Fairy Tail, Chapter 436: Memoirs
We take a break from the bullshit "let's recruit every single character from Fairy Tail again just to waste 100 chapters and see how many times we can pull the one-shot-a-villain-that's-not-threatening-while-vomiting-a-repeat-of-a-friendship-speech-and-act-like-it's-a-big-accomplishment" arc into something that's... actually good! Again, still kind of cliched with the brothers thing, but it's actually well told here.
We start off in a flashback of little Zeref studying in some Greek-esque mage school and apparently he's written a paper regarding, y'know, human life and death. Of course everyone around him tells him how brilliant he is, how much of a genius he is... but don't fuck with life and death because Anclesam the god of life and death will curse him.
Present-day Zeref talks about how he once had a younger brother who died, which was the impetus of his research of life and death. We re-enter the flashback where kid-Zeref gives a lecture about how gathering 2.7 million units of magic power, some R-System, standing for revive, will be complete. I don't think there's been any R-System in the Fairy Tail manga unless I'm misremembering or if it's referring to the 'sacrifice lots of people to Zeref' thing that Arlock tried to do in the previous arc.
Zeref's teacher confronts him, again, about the taboo subject and the fact that he's using human life as a sacrifice for his methods. Zeref tries to defend himself, talking about life and death and whatnot but the response is just 'god have mercy on this demon child'. Some time later, Zeref spends his time researching Eclipse, the doorway to the past, so that's a neat tie-in to the Eclipse arc at least. However, Zeref's teacher realizes that all he's trying to do is to revive his dead brother either by necromancy or time travel, and so the board has expelled him. Well, tough luck, Zeref.
Of course, there's nothing that's stopping Zeref from continuing his research outside the academy beyond maybe resources, but Zeref's teacher gets to be an unnecessarily asshole and continues to assert how HE WILL NEVER BE BROUGHT TO LIFE and Zeref goes crazy and his death magic finally activates and kills everyone present.
Apparently Anclesam the god we never heard before cursed Zeref and that's the reason for his odd death magic. It's a bit stupid, since Zeref's death magic has been built up for some time with some implications that Mavis was involved in it, but it's not even Zeref fucking with forbidden magic and getting transformed by it... he just got emotionally pissed off, and then this random god puts a curse on him.
That's actually kind of stupid, but still, backstory is backstory.
We get a repeat of Zeref's backstory and how he's immortal and his weird curse that depends on how much he values life, which I'm fine with since it fits into the narrative of Zeref just talking out loud. He creates demons to kill him, and we get a panel filled with the previous Zeref demons -- all these skulls and demonic faces and whatnot, and in the middle is little Franmalth the mushroom being happy as fuck. Whatever happened to Franmalth?
But the Etherious (made up of ether or magic itself) aren't able to kill Zeref, so Zeref created E.N.D., Etherious Natsu Dragneel, as his final work. Zeref then reveals that Natsu is his younger brother, or at least created from his younger brother's body. And he has created this final demon to kill him... plus, y'know, the whole resurrection thing going on.
Oh this is so going to end with a friendship speech.
You know it will.
But let's not look to the future, and kind of appreciate how unexpected this twist is how, well... suitable it is, I guess. We never had anything that contradicted this reveal before, and I'm surprised considering how badly Fairy Tail likes to handle revelations. Zeref promises more stories about Mavis and Igneel, but he wants to meet with another person.
Zeref meets this dude with long hair and dark skin in a cave and apparently they agreed to meet. Who could it be? Visually he resembled, oh, I dunno. Tempesta? Zancrow? But no, a two-page spread reveals him in full glory... and he is Acnologia.
See, Fairy Tail? And Bleach? This is the kind of stuff that deserves a two-page spread. An epic reveal. Not some freaking victory shout or just random scenery blowing up.
Zeref talks about how Acnologia hungers for destruction yet eats to little, and how unfathomable his motives are. Acnologia questions Zeref's own motives, and Zeref says about how he's been lost, and he's always wondered whether he should help the humans destroy Acnologia or vice versa, and has realized that he's destined to fight both humans and Acnologia... and tells Acnologia that he's been waiting for someone who can truly stand up to him in a fight, and Zeref intends to do just that.
Well, that wasn't like a SUPER awesome chapter, but I must admit this is the best Fairy Tail chapter I've read in a long time -- not that the competition were great, mind you. But it's a nice little backstory for Zeref with some nice revleations behind Natsu and Zeref, plus some buildup for the next arc -- Acnologia and Zeref are going to fight! And Acnologia looks cool. Yeah, let's just have these two dudes fight instead of following Natsu trek the countryside looking for, oh, I dunno, Bickslow or Lisanna or whoever.
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