This is the season where the Fairy Tail-in-space joke stops being funny and starts drawing blood. Drakken Joe and the Element 4 don't fight like standard shounen villains, they torture, they break people on purpose, and Rebecca takes the worst of it before Cat Leaper ever becomes a weapon she understands. Mashima's DNA is still all over it, the found family, the dumb cat, the bond-powered comebacks, but Shiki's gravity has real stakes behind it now, and Homura and Weisz get carried past sidekick duty into people you'd actually follow. Reviewers who came for popcorn kept saying the same thing: it hit harder than they signed up for, and nobody was talking about it. The animation won't stun you and some of the gag beats land flat, yet the run is a straight roller coaster with almost no filler fat. Cult status earned the honest way, by making you care and then charging you for it.

Shiki Granbell now commands the Edens Zero and has brought together the Four Shining Stars. With his friends at his side, he hopes to get past Dragonfall, the edge of the Sakura Cosmos where mechanical dragons swarm, so he can carry on searching for the goddess Mother. Before they can move forward, the crew spots an unfamiliar warship trailing them. It proves to be the Belial Gore, which belongs to Drakken Joe, the Dark Alchemist. Shiki and his companions sneak aboard to learn why he is pursuing them, but Drakken's underlings seize the Edens Zero while they are inside. Refusing to give up, Shiki must rely on his crew to defeat Drakken and get off the Belial Gore alive. The season mixes action and comedy with a space-faring blend of science fiction and fantasy.