Fairy Tail, Chapter 514: The Dragon Seed
Nanatsu no Taizai's author is hospitalized, so we're not getting proper chapters and just little single-chapter side stories that I'll review in one fall swoop.
It's actually a decent backstory, even if Eileen is just shoehorned into the whole dragon war festival and dragon slayer backstory with the elegance of a rock dropped on your foot. Kudos for the effort, though. We get a reaffirmation that, yeah, there's a nation that coexists well between humans and dragons, which is ruled by the dragon Berselion and Eileen herself, and the two have a special relationship thanks to Berselion being rescued by Eileen's ancestor. I'm pretty sure this contradicts some of what we know from Acnologia backstories, but we can graciously chalk it up to unreliable narrator.
Of course, war happened, and the dragons of Ishgar are outnumbered, and broken apart inside due to a faction of dragons who refused to fight their own kind. Eileen managed to convince Berselion to teach her Dragon Slayer magic to equalize the war, but the resulting dragon slayers basically succumb to horrible side effects, such as Eileen's face starting to crack apart to reveal dragon scales beneath. That's the whole anti-dragon antibody nonsense that Igneel was talking about, which... I guess is consistent if nothing else.
Of course, while we actually get some gravitas on the Eileen/Erza/Wendy front, Natsu's utter moronicity and his 'wah you're changing shapes again, spirit guide in my head, despite five chapters consecutively reminding us that this is a spirit guide in my head' stupid nonsense really making me wish that he dies. Also Happy and Lucy are naked with Natsu because clearly the best way to warm a body up is naked boobies, not clothes. Or fire. Or magic.
So yeah, there's a bit of not-badness in this chapter, if I'm being fair, but I still have trouble caring about the present-day conflict. Can we just talk about the dragon war in the past? That sounds so much more interesting.
The chapter doesn't make sense, Mashima is again making up shit as he goes along. If Eileen and Erza have anything to do with dragons then why didn't Acnologia smell anything funny from them? So yeah, not much interested in yet another ass-pulled backstory. Seriously Mashima, just get on with the one-shots and talk about Zeref and Fairy Heart because we beginning to lose the whole point of the war.
ReplyDeleteAnyway keep up the reviews, it is difficult to find sane people on the internet that still read this manga.
Eh, I dunno, unless they're going to make Erza even more of a Mary Sue than she already is, I doubt that she's going to have any dragon slaying capabilities... though, y'know, 'because she's Erza' is a meme and so. Eileen's backstory is still underway so I'm willing to let Acnologia not recognizing her as a fellow dragon/dragon-slayer have some leeway.
DeleteI think she is gonna get a dragon-slayer armor or something but I dunno, Eileen was introduced in the arc out of no where and sadly I was pissed because it felt as another way to provide a powerup for Erza to become relevant again and that is exactly where we are going right now. Because let's face it if Eileen is so important to the plot then you could just not make her related to Erza at all and still have her play a role in defeating Acnologia or something but she is related to her so that means Erza is gonna get buffed. It sucks overall, which is why I'm not happy with the focus on the two. Mashima probably wanking off to Erza as usual.
DeleteI have never really cared for Erza since... shit, the original Tower of Heaven arc? She had a couple of scenes I found genuinely cool in Tenrou and the Grand Magic Games, but other than that it's either pining for Jellal or Because It's Erza. So yeah, she went from being a strong independent woman that isn't fully fanservicey to one of the worst offenders out there.
DeleteYeah but now everytime we gonna talk about dragons, we are now gonna keep seeing either Mama Erza or Erza keep popping up. It really ruins the mood when one of the worst thing about this manga will be the center of all things from now on. That's why I rather focus on main goal of the war but NOPE, story is gonna branch out to the red-heads and I'm really close to losing my shit here.
DeleteI admit, I was actually surprised that Fairy Tail managed to do something right for once. And no, that's not saying this chapter is anything else but clunky at best (which, honesty, is as good as FT gets nowadays), but it did give us a somewhat-reasonable answer to something that's been a long-standing question; what is it that makes First-Generation Dragon-Slayers so special? And apparently, based on the exchanges between Berselion and Eileen, the answer to that question is that First-Generation Dragon-Slayers actually have dragon-tissue implanted into them - the so-called "Dragon Seed".
ReplyDeleteOf course, like Ryo 256 pointed out, there are retconning issues - arguably the biggest of which is Acnologia. Before, it was said the reason Acnologia became a dragon was because he overused Dragon-Slayer Magic and amplified it beyond reason by killing/eating all the dragons - but come the Tartaros Arc and now this flashback, things have been retconned so that Dragon-Slayer Magic/The "Dragon Seed" turning the wielder into dragons is a natural side-effect of the process rather then a mutation from overuse. At the same time, it's possible that Acnologia was a rouge Dragon-Slayer who underwent the process but never learned who invented it - or maybe that Zeref copied Eileen's process and applied it to Acnologia to end the Dragon War or something like that.
