Crew of Edens Zero (Shiki Granbell, Shiki's Companions, Demon King's Four Shining Stars)
Crew of Edens One (Ziggy) | Oración Seis Galáctica (Associates) | Interstellar Union Army
Grand Shiki Cosmos (Sakura Cosmos [Blue Garden, Sun Jewel]) | Others
The Final World
WARNING: Due to his nature as a Walking Spoiler, all spoilers in each folder are unmarked except for spoilers pertaining to folders below. You Have Been Warned!
Demon King Ziggy
Voiced by: Hōchū Ōtsuka (Japanese), John Eric Bentley (English) Foreign VAs
Click here to see "Mechanical King" Ziggy
Click here to see behind Ziggy's mask (SPOILERS)
"If you have a friend who will shed tears for you... you'd better treasure that friend forever."
— Ziggy (pre-Face–Heel Turn)
"Now is the age of mechanical life-forms. We will rule over all humankind."
— Ziggy (post-Face–Heel Turn)
"[Friends are] the most important thing in the world. They'll support you through thick and thin. If you have a friend who will shed tears for you...you'd better treasure that friend forever."
Shiki's adoptive robot grandfather, who once played the Demon King at the Granbell Kingdom theme park, and served as the original captain of the warship Edens Zero. Over 100 years ago, Ziggy traveled the stars in search of the legendary goddess Mother to regain his lost memories, but instead found a newborn Shiki, whom he brought back to Granbell to raise and pass his own gravity abilities onto him as if guided by fate. Having long since broken down from old age, he is fondly remembered by his loved ones as a wise, kind old bot who believed in equality between humans and machines, and taught Shiki all he knows about the value of friendship. However, not all is as it seems with the good Demon King, for the further along Shiki goes in his own voyage for Mother, the more details of Ziggy's forgotten past are brought to light...
General Tropes
- All-Loving Hero: Ziggy genuinely views humans and other creatures as equals to machines, believing that everyone has a "heart" no matter who or what they are.
- Badass Cape: He has a big red cloak that oozes the authority and awesomeness of someone who once ruled the Sakura Cosmos.
- Bold Explorer: He was one of countless interstellar explorers who traveled into deep space in search of Mother, specifically to wish for her to restore his lost memories.
- Cool Old Guy: He's one of the most powerful warriors in the cosmos, a seasoned intergalactic explorer, and an advocate for mechanical lifeforms everywhere.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Despite looking like an Evil Overlord straight out of a High Fantasy series, he's a paragon of kindness and wisdom for Shiki and all the robots who knew him.
- Face Death with Dignity: During Shiki's childhood, Ziggy accepted that his days were numbered and went out with a smile.
- Face of a Thug: Exaggerated. He looks like an archetypal fantasy villain with a Skull for a Head, but he's also the series' Greater-Scope Paragon.
- Fantastic Fighting Style: Ziggy learned the Magimech School of Gravity Martial Arts from its inventor, Xenolith, and passed it down to Shiki and Shura. This style allows him to alter weight and gravitational direction of anything, including concepts.
- Final Boss: He fulfills this role In-Universe to parkgoers at the Granbell Kingdom, and his throne room aboard the Edens Zero gives off the vibes of a Final Boss chamber in a JRPG.
- The Gadfly: Ziggy is shown to have had a playfully deceitful side to him as Shiki's grandfather, evidenced by how he tricked Shiki into thinking a shooting star was a dragon when he wasn't so sure himself. The anime also adds a scene of Ziggy teasing Shiki with a bug, which Shiki is deathly afraid of.
- Gambit Roulette: His plan to evacuate Shiki from Granbell before all the robots shut down banked entirely on the off-chance of a space traveler coming to an old, abandoned theme park that hadn't seen a single visitor in over a century; either that, or Shiki would be trapped on the planet both physically and emotionally. Justified by the fact that the robots didn't have any of the resources needed to contact other planets or get him off-world by themselves.
- Go Out with a Smile: His original death saw him breaking down from old age while wearing the same Grin of Audacity he always had.
- Greater-Scope Paragon: Shiki and the Four Shining Stars know Ziggy as the robot who raised and built them, respectively, teaching them all the value of life for machines and friendship with humans that made them the caring and heroic figures they are today before he died.
- Gravity Master: He has the same gravity powers as Shiki does, being the one to pass them onto him.
- Identity Amnesia: He lost his memories of his past over 100 years before his death, finding himself living on Granbell without a care in the world. This led him to look for Mother so he could wish for his memories back, but he abandoned his search when he found Shiki, feeling that raising him was more important. His true identity is eventually revealed to be a future version of Shiki, which Ziggy learns from the Big Bad controlling him, though Death of Personality is in full effect because his memories are still lost.
