Fairy Tail 417 Review: Wordless

Fairy Tail Chapter 417: Traveling Alone II

Finally, after the Tartaros arc we get a breath of fresh air and indeed it's a well-needed one. This week has two Fairy Tail chapters: a comedy-omake chapter '416.5' with a lot of fanservice and Natsu heating up a sauna so ghost-Mavis can feel the warmth and all that which I don't think I need to do a full review of.

This chapter is just a sweet, wordless chapter in vein of that one Gildarts chapter way back in the Grand Magic Games arc... which is one of the best and most emotional and cute chapter in Fairy Tail since ever. And, of course, it starts Gildarts bumping into the wandering Natsu and Happy, and they have fun for a bit before Natsu apparently tells Gildarts about Igneel's death, which I thought was done absolutely well without dialogue and just relying on the art. The art is particularly well done in this chapter, and I do like how we're actually somewhat dealing with Igneel's death instead of just raging roars and whatnot.

Also, Natsu challenges Gildarts to a battle and for a moment it seemed that Natsu managed to knock Gildarts all the way back which is bullshit, but apparently Gildarts is just holding back because the moment some weird thing out of Toriko gulps Natsu down we get an absolutely horrifying panel of Gildarts' face and he, uh, punches a mountain to destroy it. Gildarts is awesome. And I do like how Natsu is just shell-shocked and went 'nononononono'. I thought that was hilarious.

There's a bit of Gildarts gushing over Cana as well, and there's a bit of them taking each other's bag by mistake which sort of fell flat on me.

But all in all it's a Fairy Tail chapter that I really enjoyed from the beginning to the end despite being, y'know, wordless and shit, which is something that hasn't happened for quite a while. Hopefully next chapter will give us a more interesting filler arc or something to help pass the time between the one and a half year or whenever it is that Natsu says he's going to be away.