Fairy Tail, Chapter 533: Zeref the White Mage & Chapter 534: Door of Vows
Oh, double chapters! The first few pages show the C-list members of the guild gather around and we get this absolutely stupid page of every single side-character thinking of the A-list characters. Because that is so important. See, this is one of the inherent problems that I have with Fairy Tail, where literally the motivations of every single side-character is either to please or to worry or to be a rival to one of the main characters. Like, ever since the Flare arc, when has anyone else ever really mattered? Sting's character is all in relation to how much he wants to be like Natsu. Levy's less of a character and more of a morality pet to Gajeel. Laxus and Gildarts have devolved so much from how they were when they were introduced to being Natsu-mentors.
Random series of pages of Lucy talking about being oh-so-confident that her naivety can rewrite Natsu's END book and save Natsu. Because, sure, the thousands-of-years-long magic that seals the entirety of the being that is Natsu can be rewritten by just finding the one page. Not by actual rune or letter magic wizard like Levy or Freed, mind you (both of which, need I remind you, are standing around doing absolutely fuck-all), but because Lucy wants to believe hard enough. And because this is Fairy Tail that's totally what's going to happen.
We then get like five entire pages of Zeref and Natsu changing the most insipid taunts, then Natsu punching really hard with a fist on fire.
The punch itself took five fucking pages! No wonder the author can dole out two chapters in a single week. It's not like any of this has any meaningful content to it.
And of course Zeref is invincible and reforms, stabs Natsu in the chest and kills him. And this very glorious and happy moment (or dramatic, if you're still taking this series seriously instead of mocking it like me) is ruined by the absolutely stupid dialogue from Zeref about how "by the way don't apologize to Makarov, he's dead." Like, I get that Zeref is referring to Natsu's line earlier when he talks about "sorry gramps I wrecked the guild" and all that jazz, but to show an entire page of Natsu crying, as if he just realized Makarov is dead? Jeez.
Of course, this is a manga that pussied out of killing Mirajane, who is a character that has not been relevant for years now beyond the occasional power-up, so, yeah, totally not dead.
Chapter 534: Jellal fights Acnologia! Which is way, way more interesting than the nonsense with Natsu and Zeref, so of course it lasts only for a little while. Sure, Acnologia's dragon blast blew up half the sea and everything, but the fact that he's being an absolute failure at actually hitting the Christina shows that Acnologia is not ineffective, he's just really, really stupid. Sure, now he has the excuse of being distracted by Jellal, but what about the past two or three chapters?
Zeref walks away from Natsu's body and spends three pages just talking non-stop about how once he walks through the door, he's going to recreate the world and everything. Blah blah blah the 'irony' of the guild symbol marking the adventure of blah blah.
The E.N.D. book suddenly spits out magical words, and of course Lucy somehow remembers all the words that are disappearing. Talk about absolutely convenient powers we've never seen before, am I right? We have people with literal word-magic powers. We have Gray, who can freeze shit -- certainly bullshitting his way to 'freeze' Natsu's death would be a more creative use of the other main characters other than to have Lucy randomly develop super-memory.
Anna, whose personality extends to being 'Miss Plot Device', talks about how the Ravines have opened, not realizing that it's actually materializing as a tiny black hole until Ichiya points it out. Man, Anna, you're fucking useless. Jellal apparently wants to knock Acnologia into the hole by charging him. You do that, Jellal. Does it really make sense that Jellal can go one-v-one with Acnologia when he barely stood his own against August a couple chapters back, and August is apparently weaker than God Serena, who was one-shotted by Acnologia? No, it doesn't. But when does this manga ever make sense power-level wise?
Natsu, of course, stands up in an "epic" two-page spread and talk more about the door of the Fairy Tail guildhouse. Something about vowing to live or some shit. God, this is such the opposite of dramatic. Meanwhile Lucy freezes short after rewriting all the words with her bullshit main-character-power, and has white eyes out of nowhere and weirdly misshapen boobs in that last panel. God dang, such bullshit storytelling.
Not a lot to say on this bit, really. The Zeref door thing kinda sums up the problems here - an attempt to wax poetic ironies when Mashima really doesn't seem to know how to anymore, if he ever truly did.