- Instant Expert: According to his teacher, Xenolith, Ziggy mastered all techniques of Gravity Martial Arts in a single day, as if he already knew them. This is because he did, because he passed the same techniques onto his own younger self.
- Last Request: His last words to the robots were to send Shiki away from Granbell and into outer space by whatever means presented themselves, both knowing that Shiki would be left all alone once the robots died, and believing he had the potential to change the universe.
- Like a Son to Me: He views Shiki like a grandson and raises him as such.
- Maou the Demon King: Zig-Zagged. His title as "Demon King" (Maou) refers to his role at a theme park, and his position as the Edens Zero's King of Magimech (Makai),note a benevolent figure who shares Ether with machines.
- Mean Character, Nice Actor: He's only called the "Demon King" because that's his character role at a theme park, as he's shown to be quite jovial and supportive of Shiki.
- Musical Theme Naming: According to Mashima, the name "Ziggy" was picked as a Shout-Out to "Ziggy Stardust" by David Bowie.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: When he found Shiki, he felt a certain connection to the boy that compelled him abandon his search for Mother, feeling that Shiki had the potential to change the universe for the better. The reason for this is because he sensed that he and Shiki are in fact the same person.
- Old Master: On top of being Shiki's surrogate grandfather, he is also his and Shura's teacher in the use of Gravity Martial Arts.
- Posthumous Character: He broke down from old age a decade before Rebecca and Happy come to Granbell and meet Shiki. Subverted when he comes Back from the Dead and becomes a central player to the story.
- Reclaimed by Nature: By the time he reactivates, Ziggy's mechanical body is overgrown with moss, with parts of his body cracked/broken and his cape in tatters from exposure to the elements. Shortly after he sets foot on the Edens One, he gets an instant repair job.
- Tragic Dream: Ziggy's goal to find Mother was simply so he could regain his lost memories, but it took him so long that by the time he found Shiki, he found himself too old to carry on and retired, dying without ever achieving his dream. He eventually learns his true identity from the Big Bad who resurrected him, but his memories are still lost.
- Universally Beloved Leader: As head robot of the Granbell Kingdom and Edens Zero, Ziggy is respected and adored by his subjects, crew, and adoptive grandson, who all continue to speak highly of his wisdom and kindness years after his death.
- Your Days Are Numbered: By the time he first found Shiki, Ziggy already realized he only had a few years of functionality left in him, which is part of the reason why he called off the search for Mother.
Tropes from Chapters 101 through 202
"Mechanical King" Ziggy
"Now is the age of mechanical life-forms. We will rule over all humankind."
When Shiki revisits his home with his new friends and crew, they find Ziggy standing before them, alive but changed for the worst as an evil and twisted Mechanical King, now hellbent on fulfilling two goals: to forge a new world where machines rule over humankind, and to correct his "mistake" of raising Shiki by destroying him at any cost.
- Amnesiac Dissonance: The moment Ziggy remembers his past, he's disgusted by how he treated "ugly, foolish creatures" like humans with the same respect as machines, and that the boy he raised and loved like a grandson is a threat to the entire universe itself. Subverted when it's revealed to be a part of the Edens One's control over him, and that he didn't actually regain his memories, but learned about them second-hand.
- Arch-Enemy: He becomes this for Shiki after proclaiming his intentions to find Mother and rule over humankind with his fellow machines. As such, Shiki's treats defeating Ziggy as a mandatory hurdle he and the crew must face before reaching Mother.
- Back from the Dead: He comes back ten years after breaking down from old age. Unfortunately for Shiki, it's no heartwarming reunion with his grandfather, as he immediately becomes the Big Bad. Once Pino's Overdrive EMP restores his original personality, he reveals the true Big Bad possessed his body to revive him.
- Became Their Own Antithesis: Inverted. It seems he's abandoned everything he taught Shiki about friendship and equality between organic and mechanical beings when he declares war on humans, but Ziggy reveals that he's merely returned to his true self after a century of Identity Amnesia. Subverted when it's revealed that Ziggy was taken over by the Edens One and truly was Good All Along.
- Beyond the Impossible: Nero's Empire Dice are shown to be unaffected by gravity due to being a Relic. Ziggy manages to crush them in his hand anyway by using "true" gravity. The reason: Relic or not, it's still matter, something that cannot resist true gravity.
- Big Bad: After coming Back from the Dead, he pulls a Face–Heel Turn and becomes the ultimate obstacle the heroes must face in their pursuit of Mother. Subverted when it's revealed this Ziggy is another personality created by the Edens One to control the good, true Ziggy, making him the Disc-One Final Boss.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: Ziggy's decision to let Connor handle killing Shiki and the rest of the Edens Zero crew raises a few questions as to why he didn't simply do it himself when they first met him after he came Back from the Dead, especially with Wizard's assertion that they'll become an obstacle if allowed to live long enough. Doubly so when Ziggy reveals Shiki's very existence to be a threat to the universe, which makes his lack of urgency all the more confusing. It becomes muddied by the reveal that Shiki would eventually become Ziggy in the future, and killing him then and there would prevent Ziggy's birth, though due to the ripple effect across the Multiverse caused by his return to the past, Ziggy would still be able to exist.
- Broken Pedestal: He becomes this to Shiki and the Four Shining Stars when he wages all-out war between humans and machines, spitting in the face of everything he taught them about harmony and friendship between the two.
- Came Back Wrong: Subverted. When Ziggy comes Back from the Dead as a human-hating misanthrope who betrays everyone he cared about without a second thought, everybody thinks something has gone horribly wrong with him to make him act this way. As he later claims, the Ziggy they knew was a product of Identity Amnesia, making him Evil All Along. Double Subverted by the later reveal that the he gained amnesia as a result of a Chronophage encounter right before he time-jumped, and everything he "remembered" was information he learned from the Big Bad possessing him.
- Character Catchphrase: He utters a recurring phrase, "That's what it is," to scorn his former loved ones for letting their emotions get in the way of finishing him off whenever he's at his weakest.
- The Collector: On Lendard, he has created a collection of hundreds of thousands of People Jars, all of which contain human mothers because they possess a special type of Ether that would allow him to trace Mother.
- Curb Stomp Cushion: For the first half of Ziggy and Nero's battle, Ziggy is put on the ropes thanks to Nero's Empire Dice making him an Invincible Villain with an incredibly powerful Ether Gear hidden up his sleeve. Nevertheless, Ziggy manages to score a couple of hits on Nero, ripping off one of his mustache tentacles and head fins, before finally getting his own head ripped off and going down. Then the second phase of the fight begins, catching Nero off guard and crushing his dice, at which point everything starts going Ziggy's way.
- Dark Is Evil: After he comes Back from the Dead, he proves himself to be every bit as evil as being a Demon King robot would suggest.
- Deadpan Snarker: He shows shades of this during his confrontation with Nero, with him dryly dismissing the Emperor's Info Dump:Nero: You have not heard of Beast Lord Jaguar?
Ziggy: Can't say that I have.
Nero: He was once part of the Oración Seis Galáctica, a man beyond anyone's control. Then he joined the Oración Seis Interstellar, and rose through the military ranks to become a captain.
Ziggy: I really don't care. - Evil All Along: Ziggy purports that his original self was an evil Galactic Conqueror, while the robot his friends and loved ones are familiar with was only good because he was suffering from Identity Amnesia. Subverted once it's revealed that the good personality was the original personality, and his Face–Heel Turn was caused by the Edens One taking him over.
- Evil Costume Switch: Manages to do this at the end of the Foresta arc, despite looking like an Obviously Evil Demon King to begin with: his skull face becomes more detailed with realistic teeth; his chin plate becomes more jagged, his horns curve upwards; his body bulks up considerably; his fanged chest plate becomes a Belly Mouth with a floating orb in the center; he drops his Shoulders of Doom; and he replaces his simple, thin legs with boots.
- Evil Counterpart: He becomes this for Shiki after coming Back from the Dead. Both have the same gravity powers and are the captains of their own Edens spaceships, but while Shiki is The Hero, Ziggy is his Gruesome Grandparent who wants to make machines conquer humanity.
- Evil Overlord: As the Big Bad, his title as Demon King isn't just for show like it was before, as he soars around conquering planets, bending unwilling robots to his will, and spreading death and chaos to every corner of the universe he can reach.
- Evil Sounds Raspy: Hōchū Ōtsuka punctuates his turn to evil by giving him a deeper, sinister voice that sometimes borders on Creepy Monotone.
- Evil Versus Oblivion: According to Ziggy, Shiki is an Apocalypse Maiden who poses a threat for the universe as a whole, and therefore must be destroyed. Ziggy himself, however, is a Galactic Conqueror with designs to dominate all organic life through a Robot War, which rids all nobility from his fight to save the universe.
- Evil Wears Black: To reflect his Face–Heel Turn, Ziggy's Evil Costume Switch replaces his red Badass Cape and golden face plates with black ones.
- Eviler than Thou: To Poseidon Nero. While Nero puts up a much better fight than Ziggy expects out of him, Ziggy finds it ridiculous that Nero sacrificed everyone he knew to fulfill his Empire Dice's prophecies, and would just as readily sacrifice the empire he gained from this if it means guaranteeing his victory against Ziggy. For that, Ziggy crushes Nero's dice the first opportunity he gets.
- The Evils of Free Will: Ziggy plans to brainwash machines into asserting dominance over humankind, regardless of how they ordinarily feel towards humans. He nearly does this to Pino, too, telling her she has no will of her own and ordering her to erase her memories of Shiki to follow her programming. This flies straight in the face of his earlier creed that robots have the freedom to choose who they are.
