Fairy Tail 419 Review: Natsu Cuts His Hair

Fairy Tail, Chapter 419: The Message of Flame

In general, I don't have a big problem of setting up the arc so that Natsu and Lucy goes off to find every single member of Fairy Tail after a time skip. It's that there has been not much of a sense of time passing from the abrupt end of the Tartaros arc and the whole guild disbanding thing. Which, like how Natsu explains in detail this chapter, still absolutely makes no god damned sense... but at least the manga author realizes it, so maybe it'll get addressed?

Also Natsu basically committed what could charitably be called acts of terrorism, burning down the big arena and basically destroying a good chunk of the arena for what amounted as 'youthful exuberance', as the pumpkin king says, which doesn't sit off really well with me either.

Of course, Natsu is set off free with no repercussions, and then promptly gets shocked by the news of the guild disbanding, and then stay at Lucy's. We get about the same amount of progression that a Bleach recap chapter does, though at least Fairy Tail's jokes are actually somewhat funny. They stay at Lucy's house and apparently Makarov's been missing or something. Cancer cuts Natsu's hair, and then after discovering Lucy's big stalker-newspaper board, Natsu and Happy decide to leave a gigantic 'FAIRY TAIL' with flames on the castle because it's somehow a beacon to people spread across the land... I don't think they can actually see it, but I suppose the news will spread?

Eh.

I'm somewhat interested to the whole drawn-out 'let's recruit everybody' which is certainly a clean breath of air, but I'm not a big fan of how forced it is, and how the dialogue seems to imply that it's a BIG EVENT when no, it really isn't. There isn't any tension from the guild disbanding and the whole reunion thing, so on that part the past few chapters haven't really been doing much to me.