Fairy Tail 415 Review: Going Through With It

Fairy Tail Chapter 415: And It Shall Become Your Will To Live

So apparently Acnologia is just polite enough to just fly around in the sky and retreat, bleeding out of one arm while everyone was saying their goodbyes.

I know, I know, Shonen manga and everything, but still...

Credit to the writer for actually having the balls to kill off Igneel definitively... and also the other four dragons. Because apparently they're like reverse Jinchuriki who die if they exit their hosts, and they're already half-dead anyway prior to being sealed within their children. Well that is kind of annoying, but kind of a twist, so I'm not quite sure how to feel about it. It does make Grandeeney and the other three not joining Igneel in fighting Acnologia extremely jarring, though, since none of them have anything to lose anymore. Jeez.

Still, after the last few months of banal drudgery from Fairy Tail, this chapter is pretty refreshing. It's by no means the best chapter, but it's the first chapter of Fairy Tail in a long time that does dramatic moments without copy-pasting the same old patented Erza Friendship Speech over and over again.

We start off with Makarov just standing in some weird rune place talking about how he's ended up pussying out of using Lumen Histoire... so what was the whole point of him showing up in front of the C-list Fairy Tail members all dramatic while telling Doranbolt to wipe people's memories? That's a big weird thing if it turns out to be a fake-out and only serves to awkwardly allow Doranbolt to be aware of Lumen Histoire's true nature after he wipes everyone's minds. Mavis shows up for a bit, but doesn't really say anything much.

The important thing is, Lumen Histoire doesn't revive Igneel or reverse time or some bullcrap like that. Yeah. It can damage Acnologia or something, but the important thing is it doesn't nullify Igneel's death.

Since we're on the topic of Mavis... I'm going to interrupt this review for a bit. I found it hilarious how in the last Fairy Tail Zero chapter, apparently the origin about Hades's eye being covered with an eyepatch isn't him hiding some weird eye power or some tragic backstory or whatever. It just got stabbed out by a random thug. That was... so freaking hilariously anticlimactic that the rather m'eh chapter suddenly became so much funnier.

Back to this chapter, we then cut away from Makarov and Mavis to the four other dragons -- Grandeeney, Metalicana, Skiadrum and Weisslogia -- just perching and hanging out the non-Natsu people. Wendy is all happy to see Grandeeney, of course... and we get our first close-up look at the four dragons when they're not roaring or turning into shadows and shit, and Grandeeney, holy shit, suddenly closes her gigantic shark-bird maw and looks so... gentle. It's weird! Every time we saw her before she's this weird wide-mouthed angry dragon with feathers, and now she's got this very human-looking face. Metalicana is mostly the same as how he was before, just a lot more defined and draconic than some of his earlier shadowed appearances. Weisslogia is the neck and head of a Chinese dragon glued onto an European dragon, and he's got chest hair. Skiadrum looks a bit odd in the first establishing group shot, but he's basically just a black dragon with shadow bleeding off him and weird eyes that appear to be eternally glowing so 'loudly', in a manner of speaking. Like Venom or some shit.

The Jet/Droy-level people all react to the dragons. Grandeeney praises Wendy for being able to destroy the Faces. Metalicana, who's the most mysterious of the Fairy Tail dragons and implied to have a not-so-happy relationship with Gajeel, have a bit of a face-off... before saying 'you've got a vile look in your eyes', causing Gajeel to basically have a face fault. Aww, they do love each other, just not in the lovey-dovey 'take five pages to talk about it' way that Natsu and Wendy do. They're, like, manly and shit and they're happy to find each other but won't show it.

Sting and Rogue aren't happy to find their parental figures, but are more confused about why they are alive. Apparently Weisslogia and Skiadrum pulled off an Itachi and traumatized their kids simply to make them stronger. And they take it one step further by, y'know, making the two of them think that they killed their own parents for freaking years. And somehow it gave them the effects that actually doing so would... well it didn't work because Sting and Rogue are kind of shit when they fight, but okay. (Skiadrum at least has the decency to, if I'm remembering it correctly, pretend to be sick and dying. Weisslogia is just a shithead.)

Anyway, parenting discussion aside, they reveal that they are half-dead and what they're seeing is the last bits of them because their souls are among the ones extracted by Acnologia's magic way back then, so them hiding inside their children is a last-ditch effort to prolong their lives and them coming out is a one-shot opportunity. Doesn't freaking explain why none of them did jack shit in Tenrou Island, but I suppose they're just not ready? After a bunch of explanation which I suppose is about as good as we get, Metalicana mentions about how Igneel isn't at his full strength which was why Acnologia took him down, and mentions how human-loving he is.

We cut away to Natsu and Igneel, and Igneel's still... got a body, but it's definitely torn apart. Natsu breaks down and I do like how it's not dragged on either. He's initially blabbering about all the things he wanted to tell his father, kind of how like when Naruto has to finally say goodbye to Edo-Minato. He goes through the denial phase a bit going all 'you promised you're not going anywhere' before talking stuff about how he learned to read and got a job and has friends and stuff and just blubbering. We get a couple panels of Happy crying silently, and while I don't really feel for Igneel's death, I feel the impact it has on poor Natsu.

We cut away to Grandeeney announcing that they, too, have to leave even though between the four of them I'm sure they can rip out one of Acnologia's arms before disappearing. Wendy starts to cry but Gajeel just pats her in the head and tells her to send their parents off with their heads held high, which is nice. I like it. Metalicana kind of... smiles? Hard to tell. The four dragons take into the sky and tell them how the age of dragons is over and the age of humans are coming and all that and thankfully unlike a certain Will of Fire speech this is one passing-the-torch speech that isn't liable to be repeated twenty times. There is mention of the Magna Carta, a covenant about how the dragons will eternally watch over mankind, before they disappear into the sky in a pillar of light.

Grandeeney tells Wendy she loves her before disappearing, Metalicana tells Gajeel he's got a vile look and Gajeel goes 'what the hell kind of last words are those?' before almost shedding a tear with a smile. I really like the Gajeel/Metalicana bits, since we know the least about the two of them but it's a perfect example about how even with the little things we don't know how the interactions between the two are at least pretty evident that they do care for each other and aren't estranged. I like that scene between the two of them.

Sting and Rogue thank their parents in a very superficial way, which I really thought could've been done better. The four dragons disappear, and so do Igneel, who kind of sends a telepathic message to Natsu as he ascends and tells him to stand up and show him how to live his life. We get a two-page spread of Natsu just yelling into the sky, swearing to become stronger and 'grind Acnologia's ass into dust', and in spite of not really liking Natsu all that much it's a pretty well-paced dramatic moment. Really feared that it would be dragged on and on, but it was satisfactory.

The chapter ends with Igneel's words as Natsu continues to scream in tears.

The things that led to this little dragon development is extremely haphazard, and a lot of the fights in the Tartaros arc aren't all that well done. And there are a couple of seeming inconsistencies with the whole dragon thing and all that jazz, but despite all the cliches this is a chapter that has really struck a chord with me after so many chapters of Fairy Tail being 'meh' or 'blah'. Keep this pacing up! Also, let's hope Natsu doesn't grind Acnologia into dragon paste just yet.