Fairy Tail, Chapter 539: World Collapse
Thank you, cover page, for reminding me of the utterly nonsensical Great Magic Games, where you introduce around 20+ characters and have none of them ever be relevant at all. Other than Minerva, who stuck around as the manga's more obnoxious antagonists before being redeemed in the manga's most obnoxious heel face turn ever.
Case in point: Sting and Rogue are apparently so unimportant that we see their cats' faces instead of them when they apparently get absorbed or erased or whatever temporary inconvenience Acnologia caused them.
Oh, and by the way, Acnologia is back. The entire chapter shows that, and shows how Acnologia is rampaging and unleashing these gigantic explosions all over the region. And it would be impressive if I hadn't seen Acnologia being such an utter dipshit for the past 30 chapters. Apparently he devoured the Ravines of Time? How the fuck do you know that, Jellal? He looks exactly the same as he did before, but okay, I guess so. The entire chapter is just lots and lots of explosions, and I admit that the two-page spread looks pretty cool.
Erza (wasn't every fucking bone in her body broken? Or did someone heal her?) uses her bullshit-main-character-power to survive. And then Wendy gets captured by Acnologia's magic ray things (good job, all of you people bobbing around in the water!) and apparently crushed by Acnologia's knuckles. More than anything, it's definitely a fake-out, but kudos for the writer for not dragging it out.
All the other dragonslayers are also apparently disappearing, but because only Fairy Tail members matter we only see Laxus and Gajeel's reactions. As mentioned before, Sting and Rogue we don't see at all, only the cats, and apparently... whoever the fuck Eric was? Is that Cobra? He just gets turned into a ball of light. We get our obligatory 'Lucy cries screaming' scene (fuck off, Lucy), and of course, Natsu is still alive, somehow transported to the Ravines of Time, where Acnologia's human form is. It's a bunch of crystals. I bet Natsu will punch Acnologia, really, really hard. Only it'll take seven chapters to do so.
By dint of having actually epic-looking art when Acnologia destroys all the parts of the world that has none of the named characters in it (Naruto at least had the balls to kill off minor characters like Ao and Shikaku during their finale when the god-monster rampages) it's a better chapter than the previous one. The plot development? Still nonsensical and as predictable as ever.
With the Ravines of Time thing, Jellal probably could tell by sensing it or something - Ultear was a time-magic mage, so he’d arguably be the most likely person to recognize that breed of magic. Erza picking up where he left of and knowing what he'd say, though, not so much - though I did dive sine points in how her "I won't give up!" mental speech did jack-all to stop the bad guy this time.
ReplyDeleteMy bigger issue is… well, honestly speaking, what the literal fuck was the point of Anna Heartfillia as a character - scratch that, as an *anything* in this? Not a single thing she did in the story couldn’t have been accomplished by another character - the info dumps could have been done by Jellal via studying records or something like that, and Ichyia could have been a stand-alone sacrifice (heck, he pretty much was, since he was the one driving the ship). Hell, so far, Anna's only contributions to the story *caused nothing but problems for everyone*.
- She and her family built the Eclipse Gate that nearly caused a dragon apocalypse (and yeah, King Toma disregarded her order to destroy it, but she should have seen to that herself if it was so important to do).
- She sent the dragon-slayer children to the future to escape Acnologia and live in a time where their dragon-parents inside them could regenerate their lost life-force, but apparently forgot dragons live really long lives and Acnologia was still menacing them and eventually caused the dragon-parent’s deaths anyway.
- She left the dragon-slayers to live their own lives free of chaos, but they arguably got in even worse straits due to stumbling around for answers she could have just given them.
- Her harebrained “travel to the future” plan relied on her descendent Layla - Lucy’s mom - being around to help, but the latter didn’t have all 12 Zodiac Keys on her when the ritual was performed and so it got her killed.
- She stayed out of Lucy’s life out of guilt, when Lucy lacking any kind of maternal figure in absence of her mom pretty much drove her father Jude off the deep end into an obsessive over-controlling dick of a parent and pretty much ruined Lucy’s childhood.
- And now, we have the coup-de-grace; her big plan to destroy/imprison Acnologia not only failed the first time, but it’s succeeding only served to practically make him a living God that can destroy the world far easier than he could before - and he was already able to do that before he had access to Space-Time magic. How the actual fuck could someone so obsessed with killing Acnologia - to the point she abandoned her own family in the past time to do it - make such an absurdly stupid miscalculation as to forget he can eat all magic and thus an all-powerful magic void would be the worst thing to hit him with?! Hell, to quote myself in an earlier review - "shouldn’t the fact that Zeref knew about the time-rift and never used it to kill Acnologia himself told Anna that it might not be able to destroy him?”
I didn’t think Anna could actually get any worse of a failed character… but she not only contributed nothing of value to the fight, but instead actively made Acnologia even stronger than he was before. Her whole purpose in the story - to bring Acnologia down - but Acnologia’s the dragon-slayer of Magic… and Anna thought a magic that controls all of time and space was the best thing to throw the magic-eating dragon into. And somehow, this never once came up in her plan? What the hell else can I take from that beside the fact that Anna Heartfilla is a complete and total idiot to the point she makes friggin’ *Eileen* look rational and smart by comparison?
That’s true, Erza did not do her bullshit “because it’s Erza” thing and break through the problem, but because we know for a fact that this is the final leg of the manga and it’s gotta be Natsu Punch To The Face™ that ends Acnologia.
