Fairy Tail 433-434 Review: Fuck your one-shot-kills and friendship speeches

Fairy Tail, Chapter 433: Ikusatsunagi

What was the whole point of these two chapters, really? The whole idea of having two chapters per week is to give double the content. Instead this really felt like it should be one chapter. Hell, what the hell was the whole point of this entire arc, really, when it's going to be Natsu and the others just overpowering his way through all the bad guys' magic, even when it's built up to be some big scary shit? I'm not asking for the good guys to lose, but holy mother of fuck this is boring. There really isn't any tension to the fights anymore.

Oh, Metalface Priest whose name I can't bother to remember can create barriers? Who gives a shit? Natsu just punches his way through all the barriers and punches the Priest in the face. Magic? Fire manipulation? Strategy? Power-ups? Who gives a fuck when you can punch through things?

Of course the priest dies in one shot. Who doesn't? What's the point of a tense fight, of an actual fight? I mean, wasn't one-shotting Bluenote, an established powerful character, enough to make the upgrade to Natsu's base strength evident? Yes we get it, he's such a badass dude now can we get on with some actual good fight scenes or whatever? No? Jeez. Oh look Priest Dude burnt his face to summon a demon. Do I give a fuck? No.

Priest dude then spends like half a chapter summoning this Ikusatsunagi fellow, who Erza identifies as one of these Eighteen War Gods (who we naturally never heard of before) and all that and it looks kind of cool, a vortex opening up above to summon this gigantic demon monster thing. It's like something out of God of War or some shit like that. And, oh no, Evil Priest Dude wants to sacrifice his followers instead of the townspeople! So much of the evil! Natsu gets angry and we waste so much time on reaction shots of Natsu going all 'you are evil you sacrifice your comrades'.

Fairy Tail, Chapter 434: Crumbling Fist

Oh hey look cover page starring a fanservice minor character who never does shit at all. Oh look four pages of Iku the big demon just posing around and waving his sword. Four more pages to establish that Natsu is running up the sword and everyone's faces reacting to it. Is this really fucking necessary?

Two pages of Natsu just shouting about how friendship is awesome while Priest Dude just rants about how friendship is shit. You know WE FUCKING GET IT. Yeah? Don't need to have eight panels showing all the Fairy Tail members while Natsu gives a long speech that is basically the same shit as the other three dozen friendship speeches already in this manga.

Natsu then punches Iku the demon in the head. Because, y'know, that's what he does. Punch things while his fist is on fire. He takes like five or six pages to build up another punch and flashbacks to Igneel and we get even more mugshots of Gray and the others as Natsu builds up his energy and blows up Iku the big demon in one punch. At least this one gets a name, so Natsu gets an upgrade to his Tekken. Yay.

Nope. Not impressed at all. Though really, I can't say that I'm surprised that this entire arc involves the Fairy Tail members just one-shotting their enemies. Oh, big demon thing that would've been this big threat at the end of the arc in other mangas? Fuck that, main character mega punch win.

Two chapters a week? Yeah, this arc right here is the perfect argument on what to prioritize, quality or quantity. It's like even the author realizes this entire 'let's separate the guild members and hunt them down one by one' is complete and utter bullshit and wants to rush through things.

Oh, and character development post-timeskip? Hah. Beyond Lucy occassionally going all 'you left us Natsu' every now and then, every single character is the exact same as we left them before the timeskip. Expected something new from Gray, expected some actual character growth as he struggles with being consumed by his evil powers, or working with a bunch of villains for what he deems to be the greater good? Hah. We don't even get anything about his double-agent life beyond 'whoops sorry for insulting the great friendship'. Status quo is god here, people.

Holy fuck, I didn't think Fairy Tail could get any worse than the second half of the Tartaros arc, but it manages to be. It's just so boring and identikit and really there isn't any new content to read. It's just Natsu-and-company-beating-people-in-one-shot. Lucy's Spirit Armor and Carla's human transformation aside, we don't get to see any real new abilities they obtained after the timeskip beyond Natsu just being oh this huge badass that can one shot everyone in his path. All the main fighters -- Natsu, Erza, Gray -- still do exactly the same things as they do before, they just call it different things. So really what was the point of the timeskip? What is the point of this arc of gathering everyone? What was the point of Avatar and these bunch of losers and the war god and whatnot?

This arc would be bad for an anime filler arc. Is all I'm saying. Jeez.