Fairy Tail 409: Bond of Black and White
Despite Mard Geer claiming not to even be trying before, and now having assumed his true super Etherious form or whatever, he doesn't fare much better against Natsu and Grey in one of the most inconsistent displays of power levels ever. I mean, Grey having somewhat of a leg up against Mard Geer is to be expected considering his ice devil slayer powers and whatever, but Natsu? Really? Natsu, who's wounded from all the battles before and not managing to get Mard Geer out of his chair even when he's supported by two others before? Really the only reason that Natsu is still able to fight on par with Grey is only because of sheer Mary-Sue main character factor.
Mard Geer does this big black thorns thing which of course instantly gets frozen and burnt together, and then just flies up and grabs Natsu and Gray and instead of, you know, crushing their heads or something, he just scrapes their faces slightly against a bunch of rubble, which in theory should burn their faces straight off... but sine this is a shonen manga all Mard Geer accomplishes is probably a bit of extra blood here and there.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have Demon!Jiemma fighting Sting and Rogue. Apparently he survived Sting's almost certainly fatal 'punch-in-the-chest' thing, and claims to be the one behind Minerva joining Tartaros or whatever. We get a couple lines of dialogue reminding us how much of a shitty father Jiemma is, and I really can't take him seriously with his elf ears and his weird teeth -- Jiemma has sharp teeth on his upper jaw and normal human teeth on his lower. Jiemma trades a bunch of aura-surrounded punches and karate chops with Sting and Rogue that is frankly quite m'eh-inducing, and they argue a bit about the current fate of Sabertooth and power and whatnot. It's just your average manga 'heart is the strongest' speech and Jiemma is doing your average 'power is everything you sucks' speech. Oh, and of course, 'Fairy Tail is awesome friendship blah blah blah'. It's very boring and nothing we haven't read five dozen times in this manga before.
And after a couple of loud shouting and punches that takes way too long than it should... which really could've been a lot more interesting. Actual, y'know, dragon magic would be interesting. Rogue's shadow attacks which he does a grand total of once, Sting's laser thingies, Jiemma... whatever the hell Jiemma is supposed to be able to do other than punch people. See, we don't even know what Jiemma is supposed to be able to do! We could've had a normal exchange of big magic spells and dragon roars and whatnot and I would've been sort of entertained, but this is just fucking boring.
Hell, I think I would've been fine if they just do the boring punches and whatnot and they just shut the fuck up and not talk. It's so annoying because it just kills the tension. Any time someone talks about friendship the good guys will win despite the fact that the bad guy is doing well. And I think we kind of have it drilled into our heads that the villains are all anti-friendship and the good guys are all yes-friendship and we know what's going to happen. Urgh. That's freaking annoying. Do you know how many times someone talks about friendship in Fairy Tail? Literally every other battle, as well as every other line in non-battle chapters. Freaking. Annoying. Why.
And then we get a big two-page splash of Sting and Rogue doing this 'White Shadow Dragon's Silk'... which I have no idea how they formed, but it at least sort of looks cool as they pierce Jiemma all over with magic silk from their hands and say some stitch-related dialogue that doesn't really make sense considering the situation. It's... something, I guess, fairly more interesting than the last ten pages where absolutely nothing of importance happened.
And Jiemma just keels over and apparently dies, except not since he survives a fucking punch that blew apart his chest, a bunch of strings sticking through several points on his torso that isn't his chest is certainly not going to be fatal. And then they all fall down.
Good lord that was pointless as hell, wasn't it? Why did we need to bring Jiemma back? He doesn't even last more than a chapter after his reintroduction, he dies in literally a single shot and all the fight scenes before that is just uninteresting punches and them arguing over absolutely anal shit that you don't need to spell out. Why can't we have Mard Geer take out Sting and Rogue if you really need to take them out of the story? That'll make Mard Geer look more like a badass, be more of a threat and the damage he suffered from fighting Sting and Rogue would make his defeat at the hand of Natsu and Grey feel less Mary Sue-ing. Hell, why not have Mard Geer take out Sting and Rogue before they 'disappear' and reappear when Natsu arrives? This whole arc is filled with bad pacing.
Also we get a brief shot of Erza in the middle of her fight against Kyouka. I'm still not clear what reason could there be for them to show the entire fight and then cut back to the whole Mard Geer business instead of having both fights run simultaneously like a sane story.
But as it is, Mard Geer is doing his 'fly while you drag their faces against a wall' tactic, and somehow Natsu and Grey can just.... spin around and deliver a big ice-fire punch to Mard Geer's chest. Bah. Hopefully Mard Geer puts up more of a fight than Jiemma does and makes the fight against Natsu and Grey interesting even if he's going to inevitably be defeated later on because friendship. Can we please have a Fairy Tail battle where the good guys don't win because of a fucking friendship speech? Because, like, every single motherfucking battle is a friendship speech and we don't need any more.
ALSO WHERE THE HELL ARE MY DRAGON FIGHTS?
I WAS PROMISED DRAGON FIGHTS
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