DeleteRE: Anna Heartfilia… preaching to the choir. She's crap for basically all the reasons you listed, and I’ve talked enough shit about her in the past few reviews, but unlike Eileen she doesn’t even manage to have any cool scenes, and ends up being a huge inept twit throughout it all who can’t manage to even get that final sacrifice, and had to be helped out by Ichiya. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bigger waste of screentime anywhere at all than this lady.
Well, yea, but you know the worst part about Anna? I doubt we've even seen the last of her. If the Ravines of Time are just some nowhere-space, than she and Icthiya are probably still alive in there, somewhere, where we'll get some obligatory "What have I done?" tears from her at how she utterly fucked everyone over with her big plan, and than some connection to Lucy letting everyone chase after Natsu into the no-space - maybe with Brandish and mis Time-God Dimaria finishing their heel-face turns to help. Of course, that might not be the case - especially the latter parts, since that would actually involve some modicum of logic using the time-magic user to enter a time-space realm - but after Makarov came back to life, I can't for the life of me think they're going to kill even Icthyia, which by extension would mean the useless Anna with him would be alive too.
DeleteOr, to be less ranty; Fuck Anna Heartfillia, fuck Hiro Mashima and fuck this series.
Isn't Dimaria dead? Didn't Natsu maul her to death with his magic arm that ended up being pointless after all? Probably not. People with boobs never die in this manga.
DeleteDefinitely agree with your last sentence there.
No. Dimaria is alive she was fine after Natsu punched her in the tits. then Branish shrunk her and walked off with her out of the story.
DeleteJellal probably just assumed that he ate it as he said that he could eat all magic so thats not a bad assumption.
ReplyDeleteLike Acnologia has been eating any kind of magic since, shit, ever? Like, I know dragons can do that, but I don't think Acnologia has ever displayed magic-eating powers in this arc I don't think (though I haven't been paying much attention), and seeing Acnologia break out of a prison would make people go 'oh my god, the ravines didn't hold him!' not 'oh shit, he's eating the ravines!'
DeleteWell, shows how much (or rather, how little) I've been paying attention, then! :p
Deletei just love that everything was done so that natsu has for final boss the human form of Acnologia (because shonen) .the only difference is that I thought that it will be a power-down and not a power up.
ReplyDeleteyou know, for the poor smuck keep, at least, a bit of his dignity .
Come on, I haven't seen Acnologia as anything but a joke ever since he showed up and spent five chapters smooshing Eileen's face for no good reason despite his talk of "I AM THE ULTIMATE DRAGON SLAYER AND DRAGONS MUST BE EXTINCT!"
DeleteMan Lucy and others are retarded, they are crying and shit by thinking Natsu is dead but really, he just got teleported by Acnologia. Like WTF?
ReplyDeleteAlso Acnologia can fit 7 dragonslayers inside him. HHEHEHEHE. Anyway one of the biggest shit about this chapter is that about half of it just focusing on Erza, even though it's not even related to her! Like seriously Mashima, let go of your damn waifu.
Anyway, Acnologia will kick the crap out of everyone and then lose to a bunch of injured maggots. Sigh.
That part actually isn't as much of an issue, really; the idea of Natsu vanishing from Zeref's death was something they were scared of happening for a while now, and they don't even know about Acnologia getting Space-Time powers. Them thinking Natsu faded away is actually one of the more comprehensible parts of this.
DeleteSame for the "Acnologia can fit people inside him" bit too, actually - Spatial Magic is one of the few constant things in the series, affording the user a pocket dimension as was displayed by Marion (Brandish's idiot servant), Minerva (with Territory Magic), Jacob (total Spatial Magic) and Erza (her Requip draws armors out of a pocket-space). A personal reality isn't anything out-of-nowhere either - it's the *execution* of it all (namely Anna's presence and her dumbass plan causing this) that sucks, really.
And honestly speaking... the chapter didn't actually seem to focus on Erza that much, outside of her being a bystander to Acnologia's return - hell, it only really focused on her perspective for all of one page; the rest was the general mock-horror reactions from everyone else at the Dragon-Slayers vanishing.
Given how Zeref (despite losing to Natsu via magic punch-out deus ex powers) needed a McGuffin plot mechanic of equal strength to his curse (Mavis' curse) to kill him, I'm at least hoping that Acnologia either needs the same to kill him or everyone in the world dogpiling their power on hi, - at least than he could die with the dignity of not being killed by a weaker power than his own from any one individual. Not too hopeful on that, mind you, but I guess I'm an optimist on that front.
I don’t fully mind the pocket dimension thing not making sense, but honestly, more for the fact that it’s a stupidly annoying thing that’s done to facilitate the one-on-one “gonna win by punching you in the face really hard” battle between Natsu and Acnologia. Or maybe if the other five or six dragonslayers (how the hell did Cobra and Laxus count among that number, by the way? They’re basically dudes with what amounts to a magical program injected into their bodies) they’ll defeat Acnologia by a synchronized X Dragon’s Roar.
DeleteAlso, Zeref’s basically defeated and out of the count with the most powerful McGuffin in the manga – Natsu’s fiery punch combined with that one speech about family/guild/friendship/fired up. Mavis's love curse thing is basically just an utterly failed attempt at trying to tie up that romance plot no one cares about between two flat and inconsistently written characters.
True, but I still gave pity points for Natsu's derp-ex mashima punch not being what killed Zeref, since he said he'd get back up if not for Mavis killing him. Didn't excuse the rest of it, though, but still, it wasn't Natsu (though I can't even begin to tell you how pathetic it is that this is the only "good" thing about that chapter - and even than it's just in a figurative sense).
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