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I'm writing this review because I am sick of people trashing this series. This series is NOT "just Fairy Tail in space," it is NOT bad, and it is NOT driven by friendship-power; this series is actually AMAZING, it's shaping up to be Mashima's best work yet as so far it's better than Rave at this point.

Summary before getting into the details: Despite the main character talking about friendship a lot in the first few chapters, this series does NOT "run on friendship-power," and nobody is ever handed some kind of BS power-ups on a silver platter after making cool speeches about friendship. In fact, ... it's the opposite, as the universe consistently shows the main character that his views are naive and unrealistic. Below I will go into details.

Okay, so here's the issue: It would seem that Fairy Tail made people lose all their faith in Mashima, as most readers/watchers of the series with actual brains and good taste only stuck with it to the end because they were invested enough to want to see what would happen. But as a result, now that FT is over (not counting 100YQ) people no longer want to give Mashima a fair chance, so after reading just the first few chapters of this manga and seeing how much "friendship" gets brought up they decided "oh it's just FT in space and it sucks and Mashima sucks blah blah blah."

Here's the thing: This series is a lot more similar to Rave than it is to FT, and if people gave it more of a chance than just the first couple volumes they would see that clearly. The universe of this series is very GRITTY and GRIMDARK, and it DOES NOT CATER to the naive ideals of friendship that the main character believes in. In FT, we got the whole "Love is the One Magic" thing, so that friendship-power basically ran the whole series. That isn't the case here. The universe of Edens Zero is one in which people literally get murdered in cold blood immediately after making a cool speech about friendship and bonds (true story, that really happens) and in which people who are suffering and beg for help are unable to be saved and die horribly before the protagonists' eyes. This series is actually DARKER than Rave was.

It does NOT have friendship-power. The main character Shiki is able to make his ideals of friendship and bonds work, but only by WORKING REALLY HARD FOR IT WITH HIS FRIENDS: Nothing is handed to them by the universe or the plot as some kind of dumb reward for Shiki's naive viewpoints. They truly have to WORK to make their ideals stick in a universe where the vast majority of people are much better off if they only look out for themselves, a universe full to the brim with horrible things like slavery, racism, the use of sapient beings as experimental subjects against their will, and human trafficking at the level of forced-prostitution (as I said, this series is even darker than Rave was).

Some people WORRY that this series will eventually "go downhill" as Fairy Tail did, but they DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THAT, and here's why: Mashima had a complete outline for Rave's story and all the major arcs (and the story's length) from the start while just making up details (battles, character interactions) along the way. And he's said that he's DOING THE SAME WITH EDEN'S ZERO. He's outright stated that in FT he only had the first few arcs outlined and a few plot points (he hasn't said which but I'm assuming the time-travel, Zeref, and E.N.D. stuff) planned; but since the series got way more popular than expected he extended it LONGER than he planned and made whole arcs up as he went along, not knowing how long he would end up making it, and that's when the series went downhill with crappy friendship-power writing.

AS FOR EDEN'S ZERO: Mashima has stated online and in interviews that he's writing EZ the way he wrote Rave rather than like FT. He's had all the major plot and arcs planned from the start, even knowing HOW LONG HE WANTS TO MAKE IT (between Rave's and FT's length), while just coming up with details along the way. That's why EZ is as well-written as Rave was and is way better than FT! Also incidentally that means the series is now about 25 to 30 percent done at about 100 chapters.

Interesting stuff, right? What it shows is that Mashima learned from his mistakes with FT and plans to not repeat them by making sure to plan/outline all the arcs of this story from the beginning like he did with Rave. I have complete faith in Mashima that this series will continue to be excellent, because he has a full outline/plan that he's following and he showed with Rave that he can write wonderfully when he has a plan; it's when he makes up arcs as he goes along that his writing sucks like what happened in FT.

About the character-designs that people complain about: Sure, some of the character-designs are reused/recycled from Mashima's previous series, but it annoys me how people get angry at Mashima for that while giving Akira Toriyama a pass for how every male character in the Dragon Quest games looks like either Android 17 or Goku, or giving Rumiko Takahashi (Inuyasha, Ranma, etc) a pass for only ever drawing four or five distinct female faces. Why is it okay when they do it but people suddenly get all angry at Mashima for reusing his character designs? Also, the art-style evolves as the series progresses, for example later in the series Rebecca looks much more different from Lucy than she did at the start.

As for the story/characters/art themselves: This series rules. As I said, the setting is a compelling, vast universe that is very gritty and grimdark, even darker than Rave's setting was. As always, Mashima's art is wonderful in both the more static scenes as well as in fight-scenes, as well as character-designs (there are plenty of new characters, including major ones, who don't resemble those from his previous series). The plot is very compelling with a nice mix of over-arching plot-lines as well as arc-specific stories, and strong elements of mystery throughout. It gets me very emotionally invested, a lot of characters have very tragic or otherwise emotionally compelling backstories that at times have made me actually cry. The character interactions are wonderful (even in FT that was always a big strength) and the characters themselves are absolutely fascinating people. The series explores themes of civil rights, slavery, objectification, trauma at the level of C-PTSD, and much more, it's honestly even DEEPER than Rave was in terms of the level of themes it explores that are relevant to the real world. Finally, the mechanics of battle and the power-sets (Ether Gears) are really cool in this series, and the battles themselves are just a treat to look at. Something specific to note is that the main character Shiki has much more interesting powers than Natsu's "I can shoot flames" powers were. Mashima also does a very good job with the progression of the power/hax scaling in the series so that it feels natural.