Fairy Tail 444 Review: Surprise reappearances and bad dialogue sequences

Fairy Tail, Chapter 444: Emperor Spriggan

Mostly an uneventful chapter which alternates with moments of 'hey look an unexpected reappearance of an old character' and 'boobs and bikini-clad boobs'. The big moment is, undoubtedly, the big reveal at the end of the chapter that Emperor Spriggan is Zeref -- which I am of two minds of, but I'm going to talk about the rest of the chapter first.

The first few scenes centered on the Fairy Tail members helping the rescue of the islanders onto a fishing fleet that coincidentally happen to just be hanging around. What, they can't rescue these people with their own magic power? Gray can make some icebergs or some shit. But whatever. Erza analyses Brandish's magic from last chapter, and surmises that it is actually the magic to shrink stuff, with the entire island shrinking to the size of a chicken instead of Brandish using super-powerful earth magic or space magic or whatever. So, yeah, that minion who Brandish turned all 'poof' and shit? Probably just running around all tiny. 

We get some totally (un)funny jokes about transportation sickness with Natsu and Wendy subject to it all the time as Doranbolt teleports them to an underwater temple which transforms into an underwater submarine-thing. Apparently their contact is there, and it's Angel! Or Sorano. Or Redeemed Female Villain #3. Who is dressed in a feather bikini for absolutely no fucking reason other than fanservice -- Gray even lampshades it (while stripping himself). 

Erza randomly asks Doranbolt why they didn't use Cobra, which doesn't... really make sense. Why Cobra of all people? I guess Erza just knows Crime Sorciere is helping out? I dunno, the question totally came out of nowhere. But apparently Angel had been undercover in the Albaress Empire and broke her cover.

And then she pulls on Lucy's bikini because fanservice and randomly rubs in her face that 'I killed Karen'. Does Lucy even know who Karen is? Again, that coment totally came out of nowhere and if Angel wanted to antagonize Lucy, she really should've brought up how she beat her up before, or how she used to own Aries and Scorpio, or something. Bah.

Angel apparently found out where Makarov is, and he is apparently in the capital of Albaress Empire, the city Vistarion, and he's grown one hell of a beard. And he apparently has been spending the last year... playing cards, simply waiting for the Emperor to return. And not a word to his 'children' he loves so much. Makarov, your motivationsare weird. He is playing some trading card game about magic and whatnot with this creepy old dude called Yazir, and their conversation starts off in yet another example of an awkward dialogue sequence as Yazir goes 'did you hear the news about Fairy Tail?' 'I am surprised.' 'Why are you surprised?' 'I wasn't talking about Fairy Tail, but about the Emperor.' Seriously what? Is there some context that went missing with the translation from Japanese to English?

Makarov talks about how the Emperor surprises him by agreeing to diplomacy (even though he hasn't shown up for a year) and how there's another side that unites all the guilds with an iron fist. Apparently Emperor Spriggan returns, however, after disappearing for a year... and it's Zeref! We get a two page spread just to show us Zeref.

Well, I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, this makes the Albaress Empire relevant again and after all the dicking around with filler villains and the one-year timeskip, I'm hungry for a return to the main plot with Zeref and Acnologia, especially after how it seemed that we weren't going to get them with the introduction of Albaress. It does make the timeline kind of weird, though -- Zeref got out of his depression during the Grand Magic Games with that talk with Mavis, and it's only been a year since then and there was the whole Tartaros arc and that's just weird, unless Zeref had replaced the original Spriggan or... I dunno. It's just odd. 

I can't say I'm entirely that excited abotu Zeref's inlcusion as this big mastermind, because he's always been more effective as this wildcard who just shows up and kills people and says cryptic things before disappearing... but on the other hand I'm interested to see where we go with this.

So overall, between the poor segues and even more fanservice, we get some nice little build-up that makes this whole Albaress Empire thing even more relevant to the main plot. Yeah. Okay. It's kinda interesting I guess.