Fairy Tail, Chapter 478: Stealth & 479: Greatest Respect
This might actually be the shittiest fight in all of Fairy Tail. I mean 'Because She's Erza' was pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel for intelligence, but Kyouka and Erza's first parts were at the very least... entertaining, even if the pacing, the insertion of the fight relative to the plot arc, and the resolution were all garbage.
This fight? Wow, it's utterly surreal how horrible Fairy Tail has became. This fight is probably going to be what I point when I have to show an example of a shitty part of Fairy Tail. 458? It just makes an utter mockery of this villain Jacob, who was built up to be this assassin with powerful space-time magic in spite of his weird-ass pedophile-stubble face. The fight even starts off somewhat interestingly, even if the idea of 'oh my god he's moving so fast/he's teleporting' has been done with both Cobra and, y'know, the very fight before this with Dimaria.
And then, uh, Jacob 'tortures' Natsu by forcing him to... look at Lucy's clothes while she is naked. Yeah. "Torture". And Jacob himself apparently is like eight years old or something because he's shutting his eyes shut and being 'omg boobs'. Um. Yeah. And they literally make him flustered, and then kick him in the face. Why? Why do this to your villain, when he's supposed to be built up to be a threat, to be at least a plot device? Any dignity he might've had is utterly gone now, short of, oh, killing a character in the next chapter, but yeah, like that's going to happen. Also, really? Boobs randomly? You have your villain force someone to... look at a naked woman, but you yourself can't even handle it? Even the Harem Jutsu in Naruto's big climax against Kaguya at least was meant to be a 'WTF are you doing' tactic in-universe, not... something... utterly stupid like this.
The next chapter even has Zeref talking to his troops about how many of the Spriggan 12 has fallen, showing how shit the group turned out to be. Jacob's easily the shittiest of them all, though. Jacob is all like "I am going to start killing your guildmates!" Um, yeah, you utter waste of a character, actually do it. He gets distracted when Lucy says that Brandish is trapped there, and just stands there like a moron as we get this utterly long-winded explanation while Gemini copies that... pervert rapist lackey of Brandish's, with an explanation that Gemini can't copy powerful opponents.
So, yeah, apparently Jacob is such an utterly shit character that the magic of Brandish's lackey whose name no one probably remembers can disable it. Where was the 'OMG the Spriggan 12 is in a whole other level' bullshit. Everyone Jacob kidnaps is brought back because he's such a shitty spatial-magic wizard, apparently. Also, well, everyone who's not ever going to participate in a fight, ever.
Also I have no idea what happened when Happy suddenly popped up in the middle of Jacob's ninja hand sign. Was that supposed to be funny? Was that somehow supposed to be a punchline? What the utter fuck?
Makarov punches Jacob. Then Makarov throws Natsu. He can call it whatever Blazing Destruction God King Dragon Fire Fist or whatever, it's just a punch. And then we have an entire page going 'this is Natsu! This is Fairy Tail!' as if it's some kind of big-ass accomplishment to punch someone who's an utter nincompoop. Yeah. That is indeed Fairy Tail. What it really is, well, is the literary equivalent of a regurgitated bunch of vomit that botches up any kind of gravitas or any sort of dignity that this last arc might have by an utter disregard of respect for its own characters and utter stagnation of any character development and a simple lack of creativity in its fighting scenes.
I feel a little more stupid reviewing or even reading this manga regularly, and I have so much more interesting things to review. So effective immediately, uh, fuck this manga, I guess.
I feel a little more stupid reviewing or even reading this manga regularly, and I have so much more interesting things to review. So effective immediately, uh, fuck this manga, I guess.
I sincerely think we hit the bottom with these chapter. but, hey! I look after all fairy tail to see if Mashima can keep digginthis hole of mediocrity .
ReplyDeleteoh, and you can take a look at a manga called black clover? it's pretty good in my opinion.
I've read parts of Black Clover but never finished it because... uh... I dunno. I just forgot, I guess. Might catch up with it sometime soon.
Deletethe last chapter shows that the author is rather consicent problem of the manga, which in is always a good thing.
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Deletefor me , black clover is what fairy tail would be if the author was not obsessed with pointless fan-service and if he remembered that a show where people fight with magic fight REALLY whith magic , not the same lame punch for 1442 time (and with a plot amor who have the density of 3 sun)
Deleteoh. and good job for the blog. i am fan
Thanks for being a fan! I'll really have to (re)read Black Clover when I have the time.
DeleteThe thing about Fairy Tail is that it WAS genuinely good. A decline in quality is kind of expected, but right around the Magic Games and the Future Rogue arcs... the manga just became... a regurgitated mess. Every single fight ended with a punch (or a slash) wreathed in flames. Every single fight had a friendship speech so regurgitated that you can guess 80% of the words being said. And plot armour? Fuck yeah, there's in no way anything's going to happen in anyone in Fairy Tail. I mean, this is a shonen manga and I don't expect bloody traumatic deaths like, oh, Tokyo Ghoul or Attack on Titan, but Fairy Tail's contemporaries -- One Piece, Nanatsu no Taizai, Boku no Hero make it clear that their heroes are not protected by plot armour even if death is the exception rather than the rule. With Fairy Tail?
