Edens Zero

Edens Zero (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese science fantasy manga series written and illustrated by Hiro Mashima. It has been serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine since June 2018, with its chapters collected into twenty-eight tankōbon volumes as of September 2023. The manga is published digitally in six other languages as they are released in Japan, with Kodansha USA licensing the series for English publication in North America on Crunchyroll, Comixology, and Amazon Kindle. An anime television series adaptation produced by J.C.Staff aired from April to October 2021. A second season premiered from April to October 2023. A video game adaptation by Konami was also released.
Plot
Shiki Granbell, a human boy who manipulates gravity with a superhuman power called Ether Gear, lives among robots on the deserted theme park planet Granbell in the Sakura Cosmos. The park is visited by spacefaring content creators Rebecca Bluegarden and her robotic cat companion, Happy, whom Shiki befriends. After the park's robots force Shiki off the planet to save him from being stranded before expending their vital Ether energy, the three set out to explore the universe by searching for Mother, the goddess of the cosmos.
Early in Shiki's journey, the space pirate Elsie Crimson gifts him with the Edens Zero, an interstellar warship left by his deceased grandfather figure, the mechanical Demon King Ziggy. To prepare for the voyage, Shiki assembles Ziggy's original android crewmates, the Four Shining Stars, along with other friends he encounters: Weisz Steiner, a criminal from an alternate history created by a time-eating monster called a chronophage; E.M. Pino, an EMP android built by Ziggy who suffers from memory damage; and Homura Kôgetsu, a young swordswoman and pupil of one of the Shining Stars. Meanwhile, Rebecca discovers her own Ether Gear ability to reverse time and travel between parallel universes.
Before disembarking for Mother, Shiki revisits Granbell and encounters a reactivated Ziggy, who suddenly attacks him and desires to eradicate all human life. Avoiding destruction by Ziggy's enhanced Edens One warship, the Edens Zero crew travels to the neighboring Aoi Cosmos, where they are drawn into a war between its reigning empire and Ziggy's forces. Shiki leads the crew to escape when Ziggy detonates the empire's arsenal of 20,000 antimatter bombs to kill the crew, although their crewmate Witch Regret sacrifices herself to protect them, leading the crew to postpone their adventure until they defeat Ziggy.
Three years later, during their final battle on the Kaede Cosmos planet Lendard, Shiki discovers Ziggy's true identity as a mechanized version of himself from a universe where the antimatter bombs triggered a spacetime distortion that sent him and Rebecca 20,000 years into the future. Ziggy reveals the Edens Zero was built to enable his return to the present, and that his original intent was to prevent Mother's imminent death and humankind's resulting extinction by traveling to Universe Zero, the convergence point of all parallel universes. Pino regains her memories and realizes that Ziggy is being controlled by the Edens Ones rogue artificial intelligence, which seeks to ensure Mother's death. After Pino uses an advanced EMP to free Ziggy, Shiki destroys him at Ziggy's request to keep the Edens One from reasserting control.
To complete Ziggy's mission, the crew travels to Universe Zero by activating Etherion, the Edens Zeros secret time travel function made from the alternate Rebecca's Ether. This merges all parallel universes into a single, idyllic reality where further time travel is impossible, and imparts the crew's memories and knowledge onto their past selves, allowing them to reunite and prepare for their final battle with the Edens One.
Production
Following the conclusion of his series Fairy Tail on July 26, 2017, Hiro Mashima posted a Tweet on December 31, 2017, promising to start a new series sometime in 2018. After his visit to the Angoulême International Comics Festival in France, Mashima revealed that the new series would be "a new form of fantasy", and that the character Plue from his earlier series Rave Master would appear in the manga. On May 14, 2018, Mashima commented on Twitter that he was becoming "a little confused" due to working simultaneously on this series, a Fairy Tail continuation, and another "secret" project. He also stated that he was coming up with new ideas for the series "one after another". On May 30, 2018, Weekly Shōnen Magazine revealed that the series was tentatively titled Eden's Zero. Although the title is the name of the main characters' spaceship, Mashima revealed that he thought of a deeper meaning for it, but that its usage would depend on future developments of the story.
When developing the idea for his next series, Mashima originally anticipated using another sword and sorcery setting similar to the manga he had drawn for the last 20 years, but decided on creating a "space fantasy" adventure due to a lack of such contemporary shōnen manga; he coined the term "space fantasy" from his own misinterpretation of "SF", the abbreviation of science fiction in Japan, as a child. He also cited the genre's unpopularity in shōnen manga as an influence, viewing it as a challenge he wanted to overcome. Mashima has described his approach to writing Edens Zero as being in between those of Rave Master and Fairy Tail, combining predetermined story elements with ideas that he draws "just from momentum" while writing on a weekly basis to give the manga a "real time" feeling. He has also expressed an intention to end Edens Zero when its number of collected volumes is in between those of the two previous series. In 2021, Mashima stated that Edens Zero would continue the themes of friendship, family, and battles from Fairy Tail, but that it may change slightly by the end when the mystery of the character Mother is revealed.
