Tuesday, 15 September 2015

Fairy Tail 452 Review: Spriggan Roll Call

Fairy Tail, Chapter 452: Prelude to the Final Battle

By and by this chapter is truly another in a series of uneventful chapters, hyping things up but not quite really. After rereading through the flashback as a whole I really, really felt that it could’ve been done shorter with the same amount of emotional impact… and considering we’ve already seen so many of the things that happen in the flashback, I honestly cannot bring myself to care.

Anyway, this chapter plays out like some kind of quasi-artistic ‘let’s go back and forth between the good guys and the bad guys to make an infodump’ which I guess is decent if only it didn’t last so damn long. There literally isn’t anything to talk about on the Fairy Tail side of the conversation beyond ‘Natsu has a secret weapon in his arm he can only use once’ which any idiot with a brain can figure is E.N.D. So yeah and we took so long just to bullshit about that and everyone is turned into a Natsu fanboi as they go all ‘I wanna know I wanna know oh we are so increased in morale durr hurr hurr’.

Of course, the ending with Acnologia is admittedly awesome and the “twist” (no not really) that the Spriggan 12 will not only be gunning for Fairy Heart but to murder Acnologia as well is at least something to make this feel kinda different,  but the hyping up is just not working for me and I’m left, still, extremely indifferent and only the slightest bit curious. Which is why this is the first I’m going to review today to get out of the way.

Brandish, naturally, didn’t kill Mr. Space Sexual Offender whose name I cannot remember and cannot be bothered to look up and keeps him around in a miniature size and the little shit can just fuck off. Brandish can stay – from what we’ve seen of her so far she’s just an indifferent woman that acts like an asshole to everyone and that is absolutely refreshing considering most of the other interesting characters have been reduced into Natsu’s cheerleader team.

Anyway, I honestly don’t have much to say about anything else in this chapter so let’s roll call the Spriggan 12. Whatever Fairy Tail may be at least the character designs (mostly) look interesting.
·       “Winter General” Imber is the bishounen guy with glasses we see before and he’s all about ‘you must respect Zeref damn infidels” and we are told that he controls ice (Gray even reacts to this) so yeah he’s going to fall to Gray when it comes, I’m sure.
·       “Desert King” Ajeel, or Azil as some other translators do it. Ajeel’s what I’ve been calling him and until official names come out that’s what I’m gonna call him. He’s the sand dude we saw before and still looks and acts like a tool.
·       “Nation Breaker” Brandish, who is, y’know, Brandish. Who’s perpetually annoyed and indifferent at the world but listens to Zeref. I do think she’s my favourite out of this bunch but considering the others have so far been entirely unimpressive…
·       “War Maiden” Di Maria is just antagonistic to Brandish. She’s your generic stripper-armour-hot-lady in these kinds of manga that apparently is a war knight with an unknown magic and, well, y’know, it’s basically marked as Erza’s enemy because yay parallels that don’t make sense.
·       God Serena… is a gigantic tool. He tries so hard to have the kind of sheer ridiculousness that other manga characters like Tsukiyama or Alex Louis Armstrong or Franky or 90% of the JoJo cast (or even a lot of other Fairy Tail characters like Ichiya and Hot Eye) exude effortlessly… but comes off looking like a gigantic idiot. Even Brandish and Di Maria agree on that. Yuri, you got old and stupid.
·       “Mage King” August, the Hades lookalike, is apparently so powerful that he uses magic of all times and places (which, like Makarov, Hades and quite a few bit of the Fairy Tail cast) and he’s apparently ‘far more powerful than the rest of the Spriggan 12’ and we get a page full of reactions.
·       “Adjudicator” Wahru Ihyto, a weird-looking dude that looks straight out of One Piece, who’s all like ‘sinful, sinful’ regarding their target being the body of Zeref’s former lover.
·       In addition, we get two other names that Makarov has never seen before, Bloodman and Nine-Heart, the latter who is mentioned to be in the castle but is not attending the meeting. Plus a bunch of others who Makarov doesn’t even get to discover the names of.


So overall it’s looking like Team Zeref is going to unleash war not only upon Ishgar but also against Acnologia. I’m assuming Walrod, Jura and, uh, those Ten Wizard Saint guys will be involved though considering this is Fairy Tail it’s going to go all Bleach-Squad-Zero and have all the powerful good guys be taken out and the Fairy Tail guild get all the screentime. Which sucks.

Overall not to impressed though it definitely isn't a horrible chapter. It's just that we've been doing this 'buildup' for a while. Man, in an ideal world all these flashbacks and whatnot would've taken place in stead of Avatar and Orochi and all those bullshit filler, and we would be a couple of chapters into the Dragon King Festival Ragnarok thing right about now.

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