Manga: Eden's Zero

Eden's Zero Vol 1 
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

At Granbell Kingdom, an abandoned amusement park, Shiki has lived his entire life among machines. But one day, Rebecca and her cat companion Happy appear at the park's front gates. Little do these newcomers know that this is the first human contact Granbell has had in a hundred years! As Shiki stumbles his way into making new friends, his former neighbors stir at an opportunity for a robo-rebellion...And when his old homeland becomes too dangerous, Shiki must join Rebecca and Happy on their spaceship and escape into the boundless cosmos. 

I've been so ready to see what Mashima is going to do next after the end of Fairy Tail, and ever since information about Eden's Zero has been released, I've been so curious about what it's going to be like as we can see a few...similarities from the cover alone! 

The colour pages are cute at the beginning! Rebecca is kind of like Lucy with her attitude, she's a b-cuber so she's basically a YouTuber, but she's kind of a badass too when she needs to be which I wasn't expecting and her BFF is Happy the cat. Shiki has a knack for napping wherever and I'm kind of jealous of that. He uses ether gear that lets him float and have strength etc. Rebecca asks him to be their bodyguard and they register him as an adventurer at Blue Garden. 

The opening chapter kind of hit me in the feels with the robots and Shiki and what they did. But it also introduced us to the world of the series effectively. It looks like there's going to be a focus on the power of friendship again, and there's some ominous speculation from an...entity and a sense of anticipation for the adventure. I liked the way the space settings were drawn and Blue Garden. We have space dragons too!? Like....mechanical dragons?! There's a nice amount of action to go with all the introduction and there's even some surprises....like Happy and what he is, and Rebecca's previously mentioned badassness. Our two characters are on a quest to find "mother", to get the greatest B-Cube content and up Rebecca's subscribers...basically. 

As much as I enjoyed this volume, I can't ignore the Fairy Tail similarities. In the art both MC's really do look like Lucy and Gray but with some subtle differences, and obviously....the cat. Happy looks like Happy. Elsie Crimson the space pirate....I thought she looked like Erza in the art we'd seen already but she basically is as far as I can tell. Libby is also kind of a grown up Wendy except she's a cow, and then there's Weisz Steiner who looks like Laxus. There's echoes of Fairy Tail throughout with one of the robots wearing the pumpkin from the GMG arc's hat, a quest flyer and so on. The catnapper also totally looked like Racer. 

HOWEVER one of the characters did mention a "manga like that" when talking about Shiki's idea of what a Guild is and now I'm wondering how much of this has been done on purpose and if this series is actually supposed to be set in the same world as Fairy Tail? Like did I miss the announcement that says this is set however many years after Fairy Tail? Are these the descendants of Fairy Tail? 

Mashima did purposely hide some Fairy Tail characters in the volume though, I spotted Team Shadow Gear, Warren, Max and Lucy and Natsu throughout the planet! Although at first I didn't realise it was done on purpose so I was a bit like whaaaaaaat?! 

While there are some similarities to Fairy Tail, the Guild isn't the same, but some of the character designs are similar, the initial volume has left me with plenty to be intrigued by! I've been left with lots of questions and a sense of foreboding thanks to the end of the volume!