Fairy Tail, Chapter 507: Uncle
Erza cries! Flashbacks to stuff about how Natsu and Gray are angry whenever Erza cries! Natsu and Gray realizing they're complete nincompoop idiots! Random narration by Makarov's ghost or some shit! END and Devil Slayer randomly dispelling for no reason other than tears! Dramatic hug completely ruined by Natsu and Gray's completely shocked expression of being pushed into boobs!
Oh, and Juvia is alive and Gray realizes he's an idiot! Natsu has demon possession and rage, what's your excuse for not checking if Juvia's alive or not, Gray? Or for attacking your friend to a death-match? You dumb fucks.
Does anyone find this dramatic? Does anyone find this good? Does anyone find this confrontation between the main characters anything but tensionless regurgitation of the worst kind? Why am I still reading this?
Oh, the Oracion Seis are fighting... Hades-Greed-fusion! I had to look it up, I totally forgot his name. It's August, apparently. This is... actually a pretty cool fight, mostly because as little as the Oracion Seis ultimately matter, it's something new. Yes, it's just August being a badass and countering every single spell that the Oracion Seis throws at them, but it's not just the good guys winning via friendship speeches and random deus ex machinas being pulled out of the author's ass. August has been built up to be the master of magic or whatever, and seeing August take out Cobra and Racer in quick succession, then create an even bigger spiral whirlwind thing to fuck up Midnight's silly nonsense powers is hilarious. Jellal hasn't done anything yet, of course, and he's definitely going to be the one to take down August, and hopefully we'll get something cool out of it.
Knowing Fairy Tail, though, Erza or Natsu will randomly show up and steal the show. Or Brandish will show up, cry a bit and August will relent. Because this manga is nothing if not repetitive.
And after doing something cool like cutting away to other more interesting characters, and to show a fight that isn't stupidly one-sided, Eileen shows up, and apparently she's not Erza's mother, but she is Erza. Oh my utter fuck, everyone prepare for some silly Mary Sue story that'll reveal that Erza is like a goddess split into two bodies or some bullshit nonsense like that.
Hey, kudos for the manga for not bringing Makarov back to life two chapters after his death. Though everything else surrounding it is so utter shit that the concept of an actually possibly permanent death (still expecting him to be returned to life) is absolutely ruined by the fact that Makarov's sacrifice isn't heroic, it's stupid, senseless and pointless.
Hey, kudos for the manga for not bringing Makarov back to life two chapters after his death. Though everything else surrounding it is so utter shit that the concept of an actually possibly permanent death (still expecting him to be returned to life) is absolutely ruined by the fact that Makarov's sacrifice isn't heroic, it's stupid, senseless and pointless.
You know... just like how Gray's position could have been written better, solving Natsu's rage could have been as well.
ReplyDeleteBack in the starting arcs (when Fairy Tail was good), Natsu was the one who was always berating all the others to live rather then toss their lives aside for everyone else - in contrast to the selfless sacrifice trope, Natsu in the beginning was someone who defied it by arguing people should always fight to live with the ones they love, and that sacrificing oneself was a selfish desire because it's just you deciding, without any input from others, that you dying is for the best without knowing for sure of it. He knocked Gray about it in the Galuna Island Arc, he backed down Erza over it during the Tower of Heaven Arc, and he encouraged Lucy against it in the Phantom Lord Arc... and then comes this arc, where he in turn seems to be the one who's dead-set on ending Zeref at the cost of his life.
It's yet another instance where Mashima seems scared to let his characters have flaws (besides dumb spur-of-the-moment ones) - this was a perfect opportunity for Natsu to have to face something he's never really confronted; despair. He's literally the only one out of the core team (or at least the original one from the old days) who's not had that sense of crushing inevitability on him before; the sense of resignation to fate. His learning about being E.N.D. and demon awakening could have been used to illustrate his senseless rage being out of his ideals breaking at seeing Lucy seemingly dead and that, even though he wants otherwise and it goes against everything he's ever said, he'd rather kill Zeref ASAP then let anyone else's death or suffering be on his conscience. Hell, one could even have it be that prioritizing Zeref's defeat over his own life was why Natsu didn't talk about E.N.D. - because he didn't want to burden anyone who managed to kill Zeref with having killed him, too. Basically that all these feelings together were what finally made him go over the end and get overtaken by his demonic instincts.
If they were going to have Natsu get snapped out of his demonic rage, it would have been more apt for Lucy and Happy to call Natsu out on this - yeah, Happy did something along those lines when he stopped Natsu from killing Zeref earlier, but he never gave a sensical reason for it aside from pussying out. This (and hell, the scene were Happy stops Natsu from ending Zeref as well) would have been much improved by them simply asking "Where's the Natsu who called heroic sacrifices stupid and selfish?! Where's the Natsu who told us to live for each-other's sakes?!" Something that would in turn express what has never been apparent - the idea that Natsu has in fact undergone some degree of change, which is a far cry from how he always looks to have been a static and unchanging character. Something that would make him realize he's doing the same damn thing he always railed at others for - believing he's the one who has to fix everything at any cost instead of taking help from others like a nakama should. This series has literally gotten so self-absorbed that it doesn't even remember what its initial message was.
Also, I just realized that the encounter between Erza and Eileen feels like yet another rehash - this time of Gray and Silver and of Lucy and Brandish (mysterious figure on the enemy side who has an obvious big connection to main character). I actually don't know if I can keep track of how many times this arc has rehashed things anymore.
Yeah, the writer is really and utterly brain-dead in ironing out the character flaws in the characters. Everyone used to have a fair amount of flaws here and there, but even the most roguish of the FT group -- Gajeel and Laxus -- have been ironed out forcibly in order to better fit the 'nice guy that loves everyone in his team' mould. Hell, whereas Erza and Lucy are very different characters early on, I'm hard-pressed to tell their personality apart in recent arcs other than 'tomboy sword girl' and 'girly girl'.
DeleteWith Natsu, I just think he doesn't know what END is so when the rage is all out because "Lucy dead noooo". But the one time that a proper speech could've actually worked, like the way you described, they just dole out an average "life precious, you have friends blah di blah" speech, which is just eyeball-rolling inducing.
I'd argue that the mysterious-powerful-enemy-with-a-connection-to-the-main-character has been beaten to death with multiple Jellals and multiple Jellal arcs. Ironically, one of my least favourite FT characters from the early days is now one of the few that doesn't irritate me outright.