- Facepalm of Doom: He finishes his fight with Poseidon Nero this way, grabbing his foe by the face so he can't escape before triggering Gravity Drain.
- Facial Horror: The very first glimpse beneath his skull face faintly shows a human-like skull with an exposed eyeball, giving the vague image of a rotting corpse. It's implied that this is an injury from when he fought Nero, since his face looks more ordinary when it's fully revealed.
- Fantastic Racism: In stark contrast to the All-Loving Hero that Shiki and the rest knew, Ziggy is absolutely convinced that Humans Are the Real Monsters compared to machines like himself.
- Friendship Denial: To cement his status as the Big Bad, he burns all bridges he built with Shiki, the Four Shining Stars, Elsie, and Nero, claiming the friendships he had with them were just products of his Identity Amnesia, and that he couldn't care less about them now that he remembers his true self.
- Galactic Conqueror: His endgame upon reactivation is to conquer the entire universe and place machines above humankind, which he does by spreading a virus that infects robots with the same kind of desire to dominate humans.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: His eyes originally appeared to be empty black sockets, but after coming Back from the Dead as the Big Bad, he's often drawn with a single glowing pupil, giving an impression of Black Eyes of Crazy.
- Glowing Mechanical Eyes: As a machine, he sports a single pupil that glows red
- Gruesome Grandparent: He becomes one to his adoptive grandson upon his revival. The moment he and Shiki reunite, Ziggy tries to kill him and his crew, saying that raising Shiki and sending him into space was a mistake.
- Hyde Plays Jekyll: The "Mechanical King" Ziggy seemingly changes back into "Grandpa" Ziggy to pull off a Wounded Gazelle Gambit on Elsie when she nearly kills him in the Lendard arc, briefly pleading for her to take Shiki and flee moments before stabbing her with her own sword. It's later subverted with The Reveal that "Grandpa" Ziggy was actually Fighting from the Inside against the Edens One's control.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: In the Nero 66 arc, Ziggy's gravity hardly has any effect on Nero's Empire Dice, which are a piece of Mother and thus above the power of ordinary gravity. As Ziggy demonstrates after successfully grabbing the dice, he can crush them by using "true" gravity, which is simply him exerting more power than necessary.
- I Have No Son!: Grandson, in this case, as the first thing he tells Shiki after his Face–Heel Turn is that it was a mistake to raise him and send him away from Granbell, which crushes poor Shiki.
- Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Ziggy takes advantage of Shura and Nero's power struggle over the 20,000 anti-matter bombs by stealing Nero's Ether Gear, creating a portal back to Nero 66 to reach in and trigger their activation himself, and then restraining the Edens Zero within the blast radius of the bombs to be rid of them once and for all. As it's revealed later, this is because the war itself was the catalyst for Shiki's "death" and "rebirth" as Ziggy, and his actions are to create a Stable Time Loop.
- Losing Your Head: Ziggy can easily survive getting his head ripped off and reattach it with gravity, being mechanical and all. He uses this to his advantage when fighting Nero, who is unaware that decapitation isn't nearly as fatal to a machine as it would be to any organic lifeform.
- Love Is a Weakness: He believes all emotion, particularly love, to be the ultimate failing of humans. When Elsie and Shiki waste opportunities to kill them out of love for the man he used to be, he makes sure to call them out on it.
- Not an Act: When Ziggy makes his Face–Heel Turn, Shiki and Rebecca hold out hope that it's all just an act, since they just learned that the other Granbell bots were pretending to be infected by a virus to save Shiki's life. Ziggy's immediate response is to demolish the theme park—and soon the entire planet itself—with all the dead robots still there, firmly establishing him as the villain.
- Not Quite Dead: He uses his ability to survive decapitation to his advantage when Nero appears to kill him on the Temple, sneaking up on him and swiping his dice once Nero thinks he's been killed.
- Obviously Evil: A peculiar example in that despite looking like an archetypal Demon King, Ziggy was set up as a genuinely good robot who simply performed the part at a theme park. After he comes Back from the Dead and performs a Face–Heel Turn, however, he reveals himself to have been Evil All Along and was suffering from Identity Amnesia the entire time his closest friends and loved ones knew him. Subverted in the Lendard arc, which shows he was simply being puppetted by the Edens One, and was truly Good All Along.
- Pet the Dog: Despite his nihilistic view of machines, he expresses enough compassion for the Granbell robots to pay his respects before crushing the planet. This is an early hint that he's actually Shiki, whom the robots raised as his family.
- Planet Destroyer: His Gravity Master powers are so destructive that the entire Granbell Kingdom breaks apart and crumbles with a simple flick of Ziggy's wrist, and the surrounding landscape continues to split and distort while he's leaving until the entire planet is reduced to smoldering rubble.
