Fairy Tail, Chapters 526-527
Really don't want to talk about Fairy Tail. I really don't. It's stressful, it means I have to read the chapters with more than a skimming glance, and my opinions tend to be super-negative anyway. But I'm going to talk about the chapters for Fairy Tail both this week and the previous.
So 526 started off with a generic, boring battle between Gildarts and Cana versus August, who suddenly goes from 'professional, detached uber-mage' to a random sadistic shit for no particular reason at all. And both Gildarts and Cana are still one-trick ponies. One launches playing cards that explode, one punches really, really hard. And they exchange very, very insipid dialogue all the while August just stands there hand outstretched listening to Gildarts and Cana talk. Because this is Fairy Tail. 'Tis dumb.
Cana acts like it's some really horrendous act of self-mutilating sacrifice for Gildarts to charge forwards when it's his fucking robotic arm. Really, the writer of this manga has so little balls left that he couldn't have done this to Gildarts' good flesh-and-blood arm? Like, there's the stupid-ass fake-outs with literally every good character's death (and the jury's still out if Makarov won't miraculously return to life at the end of this arc) are bad enough, but shit, you don't have the balls to actually injure your protagonists?
Zeref kills Rahkeid for no real reason other than he's an inconsistently written villain who goes from a nihilist to a sadist to a psychopath at a drop of a hat. Fuck off, Zeref. I guess I hate Rahkeid more because he's a rapey one-note caricature, so good on Zeref for killing him. Zeref gives a long, long speech, and Natsu doesn't go and try to stop Zeref from brutalizing his own "son" who is not actually his son but just a demon from the book of Zeref. Because oh-em-gee a plot twist... that no one gives a shit about. Who the bloody fuck cares if Rahkeid is really Zeref's flesh-and-blood son? He's still crap either way. Also dead either way.
The flashback showing Precht finding Mavis pregnant and abandoning the child while he's shrouded in darkness makes it clear that they're doing a stupid-ass fake out that August is Zeref's biological son. Does it matter? No, not really. Does it explain August randomly being pissed off at father-child relationships? No, not really, especially when he's established to be a surrogate parental figure to Brandish. It makes no sense. It's shoehorned in to give August some random last-minute connection to Zeref, adds absolutely nothing to the story and is shit. Oh, Zeref 'adopts' him anyway but doesn't know that he's his biological son... so August has huge daddy issues... because he doesn't tell Zeref that he's his father? How the utter fuck is that Zeref's fault? He doesn't even know he has a son, and you're angsting about how Zeref never cares for you? Yeah, August, you brain-damaged dolt.
Blah blah blah August's power is copying magic that doesn't work on holder-type magic. Not even going to try to understand this, because Fairy Tail's never been consistent at all with how its magic works. Gildarts punches August really hard that it explodes.
527 starts with Zeref killing Rakheid, and Natsu is all "yooouuuuuu killed your nakamaaaaa" like a broken record and punches Zeref.
August then tries to destroy the entire country up, showing his devotion to Zeref. Wait, isn't his magic fucking copying other people and neutralizing them? Where is this giant explosion nonsense coming from, then? I guess it's the same place where Natsu is still able to use fire magic despite destroying the dragon and demon seeds inside him. See, this is the kind of nonsense why I don't try to figure out how Fairy Tail magic works. Also, in previous chapters you were creating huge-ass explosions without having to blow yourself up. So, uh, you just want to suicide bomb yourself for... no good reason, then. Maybe it's the same part of your brain that tells you 'I am so sad because daddy never loves me even though I never told him I was his son'. At this point it's just hilarious. I've read bad fanfics that are better than this.
Mavis's telepathy is blocked as she tells everyone to put their powers into defensive mode. What, you think this is Yu-Gi-Oh? You can just turn to defense mode? August makes eye contact with Mavis (who also doesn't know that August is her son) and suddenly we get epic closeup panels, and August fucking dies.
Then we have like five entire chapters of nothing but people reacting, Child August showing up then disappearing, Mavis not realizing anything, Zeref not realizing anything, and it's all just August's personal delusional battle in his own mind. What the shit, August.
