Fairy Tail 446 Review: So Much for Spriggan

Fairy Tail, Chapter 446: The God-Forsaken Land

Sorry about that -- I was sick, but now I'm better. Watched a shit-ton of Game of Thrones and got caught up all the way to season five. Good stuff. Reviews for My Hero Academia, Akame Ga Kill, Nanatsu no Taizai and a brand new chapter of Berserk of all things will hopefully follow up later this evening.

But let's talk about this chapter of Fairy Tail, and how once again how utterly stupid my hopes for an arc that isn't exactly the fucking same as all the others before it. Picture it: a big organization dark-guild thing with a group of elite warriors. One of these warriors shows up and oh my god he's so powerful none of our wizards can stand against him! Oh, wait, in three chapter's time Natsu just one-shots that person or a person of the same caliber with a single punch to the face.

Yeah, that was Tartaros. And Grimoire Heart. And Sabretooth. And Oracion Seis. And, as it seems, the Spriggan Twelve.

The first half of the chapter was eyeball-rolling inducing but mostly harmless, just Makarov admitting what I've been saying since the timeskip began: that he's a motherfucking idiot. Erza says some bullshit about how heart is awesome and all that bullshit, and we are intercepted by Ajeel, the dude with the exploding hairdo. His powers are apparently sand, because he was talking about sandstorms last chapter (how droll) and it's basically... well, just like Gaara or Crocodile. Not that it's not impressive -- Gaara and Crocodile are among my favourite villains from their respective series -- Ajeel makes good threat about his power levels by turning Erza's sword into sand and creating some giant sand monster-things.

I also did like the little explanation that Doranbolt's teleportation can only be done a number of times in a day and has a specific range, thus kind of limiting what he can do and not make him ultra-overpowered.

For a moment I thought we were going to have a relatively balanced-out fight, with Gray and Lucy showing off their new powers which, while effective in stopping Ajeel's attacks, didn't seem to trouble the guy beyond him going all "oh, that's kinda neat!" before charging in with a different attack. We see a few tricks courtesy of Gray's Demon Slayer tats covering half his body, while Lucy equips Sagittarius as an armour. Gray's totally creatively-named Ice Make: Silver is just him doing the freezing thing on a wide scale which is boring but at least that's something. Lucy can shoot arrows and whatnot and doesn't get immediately humiliated which is a gigantic improvement considering her recent track record.

Ajeel does this big Antlion Pit attack thing, and monologues about how he eats wizards like them for breakfast -- and if he is as strong as Brandish as one of the Fairy Tail dudes notes, that would be appropriate. But Natsu just... evaporates the sand away without harming the rest of his teammates, does some "we are fairies" two-page spread with each of their guild marks glowing because friendship, before delivering a good, solid punch to Ajeel's face.

Next chapter is called 'Escape Battle' so hopefully this punch won't do much against Ajeel and he won't just be defeated really quickly and effortlessly and they still have to escape, but this just kind of soured the whole threat of Alvares or however the hell you spell that country for me. Overall it starts off slow and stupid, ends up being pretty cool in the middle, and ends off with an eye-roll inducing sequence. Eh, I've seen worse in Fairy Tail itself, so I guess... m'eh.