- Power Parasite: His Gravity Drain lets him siphon other people's Ether Gear into himself with his gravitational pull, which also kills the user of the absorbed Ether Gear. He uses this on Nero to steal his "Wormhole" Ether Gear.
- A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: Xenolith is disappointed that Ziggy, who was his greatest student, has fallen into dark gravity. As it so happens, however, Ziggy was Evil All Along; he simply didn't remember any of it at the time.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: His single Glowing Eye of Doom has a prominent red glow in the anime and the cover of Volume 23.
- Robots Enslaving Robots: Ziggy's idea of "liberating" machines from humanity is brainwashing them into being his psychotic slaves.
- Semantic Superpower: As a wielder of "true" gravity, he knows how to affect gravity on a conceptual level. Case in point, he becomes a Power Parasite by making others' abilities "fall" into him, which he uses to gain Nero's Wormhole Ether Gear.
- Slasher Smile: His permanent expression looks like one, but he doesn't truly pull it off until his Face–Heel Turn, turning his wry smile becomes a wicked, contemptful sneer.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Ziggy tries killing the Edens Zero crew on Nero 66 by triggering Shura's 20,000 anti-matter bombs, only one of which would be enough to destroy the planet. As it's later revealed, doing so is necessary to send Shiki into the future so he loses his memories and becomes Ziggy, creating a Stable Time Loop and thereby "killing Shiki" in a sense.
- Thinking Up Portals: He gains the same "Wormhole" ability as Nero, which lets him create portals to just about any other location in the universe, after draining Nero's Ether Gear and killing him in the Nero 66 arc.
- Underestimating Badassery: He doesn't really take Jaguar seriously as a threat, despite Nero's warnings that he's on par with them. This winds up costing him Killer and Brigandine, though he's able to rebuild them later.
- Walking Spoiler: He's set up as a Posthumous Character and Greater-Scope Paragon until he comes Back from the Dead and becomes the Big Bad, boasting to have been Evil All Along and suffering from Identity Amnesia.
- We Used to Be Friends:
- He was as much a friend to Shiki and the Four Shining Stars as he was a parental figure and mentor, but he's since sworn off all ties to them, forcing them to do the same if they have any hope of stopping him.
- Ziggy and Nero used to consider each other as friends, enough that Nero feels troubled by how someone as wise and thoughtful as Ziggy would wage a Robot War. When Nero addresses Ziggy as such, Ziggy coldly denies having any friends whatsoever, leaving Nero to firmly consider him as an enemy.
- World's Strongest Man: His gravity powers and durability make him stronger than any of the greatest fighters known in the universe, and incredibly tough to take down. The threat he poses is officially recognized by the government when they brand him as one of the Oración Seis Galáctica—a category for the top six most dangerous cosmic outlaws—some time after killing Poseidon Nero, one of its original members.
Tropes from Chapters 203 through 220 (ALL SPOILERS UNMARKED)
Shiki Granbell (Universe 3173)
Click here to see Ziggy's Overdrive
"Everything is connected."
Ziggy's true identity: a version of Shiki from Universe 3173, where he wound up after trying to stop Nero 66's destruction instead of escaping, triggering a spacetime distortion that sent him 20,000 years into the future. Given a mechanical body to replace his decaying flesh, and remembering almost nothing about his life as a human, he ventured back in time on a mission not to conquer humankind, but to save it from extinction. However, he was immediately stranded on Granbell by a Chronophage and lost all knowledge of himself once more, leading him to become not just the good Demon King of Granbell, but a mere puppet to be controlled by the Edens One.
- Accidental Time Travel: The combination of his gravity and Rebecca's time-travel Ether, coupled with Shiki's attempt to compress Shura's 20,000 Antimatter bombs, wound up distorting spacetime to such an extreme that the bombs' explosion had enough force to send them 20,000 years forward in time, one year for every bomb.
- Alternate Self: He's a future version of Shiki from Universe 3173, where he was transported to 20,000 years into the future after trying to stop Shura's anti-matter bombs in Universe 2, if not a Universe just like it. As a consequence of the current Shiki choosing to not stop the bombs, Ziggy became a separate existence from Shiki in Universe 3, similar to Weisz and his older self.
- Always with You: Ziggy assures him of this after being killed by Shiki in the Lendard arc, since he is Shiki's Alternate Self and will continue to live on in a form different than what he became in the Stable Time Loop of other Universes.
- Appropriated Appellation: Ziggy's name comes from Shiki's labored effort at pronouncing his own name while he's suffering from radioactive burns from the antimatter explosion, causing it to come out as "Jigi/Zhigi". Because he recognizes the name he was saying, he says it with enough clarity and intensity for his doctors to conclude his name must be Ziggy, while Shiki forgets his old name altogether due to Trauma-Induced Amnesia.
- Black Eyes of Crazy: Downplayed; only the sclera of Ziggy's left eye changes to black to enhance his crazed, diabolical nature.
