Fairy Tail, Chapter 538: The Flame Extinguishes
Let's get this out of the way before I talk about any of the other manga this week. So... there's really not much to talk about. There's not much to make fun about, either, mostly because of how devoid of content this chapter is.
Basically, Lucy finishes using her main character powers to bullshit her way through the rewriting magic, and apparently she wrote down 'all our memories' into the book, something that was not hinted or alluded to in previous chapters. Or maybe it was? I wasn't exactly paying much (read: any) attention in the past few chapters. Gray does his one contribution to the whole affair, which is to his Devil Slaying magic to purge all demonic influence from Lucy's body. That... see, that's actually a usage of pre-established magical powers that make sense! Like, shit, the first time in this arc, maybe.
Some bullshit dialogue. The book disappears. Natsu catches up with an unnecessarily large amount of reaction panels and anal dialogue. Yeah, the First passed away, which would be something that might be emotional if the manga had used the 200+ chapters that Mavis appeared in to actually give her a personality beyond 'your friendly neighbourhood cryptic ghost'. Lots more big face close-up panels that is hardly necessary.
Then a couple of pages so people can tell Jellal what Ichiya basically said before his heroic sacrifice, because apparently Jellal has the memory of a fucking goldfish.
Then we get this long montage of them doing the thing that characters in horror movies that are sure to die do, which is talk about, hey, wouldn't it be super-dope if they did these things in the near future? And then something horrible happens. Natsu disappears, because the book disappears, because Zeref died. Which really didn't need to take this long to happen. Neither did we need three entire pages for Lucy to scream to the sky for the thirty-fifth time. Neither did we really need the suspension of disbelief for a manga that doesn't even have the balls to kill off minor characters like the members of Mermaid Heel or a dying Makarov.
Oh and Wendy sees a crack in the sky. Will Acnologia prove to be effective at all at being a threat? Or will he flop around like a total dunce, unable to do anything productive but stomp on a dead corpse's head and claim that he's going around 'slaying dragons'?
Basically, anyone who thinks Natsu's going to stay dead or vanished or whatever is a moron. Anyone who's having any sort of hope that this manga's not going to do the obvious thing is also a moron. Also, Acnologia will completely trash Wendy, Gajeel and Laxus and roar about how he's going to kill all the dragons but failing to do so against a kid, a wounded metal rockstar and a man with an implanted lachrima, then Natsu shows up with the power of friendship, punches Acnologia and the manga ends. Hopefully soon.
Basically, anyone who thinks Natsu's going to stay dead or vanished or whatever is a moron. Anyone who's having any sort of hope that this manga's not going to do the obvious thing is also a moron. Also, Acnologia will completely trash Wendy, Gajeel and Laxus and roar about how he's going to kill all the dragons but failing to do so against a kid, a wounded metal rockstar and a man with an implanted lachrima, then Natsu shows up with the power of friendship, punches Acnologia and the manga ends. Hopefully soon.
Honestly speaking, pacing has been as much an issue for Mashima as making a compelling plot is; Gray using his powers intelligently could have been done in just the last chapter when he cooled off Lucy using ice - that could have been changed for him to say "Don't worry about this demon crap or whatever it is. I'll purge it as it comes - you just worry about saving Natsu." It really didn't need to get dragged out like it did, but treating stuff as an issue only to rectify it next chapter's been pretty much the theme of this arc.
ReplyDeleteAs for Natsu vanishing... he's run off to find Acnologia. No, I'm not buying he actually faded away, and if he did than he's not likely going to stay dead, but I'm making the assumption that he's probably gone running to try and find Acnologia while not even knowing he was already gone (or at least for now, if the cracks in the sky are any hint and not just a sign of some new out-of-nowhere element about to appear).
Honestly though... I don't get how he was saved. Even if Lucy rewrote everything in the book... the book itself is freaking gone, taking all the words with it. How the hell does redoing the anchors between it and Natsu do anything if the book evaporates - shouldn't she have needed to put the words in a new vessel or the like, or even mark them down on herself which would have tied their lives together and shown her willingness to risk her life for him (which is sappy, yes, but it'd still be better than this)? IDK - Fuck this series; that's literally all I can say at this point.
Agreed! Pacing is shit. There's the general ordering of sub-plot-points like you mentioned, but the pacing in general has also been dragged out in so many parts and scrunched together in some others.
DeleteAlso -- magic in Fairy Tail makes no sense and bends to the whims of the "plot", as vaguely defined as it is. Honestly, writing about Fairy Tail is more of an obligation than anything. Maybe next week if nothing happens it'll be relegated to a couple of sentences in the 'misc. manga reviews of the week' compilation.
While it is pointless to complain about it but doesn't anything entering the timelapse become essentially nothing? Like Acnologia shouldn't even exist (plus you could hear him saying about his body breaking apart as he was pushed into the timelapse)......So in other words, it is likely that Mashima is saying, "Shit I think I killed him too soon, gotta bring him back!" And of course this also means that Ichiya and Anna will come back too.
ReplyDeleteMashima just can't make up his mind. Sigh.
It's supposed to be a plot twist about 'oh no, the villain is totally defeated with this plot device! Except it's not a fire Natsu punch, so the villain can come back!' My five year old nephew makes better storylines than this when he's playing with his toys.
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DeleteActually, it seemed to be more like they got pulled into nothing. Like the Daleks in Doctor Who's Doomsday episode - they were pulled into the emptiness of oblivion, but not technically destroyed. Also, Acnologia didn't actually say anything about his body "breaking apart" - he said "my body is..!" and got cut off by that point.
DeleteIt was, however, supposed to be impossible to get out again, which was the impetus of Anna's whole plan to beat Acnologia... but than again, this is the woman who didn't even test to see if the rift was open before luring Acnologia towards it and yet had been so overconfident in the plan as to have no backup for it whatsoever should it fail and ultimately could think of nothing else to do but to keep hitting the button over and over again till it worked. Would it really, really surprise anyone to learn that Acnologia being destroyed by/trapped forever in the Ravines of Time was just another fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants assumption like the rest of her plan seemed to be?
Hah, I don't count on Mashima even trying to ape, like, Doctor Who's oblivion or whatever, because he's just making it up as he goes. I'm pretty sure whether it's trapped or being disintegrated or retconned out of existence or timey-wimey jumble, Mashima can easily bullshit a 'my magic power too strongkt!' excuse for Acnologia to break out.
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