One big problem that plagued this arc even worse than the Tartaros arc is that the villains are literally jokes. Like, Tartaros had Franmalth as the obligatory funny villain, but even he felt like some kind of a threat. This one? Brandish was awesome in her first appearance (before being reduced to a bad BDSM joke), and Ajeel was a generic douchebag villain, but every single other member of the Spriggan 12 fails to impress. At all.
ah yes , natsu have a pretty narrow list of technique at his disposal . and his special , secret , etc techinque are showing ,are not better
Deletereally , for his first tech , he hit thing and it
explode , i gess?
and for the second... i have no idea what happening .
ther worst in all of this , is that the most clever moment with his power his litteraly in the start of the series , againt the scythe guy.
for rappel , the guy have a barrier of wind who protect him of his attack. and his beat him in inducing a updraft with his flamme who heat up the air
( and he do this thing where he use his flamme like a extension of his arm ) . THAT what the most intelligent moment of fairy tail , in my opinion .
but , a. oda as do better in one chap with fire power .
and i remember the moment when the saint mage was considered like something... you know , strong .
now , when the springgan are considere better than them , i considere thant the standard i reeeeeally low ( and who the f@@ck puts a assasin as a officier , i just stupid )
and who believe that the old man of them is just hades retrain?
Yeah, Natsu's repertoire basically extends to him just punching stuff with his fist on fire. Or kicking things. Or the odd fire breath. Maybe he eats stuff to give him a generic power-up. Remember the early days of Fairy Tail, where there was an attempt at creativity with him heating up the air to fuck up air currents? Or boosting his elbow with a fire blast to rocket his fist into an anti-magic area? Man, Fairy Tail right now isn't just bad compared to other manga, it's even bad compared to its earlier material.
DeleteWith the Spriggan... man, they fall into Fairy Tail's last few arcs' worth of building them up to be "look at these supremely powerful individuals that make established powerful characters look like a joke", then completely devaluate their badassery by giving them absolutely degenerate character quirks that probably would've been funny if you're doing some shitty filler villain, not building up to the final badass group. I mean, hell, I don't want villains to be doom and gloom all the time, because that's boring, but shit like Jacob Lessio should not be anywhere near an epic arc of the manga. Fairy Tail itself, again, has managed to have villains with quirky personalities that still felt like a threat -- Cain Hikaru, Hot-Eye, Juvia when she was a villain, Zirconis, hell, even God Serena in this very arc is not bad, just disappointing -- but Jacob is just horrible.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with your assessment, Blackjack. Hell, Bleach and Naruto, even though they were pretty meek about axing characters, was still WILLING to give long-time characters like Neji and old man Yamamoto deaths that impact the story. Fairy Tail... by comparison, I think it's kinda regressed.
ReplyDeleteBiggest evidence to this - the Edolas Arc. It kinda regressed Fairy Tail's maturity in my eyes - the characters arguably lost the feeling that anyone in their group was ever at risk of really dying. It put them in a sheltered bubble of immunity and reduced the impact of the reality of death that Lisanna's "dying" had on them all. And in the end, Natsu & Lisanna's hinted feelings to each-other was rather poorly capped off with Lisanna seeming to basically give him up to Lucy way too easily by asking her to take care of him or the like.
To think this manga has gone start to current not only without losing any of the guild's members but actually REGAINING formally dead ones just puts a bad taste in my mouth from how much overly-sappy saccharine it pours out on the very idea such a thing is even possible. To say nothing of skimping out on anything that so much as CHALLENGES the character's moral preconceptions, such as how Gray's "betrayal" and the "crime" of Lucy's mother got resolved - there's no tension, no stress, no hook, nothing to really make anyone care about it anymore because it's the same goddamn plot done over and over and over since the Edolas and Trenou Arc's onward.
Oops, I forgot to reply to these comments. Well, better late than never.
DeleteBleach and Naruto are good comparisons as formerly good mangas that have endings that are super stretched out and padded out with loads and loads of lesser villains we don't care about, but the lesser Sternritters and lesser Edo Tensei zombies are a lot more threatening than the Spriggan. Yes, the Spriggan might have had a larger power level than some of the characters I mentioned, but with the Sternritters even the weirdest and quirkiest of them felt like they were going to give a fight where they might win. When, say, Renji fought Mask de Masculine, or when Kenpachi fought Gremmy, or when Mayuri fought Mr. Handy, really, there was this tension whether the dudes on the protagonist side would win, or the antagonist would win. This is Bleach so there's no real doubt that all the lesser villains will be taken out, but WHO will take them out gives us a reason to care with the current fight. Ditto with Naruto, the World War arc was the most entertaining when Naruto and Sasuke aren't just using their overblown powers against Tobi/Madara/Kaguya, but when the lesser characters were fighting against lesser antagonists.
And even then, Bleach and Naruto had several climatic deaths. I can rant about the uselessness of killing Neji when the poor dude hasn't been relevant in non-filler arcs for 15 years, but hey, someone from the 'main' cast dies. In Bleach we get a smaller death poll than I honestly would've liked (Byakuya STILL should've stayed dead) but a fair amount of people died too there.
And I don't want a shonen to be super bloody and traumatic and have likable characters die every arc, because then it'll turn into some silly gore-fest, but jeez, any injury they get only rip up their clothes and dirty their skin, and maybe put them in a sick bed in bandages for a couple of chapters. The only real loss so far has been Sherria's ability to cast magic, and honestly who the fuck gives a shit about Sherria?
The Edolas arc was bad, but it wasn't horrible. The manga was still quite readable for the next few arcs, and even then I was still kind of enjoying myself when I read the Tenrou Island and Magic Games arc, as much as those arcs have their own problems and still rely on the A-Team just overpowering everything. But with the Tenrou Island we get one of the rare moments of character development with some of the lesser characters -- Cana, Fried, Makarov -- and Natsu and Erza weren't in 100% Cheat Mode all the time, whereas the Magic Game arc had interesting villains and antagonists in Sabertooth and Kagura, even if all of them kinda ended up being shit.
But the Flare arc, Tartaros arc, the Filler Retrieval arc and now especially the Alvarez arc is just an exercise at taking the formula to create an anime filler arc and turn it into an overblown manga arc with absolutely zero consequence.
And at this point, is there a reason to care?