Fairy Tail, Chapter 540: Harmony
I cannot believe to say this, but I will miss Fairy Tail when it's gone. It's gone from 'god this is going downhill' to 'oh god this is so going downhill' to 'who the fuck writes this kind of trash' to weirdly and utterly hilarious because of how bad it is. It's like pointing at one of those crap unfunny parody films like Epic Movie or Sharknado or whatever where every single joke fails to land, there is no part of the movie that's actually funny or watchable, and the sheer entertainment factor I get is to laugh at how bad it is.
And Fairy Tail is in that spot.
Because god damn, what a stupid shit this manga has became.
I'm going to go all in with these last six chapters, because I cannot fathom that any other manga or, really, any other work of fiction in the future will be anywhere as hilariously bad as this shit.
So, the cover page! We're reminded of the Sun Village arc, which tries to do something different by foreshadowing Tartaros (remember how insanely hyped Tartaros was? Well, Tartaros at least had cool designs, unlike the Spriggans) and developing Flare as a character. Ironically, despite her never appearing anymore in the future, I don't think, she has far, far more personality and backstory than supposed long-runners like, oh, half of the random FT dudes that show up here. Oh, and Minerva. Remember Minerva? Remember how utterly vile and cartoonishly evil Minerva was? Her redemption was "oh, she had a bad childhood, so let's forgive all the horrible shit she's done as a grown-ass woman", which is stupid. Oh, and remember the 'funny' jokes when our heroes got turned into children and all the women's clothes didn't fit and we learn that Doranbolt is a goddamned pedophile scum?
Anyway, let's get into the first page! Where Acnologia and Natsu face off in a weird-ass crystal dimension which we later learn is the Ravines of Time itself. Which last chapter we are told that Acnologia devoured. Which last chapter we also see Acnologia break out of. So, uh... yeah. Not going to burn my brain cells thinking about this. Fairy Tail operates under the laws of 'MAGIC! So anything can happen', and it's not even going to be consistent to the very previous chapter.
For whatever reason, after the requisite close-up-to-faces-for-two-pages-with-inane-dialogue-that-has-no-real-reason-to-be-said thing that Fairy Tail likes to do, we learn that the other five dragon slayers are stuck in crystals, because we're not even going to pretend that death is even a possibility in this manga. I guess it beats taking out Laxus, Gajeel and Wendy from the supposed epic final battle? I did find it absolutely moronic that motherfucking Cobra, a.k.a. the dude who never had a single line of dialogue since his one-panel cameo in 2012 or whenever, is ranked alongside the actual main characters here.
Like, what the fuck? Sting and Rogue are utterly shit and ineffective, but at least the manga likes to remind us that they exist. And they have been trained by dragons. Like, the whole point of the absolutely moronic time travel plotline being shoehorned in is to show that the five people trained by actual dragons are special cookies. Why the fuck are Cobra and Laxus counted among dragon slayers? Shit, they're literally just dudes who have dragon lachryma shoved into their body. And apparently, the only two people in the world who have dragon lachryma in the body. Like when other manga have their grand, epic finales, you don't see a fucking second-stringer like Temari showing up in the Naruto finale, or Shuhei showing up to fight Juhabach in the Bleach finale.
Also why the fuck is everyone else automatically trapped inside crystals, while Natsu can walk around and react like a complete moron, despite Natsu disappearing earlier than Wendy and the others?
Also, let's take a look at Acnologia's extremely enlightening motive rant, shall we? He says he has devoured the Ravines of Time, having surpassed space and time and allowing him to destroy the world... but he wants to bring the dragon slayers into this world of space time... to... destroy them. He took them out of the world to destroy them. But he's going to destroy the world. What in the literal what? "I am going to take the pickles out of this burger so I can eat the cake and also so I can eat the pickles."
We got a panel of flashback to when Acnologia killed Igneel, because Igneel was such an amazing character. Acnologia tells Natsu that he's going to turn him into a pillar. And you could not have done that automatically like the other dragonslayers because... why, exactly? Stupid-ass lizard,
Erza is shouting into the sky with absolute gems of dialogue such as "you fiiiiend" and "Acnologia is running away?!" Truly, some absolutely quality dialogue here [/sarcasm]. Oh, and to nobody's surprise, the Ravines break and out tumble Ichiya and Plot Device. We get several panels of everyone reacting to their survival. Plot Device, whose name is apparently Anna, does what she does best, and gives us yet another monologue about a newly-introduced and shoehorned plot complication that makes no lick of sense unless you have some really, really loose sensibilities for what is acceptable as logic. She goes on a rant about how Acnologia has absorbed so much power from the Ravines of Time that his body and soul were split. And apparently his body is rampaging in the world, while his soul, and I quote, "is dwelling within the Ravines of Time to attempt to gain harmony", and this harmony can be gotten by the dragonslayers, and circulating their magic can apparently stabilize his magic power.
