Fairy Tail 424 Review: Pointy Beard Dude & Gray's New Hairstyle

Fairy Tail, Chapter 424: Avatar

Well, one chapter in and it's defintiely a shit-ton more relevant than the fillery Wendy chapter. But then the Tartaros arc started off strongly too, so I'm really not trying to get my hopes up. Before talking about all the Gray and Avatar stuff, we've got the cover page, starring Warren Rocko the telepathy guy who's one of those Z-lister members who are even less important than Jet and Droy. He's... doing something. Apparently working with his telepathy. Or something. I honestly have no idea. It's a bit of a One-Piece-esque thing, having the cover page show what's going on to minor characters, but that's definitely preferable than showing us profiles of these Z-listers for the third time.

We get a bit of unfunny funny moment with Happy and Natsu just messing around with the localized rain. It's stuff that doesn't really work for me in manga and probably would be a lot funnier in the anime. Maybe. Anyway Team Natsu find Juvia and naturally we get her going all 'Gray-sama' in hallucination and whatnot. She then falls down sick with a fever, and we get a bit of a back and forth as Juvia keeps making this double-entrendes about her and Gray, but apparently they didn't do the deed becuase Gray kicked Juvia out. Also, uh, isn't being a Rain Woman, uh, Juvia's thing before Fairy Tail? How does she get sick from that?

But Juvia and Gray did live together alone, but around half a year ago Gray's right arm is kind of all black and shit. Presumably the Ice Devil Magic thing is taking over all Sasuke style. And all Sasuke style, Gray leaves after a bit without an explanation and causes Juvia to break down and cry. Man, none of these manga women have a backbone, do they? Juvia at least attempted to look for Gray herself, but ended up not finding him and just staying where they used to be happy together and that causes the rain to come down and all that.

Lucy lampshades that Natsu basically did the same thing, which kind of guilt-trips him. But Natsu takes like two or three pages being all 'I'll find him and we'll be a guild together again' and my god this is basically the plot of Naruto, isn't it? Heh. I'm not going to open that can of worms until we see more, though.

Anyway, Natsu suddenly announces that they're going to go to Sabertooth for whatever reason.

Elsewhere, this group of ominous evil characters gather around a table. They talk about how the Balam Alliance has fallen and all that, and now it's the age of the Avatar era, a guild who belongs to the Dark Mage Zeref. Well, at least we're addressing Zeref even if we're going about it in a roundabout way through these wacky-looking evil people which honestly after the whole Natsu-is-Goku thing we saw last chapter I don't think they're really all that threatening. But we'll see.

We're introduced to this metal-headed dude with a beard so pointy it could poke someone's eye out and these holey goggle eyes. He looks like someone. Too tired to think of who, but he definitely looks like someone. He's called Priest Arlock, apparently. We've got a bunch of other dudes too: creepy midget voodoo jester clown, someone with closed-eyes and eyebrows more epic than Yuka, dark-skinned girl with boobs, weird deformed robot-thing that sort of looks like the Menos Grande from Bleach, handsome blonde dude, and cheery cute girl with a ribbon. And Gray, of course, who's changed his hairstyle a bit. Who also totally is evil, but that won't happen because this is Fairy Tail.

I'm kind of happy that we're not going with the filler arc the way I had feared it would be -- three pointless chapters for each character -- we're tackling Juvia and Gray at the same time, and they recruited Juvia no problem at the end of this chapter. And Gray has apparently joined up with thie group working right under Zeref, so it's nice to see that the bad guys aren't just bumbling around doing nothing. It's better than the not-horrible-by-any-means-but-pointless Wendy mini arc... I just hope it doesn't disappoint like the Tartaros one did.