Fairy Tail 435 Review: Well that was completely pointless.

Fairy Tail, Chapter 435: Victory Shout

I could do this in tandem with 436, but I feel like it deserves its own post. Because of how utterly stupid this entire arc has been. It shares Bleach's slow pacing, but without actually progressing the plot since it's just retreading the same ground as every filler arc out there. There's no real world-building, and when there is it's comes out of nowhere like giant war gods and whatnot. There's no sense of threat to the enemies since even when they're built up to be an old super-powerful enemy or worshippers of Zeref or a giant army or a titanic war god anyone from Fairy Tail can just one-shot them.

And this chapter? The first page is just mugshots of everyone reacting because we don't have enough of them. The next two pages are mugshots of the villains and generic mooks going all 'oh my god impossible so badass'. The fourth page is just a full page of Natsu being badass. Again, all the badassery is lost on me because of how utterly mind-numbingly predictable and formulaic this arc has been even moreso than anything.

Robot and Puppet Guy who are somehow still hanging around (didn't Natsu one-shot the robot already?) gets taken out quickly by Gajeel and Panther Lily who places everyone under arrest. Again, takes a long time with giant panels. Lucy meets Levy and that takes up a couple of pages of them just yapping their mouths off. We get two pages of 'comedy' as Natsu mistakes Gajeel for his twin brother, Warrod showing up for a visual gag, people disbelieving that Gajeel actually became a councilman, and a truly unnecessary page of Gajeel putting everyone 'under arrest' as a joke.

Then Gajeel threatens Gray with arrest, Erza whacks Gajeel, does an Erza-is-a-ditz thing, some random flashback panels and of course everything Gray does is forgiven even by Juvia who was mentally broken by the fact that they left her behind without telling her anything because reasons. We get a page of the Fairy Tail people being all 'yay we won we awesome' and a two-page spread of them in a victory shout because it's so necessary wow so dramatic it deserves two entire pages 

It's so unbelievably cheesy and cliched. It would be fine on chapter, like 20 or something but this is 435 and we should really be in big arcs and not this random bunch of weak villains.

We get a page of Sting and Rogue just arriving and just being terrified. Sorry, dudes. You guys are trapped in a manga where you have no hope of being badasses because Fairy Tail soaks up all the plot relevance.

We then get four pages where Frosch has somehow gone down and Natsu is all like "OH MY GOD GRAY IS GOING TO KILL FROSCH" which, y'know, didn't make a goddamn lick of sense in the first place. But of course Gray hugs Frosch and he's cute and everyone is all making jokes and shit because what is the point of foreshadowing? It's built up during the Grand Magic Games arc how Frosch's death a year later will kickstart something awful and vaguely dragon-related and this arc goes all 'Gray is evil and will kill Frosch and make Rogue become evil!' And while no one's going to buy that that's going to happen, we're just... handwaving it away. All the buildup (not that I want to see Frosch die cause he's like, kawaii and shit) and foreshadowing over several years real-time, to be handwaved away like the joke it is. 

Man, it's freaking stupid. If you're not going to do anything with it, why even include it? Why even include the fact about Gray killing Frosch early on in this arc? Why not just leave Frosch's death hanging open for something more relevant?

Why am I even expecting any good plotline management in Fairy Tail even?

Granted the next chapter is surprisingly good, but I don't really have, y'know, hope that anything out of Fairy Tail's going to be anything more than decent.