Fairy Tail 464 Review: Natsu Punches Zeref

Fairy Tail, Chapter 464: Natsu vs. Zeref

Yeah, absolutely nothing in this chapter is anything you can't predict. You've got Natsu and Zeref punching each other, because fuck magic, right? You can't make anything fights interesting with magic, after all. It's not like, oh, you have a lot of flexibility with fights that involve magic. </sarcasm> You've got Natsu pulling off his bandages and revealing that it's some secret hand-down power from Igneel. It's everyone's second guess that doesn't involve END. We've got the random people talking about how awesome Natsu is and pulling back.

Honestly there's absolutely nothing interesting about his fight, and it's a pity because it should be. It's the confrontation between Natsu and Zeref, the main character and the main villain (who also happens to be his brother). Even with Natsu not being aware of the whole brother thing surely you can make things more interesting than literally just punching each other with glowing fire/darkness aura around your hands? And there really isn't much tension other than the surprising placement that the Natsu-Zeref fight happens before half of the Group-of-Powerful-Enemies-for-the-Arc gets taken out.

And, well, no one's really going to buy that Natsu just killed Zeref, are they? If Zeref really died like this it's the most anticlimatic thing ever because there's no sense of resolution. And if it's meant to be a fake-out to fool readers into thinking that a plot twist just happened even though it didn't, then it's a piss-poor fake-out. And if the writer defies all common sense and this is a honest-to-goodness plot twist, it's absolutely moronic if the writer of the manga thinks that you can write off the main villain like this.

The thing is, it's not even a bad chapter even in a vacuum. It's just that it's a fighting chapter, and the fighting is absolutely boring. That's the biggest insult a fighting scene can get, because even when fighting scenes are intrusive, padding or downright detrimental to the plot they usually aren't boring. And this? This is Grade A boring. It's great art, sure, but when you've seen chapter after chapter after chapter of the same identical punching each other with glowing hands fight... and outside that vacuum this is supposed to be a climatic confrontation between the main protagonist and the main antagonist.

Sometimes I wonder why I still read this. I honestly do. Other mangas have, y'know, actual stories.