Eden's Zero Vol 7
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review!
A young boy gazes up at the sky and sees a streaming bolt of light. The friendly, armour-clad being at his side tells him gently, 'That's a dragon.' The fact that he's joking isn't important. What's important is the look of wonder on the boy's face... and the galaxy-spanning adventure that's about to take place!
Volume 7 finds the crew in search of Valkyrie, however they soon stumble across a seemingly peaceful planet that's under the tyrannical reign of Madame Kurenai. Shiki and Homura soon become separated and relegated to the labour district in order to mine 100,000 metals before they can be free. It's not the kind of mining that you might be thinking of though.
In an original twist there's creatures that carry metal and they must be defeated to obtain or rather 'mine' it. While they deal with Madame Kurenai's minions there, the lady herself is seeking the Eden's Zero. We also make the discovery of a weakness to the ether gear, which I personally thought was an interesting development and makes it seem less over powered.
Meanwhile, Rebecca has been separated from them and is unable to make contact with the others remaining on the Eden's Zero. She does run into Labilia though and I think I dislike this character more and more every time I see her. It was kind of heartwarming for her to offer to help Rebecca and to help her become a better B-Cuber in the process, but there was a little twist that I really shouldn't have been surprised by. However, we do get to meet another B-Cuber called Nino. I spent a lot of this volume trying to decide whether or not I trusted him!
Volume 7 moves along smoothly from point to point with its usual mix of action and intrigue, plus a really big monster to fight! There's also two really great plot twists to look out for in this one, one of which throws quite a spanner in the works for our crew and their mission and I'm curious as to where they're going to go from here!
Eden's Zero Vol 4
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review!
A young boy gazes up at the sky and sees a streaming bolt of light. The friendly, armor-clad being at his side tells him gently, "That's a dragon." The fact that he's joking isn't important. What's important is the look of wonder on the boy's face... and the galaxy-spanning adventure that's about to take place! Join Hiro Mashima (Fairy Tail, Rave Master) once more as he takes to the stars for another thrilling saga!
There's tension from the start of this volume as we have an incoming disaster and a fight, so you could say the first few chapters are pretty intense for that, and we've got twists once again to take us by surprise, especially as we meet Sister Ivry. Plus we obviously have a mad scramble to get off the planet before it all goes to hell, basically.
I really am enjoying the dynamics between our little group of misfits, and the banter that they have that provides a lot of the humour. I also love the adventure/quest vibe to this as we bounce from place and ensuing chaos to place and yet more chaos. So far each new place we've visited has been not only interesting but also different to the previous places we've visited.
We got to learn a little more about Homura in this volume which eased my suspicions about her a smidge. But we have an ominous new character on the loose that may or may not...but most likely will cause trouble for our group.
Keeping up the nice pace we soon head out to search for the remaining two of the Four Shining Stars, their next target being Valkyrie. However, before they can find Valkyrie we come face to face with Hermit..sort of. Of course nothing is that simple and so we get to venture to yet another new planet, of course this one is quite different to the ones we've seen so far.
Digitalis and the explanation for it kind of reminded me of SAO with the whole "if you die in Digitalis you die in real life" kind of thing, and the fact that once you enter the planet you're in a game, which I also found an interesting route to take with the planet and it's different to anything I've seen before when it comes to sci-fi manga or books. What made this planet even more interesting is that we've got a murderer running around so while we get a little bit of a break from the tension it's not long before we're back with it!
As for easter eggs, I spotted quite a lot of Fairy Tail easter eggs in this volume...Weisz really used a flamethrower ether gear and yelled "atlas flame" and I stared at the page for a solid minute like...you didn't?! We also have an Oracion Seis and Ichiya popped up...sort of. It also has to be said that Rebecca really looked like Carla when she's in her human form at one point.
All in all Volume 4 is another nicely paced volume with plenty of action and intrigue to keep you going, and I'm enjoying how everything is tying together both within this volume specifically and within the story as a whole! After the cliffhanger ending, I'm even more excited for the next volume!
Eden's Zero Vol 2
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher, in exchange for an honest review!
Shiki, Rebecca, and Happy have gone to the planet Norma in the hopes of getting a bigger ship from an old friend, Professor Weisz. But when they get there, they see outdated technology and an unfamiliar city...and the only sign of the professor is a mysterious young man going by the same name. What's more, he's gotten himself into some trouble with the toughest gang on the planet--and neither side is going down without a fight!
We have immediate intrigue from the beginning as we meet our narrator, before we head in to some action and it's not long before we see what the opening page meant when it said "time has no meaning". It's an interesting twist, I'll give it that, and I wasn't expecting it. Whether or not it was just a convenience for the volume to give us another character for our crew, or whether it has a larger part to play remains to be seen.
Throughout this volume we get to know Weisz who is the latest member of our little group, along with a little robot called Pino! They should be interesting additions to the crew, because Weisz is kind of a scumbag, but he's not all bad? You could say.
There's a nice amount of action as they're running from a gang and then having to stop the gangs evil plan, and there's the time element and then we have to fight some aliens. We finally get to meet the space pirates properly, as our characters come in to contact with Elsie Crimson. I actually quite liked her and I'm kind of hoping that we get to see some more of her! I was a little bit disappointed she didn't join our main group!
She does provide us with a few more interesting twists, there's some connections to Shiki's grandfather, an interesting tidbit about Mother, we meet Elsie's nemesis Justice who's with the Cosmic Government and hunting her down, and I'm so looking forward to more of that too! Plus the final page leaves us with a hint of a new character that we'll be meeting in volume 3, I assume!
Volume two has a nice balance of action, intrigue, heartwarming and emotional moments, and plot progression as we gather some new crew members and bring in a few new elements while moving things in to place to head off on our quest. This is presumably the final volume focusing on the world building, and introducing us to the characters before the story really kicks off next volume!
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!
