Fairy Tail 420 Review: Carla the Human

Fairy Tail, Chapter 420: Lamia Scale's Thanksgiving

Another slower chapter, but kudos to this chapter for actually having a plot twist that surprised me! The whole 'faux-nostalgic timeskip' and 'we will go around finding all our old comrades' thing I saw coming from a mile away when Makarov (still without any good reason beyond drama that fails to deliver) disbands the guild at the end of the Tartaros Arc.

We get a bit of Natsu and Lucy fooling around, and a little fake-out regarding Lucy's fighting capabilities... she's apparently been training, but eh, I'm not sure that it'll really mean much in the long run because she's kind of the butt monkey of the series. Lucy's attempt to actually challenge Natsu into a sparring contest ends up interrupted with Natsu sniper-ing some random villains. We get a bit of them just mucking around with buildings Natsu destroyed and general stuff. After a bit, Lucy leads them to Magerett Town, which is the town Lamia Scale is based out of.

And they arrive while Lamia Scale is doing their thanksgiving parade. Lyon does some ice bird and ice bunny stuff... and we get Toby doing this stupid impression of himself crying that I find absolutely unfunny like the audience. Oobababa the old granny master is hilarious, though. And then it's revealed that Wendy has became a member of Lamia Scale, and is dancing in this loli duo with Chelia and everyone is cheering for them and stuff. It's a bit of a surprise, but not entirely unexpected. The fact that Fairy Tail members might be snatched up by other guilds is kind of a speculation of the actual lasting changes to the plot that might happen over the timeskip.

Granted it still doesn't give an excuse for why the Fairy Tail members didn't just stick together and make a new guild, but I suppose that's either going to be addressed or glossed over.

Also, notably Jura is absent among the important Lamia Scale members, and I'm wondering what's going on with that.

Natsu's kind of freaking out and wants to get Wendy back from the 'dark side'... and they are approached by Carla... who's a human now! She still has cat ears growing out of her hair, but she's a human. And apparently not even Lucy knows what the fuck is going on. That I didn't see coming, and it's at least interesting enough to make me curious for next chapter.

This chapter's cliffhanger shows this bunch of shady characters led by someone with a snake tongue who wants to fuck up Lamia Scale, but they look absolutely non-threatening and undoubtedly are going to be crushed into bits by Natsu in a single shot. But I'm at least somewhat curious over why Carla is a human and whether the members of Fairy Tail snatched up by other guilds will return. Not overly excited for Fairy Tail with this slower, more relaxed arc that's more 'wacky villain of the week hijinks' and less 'big demon/dragon/evil guild arcs'... but, once again, it sure as hell beats Tartaros... but at the same time, I can't help but feel extremely disappointed. As poorly-paced as the Tartaros arc was, by the end of that arc we've got a lot of major plot points running throughout the entire series all brought up. Natsu is E.N.D., Zeref being all ominous, Acnologia, Igneel's death, all the dragon stuff, all the demon stuff, all the dark guilds... and while I wouldn't mind a shorter little filler arc, this seems like it'll take quite a while, and for what? To prolong the life of Fairy Tail's manga as long as it can by padding it out with this 'let's find our guild mates one by one in these completely throwaway chapters'? What, we'll devote at least two chapters to Wendy and Carla. Then to Erza. To Gajeel. To Gray and Juvia, if they're together. To Elfman, Mirajane and Lisanna. To Cana. To Laxus. To Makarov. To Levy and whoever the fuck's important enough.

And all that just because Makarov disbanded the guild on a whim. Unless this has something to do with Lumen Histoire and it's big buildup that ended up doing nothing, this random mini-arc four hundred chapters in is just... kind of fucking pointless. Especially since it's Fairy Tail and friendship means there's not even any kind of tension for any of the Fairy Tail members to, y'know, not return. It's not even a 'we need to go straight to the dark and gritty Zeref and Acnologia plots' thing. I wouldn't mind a filler arc. But there are so many ways to do a good, relevant filler arc. We could do something with the Wizard Saints. Or a new dark guild. Or, hell, even a flashback arc a la Fairy Tail Zero. Natsu dealing with Igneel's death or looking for stuff about the dragons. A Jellal spinoff. A new guild member. Something. Not this. It's not bad, it's just... well, the wrong type of plot at the wrong point in a series and we're just throwing in this timeskip and this fetch quest to drag this series on and add like thirty, forty chapters that mean jack shit. We're 400 chapters and three spinoff series in. We don't need this.