Lightning Round!

When we last left off in Edens Zero, the gang met with the all-knowing, fourth wall breaking fortuneteller Xiaomei to find Homura’s mentor, Valkyrie. Xiaomei’s happy to tell them where she is, but first they have to fight through her champions.

She has a fighting fetish. Shiki makes short work of the first guy, but now the rest of the crew has to step up.

Recap

After Xiaomei gets down from her high, she tells the heroes that they have three more people to fight. To make things fair, she’s making each of them fight, one on one, anything goes aside from killing.

First up is everybody’s favorite blonde B-Cuber, Rebecca, and her best friend Happy! Against the Space SBA champ and B-Cuber Flanker Yotch!

It’s a gunslinging showdown as Yotch uses special bullets that spew… clothes eating slime?

Big mistake on his part, because Rebecca beats the snot out of him.

Next up is Weisz against Highway Yana, who reminds me a little of Dyspo from Dragon Ball Super. Weisz uses Pino’s EMP to shut down his speed, then curb stomps the poor guy. Another one bites the dust.

Yet Xiaomei gets even more excited, because she knows what’s coming in the final round. For the Edens Zero, Homura steps up to fight. To her shock, though, she sees her opponent is a duplicate of her teacher, Valkyrie of the Demon King’s Starshines!

Review

I would have preferred it if Mashima had decided to draw out this tournament thing over a few chapters so that we could see the heroes really cut loose. It feels like he’s rushing things at this point. That said, I found Rebecca and Weisz’s fights, while short, to be a good way to show off their skills. We also learned to never make Rebecca mad, because she will beat you senseless.

The one thing I am curious about is how Xiaomei created a replica of Valkyrie in the first place. I know that she’s up to something, but I can’t figure out what.

This chapter was short, but it seems the point was to get the fodder out of the way for the big guns. Next chapter will see Homura stack up against a copy of her mentor, and that makes for some good character development and backstory. I’m look forward to it!

I Give “Valkyrie’s Footsteps” a 2.5/5. Could have been better, could have been worse.

Also, we need to address how much fanservice Mashima’s putting into his work now. The slime thing was crossing into ecchi territory.