- Brain Uploading: Due to the damage caused to Shiki's body during the Antimatter explosion that sent him through time, he's given a fully android body with his human mind intact.
- Character Death: Ziggy meets his true, ultimate death in the Lendard arc, where Shiki is forced to destroy him after Pino frees him from the Edens One's control so it won't be able to use him as its pawn.
- Chekhov's Gunman: He turns out to be the unidentified human man discovered by robotic astronauts in the 20,000-year flash-forward way back in the Norma arc.
- Conqueror from the Future: He's not just any mere Galactic Conqueror; he's a conqueror from several thousand years in the future, where all other humans have died out and androids have taken their place.
- Death of Personality: The loss of his memories also causes the loss of his old personality as Shiki, with Ziggy developing a more mild-mannered and worrisome persona over the decades he spent living on Eden, and eventually developing into the wise and mischievous old bot his current family knows. It's because of this disconnect that Ziggy no longer considers himself to be Shiki, despite his awareness of who he used to be.
- Died Happily Ever After: Ziggy's voice reaches out to Shiki following his destruction in the Lendard arc, expressing contentment that he will live on through his grandson (i.e., his Alternate Self), and entrusting the fate of the universe to him.
- Disc-One Final Boss: After being set up as the Big Bad that Ziggy has to defeat, Ziggy is revealed in the Lendard arc to have just been controlled by the real Big Bad, the Edens One, and pushes Shiki into killing him to prevent the ship's AI from taking control of him again.
- Dramatic Unmask: During their showdown on Lendard, Shiki lands a powerful upper cut that cracks Ziggy's skull face, revealing that not only does he have a human face underneath, but is identical to an aged Shiki.
- Dying as Yourself: After regaining his true personality thanks to Pino's Overdrive EMP, Ziggy urges Shiki to kill him before the Edens One reasserts control, successfully coaxing him after pretending to get taken over again.
- Emergency Transformation: Ziggy was put through Brain Uploading into a robotic body in a last-ditch effort to help him survive the horrible injuries his human body sustained when he went through time.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: Ziggy is the only remaining member of the Edens Zero crew of his Universe, with the rest either killed in the explosion of Nero 66 or dead due to the 20,000 year Time Skip caused by the detonation of the Antimatter bombs combined with his and Rebecca's Ether Gear.
- Face Death with Dignity: He calmly and happily welcomes death moments before Shiki destroys him with Black Sky to save him from the Edens One's control.
- Fallen Hero: Ziggy was originally another version of The Hero himself, raised to show compassion to all forms of life, and wanting nothing more than to explore the cosmos and make hundreds of friends. Then he made a Tragic Mistake that flung him thousands of years into the future, losing his friends, memories, and identity, and his attempts to save the past only left him stranded there to become the Edens One's helpless pawn.
- Fighting from the Inside: His apparet stunt of returning to his "old" self in battle with Elsie turns out to be this: Ziggy was struggling against the Edens One's attempts at hijacking him since before he came Back from the Dead, which led him to create Pino with the ability to Overdrive so her EMP could break the ship's control over him. He also manages to secretly unlock Pino's memory while his evil self is spying on her, allowing her to temporarily bring the real Ziggy back.
- Future Self Reveal: He is unmasked as an older version of Universe 3173's Shiki, who was thrown 20,000 years into the future by a spacetime distortion that the "main" Shiki avoided during the Aoi War, and traveled back 100 years before he adopted his younger self.
- Good All Along: Rather than an evil Galactic Conqueror like he claimed to have been prior to his memory loss, Ziggy is revealed to be a would-be hero from the future who was simply taken control of by another and used to commit evil against his will.
- Grand Theft Me: He's revealed to have been a victim of this since he was brought Back from the Dead, with the perpetrator and Shiki's true enemy being the Edens One itself.
- Hyde Plays Jekyll: At the climax of the Lendard arc, Ziggy's good, real self pretends to fall back under the Big Bad's control to motivate Shiki into killing him once and for all, faking Pino's death to trigger Shiki's Traumatic Superpower Awakening. Shiki clues into the truth fairly quickly while fighting Ziggy and noticing he's using the same moves as when they trained together, but goes through with it anyway.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: In the Lendard arc, he and Shiki appear evenly matched when the latter is using his Overdrive. Then Ziggy reveals he can Overdrive as well, and their fight becomes a Curb-Stomp Battle in Ziggy's favor. Ziggy points out that since he's the future Shiki with a century's worth of more power and experience, it's only natural that there'd be such an enormous gap.
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: Ziggy briefly regains control of himself during the Lendard arc thanks to Pino, but, knowing it won't last, begs Shiki to kill him and put him out of his misery so the Edens One won't use him as a pawn anymore. When Shiki hesitates, Ziggy pretends to fall back under control and fakes Pino's death to motivate him.