Publication
Edens Zero is written and illustrated by Hiro Mashima. The series began in Kodansha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Magazine on June 27, 2018. Kodansha has collected its chapters into individual tankōbon volumes. The first volume was released on September 14, 2018. As of September 14, 2023, twenty-eight volumes have been released.
The series is published simultaneously in seven languages: English, French, Chinese, Korean, Thai, German and Brazilian Portuguese. North American publisher Kodansha USA has released chapters of the series on digital platforms such as Crunchyroll Manga and Amazon Kindle. which ended on January 16, 2023.
This was replaced with a new app service that was released May 10, 2023, known as "K Manga" which will include the new simulpub chapters of the series. This new platform is available for Android, with a full website planned for a later date.
Media
Anime
On June 12, 2020, Mashima announced on Twitter that the manga would be adapted into an anime television series. At the Tokyo Game Show livestream on September 26, 2020, it was revealed that the anime would be produced by J.C.Staff and directed by Yūji Suzuki, with Shinji Ishihira serving as chief director, Mitsutaka Hirota overseeing scripts, Yurika Sako designing the characters, and Yoshihisa Hirano composing the music. The series aired on Nippon TV and other channels from April 11 to October 3, 2021. Netflix acquired streaming rights to the series, which was released globally on August 26, 2021. The opening theme is "Eden Through the Rough" by Takanori Nishikawa, and the ending theme is by CHiCO with HoneyWorks. The second opening theme is "Forever" by L'Arc-en-Ciel, and the second ending theme is by Sayuri.
Director Yūji Suzuki died on September 9, 2021, before the series' broadcast was completed. Although he had worked in the industry as a key animator and episode director since the mid-2000s, Edens Zero was the first and only full series Suzuki directed.
On February 9, 2022, it was announced that the series would receive a second season, which aired from April 2 to October 1, 2023, with Toshinori Watanabe replacing Suzuki as the director. The opening theme is "Never say Never" by Takanori Nishikawa, and the ending theme is by Asca. The second season was licensed internationally by Mediatoon Distribution and streamed by Crunchyroll in various regions and also Bilibili in Asia-Pacific. A 72-minute recap original net animation of the first season aired in Japan on the same day as the second season premiere, and was streamed by Crunchyroll from April 29, 2023.
Video games
On September 16, 2020, Konami announced that they are developing an Edens Zero video game. It was later revealed at the Tokyo Game Show 2020 livestream that two separate action role-playing games were being developed, one being a 3D game for consoles, and the other being a top-down game for mobile devices. In February 2022, the latter was revealed as Edens Zero Pocket Galaxy and was released on February 24 for iOS and Android.
On December 17, 2021, Mashima announced that he was developing an Edens Zero video game by himself using RPG Maker. Describing it as a "hobby project" that he worked on in his free time, he released the game for free on PC on March 16, 2022.
Reception
Sales
In Japan, the first volume of Edens Zero reached 13th place on the weekly Oricon chart with 30,178 copies sold. The second volume ranked 16th with 41,506 copies sold, and the third volume at 18th place with 31,316 copies.
Critical response
The first volume received a mixed response from critics on Anime News Network, where it was rated on a 1 to 5 scale. Amy McNulty gave the volume a 3.5 rating, calling it a "solid start" and praising the story's pacing, characters, and art, while adding that it "may not blow anyone away". McNulty also commented on Mashima's similar visual and design choices to Fairy Tail – which she noted could be taken negatively – but opined that the manga could benefit from readers' familiarity with Fairy Tail, and found it accessible to new readers of Mashima's work. Rebecca Silverman, who also rated it 3.5, considered the manga to be Mashima's darkest work, and praised him for using themes that "helped make his previous series Fairy Tail work so well", citing Shiki and Rebecca's complementary backgrounds as orphans as an example. However, she expressed slight concerns over the story potentially becoming confusing for readers with the volume's implications of time travel and flash-forward cliffhanger. Faye Hopper, who gave the volume a 3 rating, found that the shift from "high fantasy pastiche to Star Wars reminiscent sci-fi" helped enrich the story, but criticized Mashima's humor and adherence to shōnen manga conventions. Teresa Navarro gave it a 2 rating, finding the characters and art style to be nearly identical to those in Fairy Tail, but considering its potential to gain a cult following from fans of the shōnen genre.
Notes
General
Translations
References
External links
2018 manga
Action role-playing video games
Adventure anime and manga
Anime and manga about parallel universes
Aniplex
Crunchyroll anime
Fiction about social media
Hiro Mashima
J.C.Staff
Kodansha manga
Konami games
Netflix original anime
Nippon TV original programming
Science fantasy anime and manga
Science fantasy video games
Science fantasy television series
Shōnen manga
Unreal Engine games