Fairy Tail 421 Review: Bunch of mooks

Fairy Tail, Chapter 421: Wendy and Chelia

Seriously, the Wendy/Carla mini-subplot isn't resolved by this point? And it isn't even a remotely interesting thing either. It looks like we're going to get like three chapters for Wendy. Minimum. So it looks like we'll be getting around 3-5 chapters per character for this pointless 'let's gather everyone from all over the world for no good reason' arc, which I've bitched about before. There's some interesting details given in this episode, of course. The fact that Makarov might not have randomly decided to disband the guild on a whim (well because that would be fucking stupid) and it having something to do with the Council... which is now made out of the Ten Saints, apparently, including Jura. Which is like the only real interesting member of Lamia Scale since Lyon really only works as a foil to Gray.

And that really points out that there's a shit-ton more interesting filler arcs we could've had, yeah? We could've had a smaller arc regarding another member of the Ten Saints. But no, we get this pointless thing that would've sort of made sense after the first seven-year timeskip, but now? It feels so forced and generally just a big fat whoop.

We've got Natsu basically just dragging Wendy back, and Wendy going all 'I want to stay in Lamia Scale because my friends are here' and Chelia later on being all 'follow your heart', so no guesses that Wendy is going to follow Natsu. Kudos for them not just doing it right off the bat, but it also makes this thing so long. And with the timeskip not really changing anyone's personalities... you'd think Igneel's death and Lucy lapsing into borderline obsession-slash-depression during the timeskip would make Natsu and Lucy respectively mature somewhat, but no. Wendy even lampshades that they're all exactly the same as before.

Chelia's cool, though. She's like the only part of this chapter that I am not entirely indifferent about. She's pulling off a generic 'follow your heart' speech, but for whatever reason I kind of like how she's grown slightly more beyond 'Wendy's little happy rival-friend'. And apparently next chapter will see Wendy and Chelia take down whoever is behind Oroch.

Carla's big human-form thing from the last chapter? Turns out it's pointless and not some weird thing she got herself into, which is certainly more interesting than 'oh random dark guild attacks Lamia Scale' and 'oh Wendy is wishy-washy about which guild'. No, she simply learns transformation magic. Whee, I guess?

Oh and this 'Orochi' guild sends a hundred thousand monsters to attack Lamia Scale. It looks impressive art-wise, sure, but at no point of reading this chapter do I feel that they are any sort of a threat. Natsu and Wendy and Chelia and I guess Lucy and everyone will just take them out like it ain't a thing. They are truly the epitome of 'filler villain'. Never really heard about before, doesn't look threatening and Lyon just one-shotted one of these beast-men with no problem. I expect Natsu will pull a Luffy and take out half of the hundred thousand mooks in one shot. Except that unlike Hody Jones, we don't really know who the hell is the leader of the Orochi beyond 'they hate Lamia's guts'. They don't really stand much of a chance.

Taking it on its own, it's really not a bad chapter. It's actually a little charming side story, and for that I do applaud it... but with three side-titles already running alongside it, in addition to all the anime filler arcs, do we really need more? Add that to this unnecessary timeskip holding absolutely no tension or really any point to it whatsoever. At the moment, I have just so little interest with Fairy Tail right now if it's going to continue this string of uninteresting plot points. I just hope that when we get to the more interesting characters -- people like Laxus -- we actually have some filler villains worth writing home about.