Fairy Tail, Chapter 513: Flower Circle
Some nonsense in the beginning about how Kagura and Minerva have forgiven each other and shit, and a bit of a blah-di-blah scene with the rest of the Sabertooth members involved. No, I still don't buy Minerva randomly turning good for no good reason, and while Kagura's whole affair with Jellal might explain why she's so quick to forgive Minerva... I still think Minerva's heel-face-turn is easily one of the worst among the heel-face-turns in all fiction. But, hey, it's not like Minerva's going to matter anymore, is she? I mean, it's not like she's allowed to even do anything by the author.
No, let's talk about Erza and her stupid Mary Sue backstory... who is only marginally more interesting than Natsu. But not by much. We get a very simplistic fight between Erza and Eileen, and, of course, Eileen is so much more awesome than Erza and is able to make a flower circle out of the rain of swords that Erza summons. It's honestly only entertaining because I like seeing Erza put in her place. Some big revelation that Eileen is Erza's mother (honestly at this point if you haven't seen this 'plot twist' coming from miles away, you might need to go see a doctor), and hilariously neither of them gives a shit. Good. Fight it out, don't bring your family drama into this. That's uninteresting at all.
Also, apparently Eileen is, -gasp- the Queen of Dragons! It would be, y'know, something earth-shaking if we actually knew that a queen of dragons actually existed. Or if Erza is supposed to have some kind of cool backstory. Like, a hint given here and there in the earlier chapters would've worked very well -- Fairy Tail isn't the most subtle manga, but it has done it before with things like having Igneel and Grandeeney's meeting be explicitly ambiguous to hide the fact that they're hiding within the bodies of their children to make stupid antibodies -- this is just something that a ten-year-old fanfic writer would do to be all like, "by the way, Erza's mom is super powerful, and she's the QUEEN OF DRAGONS!"
Yeah, I don't really give a shit. They're going to give some stupid retcon to some of the pre-established backstory to make Erza super-badass and super-awesome with super-holy-shit backstory that I don't care about. Kudos for not including a friendship speech, though. That's like, a huge achievement for this crappy manga.
Why the fuck am I still reviewing this?
Because you're one of the only few reviewers that I can find online that's willing to point out the major flaws in Fairy Tail's writing structure while giving witty criticism to it.
ReplyDeleteThanks :)
DeleteIt's not hard to point out the major flaws of this story, though. And since I don't have much to really discuss about the story -- unlike my other manga reviews -- witty criticism (and I highly doubt most of them are particularly witty) is probably the only thing left.
Personally speaking, I think the twist about Elieen being "Queen of Dragons" is both a good and bad twist.
ReplyDeleteIt has good potential in that, for once, we'd actually have a somewhat-justifiable reason for why the hell Erza is so freakishly OP (well, justifiable as far as Fairy Tail's warped sense of logic goes), since anything affiliated with the dragons or demons seems capable of random "deus-ex-mashima" powers. It would also make Elieen's confrontation with Acnologia slightly less asspullish if she's actually supposed to be something equivalent to him in stature (after all, he is the "Dragon King" for lack of a better word). It might also explain what her connection to Zeref is, considering he had pacts with the dragons before he crossed fully into despair.
On the flip side, it has bad potential because there hasn't been any justifiable reason for why none of the Dragon-Slayers could recognize Erza had some kind of connection to dragons or dragon-attributes. I mean, it's an issue that's gone all the way back to Laxus in the Fairy War arc where Natsu and Gajeel both looked surprised to learn he was a lightning-dragonslayer (of course, the fact that Laxus was a purely-artifical dragonslayer might have been part of it, but there's so little to go on lore-wise that it looks just as much like he just pulled it out of his ass). It also implies that Eileen is from the age of dragons like Zeref - aka, that she's either at least 400 years old or went through time. It also adds a different problem to Eileen's fight with Acnologia - namely that he ought to have *recognized* her as a so-called "Queen of the Dragons." Of course, it's always possible the title is self-imposed - Eileen's shown enough egotism to make it possible - but that's just trivializing the dragons more then they already are at best, and at worst makes Eileen even more desperate and pandering a character then she already was if she's expressing THAT much arrogance before her inevitable loss. And both her and Erza's magic - infusion and requip respectively - aren't even the right types to fit a Dragon connection, since dragon-magic has always had elemental affiliations up till this point (well, save Acnologia, but his comes across as raw destruction - like a combination of elements - so even then he's still truer to the formula then Eileen would be).
All in all, this just feels like yet another clusterfuck to the lore that people are going to either spend days analyzing or defend as being "an awesome twist" - or at least among those who still find the series entertaining :P
It is a way to explain why Erza is super-duper-awesome, that's for sure, but you point out all the flaws in making Eileen the queen of dragons -- whatever the hell that means.
DeleteThe thing that irks me is how little foreshadowing we had about anything regarding Erza being the daughter of the dragon queen or whatever. You explain it way better than I did, so I'm not going to repeat what you said, and will just nod and agree.
It is definitely a twist, that's for sure. An awesome twist? No, not really. A clusterfuck is honestly more accurate. We haven't even gotten clear what's so special about 'natural' dragon slayer magic against artificial ones or god-slayer magic or other lesser elemental types either.
You know what. Is there a point to this Erza parent? No there is not.
Deletein fact it is explained by Erza it doesn't matter because Makarov that failure of a father is her parent. Erza's parentage was never mystery that people needed to be solved.
Trying to fill the hole of how is Erza so bullshit is a doomed errand. Hiro is trying to get out of a hole by digging deeper.Or in TV Tropes terms the Voodoo Shark a rare thing to see.
Sorry for the double post. This bring up main issue with a lot of fairy tail right now. What is the reason for any scenes and information. Larcade (which is the translation crunchyroll has) is Zeref son...so what he did nothing. he beat no one he was a waste of time. Making Erza the dragon princess stupid and pointless. Hiro adds needless details that more often then not subtract from from his work.
DeleteThis is amazing to me. Look I have personally gave up on Fairy Tail being good. I just like laughing at it failure and learning from it.
If Erza is overpowered af, (I even made a rant abt how mary sue she is), then what more if its the queen of dragons? -__- THis manga is killing me. I'm surprise you're still reading it. Such a brave soul.
ReplyDelete