ReplyDeleteLike the thing with Lucy memorizing everything in the E.N.D. book - I think that's meant to be a callback to how Lucy's supposed to be an amateur author (the early arcs had her writing up her adventures into a book, but that fell out of focus along with most other character development, and she was a part-time journalist and was privately tracking down her former guild-mates in the time-skip between the Tartaros and Avatar arcs), but that's a really, really weak aspect to build the whole "Lucy can suddenly memorize a whole book of arcane words" bit. Maybe if she'd had some kind of tool or power like those instant-read glasses of Levy's or had even been shown studying through the book and memorizing parts of it before it started falling apart, it'd be more believable that she knew how to repair it - as is, it feels an asspull. Especially since I don't recall her even having any tools on hand that can manipulate magic runes of the sort in Natsu's book.
Yeah Zeref's just bad in this thing. Not much to say about it beyond 'o god it's just horse shit'.
DeleteLucy being a writer and Lucy having photographic memory isn't really a good logic to go to. Hell, if nothing else, Gray with his whole 'ice make' skills would be far more believable for someone who can quickly memorize the shape and look of things. A far, far stretch without bringing in Freed or Levy or the dude with Archive powers from Pegasus (Hibiki?) but at least it would make a crap ton more sense than Lucy developing convenient memorizing magical demonic alphabet randomly.
Honestly, 100% of the reason I'm still reading this manga is so that I can mock it.
Agree on that much - Lucy's being an author translating into "she's going to (re)write/save Natsu's story" feels like Mashima is trying way, way too hard to put some kind of symbolism into the story, yet missing every note. It, like everything else, comes too far out of nowhere and has too many generic elements to it that it just feels like we're counting down the moments till it ends.
DeleteSpeaking of which, I noticed the covers of the past few issues have a "Memories" theme, each one spotlighting/recounting a different past arc or notable storyline. If hope's willing, it represents a countdown that ends with the series' final issue. Right now it's at the recap-poster for the Tower of Heaven (the seventh arc), and there were 17 story arcs total (minus anime-filler ones, the movies and the Zero prologue), so depending on how they break things up or not... we could be seeing Fairy Tail end in just ten more chapters, give or take.
Here's hoping, huh?
Symbolism? Nah, it's just bad writing.
DeleteYeah, the cover pages and the 'memories' to a time when Fairy Tail was actually decent is actually a nice little countdown. Though isn't the manga ending in like May or June, before the new movie comes up? That's literally the only reason I got back to do this weekly. If I had to read Fairy Tail every week for more than a month I don't think I can take it.
Hiro said he has about 2 vol. left of Fairy tail. so like 10-20 chapters
Deleteregarding August he was pretty much unbeatable considering he can essentially copy and nullify an opponents magic. Within reason as he was likely unable to use this power on dragonslayer magic but yeah he is definitely above "God" Serena there is not doubt about that.
ReplyDeleteWell… actually, I kinda have to protest that one point about August’s strength, due to the fact he had a huge weaksauce weakness that he himself was aware of; he was vulnerable to Holder-Type magic... or in other words, any and all magic items.
DeleteBasically, August's power boiled down to him being just a glorified magic mirror that could copy/reflect spells, but not magic items (reflect energy, but breaks from a solid object logic) - that was proven in how Jellal and Gildarts’ attacks couldn’t hurt him, but yet had to dodge B-cast member Cana’s attacks and (according to Gildarts) freaking LUCY would have given August trouble because he wouldn’t have been able to copy the magic of her keys.
So considering that huge, huge overspecialization in August’s power, comparing him to Acnologia (who’s got dragon scales to handle magic items) doesn’t seem fair, and August himself knowing his huge (and in my opinion, lame) weakness is probably why he considered God Serena his superior in power; because, unlike him, God Serena didn't have a magic that was actively vulnerable to literally any mage who used a weapon or item instead of magic.
I never said Acnologia had any such weakness to it, though - only that his dragon-scales were more universally defensible/they blocked everything, not just one type like August's magic did. And of course August never bothered to properly learn any kind of proper magic besides that - this is Fairy Tail, where the villains don't have the brains to learn beyond one powerful skill at a time.
DeleteExample; the "random finger laser" seems a rather basic spell power by comparison - a variant of the basic energy attacks that pretty much anyone with their own magic was seen capable of using. IDK if that even qualifies as being able to do other kinds of magic - it'd be the mage equivalent of breathing.
The villains don't have the brains to learn beyond one powerful skill? Come now, when have you seen Gajeel do something that's not 'create a metal rod/sword'? Oh, right, when he eats shadow or carbon and creates a slightly-different metal rod/sword. Like, yeah, the heroes are marginally better than the villains because we see more variations of ice swords, indestructible stripper armours and fire blasts, but at the end of the day it's just stronger versions of their basic gimmick. They just win because, well, it's Fairy Tail and the world runs on main character status trumping and bullshiting any kind of actual buildup the villains have.
Delete