Another big issue is with Erza - but not Eileen. Now, I actually disagree with Ryo 256 about Acnologia's being able to recognize her for one simple reason - and it's that I don't think Eileen's a Dragon-Slayer anymore. By that, I mean it's possible she managed to either suppress or remove her Dragon Seed in order to save herself, leaving her unable to be identified as a Dragon-Slayer (much like how Laxus's sealed power kept Natsu and Gajeel from recognizing his lightning magic being the result of Dragon-Slayer magic)
Back to Erza though - the way things are going, it's actually *problem* for the story if she's not a dragon-slayer. That's because, from what I can tell, it seems to be heavily implied that Eileen's dragon mutation happening while Erza was in her womb caused some kind of situation that left Eileen believing Erza was dead (hell, I'm actually starting to wonder if that scar on Eileen's stomach is from some kind of c-section... which would be a pretty jarring route for FT to suddenly bend into). Simply put, it's implied the Dragon Seed affected her pregnancy in some way - and how the hell Mashima intends to explain why that *didn't* grant Erza dragon-powers, I have no clue. I mean, the only possible explanation so far (Eileen transferred her Dragon Seed into Erza's developing body in order to save herself, then removed Erza from her body and left her for dead) is rendered improbable simply because a fetus being exposed to the Dragon Seed should have made Erza not just a dragon-slayer but literally half-dragon... unless her body acclimated to it somehow...
IDK - I think maybe I'm trying too hard to make sense of all this shit :P
It's not utter regurgitated horse shit, which is above-average for Fairy Tail nowadays.
DeleteIs the Dragon Seed an actual, physical thing implanted to them? I thought that was just a metaphor for the dragon powers or antigens or whatever consuming the human host. I could be wrong, though, kinda skimmed through this chapter and might've missed a line or two.
Yeah, it's a huge retcon in Acnologia's backstory pre-Tartaros, but on the other hand, the story was told by... Makarov? Hisui? Someone who doesn't know what's going on. Again, I could be wrong... but in-universe it could simply be justified by whoever that's talking not knowing the full story, and the 'consumed by murder magic' is just the widely-known version. Or maybe Zeref and Acnologia are actually citizens of Berselion during that time or something.
Again, with Eileen, the author clearly hasn't finished telling her story yet, so yeah, not an issue for me that Acnologia doesn't recognize her.
A C-section is more jarring than orgasm magic? ;)
With Erza, I dunno. I just she just has 'BECAUSE SHE'S ERZA' story breaking powers due to being affected during pregnancy? She has been able to do some nonsensical stuff.
Problem is that Eileen could just be another unreliable narrator before we get retcon'd in the future by....I don't know maybe Erza's uncle or something. That's why the back story doesn't matter if every random joe can pop out of no where and tell you a different version.
DeleteWell, from what Eileen said, it seemed the Dragon Seed was an actual, physical sample of a Dragon's tissue implanted into the human body - which in turn would make Dragon antigens make more sense if there's something physically producing them in the body. From there it starts to consume the host because human bodies are incompatible with dragon tissue. It'd kinda be like the Demon Factor that Mirajane apparently has to let her control the demons she absorbs - magic from different species requires being part of that species yourself, at least partially so(?)
DeleteAnd for me, a c-section would indeed be more jarring in this context, considering it'd be implied Eileen basically had Erza ripped out of her womb as an annoyance and tossed her aside - self-mutilation of a pregnant woman combined with callous mistreatment of a fetus, basically. That's pretty dark and gruesome compared to the mind-numbing lunacy the manga normally does - and yeah, there's a lot of worse things out there, and maybe I'm reading too much into it, but the implication alone is a pretty stark contrast to how comparatively insipid things like orgasim magic were.
And Ryo, Blackjack does have a point - Acnologia's story was narrated by someone who wasn't there, based off interpretation of a 400-year-old legend. It's very possible that Acnologia and Zeref only got all the credit because they were the most reputable people to survive that war (greatest dragon-slayer and greatest black mage respectively), or that Eileen's name got stricken from the records as punishment for the unstable magic or any number of other things. Granted, you're right in that it'd be nice to have a history that doesn't keep changing with every new character we meet, but at the very least there's nothing that makes it lore-breaking... this time. Not yet, at least XD
Haha Mirajane has to control her demons? The whole Take Over thing felt like a very fresh take on general transformation magic in mangas when it was first introduced, how you have to let the beast/demon take over your body, but other than Elfman rampaging that one time it's never really amounted to anything.
DeleteAnother possible thing is Eileen probably wanting to strike her name off the history books for... reasons. Or whatever. It's an annoying retcon, but it's not as story-breaking as... oh, that one Mega Zetsu Is Behind Everything retcon in the last 20 chapters or so of Naruto. It's bad writing, but it's not quite as bad as a retcon that doesn't make sense.
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