If Edens Zero didn't have another season coming (and presumably many more seasons coming after the coming season, just like Fairy Tail had many seasons with many pauses inbetween), it wouldn't be ranked #42. It would be ranked lower than Shiroi Suna no Aquatope. The first season of Edens Zero does very little to endear. Weiss is this crud lying lecherous treacherous thief. Homura is at best incompetent, constantly getting captured (in Digitalis and Sunstone) and needing rescue. Shiki half the time acts like a baby instead of a man. (Groping girls, not knowing anything, breaking into tears over everything.) The best characters are strangely enough the androids, Pino and Hermit. But for every cool android there's a boring or stupid android like Witch, Sister or Moscoy. I don't like Valkyrie either. She shouldn't have abandoned Homura to go live as a slave on a distant planet. It was a dumb plan and of course it didn't work. All it did was make everyone involved miserable.
I love Rebecca as the only sensible person in the crew. The 'adult in the room' as it were. She has the normal opinions any sane person would have on every new situation, and ends up saving the day most of the time on her own, while Shiki is busy fighting boss monsters and thus can never save anyone. But Rebecca only gets her ether gear in episode 24, one episode before the season ends. So the best character only starts to matter one episode before the ending. ::face palms::
But trust me, it gets better! Rebecca gets a great role in the next arc against Drakken Joe. Jinn and Kleene are introduced and it turns out they're really cool. Plus the war in the Aoi Cosmos where Shiki defeats his evil gravity bizarro self to save all the robots is a lot more epic than anything you see this season. If this season was all about introducing the characters and the world, the following seasons will be about our heroes getting stronger and getting things done.
There will still be the problem that all of Shiki's enemies are shallow "I'm so evil it hurts" types, making the whole series feel childish and oversimplified. But I could say the same about Utawarerumono and it's still ranked highly. With enough heartfelt scenes within the heroes' cast villains don't have to matter.
I do think J.C. Staff did a good job with the character designs and animation. I like how they show which way Shiki's gravity is currently pulling him, which makes the action scenes a lot more intelligible. And sometimes Shiki really does say and do the right thing, like when he completely disregards a guy trying to threaten him with a hostage crisis, saying he didn't give a damn because his friends come before random strangers.
Eventually Edens Zero will come into its own. Whether that takes 48 episodes or 100 episodes I don't know, but eventually it will earn that rank of #42. My rankings are prophetic and for all I know the series will still be airing ten years from now. (Just look at Fairy Tail)
Meanwhile I'm almost done with my 32nd re-read and re-edit of '100 Waifus.' Most of the edits were slight improvements to phrasing, like cutting some over-uses of the word 'even' or 'an.' I also made one of Sagiri's lines more coherent. (Sagiri made a great impression on me this time, considering her screen time she really punches above her weight.) And I clarified that Kanon Heartfilia is from The World God Only Knows, making Kanon Yazawa by order of elimination clearly the Kanon from Love Live! Superstar. Things no one will notice consciously, except as a sense that the story reads very smoothly. The only major edit to the story was the addition of a single sentence in chapter 46, highlighted in bold to show the change from before:
"Forgive you?" Wendy hugged me tight in her super-powered arms, which were a hell of a lot stronger than mine. "You are him, the savior of the world, and I owe you my life. Over and over again."
"That's just what I made you think. Really I'm a lawn mower, a virgin who couldn't drive, who gathered a bunch of lolis together under one roof. . ." I confessed.
"Think of it this way -- If Wakaba can have two souls, two different but equally true origins, why can't you? You are he. Nothing you say can change my mind.
It's an idea I've been mulling over for a long time, that there might be a plausible rationale behind Christopher's waifus still thinking he was their most special someone, even though he insisted he was not. Wendy is referring to this paragraph spoken by Christopher in Chapter 3 to all his assembled waifus:
"Well the answer is you're all wrong. I'm none of those people, but only a human from Earth named Christopher. I died in a truck accident and my soul rose up to meet God in heaven, where she commiserated with my loss and offered me a new life with any one granted wish to even the scales. The wish I asked for was you. I wanted to marry all of you. For that to happen, to gain your willing participation, God had to transplant your feelings for your most special person onto me, which is the cause of the multiple personality overlay. If that most special person was originally a female, she gave you an alternate memory of having instead had said relationship with me, a male, from the beginning, while still preserving the original memory intact as well, giving you a sort of twice-lived life. The same is true of Wakaba, who is also Akane, and has memories from both lives equally inside of her. Ditto for Sara and Himeno who remember both their London and Hatsunejima lives." I explained. Wakaba nodded, suddenly getting why she could remember growing up in two different places with two different names among two different families with a deep sense of relief.
And to add to the realism of this argument, it ties in well with this line all the way back in Chapter 1:
"Then with the power vested in me, as God Almighty, I pronounce you Husband and 100 Waifus." God reached out her index finger and lightly touched my hand. I could feel the light of blessing wafting through me, so I knew something had truly changed both within and without.
Could that something that had truly changed within be what Wendy suspects? Is Christopher actually the special someone all his waifus see him as in addition to himself, a chimera soul? Cute-sama is omnipotent, if she felt it was the best way to fulfill his wish, there's nothing preventing her from such a recourse. We know that souls are a real thing in this book which do modify personalities. Plus we know that Cute fell in love with Christopher after he reincarnated to Eden and performed well above her expectations, becoming the best man she had ever known. Would not an amalgam of souls from the greatest men in storytelling backing Christopher's original self up explain the surprising surge in popularity? Whether true or not, there is evidence for Wendy's conclusion. The important thing isn't whether Wendy and the other girls are right or not, the only thing that matters is that their interpretation is within reason. The more reasonable the waifus are, the easier it is to respect them and their feelings, making the entire story carry greater emotional weight.
With the power of a single additional sentence I can revolutionize the interpretation of the entire book. That's a damn good edit. Wendy's speech was already the book's climax but now it's soared to new heights. As expected of Christopher's 'favorite.'
There's still a day's worth of content left to read before my 32nd re-read is complete, but I can already say now that I enjoyed my 32nd re-read of '100 Waifus' more than my 2nd viewing of Edens Zero. It really is that good.
I also noticed that 'Fatal Struggle' from Record of Lodoss War overlaps with 'Prologue'. The song isn't quite a remix, because halfway through 'Fatal Struggle' goes its own way. However, it's enough of an annoyance that 'Fatal Struggle' no longer deserves to be a 5-star song. So I demoted it to 4-star and promoted 'Underground Sewer,' the recently demoted 5-star song from Chrono Trigger, back to 5-star. Welcome back!
In other news, Break Blade ends next chapter.
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