How the fuck this makes any lick of sense I don't understand beyond MAGIC LUL
Also, can I just point out that for all the bullshit about Acnologia's body running rampant, last episode he was fully conscious in dragon mode and is in full evil monologue mode? So not only does this not make sense, it contradicts the scenes we saw last chapter. Hell, all the bullshittery about "Acnologia ate the Ravines of Time! And within those Ravines of Time, he is fighting the dragonslayers" doesn't even make sense within this chapter itself.
Jellal repeats the exact same thing Plot Device just said, because that is such a premium usage of panels. Erza asks Plot Device what to do, and we get a zoom in to her face where she tells Erza to believe in their strength, as if that's some huge, sage advice. Which it would be, if we didn't hear it literally every second chapter in this crap manga. Because she's Erza, she's going to swim all the way to Magnolia. Broken bones when she's fighting mommy dragon? What? I mean, something that happens ten chapters ago is hardly relevant, right?
Doranbolt, the pedophile, shows up in front of Erza for... what, exactly? I'm not entirely sure. Fuck off, Doranbolt. You're almost as bad as Anna in being a soulless Plot Device only good for pedophile jokes. Yes, he teleports Erza next to Gray and Lucy and whatever, but come on, Doranbolt, because she's Erza, man. She can probably teleport her way next to Acnologia just by making a constipated face and roaring hard enough. Fuck, this stupid body/soul split thing is just to give Erza an excuse to fight Acnologia, isn't it? Because she's Erza and she has to be involved in the big final battle despite having less of an excuse to be present than fucking Cobra does.
Natsu gets turned into crystal and he screams. Apparently he can't use his flames. Acnologia talks about how he fought Zeref and he loses his arm (since when has Natsu's flames been tied to his arm?) and should be thankful for that. How does Acnologia know what Natsu has been doing? He's too busy trying and failing to catch a flying ship back when that happened. Though, I mean, this is the same manga that has fire punches beat infinite-magic-of-time for no real reason beyond 'he made a speech about friendship in his mind'. So.
Makarov, the stupid old man who has been making a lot of stupid decisions for no sensible justification, ends up getting himself killed for the most stupid and inane reasons ever, and gets his ass revived by a literal asspull, shows up, with the rest of the irrelevant characters who has never been relevant. We get yet another explanation of the body/soul rip and 'dragon slayers trapped in Ravines of Time'. No, Hiro Mashima, repeating the same thing three times in a chapter does not make something have any actual sense. A bunch of minor characters take turns saying things that other people have already said earlier this chapter. Bickslow shows just how utterly shallow his character is, because all he has as a character is being a Laxus fanboy. The cats just say the names of their dragonslayer partners, because that is so fucking necessary. Angel, apparently, is a goddamn retard, asking about 'physical and spiritual? I'm completely lost. Is Eric in there too?'
And then we get a fucking god damned diagram. A god damned diagram of something this chapter has explained three times already. I guess Hiro Mashima does think that anyone reading this manga are idiots that we need diagrams even after this chapter has explained the plot point three times already. Also, still makes no absolute god damned sense. I mean, I know Mashima writes this manga for literal five-year-old kids, because those are the only people who can find any kind of unironic joy from Fairy Tail at this point, but still.
Oh, we get Charle crying about how 'Wendy is fighting with everything she has' and sappy bullshit like that. Natsu blasts through the crystalification by shouting really loudly and unelashing fire, because of course he does. Wendy apparently broke out because she heard Charle's voice. Oh god, this manga just digs a deeper hole every single page I read it and it's just so hilarious. Every single six dragon slayers break free because they hear their friends' voices, because that makes so, so, so much fucking sense. "It's time to slay this dragon!" they shout out, while facing off against Acnologia's human form. Good job for ruining the one legitimate epic moment that the manga might scrounge up.
Also why the fuck does Laxus look like he's got a bandana covering his eyes in that one bottom-left panel? Like, jeez, that's some shitty-ass shading right there.
So yeah, a bunch of morons fighting an even bigger moron. Like, seriously. I was about to say about how utterly ineffective the purported dragon slayers have been, failing in even killing any dragon, even the nameless ones from the grand magic games... but at the same time, look at Acnologia! He's shit! His entire career consists of... failing to kill Makarov, failing to kill the Fairy Tail members, killing an already walking-dead Igneel, failing to kill anyone else during that fight, killing God Serena (who is a crap shit), sitting around for the majority of a war, stomping on a corpse's skull, failing to kill Wendy, failing to catch up to a flying ship, failing to kill Jellal, and only actually succeeding in having any semblance of a threat after Anna's stupid plan backfires.