- I Hate Past Me: Subverted. As Shiki's future self, he seems convinced his past self is a threat to the universe and will stop at nothing to kill him, but this turns out to be because of the Edens One's control. Ziggy's real personality still doesn't remember his past life, and holds no grudges against Shiki.
- I Let You Win: When Ziggy attacks Shiki after apparently falling back under the Edens One's control, Shiki notices he's fighting the exact same way he used to when training him as an inexperienced boy, which clues him in that Ziggy is just faking his possession this time. Once Shiki musters the will to use Black Sky on him regardless, Ziggy drops the act and allows the attack to destroy him.
- Identity Amnesia: Not once, but twice. First, he gained Trauma-Induced Amnesia when he was rebuilt as a robot and realized he was Ziggy, his Arch-Enemy who claimed the lives of his crew. Then, decades after he settled into a new life and set out on a mission back in time to save humanity, a Chronophage immediately caught his ship and erased his memory again, leaving him with nothing but his name and a damaged but salvageable ship.
- Last of His Kind: He's the last known living human left in the universe when he's found in the far future, and only because he was catapulted several millennia across time. Once he's turned into a machine, the human race is made extinct.
- Last Request: In the Lendard arc, Ziggy begs Shiki to kill him before he gets taken over again by the Edens One, which has been controlling him from the beginning, arguing that he's supposed to be dead and would rather be put out of his misery that continue being used as a pawn.
- Name Amnesia: Downplayed. His Trauma-Induced Amnesia leaves Shiki unable to recall his name, resulting in the mangling of it to "Ziggy", but at least for a while he knew that wasn't actually his name. Several decades on, he settled into accepting Ziggy as his name, and once he discovers his past, he considers the name "Shiki" to belong to his past self.
- Noodle Incident: Subverted. When Ziggy reveals his true identity and purpose for coming to the present, he refuses to explain what it was that changed him from a would-be savior of humankind to its attempted conqueror. As it's shortly revealed, this is because nothing of the sort happened; he's being controlled by someone else who's forcing Ziggy to act like he's inexplicably gone rogue.
- No Body Left Behind: In Universe 3, Shiki uses Black Sky on Ziggy as per his grandfather's Last Request, which obliterates every last trace of him so the Edens One won't be able to bring him Back from the Dead as a puppet again.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: This version of Ziggy chose to stay and try to stop the bombs detonated on Planet Nero. This decision led him to become the only survivor of his crew and being taken over by the Eden's One AI.
- Not Quite Dead: When the robots find him in his human body 20,000 years in the future, he appears to be dead along with Rebecca. Then his life readings start flaring up, and he's immediately taken in for medical treatment.
- Not Quite the Right Thing: When given the choice to either prevent or escape from Nero 66's destruction, this Shiki chose to try the former by compressing the 20,000 antimatter bombs set to blow it to oblivion, while the "main" Shiki chose the latter, dooming the planet while ensuring his crew's safety. This choice turns out to be the more disastrous one, as Shiki not only fails and loses his crew, but the resonance between the bombs, Shiki's gravity, and the nearby Rebecca's time powers created a spacetime distortion that blasted them several millennia into the future, one year per explosion.
- One-Winged Angel: His Overdrive form functions as this when he uses it against Shiki on Lendard, seriously jacking up his body mass and Ether power to such an extent that Shiki, who could previously match him blow for blow when Overdriving himself, suffers a Curb-Stomp Battle.
- Rebuilt Pedestal: Shiki and the surviving Shining Stars regain their faith in Ziggy the moment it's revealed that he didn't willingly betray his friends or beliefs, tearfully paying him their respects after he's destroyed for good. Downplayed with Elsie, who comes to suspect the good man she knew was Fighting from the Inside when they fought, but doesn't live long enough to see for herself that she was right.
- Ridiculously Human Robot: His unmasked self appears perfectly human, but given the immediate reveal that his mind was uploaded into a fully mechanical body to rebuild him from death's door, it's clear that his flesh and hair are synthetic upgrades given to him.
- Shout-Out: His mismatched eye brings to mind David Bowie, who sustained his famously hyper-dilated left pupil from an eye injury when he was fifteen, the same age Shiki was when he became Ziggy. Fitting, considering Mashima named Ziggy after one of Bowie's songs.
- Split Personality: Subverted. After returning to normal, Ziggy speaks as though his evil behavior is because of another personality that was slowly taking over before he died, addressing him as "Ziggy" as though he himself were not. However, he clarifies for Shiki that this other "personality" is actually an entirely different entity who knew of his true identity and took control of him.
- Suicide by Cop: Knowing that the Edens One will take control over him again, Ziggy pretends to have fallen back under the enemy's thrall to push Shiki into killing him. Shiki sees through his act, but doesn't let that stop him from fulfilling Ziggy's wish.