What the utter fuck? It's just hilarious. I'm not even mad. I'm just amazed something like this can be published in a manga and not rushed to its conclusion. Or maybe this is Fairy Tail being rushed to conclusion, which is good.
Mavis talks to Lucy, Happy and Gray about the END book and blah blah blah save Natsu plot contrivance deus ex machina blah blah. Natsu and Zeref shout words at each other, very long-winded and repetitive nonsense. "FRIENDSHIP IS PASSION" or some bullcrap like that. I think Natsu wants to show that Zeref still has family that he can care for, but because Natsu's as brain-dead as August is, the way he's going to show it is by punching people with flaming fists. Power of love and power of friendship will redeem Zeref in the end, but man, it's just so fucking trite.
Oh, and Acnologia's just apparently patiently standing, waiting for his turn. Some dragon of ultimate armageddon you are.
Fuck this shit. I just wasted fifteen minutes of my life talking about it. I feel dirty.
Just a small note, but I don't actually think Natsu destroyed either of the seeds inside of him; I think it's just that they vanished to represent him rejecting the choice to lose either one. Igneel said it was because his "doubts" (which were badly illustrated) were causing them to be unstable and try to fuse into one power, and his "newfound resolution" (which was poorly done) stabilized them as two separate ones. Hell, the very next chapter is called "Demon Dragon", so it seems more like he just somehow stopped them being unstable, no matter how little sense that makes.
ReplyDeleteWith August, his huge explosion seemed to be created when he mirrored Natsu's fire magic. It's one of the few times Mashima looks like he was trying to be subtle - despite all the power August is said to have, he's only ever been shown mirroring attacks and turning them back on the caster (Natsu's fire, Racer's speed, Cobra's poison, Gildarts's crash-magic, etc). It's lackluster as all hell considering the buildup, but I guess he at least TRIED, which was more than he did for the other Spriggans. Likewise, I think his trying to atomize himself was basically him either overloading his own body or borrowing Gildart's crash-magic to destructive effect - maybe it's like the Parasite from Superman in that he can't permanently retain the powers he copies like Natsu's fire, though that would be a pretty farcical weakness (but would you be surprised, either?). Granted, the stupid part comes from how everyone thinks he ran out of magic power before he could kill everyone, but the truth is that he just saw his mother and HESITATED for one second too long, his suicide attack only failing because he flinched a single moment longer than his body could hold out - Deus Ex Mashima, you have no equal :P
In all honesty, it's the character's behavior that pissed me off more than the gaps in explaining the magic did. The idea of Zeref and Mavis having a kid who aged normally due to not being in stasis or immortal may sound cool on paper, but in execution it's just inane to try and make work - odd enough that this is seemingly supposed to be Mashima's explanation for how Mavis survived Zeref's curse (there was a "small spark of life" left in her according to Prechet - baby August, who's life apparently re-ignited Mavis' own), but why even create this story for a character if you DON'T DO ANYTHING WITH IT?! It doesn't alter the plot at all - Zeref never knew, Mavis never knew (which BTW, how the flying fuck do you not know you're pregnant and gave birth? Did Prechet alter her memories for some "don't want her to agonize over Zeref's kid or be attached to the evil wizard" reason? He was more obsessed with Zeref by the end then Mavis was - and if he knew Zeref and Mavis had a kid, why didn't he just look for that kid instead of going to Trenou Island? Couldn't a one-of-a-kind kid with that much light and dark magic together have been better for his research). It takes what was supposed to be a big twist and not only makes it a plot-hole but a plot-canyon, but it also turns August into Rakheed Mk II - A "well done, son guy" who's motivation is just pining for his parents to recognize him without having to tell him.
Whatever the situation with the Seeds are, the artwork and scripting are just so super confusing in its attempt to be symbolic (it's not) and to be this huge revelation (it's not). What I saw were the seeds being destroyed and while it might just be in Natsu's mind I'm not that confident with Mashima's storytelling and it might just be the Power of Friendship.
ReplyDeleteWith August I suppose, yeah, his power has been foreshadowed, kind of, but what about the suicide bomb, or the finger laser that he used to 'kill' Mirajane? August was relatively well handled up until this chapter, though, I'll admit that much. If it's like Parasite where he retains the powers temporarily after surviving, then why did he need to jump away from Cana's cards instead of disassembling them or disassembling himself?