God, I never thought I've ever seen a more shittier final villain than Kaguya from Naruto, but Fairy Tail is truly in a class of its own. And somehow, you know next chapter is going to be worse. Tune in next week for more shit-talking of this manga, because god damn this is borderline therapeutic.
Part of me wants to say "I told you so" about Anna and Ichiya surviving... but as we both noted last time, there's no point even acting like it wasn't a given they'd be alive. NOBODY on the "heroes" side ever dies - and I use the term "hero" very loosely, since by this point the entire fundamental principles of the Guild and how it;s members act feels like the epitome of hypocricy. To recount three speeches from three of it's members in just the Alvaraz Arc alone;
ReplyDelete- Cana with her "we'll fight for our families regardless of what the risk to the world (and by extension anyone and everyone else's families) is!" speech.
- Lisanna with her "you people were so used to dominating your enemies that you don't really know what it's like to ever lose something (even though WE'VE never really lost anything either)" spiel.
- Lucy's "we've won plenty of battles and beaten plenty of strong enemies before so why would this be any different (even though all our enemies likely went through the exact same thing of being unbeatable before us and it didn't save THEM)" remark.
Adding to that is... well, yeah - normally the magic stuff can be handwaved, but the Ravines of Time are really, really badly explained; did Acnologia create a new realm from eating the original, did he gain control of it by eating it's core essence like Yhwach did with the Soul King and Soul Society in Bleach, did he create the realm himself after eating the void of space-time - it's amazing how this chapter has the gall to give us a fucking diagram of things on top of repeating it and yet STILL somehow does jack-all to actually explain what the hell is going on.
Also, looking at Erza, I'm guessing Wendy used healing magic to patch her up? I mean, she was treating Erza's injuries while they were on the ship - or at least until the whole "Jellal and Wendy take turns crashing into Erza's boobs while the ship shakes about" thing - but it was only ever mentioned in passing rather than actually shown on any of the pages; again, that "honor" was reserved for "gag-boobs fun-time with Erza!" bit. Same with Natsu's arm - it suddenly looks a lot less hurt than it did earlier, which implies Wendy magicked it up to be better in that split-second when she could never heal *that* fast, like she's suddenly become Orihime now.
Yeah, I don't think anyone with half a brain reading this story would actually think that the manga will kill off Ichiya and Anna. Like, I'd be surprised if they killed off someone absolutely minor like, oh, I dunno, Cobra's pet snake and not revive it at the end of the manga.
DeleteYeah, a lot of the Fairy Tail stuff simply doesn't work because the manga's crapsaccharine mentality means that nothing bad that happens to the good guys ever stick, other than Lucy's father's death -- but that ends up going nowhere. Compare this with a superior show like My Hero Academia when Midoriya talks about how hard he has fought to get to where he is, or even Naruto when he gives the same speech, and you actually believe them because we actually see the trials and tribulations that a character like Midoriya went through to get to where he is.
So when someone like Natsu, who literally has never even trained to be stronger beyond some weird offscreen 'I went to the mountains and got longer hair and is twentybillion times stronger' in the moronic timeskip.
With Juhabach in Bleach it's at least sensible. Not only has ascending into the Soul King's place been foreshadowed since around midway with the huge Aizen/Espada mega-arc, Juhabach kills and takes over the Soul King's powers. Bleach never went and emphasized how Acnologia DEVOURED the Ravines of Time, and then in the same breath says that, hey, our so-called heroes are IN the Ravines of Time. Three fucking times in this manga, and we even get a diagram. No, Mashima, you can say "The Moon is cheese-flavoured" five hundred times and it wouldn't still make a god damn lick of sense.
Wendy has healing capabilities? I thought all she can do is to cast buff spells. Though I do have to admit that I've never really paid much attention to Wendy and am geniunely flabbergasted people count her among the 'main' characters of the manga (which I guess she kinda sorta is, I mean it's not like Gray or Erza have any real personality to speak of, just a crapload more screentime). But yeah, showing panels of the Blue Pegasus nobodies talking describing the situation or having gag-boobs scene is so, so much more important than showing something like this.
True enough. Honestly speaking, I think the whole "Ravines of Time" thing was just Mashima's idea of how to kill Acnologia in a way that would... well, actually kill him; with how much his dragon power has been hyped up and all the other BS he's done so far, Mashima's pretty much out-foxed himself in that I actually don't think he was able to come up with a way for anyone to actually *beat* the so-called Dragon King and so he had to find some way to nerf him.