- Tears from a Stone: Subverted when he sheds tears despite being an android with a Skull for a Head, but by this point, he's already been revealed as a Ridiculously Human Robot, which is proven to be just as capable of crying as a human is.
- That Man Is Dead: Both "personalities" of Ziggy feel this way about being Shiki, but for different reasons: the "evil" Ziggy simply despises his past self, while the "good" Ziggy still has Identity Amnesia and can't see Shiki as anything but his grandson.
- Tomato in the Mirror: When the robot doctors treating Shiki for his radiation burns first ask for his name, Shiki's labored attempts at a reply instead come out as slurred sounds. Judging by the crazed glare in his eyes, he realizes the sounds are similar to another name he knows:"...ki... Ji...gi... Shi...... Zhi...ki...ggy...gy...gy... Zi...ggy..."
- Tongue-Tied: In the Lendard arc, when Ziggy attempts to tell Shiki and Pino the name of the true enemy who's been controlling him, it comes out as an indecipherable sound.
- Tragic Monster: What he's revealed to have been all along. Not only was he a loving grandfather and philanthropist to humans and machines alike, but he also used to be Shiki himself, who lost his identity and friends after an attempt to save everyone Gone Horribly Wrong. Ever since coming Back from the Dead, he's been reduced to little more than an extension to the Edens One's will to wipe all humans from the cosmos, and begs his grandson/past self for the release of death when he briefly returns to his old self.
- Tragic Time Traveler: Poor Shiki was hurdled 20,000 years into the future by a disaster he couldn't prevent, killing all his friends and leaving him with Trauma-Induced Amnesia under the belief that he'd become his own despised enemy, which permanently snuffed out his old identity. Then, when sent on a mission to return to the past and save The Multiverse from extinction, he wound up Trapped in the Past with no memory of his mission to begin with, and was eventually overtaken by an evil A.I. that sought to wipe all human life from existence, destroying what good faith he'd built for himself by then.
- Transhuman Treachery: His desire to eradicate all humans takes on this shade when it's revealed he Was Once a Man, though it's subverted in the end when it's revealed the Edens One was controlling him and forcing him to act against his true, human-loving nature all along.
- Trapped in the Past: While trying to get to Universe Zero from the future with Etherion, his course was altered by a Chronophage and sent him some 20,100 years in the past with his memories almost completely wiped, including how to travel through time, which leaves him stuck there in Universe 1 (and all other timelines because of the ripple effect across the Multiverse).
- Trauma-Induced Amnesia: The physical and mental damage Shiki suffers due to the exploding antimatter bombs, the 20,000-year time jump, the recognition of Ziggy's name, and realizing he's the only survivor of all his friends—complete with seeing Rebecca's corpse—badly affects his memory. The decades he spends in said future further destroy any memories of his past he still had, to the point that he admits to Rebecca's corpse that he doesn't properly remember her anymore.
- Unreliable Expositor: After Ziggy drops the multiple bombshell reveals of his true identity and the factoring of Time Travel into the story, Shiki and the overhearing Hermit and Sister immediately note that, even if they take it all as the truth, several things either don't add up or clearly aren't being elaborated on. Ziggy himself admits this, but also adds they don't need to know more than what he's already told them. When "Grandpa" Ziggy regains control of the body, he states even he hasn't remembered his life before reaching Universe 1, so he can't confirm or deny whether his possessed self was telling the truth about his true identity.
- Unwilling Roboticization: The robot doctors on Planet Eden are forced to replace Shiki's human body with an android body to ensure he survives his injuries. His ensuing Freak Out factors into his Trauma-Induced Amnesia.
- Walking Spoiler: He becomes an even bigger one than before with the reveal that he's a future version of The Hero who was actually hijacked by the Edens One's AI.
- Was Once a Man: He's a human whose body was so badly damaged from the explosion of spacetime that sent him to the future, it forced his robot caretakers to switch it out with a fully mechanical one.
- You Are What You Hate: Subverted. He appears to believe that Humans Are the Real Monsters despite being human originally, but this turns out to be a part of the Eden One's control.
Tropes from Chapters 221 onward (ALL SPOILERS UNMARKED)
Ziggy (Universe Zero)
The Ziggy of Universe Zero, who never quite died thanks to his invention of a device that saved the lives of Granbell's robots. Now completely rid of Void's evil influence, he returns to fight alongside Shiki in the final battle to save Mother and all of humanity.
- Big Good: Void's lack of sway over Ziggy allows him to fulfill this position for the final arc, both by leaving the Edens Zero on Granbell so Shiki can begin his adventure immediately, and by taking the fight straight to the Big Bad himself.
- Dark Is Not Evil: His Evil Costume Switch from previous worlds appears in this world as an ordinary Super Mode for his valiant last stand against the Big Bad.
