Fairy Tail, Chapter 474: The Moment of Complete Silence
It's not entirely as uneventful as the Bleach chapter. Nothing really happens beyond the arrival of the Crime Sorciere guys, which really should've been expected considering the small role that Angel played earlier in this arc. It's certainly far better than Tartaros, which set up Jellal and Oracion Seis coming in to fight the demons very early in the arc... and then doing absolutely jack shit with it.
I really wished they stayed away from the moronic 'let's just bring out the fan favourites' bullshit thing and randomly have Ultear show up with full gratuitous ass-shots. Ultear's scenes were actually the highlight of the embarrassing ending to the Future Rogue bullshit. Yes, Ultear's scenes back then were extremely cliche, and it's a bit of a cop-out that she has to spend the rest of her life as an old woman who neither her friends nor Gray know the identity of... but it was something fresh, new, and a really strong cahracter moment for Ultear that marked a real turning point and redemption, with her slipping back to her pragmatic 'let's kill present-Rogue to clean this up the most efficiently' and all that and then using some forbidden magic... which happens to stupidly revive the three minutes that everyone important would've died. But bad plotting aside, that was good writing for Ultear.
And really, she has no business showing up here at the end instead of someone like, oh, Cobra or Racer or Midnight or Hoteye or Angel, none of which really had that much non-filler characterization to go on to justify their continued presence in the story. Angel's got that whole Yukino shebang going on, but honestly I'd rather have the five ex-Oracion-Seis members gang up on Di Maria instead of just bringing Ultear back for no reason. The ex-Oracion dudes plus Wendy and Sherry would've made for a decent, somewhat believably tense fight. Bringing Ultear back for no reason? Yeah, Di Maria's going to get her ass handed to her, if it wasn't already obvious already.
And honestly it's a bit of a missed opportunity not to have Racer -- who has basically a lesser version of Di Maria's power -- fight her.
Anyway we start this chapter off with some needless and pointless scenes with Happy, Natsu and Lucy. Which had no business being there. Warren gives a stupid recap, Mavis broods, we cut away to Gray, Lyon and Juvia fighting mooks, Meredy shows up to beat some up, Lyon falls for her because shipping is super-important in the middle of a war. It's honestly a very uninteresting scene, and I just went 'oh. Right. These guys are a thing.'
And then Erza and Kagura face off against two elite mooks, Douche-Lance and Skip-Leg-Day, and one-shot them. And then Jellal one-shots them again in a big entry. I've never liked Jellal, but I've warmed up to him a little in recent arcs where he's not this Mary Sue that every single plotline revolves around. It's cool to see him a bit, though the bit with Kagura and Jellal's little rivalry thing is interesting. How will Kagura react when the motherfucker who was responsible for her brother's death is fighting on her side... but he lost his memory? Or, rather, more importantly, do I have faith in Fairy Tail to tackle this subject with actual quality writing or anything that isn't blatantly obvious, or maybe turn this in the end to a stupid joke? No, I don't.
Di Maria stops time, and he gives this long, long rant about the solitary of her life and blah blah blah and is about to stab Wendy, but then time starts again and the two of them kick her in the face. Then Ultear shows up. Not a wholly uninteresting chapter, again, but it's very perfunctory, none of the fights look interesting, Di Maria's power has kinda already showed up in the manga before, and Ultear's return kinda pisses me off.
Still better than last week's Bleach, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment