Edens Zero

Edens Zero (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese science fantasy manga series written and illustrated by Hiro Mashima. It was serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine from June 2018 to June 2024, with its chapters collected into thirty-two volumes as of June 2024. Set in a fictional spacefaring universe, the story follows Shiki Granbell, a boy with gravity powers who embarks on a voyage aboard the titular starship in search of a cosmic entity named Mother.

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 Manga, Comixology, and Amazon Kindle. An anime television series adaptation produced by J.C.Staff aired from April to October 2021. A second season aired from April to October 2023. A video game adaptation by Konami was also released.

Plot
Shiki Granbell, a human boy, lives among robots on the deserted theme park planet Granbell in the Sakura Cosmos. His adoptive grandfather, the benevolent "Demon King" robot Ziggy, teaches him to control gravity with a superhuman power called Ether Gear. Ten years after Ziggy's death, the park is visited by spacefaring content creators Rebecca Bluegarden and Happy, whom Shiki befriends when the dying robots force the three off Granbell before expending their vital Ether energy. Seeking new friends and adventure, the three set out in search of Mother, the fabled goddess of the cosmos.

Early in the trio's voyage, the space pirate Elsie Crimson gifts Shiki with his inheritance from Ziggy, the interstellar warship Edens Zero. Shiki gathers Ziggy's android crewmates, the Four Shining Stars, as well as others he befriends, including Weisz Steiner, a criminal from an alternate history created by a time-eating Chronophage; E.M. Pino, a memory-impaired EMP android built by Ziggy who dreams of becoming human; and Homura Kôgetsu, a young swordswoman and pupil of one of the Shining Stars. Meanwhile, Rebecca develops her own Ether Gear ability to reverse time and travel between parallel universes to save Shiki after he is killed by the crime lord Drakken Joe.

Before leaving the Sakura Cosmos, the Edens Zero crew encounters a revived, malevolent Ziggy, who aims to ensure Mother's death in the near future, which would trigger an extinction event for all human life. Captaining the Edens One, an upgraded version of the Edens Zero, Ziggy draws Shiki's crew into a war with the neighboring Aoi Cosmos's empire, where he detonates the empire's arsenal of 20,000 antimatter bombs to kill them, although Shiki leads the crew to escape. Following a three-year conflict, Shiki discovers Ziggy's identity as his own alternate self who tried stopping the bombs instead, an act resulting in a spacetime distortion that sent him and Rebecca 20,000 years into the future. Ziggy reveals the Edens Zero was built to send him back in time to Universe Zero—the convergence point of all universes—where Mother's multiversal deaths can be prevented. Pino realizes Ziggy is being controlled when he discreetly repairs her memory, allowing her to access an empowered Overdrive state and free him with her EMP. At Ziggy's urging, Shiki destroys him to thwart his controller, the artificially intelligent Edens One.

The crew travels to Universe Zero's past by activating Etherion, the ship's time travel function made from the future Rebecca's Ether. The process imparts the crew's memories and abilities onto their past selves, who find Universe Zero to be an idyllic reality where several deaths and misfortunes in previous universes have never occurred. As the Edens Zero traces Mother to an uncharted region of space, Pino suffers a fatal malfunction upon learning the Four Shining Stars' origins as replicas of humans who lived 20,000 years ago on a dying planet Earth. The Edens Zero is joined by a resurrected Ziggy in destroying the Edens One and its android avatar, Void, whose consciousness belongs to Shiki and Rebecca's unborn son from Ziggy's timeline.

When Shiki reaches Mother, she reveals herself as the Overdrive form of Earth, Shiki's homeworld, where Ziggy found him while Mother was temporarily reverted to her planetary state by the Chronophage fifteen years earlier. Learning that allowing Mother to die in Universe Zero would guarantee the survival of those who died in the previous world, Shiki does so with the intent to lure the Chronophage into restoring Earth. He succeeds after defeating the Chronophage's core body, the future Rebecca, who vanishes upon remembering her past. The crew then uses their technology to revitalize Earth, while Pino deactivates. Some time later, Shiki and Rebecca settle on Granbell and have a daughter. As the crew's reward from Mother for saving her, Pino is reactivated—declining the chance to be reborn as this human daughter—and reunites with her friends.

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 his previous manga, 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 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.

Manga
Edens Zero is written and illustrated by Hiro Mashima. The series began in Kodansha's manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Magazine on June 27, 2018,  and ended on June 26, 2024. Kodansha has collected its chapters into individual volumes. The first volume was released on September 14, 2018. As of June 17, 2024, thirty-two 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. This was replaced with the K Manga app service that was released on May 10, 2023.

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 "Bōken no Vlog" (冒険のVLOG) by CHiCO with HoneyWorks. The second opening theme is "Forever" by L'Arc-en-Ciel, and the second ending theme is "Sekai no Himitsu" (世界の秘密) 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 "Rinne" (リンネ) by Asca. The second opening theme of season 2 is "Kaibutsu" (械物) performed by Tani Yuuki, and the second ending theme is "My Star" by Lozareena. The second season was licensed internationally by Mediatoon Distribution and streamed by Crunchyroll in various regions. 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. however the game ended it's service on February 29, 2024.

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, Rebecca to Kikai no Yōkan, (レベッカと機械ノ洋館) for free on PC on March 16, 2022.

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 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 genre.