Also everything about the Mavis/August thing is just stupid no matter how you look at it. The setup, the conclusion, the eye contact... none of it felt like anything but bad fanwank. Every single thing about August's backstory and how he's handled falls apart badly, even worse than Eileen's was, and all of it is just super dumb. Which is why I ended up doing a review for this set of chapters.
I'd have agreed if the scene were of Natsu destroying the seed(s) himself, but it wasn't; they just crumbled and faded on it's own. If I were to guess, it was supposed to symbolize Natsu's preconceptions, uncertainties about his identity "crumbling away" (again, the uncertainties that had never even been an issue until literally that chapter, nor had it been hinted that Natsu was having these doubts even after facing Zeref). Plus, it's precisely *because* of the whole Power of Friendship thing and Mashima's idea of storytelling that I'd be inclined to say it was an attempt at symbolism; Natsu either ignoring a choice or taking an out-of-nowhere third path, both without having any consequences, is par for the course with FT :P
ReplyDeleteThe suicide bomb seemed to be simply generating so much magical energy that it'd boil the blood of everyone in the city - it seems more an emission of raw magic than anything else, and even than it could be argued as being a corruption of Gildarrts Crash-Magic . And the finger beam seems more like a common or general spell as opposed to a major or high-level one - or hell, maybe it was something that he copied from Mirajane since her Take-Over could fire energy blasts as well. Additionally, Gildarts noted that August's copied version of the magic automatically negated damage from the original's - or in other words, his disassembling himself wouldn't have kept Cana's cards from damaging him; he'd still have had to dodge and it still would have tipped them off what his weakness was. Of course, it's also possible that, unlike Parasite, he doesn't even retain the powers THAT long - after all, it hasn't even been an hour since he fought Jellal's group and I didn't see him use any of the decently-lethal or useful abilities Crime Socerie had. Which, again, while I give Mashima props for at least attempting forshadowing, it's still a pretty lackluster way to have such a supposedly powerful character go out by giving them such a huge vulnerability as "can only reflect/copy powers for an instant like an over-glorified magic mirror, therefore physical blows or magic objects are his weakness".
And yeah, for all the things Eileen was, at least her backstory was *good* - divorced from her characterization far too much to make anyone care about her, but still good in the individual sense. With August though, it's even worse because it doesn't even do that - it's both bad *and* divorced from his characterization. And since Eileen was a personality-absent Mary Sue right out of the gate, I think this makes August the new winner for "quickest character for Mashima to ruin in FT" - because he got ruined as a character by his backstory in one chapter, and then died the very next chapter.
With August it's definitely worse because the character has been built up pre-backstory as a super-loyal, super-serious character. It's not much, but him telling Eileen to stop dicking around and kill Fairy Tail members and his moments with Brandish, all serve to make him somewhat distinct as a character (with a very loose definition of 'distinct'). But both the backstory and his random personality change just negates all that for the cheap and not even well-done twist that 'August is Zeref's son, not Rahkeid'.
DeleteI dunno. Trying to figure out how August's power works just really is an exercise at trying to apply consistent logic into a manga that doesn't care about consistency. Sure, we could argue that August's suicide bomb is a corruption of Gildarts's Crash, or that it's one of his few innate magic powers, or whatever, but then the rules of magic in FT has been so poorly defined that we can cook up a dozen explanations for that easily... but the fact that it can be handwaved doesn't make it any less out-of-nowhere that August's switch from 'mirror everyone's powers' into 'suicide bomb' any less jarring.
Yeah - too bad even that bit with Brandish got tossed out. Even finding some way to tie bits of it into things - like, say, that he'd wanted Zeref to recognize him as his son on his own because he felt a father should be able to know who their kid is without being told, and Zeref never doing so either ruins August's faith in parent-child bonds or, in a twisted version of FT's own rhetoric, convinces him that blood-relations are fleeting when compared to present-tense bonds. Even though that logic's totally inane, it would have been more rational than "why doesn't dad love me?!" followed up by "oh, right - he doesn't know about me" path that Mashima took.
