Fairy Tail 416 Review: Etherious, Not Evil

Fairy Tail, Chapter 416: Tartaros Arc [Last Chapter]

We get a wrap-up chapter for the Tartaros arc, which was... all right. I don't particularly care all that much about a fair bit of the developments here, but there are certainly things I did not expect to happen, chief among them the disbandment of Fairy Tail and Natsu heading off for a one-year journey with only Happy. Though I doubt too much of the status quo would change after this since this is, after all, Fairy Tail, I am interested to see if they can subvert my expectations and actually make it into a meaningful twist.

E.N.D. being 'Etherious Natsu Dragneel', though? That wasn't too much of a surprise considering I and like everyone else with access to the internet has figured out that E.N.D. was 'Evil Natsu Dragneel' or something along those lines for, like, the past year or so. It's pretty blindingly obvious what with E.N.D. being a fire demon, the backstory given by Mard Geer and Zeref going on and on about how Natsu is going to be the one to kill him.

We get a bit of recap of the casualties of the battle, and both Mirajane and Makarov note that they are not going to rebuild the guild again. Makarov talks about it going to be the end of the era, and after we cut away to everyone else, later on Makarov meets up with Doranbolt, who has erased everyone's memories about Lumen Histoire. Makarov then tells Doranbolt that he's going to relieve him of his duties, and reveals that Doranbolt is, in fact, a Fairy Tail member, and was a double agent within the council in the first place, with self-memory-erasure being the reason why he was so crazy back in Tenrou Island. It's a bit of a convoluted retcon thing going on, though this does explain why Tenrou Island accepted him so readily. Doranbolt freaks out for a bit, but finally accepts it... just as Makarov says that Fairy Tail will disband.

Not quite a big shock for me personally as it would probably be for others, but eh, I don't think the Fairy Tail members are going to really split apart. They're still going to gather in small groups and will still be allies or something, and the manga sure as hell isn't going to be renamed 'Blue Pegasus' or something.

We get snippets of the other characters. Elfman is too ashamed to face the others after his partial brainwashing thing. We get a bit of Laxus waking up and hugging the Raijinshu and talking about how he's pathetic and wasn't able to protect those important to him and whatnot. We get Cancer restoring Wendy's hair to its original length. Pantherlily and Charle, as well as Gajeel and Levy, are paired up and are just hanging out and talking abut stuff. Juvia walks up to Gray, who has buried his father next to his mother, and kind of gets all teary-eyed about having been responsible for indirectly killing Silver, and after nearly bursting out Gray finally ends up crying to Juvia's boobs. I thought this one was well done, finished in two or three pages and being just the right length to feel dramatic without Fairy Tail's usual giant overblown speeches. I do like it.

We get a bit of Erza reliving her torture in the Tower of Heaven, and apparently being tortured while naked by that octopus demon had brought them up... can't blame her, considering the whole armour thing was kind of a mental crutch to compensate from her childhood insecurities or some shit like that. Jellal shows up in a totally unnecessary two-page spread talking about how he'll be the darkness while Erza and the rest are going to be the light. Real good job being the darkness, you stupid author's pet. Where were you when all the shit with Face and Tartaros went down? We last saw him recruiting the Oracios Seis like, last fucking year and I thought they were going to show up somewhere down the line, but no. Bah. Whatever. I really, really hope Jellal does something cool in the future and not just tease of interesting stuff without really delivering much payoff.

Sabertooth welcomes Sting, Rogue and fucking Minerva back, of course, and because this is Fairy Tail they welcome Minerva with big smiles and shit despite Minerva doing absolutely jack shit to redeem herself. Among all of Fairy Tail's sudden redemption stories, none is as completely random and poorly written as Minerva's, and I absolutely hate to see this stupid bitch be welcomed back like this. Everyone else were treated with suspicion initially -- Gajeel and Juvia in particular had to earn the trust of the others until fairly late into the series, Ultear and Meredy had entire chapters devoted to them, Jellal had his whole memory loss thing and Flare had an entire arc of slowly defrosting from the psychopath that she is. Minerva? All her reasoning is 'my father abused me so now I am a crazy power seeker and somehow you all forgive me now'. This is fucking stupid. There is no point in Minerva's "redemption" that makes sense.

Natsu and Happy, meanwhile, are taking all the money from their ramshackle house, and leaves behind a letter for Lucy, which she later finds after the obligatory 'are you in my room' comedy scene. Natsu and Happy are apparently going off for training for a year, leaving Lucy behind, and she runs out and cries and does the Lucy stuff. We get mugshots of everyone (including Doranbolt's hilarious shocked expression) as Natsu does a proclamation while Makarov tells his brats to 'fly free'. And then Zeref talks about the whole E.N.D. thing.

(What happened to Franmalth?)

The next chapter is 'Solitary Journey', so I'm going to assume we'll get a couple of smaller arcs featuring Natsu, which I am totally cool with. The Tartaros arc was an attempt at being something gigantic and it had a really strong opening with Jackal killing the council, the manhunt for the remaining council members and Laxus being taken out by one of the Kyuukimon, before having a lot of distractions in the middle (the whole Jellal subplot that really went nowhere) and dragging on and on and on with the Kyukimon. There were some nice-ish battles, with Wendy's fight against Ezel and Gray's fight against Silver (plot twist dance overdose notwithstanding) being the highlights. Juvia's battle against Keith, the Strausses taking out Sayla and Gajeel's fight against Torafusa aren't bad either, and Mard Geer was at least entertaining.

But for all the good fights, the Tartaros arc was plagued with random distractions that ran for a while before dispersing without much impact, like Aquarius' sacrifice, the whole Spirt King vs Mard Geer fight, Sting and Rogue's arrival, Lumen Histoire, Jiemma's subsequent arrival and disposal, everything about Hades' reappearance... they just all end up falling flat, with Acnologia and Igneel being the only real thing that meant anything, and that was mostly offscreen and eschwed any proper characterization for Igneel in favour for a generic, overlong fight of Natsu and Gray against Mard Geer. Add everything about the 'nine minutes' idiocy and Kyouka's horrible, overtly-long and stupid fight against Erza, and Minerva's equally-stupid redemption. There were some grating moments too, like Happy's stupid comedy victory against Jackal that felt massively groan-worthy, Natsu and Gajeel punching each other stupidly, Tempesta's second stupid death. Plus Jiemma, Franmalth and especially Kyouka are all defeated by a friendship speech...

Also, the damn thing is really, really long for really very little payoff. Thankfully it managed to limp into a somewhat serviceable ending by revealing a lot about the Etherious and Zeref's backstory, as well as finally answering the whole 'where did the dragons go' mystery, albeit one that wasn't really that satisfynig of an answer... but overall the Tartaros arc is decidedly a step down from anything Fairy Tail had done before.

Well, whatever the case that's all done and dusted, and I'm looking forward to what's to come in the future. It's a decent closure to this overlong arc, and frankly it feels extremely welcome in a cathartic way. Hopefully Natsu won't be too irritating in the subsequent arcs to come.