DeleteHence the splitting his soul apart from his body - which, naturally, is likely going to be weaker because all the power's in the "main" dragon body, so it becomes a case of everyone who's not a dragon-slayer stalling the dragon while the spirit is killed by the slayers. Because fuck having a proper battle where we have all the heroes all united as one big family (which last I checked was supposed to be the whole premise of the goddamn serious, by the way), and beating the evil dragon - let's instead have it where only a select few are actually important while everyone else is basically just the meat shield. Oh, and lets not forget how this is totally ripping off Fire Emblem: Fates in how the big bad dragon antagonist of that world *also* divided his mind from his body and his power with it when his dragon form went mindless from getting too much power - as if the series didn't have enough complaints of ripping off other, better ones.
And yeah, Wendy has healing magic, though the only stipulation is that she can't use it on herself the same as how Natsu can't eat his own flames. In fact, Wendy was actually *introduced* as the token "White Mage" of the group and originally couldn't do anything else but support and healing since she was both inexperienced and ill-suited for combat. Hell, you yourself noted it way back in Chapter 501 when Wendy healed Juvia from near-death as being expected since Mashima never kills anyone (although considering how mind-numbingly stupid this series can be and, again, that the healing stuff is usually done off-screen rather than shown up-front, it's admittedly pretty easy to forget that stuff after a while).
Although in the same vein, Zeref was also hyped-up, magic power wise, and Natsu punched him out with fire and friendship, so I honestly didn't particularly care what Acnologia can do -- even if by breathing he can destroy the planet, it's not going to matter because the writer has no concept of power levels.
DeleteHonestly, the silliness of the body-soul split is compounded by the sinking feeling that it's just to give Erza, Gray and Lucy something to do. And if it's a ripoff of Fire Emblem (a series I have never touched) then it's a bad ripoff too because last chapter, Body!Acnologia was pretty talkative and not at all mindless.
Wendy used to be an interesting concept, with that 'White Mage' thing going on to make her different from Natsu and Gajeel as a dragon slayer that's not about unleashing blasts of destructive energy and stuff, and I found her 'buff only' magic abilities actually interesting. But the manga never, ever did anything at all with her beyond making her Moe Moe Moe Moe Moe Moe. Also, yeah, apparently she does heal Juvia in 501, but I wouldn't lose any sleep about forgetting anything in the Alvarez/Zeref arc.
True; he may not have been able to kill him, but he did still wipe out what was pretty much stated to be "the ultimate magic" with the power of heart. Guess it really is pointless to try and make sense of a power scale in this series - largely because it doesn't seem to have *any* kind of scale anymore.
DeletePretty much. In Fire Emblem: Fates, it was clarified that Anankos - the dragon big bad - had his mind fractured between his bodies, so it wasn't grossly dissimilar to Acnologia's current state... but, like you pointed out earlier, Fairy Tail *didn't* state that Acnologia's mind had split in two; it said his mind and body were wholly separated, so there's no reason Acnologia's dragon-body should have a consciousness like Anankos did. Mashima's infodumps don't match his illustrations - and this, again, is despite the galling amount of hand-holding this chapter tries to do for it's nonsense.
And yeah; after the Tartaros Arc when she got her Dragon Force mode, Wendy basically just became a smaller version of the other dragon-slayers and thereafter became less of a support unit - and normally you'd think development like that would be interesting, but it ultimately just makes her more generic to the others and their already-overabundant stock of "super-powered break everything in your path" powerhouses. So yes, it does get a bit harder to pick out someone for a specific role when the author seems to go out of his way to make everyone generically similar in destructive power up until the plot needs one of them to become all-powerful.
All the Fairy Tail members are pretty generic, yeah? Which is a bit of a shame because early on there are some hints as to more complex magic -- in particular, while Natsu and Gray are your typical elemental magic, the manga kind of tries to show other types. Erza as the 'fight with enchanted weapons' spellsword-type character, Lucy as the summoner, Wendy as the buffer/healer, the Strausses as the druid-type transforming caster....
DeleteBut now everyone just shoots shit or punches/slashes shit.. Lucy's summons? Shoots energy blasts or punches people. Erza is the same, when has her magical armour/sword last relevant? Wendy like you said became a generic 'X dragon roar' like everyone else. And the Strausses's transformation just allow them to shoot energy blasts now. Others, like Bickslow's 'control ghosts that can inhabit any non-living object' ends up being a glorified portable magic laser cannon, and Fried's 'I can make powerful reality-defying runes' ends up just turning him into a black demon swordsman most of the time. It made the already-generic fight scenes even more generic.
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