DeleteAlso, think that Rahkeid took the place for "most useless character in FT", or at least for the Alvaraz Arc - say what you want about the other Spriggans, but how many of them were built up like "Zeref's son" and "Secret weapon against Acnologia" Rakheed Dragneel only for him to just be one of his "proto-Natsu test subjects" or whatever and then just up and die? Hell, I think even *Eileen* was more relevant to the plot as the inventor of Dragon-Slayer magic, shoe-horned twist that it was - what, if anything, did Rakheed (or Lacarde or whatever the fuck his name in the localization was) actually DO between his introduction and his death?
And yeah, I get raising one's brows at August's using a suicide blast like that. Honestly, maybe it's because of how nebulous that is that it doesn't bother me as much as the personality defects - the magic issues can be often (though not always) be handwaved, but character idiocy is something else altogether :P
Both of what you suggested as August's storylines would work very well, even if the idea of it realized with Fairy Tail's crappy writing means that it wouldn't have played out as well as it does in my head. Whatever the case at least it'll be consistent with what we know about August from previous chapters.
DeleteAlso agreed about the whole magic issues. I can make an argument about a lot of the power level stuff in a lot of better mangas also don't make sense (Dragon Ball, being a manga I read recently, has a lot of moments that don't make sense but is ignorable or handwaved because the writing's a lot better -- and I don't necessarily think Dragon Ball even lives up to its hype) but the character writing is definitely inexcusable.
Rahkeed is dumb, that's for sure. God Serena at least had a role in being the big worf-hammer against Acnologia AND his death scene is equal parts awesome and hilarious. And as much as I hated Jacob at least he kinda-sorta makes sense as the token funny character. Rahkeid was built up as this son of Zeref, the third Dragneel, with all the priesty nonsense... and then he's a one-note orgasm magic user whose claim to fame being that he's the only person Sting ever beat without teaming up with Rogue. Kind of. And then he survives except Zeref gets rid of him because he's interrupting. Oops.
He didn't actually stop the spell. I mentioned it already, but what happened is that he saw Mavis and hesitated one moment longer then his body could last. Hell, I don't even think the spell *could* be cancelled - its just that, for reasons of "FAMILY LOVE", he flinched before he could finish the job and his body crumbled away. Or in other words, literally the only reason he failed to make everyone die with him is the same "suddenly understands love" bullshit Mashima's always used with his villains.
ReplyDelete"Because of love" bullshit, then. Because totally locking eyes with mommy for one second stops the casting of the uber-awesome country-destroying spell. And it's justifiable because we have no idea how FT's magic really works, so maybe it's a magic that, hey, I dunno, requires absolute concentration or you die and fade away into a weird ghostly kid version of yourself or some shit like that.
ReplyDeleteI think if the spell had been stopped, August wouldn't have, well, died at all. If I were to try and think of an analogy... it'd be like someone pulling the pin on a hand-grenade to blow everyone up, but getting distracted before they can throw it and having it blow up in their hand and kill themselves because they waited that one second too long. Which, I restate, was honestly the most anticlimactic way August could have gone out - even Gildarts killing him would have been more acceptable, since at least August would have died from Gildarts figuring out his weakness and exploiting it; why even have August survive Gildarts's final attack if he offs himself anyway? Was it that he was dying already and tried to take them with him, or did he just go "fuck it"?
ReplyDeleteAlso, props to Ryo for noting something I'd missed earlier; the OOC moment from Precht. If this was pre-Hades days, he'd have been more likely to either kill the child or put them somewhere he could keep an eye on their development, and if this was when he started to become Hades than he'd have kept August as either research material or a new recruit (after all, considering what he was researching, a literal fusion of dark and light magics would have been a major boon to his work). It also doesn't explain why Precht never once tried to look August up for his cause. Did he just not know what happened to him when he left the continent - he had an airship, so crossing the sea would have been no problem. Did he ask and August turned him down - no, August would have likely tried to kill him for invading their territory. Did Precht just figure August too much trouble to leave alone - no, because August would have likely been a very big ally and big on getting a potential obstacle to Alvaraz removed without having to do anything. It's not like Eileen's backstory where the only thing wrong was that the character in question felt like a different person entirely from the one in the flashback - this is quite literally a lore-breaking retcon of canyon-sized proportions.