Declaration from One Demon King to Another!

Edens Zero Chapter 169 Review/Recap

The Aoi War has ended with the fall of Nero’s empire and a lot of death for everyone. Nero, Shura, and Ijuna are dead; Creed’s dead; Witch gave her life to save Edens Zero. Everyone’s experienced some form of loss, and Ziggy is at the heart of it all. Having seen what his adoptive Grandpa’s now capable of, Shiki can’t let him go unchecked. With a new resolve, Shiki makes a declaration of war: he will bring Ziggy down.

Recap

Having lost his eye in his fight with Shura, Sister crafts a new, cybernetic one for Shiki. The eye works perfectly, except that Sister added X-Ray vision for the fun of it, much to the girl’s dismay.

Later, Weisz and Laguna meet in the Spa of Edens, where Weisz asks why he’s still hanging around the ship. Laguna then explains his real backstory. Before he joined Oasis, he was a popular actor on a small planet, alongside his best friend, Harold. They wanted to be the biggest actor’s in the cosmos, but when the Empire invaded, Harold was killed. That’s when Laguna realized, despite his sadness, he couldn’t stop acting. He lost the ability to tell when he was being sincere, even after retiring and joining Oasis. Not anymore, though. Now, he wants to help Edens Zero.

As life goes on aboard the ship, Shiki tells everyone their goal hasn’t changed: they’re still going to find Mother. However, they can’t let Ziggy have his way anymore. Shiki makes a declaration of war: he will stop his ex-Grandpa before he can destroy humanity.

Xiao Mei then explains what happens next: the Union Army builds a new government at The Temple, Oasis becomes a civilian organization, and things on Foresta start to stabilize. Thus, three years pass since the end of the Aoi War.

Review

This was a very…quiet chapter. That’s not a bad thing in any way, mind you. The last three chapters of the manga have served as the falling action of the Aoi Cosmos Saga. That’s important to the narrative of a good story. It serves as an emotional cap to what everyone’s gone through during the Aoi War arc.

As far as the time-skip, I admit, it was a little surprising for Mashima to do it now. However, it also makes sense. Shonen tropes 101: if you want characters to get a massive, offscreen powerup, you give them a time-skip. So it looks like the next time we see Shiki and the crew of Edens, they’ll have new looks. I’m actually looking forward to seeing what everyone looks like.

This was a good chapter, overall, and I like the idea that Shiki now has a cybernetic eye. It’s a callback to Fairy Tail, since Erza also had an artificial eye on her. Can’t wait to see what everyone looks like next chapter.

I Give “Declaration” a 3.8/5

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