Fairy Tail, Chapter 535: Greatest Power
Of course the chapter opens with Lucy getting magical tattoos and orgasming from trying to fuck around with the E.N.D. book. Of fuckin' course. Some bullshit plotline that came out of nowhere about how the E.N.D. book can be changed but it'll corrupt anyone who tries to do so. It's a bunch of bullshit that literally is slightly, slightly less bullshit than Anna Hearthphilia showing up out of nowhere, simply because Sayla edited demon books one time. Still, pretty absolutely fucking stupid that it heals Natsu literally instantly. Like, of course the main character of this manga isn't going to die like that (though I would really like it) but jeez, seeing Natsu come back up and spout off three pages' worth of bullshit friendship speeches -- one he just repeated a while back, mind you -- is absolutely stupid. Seriously, man, ranting the same the power of the me is the power of the fairy tail of the thought of the final justice of the bond of the guild of the family speech isn't going to make it any less of an asswipe.
Oh and we have an orgasm scene, just because. Happy is absolutely useless at this point, isn't he? And Lucy's only being useful due to main character bullshit powers. Gray's use is a portable air-conditioning device. Like, seriously, that 'here, have some cold' scene is so painfully "shit, better give my supposed third-main-character something to do".
Because you know who's really doing anything at all here? Jellal. Because, shit, does it make sense that he can push Acnologia so hard? Does it make sense that Acnologia only remembers now that he's a fucking magic-devouring dragon? Does the pacing of the battle even make any sense at all? No, not really, but at least it's a battle that's marginally entertaining. Mostly because using magic to turn yourself into like a bullet to push the dragon into a time-warp is so, so much more interesting -- on a very loose definition of 'interesting' -- than the actual confrontation between Natsu and Zeref.
Which, if you guessed is "three full pages of nothing but a full-face panel and a fist wreathed in fire", is absolutely right. Truly, an absolutely epic and utterly engaging fight for the ages to be remembered in the annals of fiction. #sarcasm
Like, seriously, does anyone even look at these panels and go 'damn right, what a badass scene?' God, right now I have so much more respect for Naruto's absolute trainwreck of a finale, and that's not something I thought I would ever, ever say in my life. Because, shit, at least Naruto's doing some new shit with his kyubi energy armour and his infinitely endless and meaningless rasengan variations, so even if the end result is the same big old explosion, at least it actually looks different instead of panel #4356 of full-face-Natsu-and-a-burning-fist.
Oh, and the Blue Pegasus ship and its crew of irrelevant secondary characters who aren't doing jack shit (and Ichiya, who shows up for all of two panels to make this chapter not entirely horrible) finally crashes into the ocean.
Also, seriously, how can we still take Acnologia seriously? A wounded Jellal is more than capable of nearly knocking him into the time warp, he takes like forever to destroy a single flying ship, and even as a big ten-ton dragon holding a magic-less human in his hand, he's not even being effective in killing him. Seriously, that two-headed retard dragon from that old Excalibur cartoon is a bigger threat than this fat moron.
I'm not even going to touch the Natsu vs Zeref stuff, because... well, WFT can even be said? It's literally the same things that happened last time, complete with the same flaws as before.
ReplyDeleteOn Acnologia vs Jellal... well, honestly, that doesn't bother me as much since we had it set up all the way back on the Trenou Arc (where he let the whole guild take potshots at him out of boredom and bemusement) that Acnologia doesn't take anyone but dragons, powerful Dragon-Slayers (and Gildarts) seriously. I mean, yeah, it's the same exact "the villain's arrogance will be their undoing," but at least with Acnologia it was a solidly-established part of his character from the start, rather than being shoehorned in at the last moment (unlike his suddenly bothering to spout out cheesy lines like "I'll crush you" when he wasn't even supposed to consider humans worth talking to anymore; now *that* was something that fucked with the character's established behavior).
Eh, Acnologia is a shitty villain whether he's consistently written or not. Even discounting his particularly sorry performance here against Jellal and the Pegasus gunship, he's already being a shitty character. If he's supposed to be only obsessed with genociding dragons and is hunting down dragons slayers only... we really don't get any real reason why he's not shown up to hunt the other dragon slayers at all beyond 'well, it's not plot relevant yet'. No excuse of, say, performing a ritual, or being held back by one of Igneel or Zeref's spells, or being wounded by Gildarts or something. Nope, apparently between Tenrou and Igneel's death and the current arc, he's just spending every single time just lurking in a cave or some bullshit like that.
DeleteAnd even then, throughout this arc what has he done? He meets Zeref ominously in a cave at the beginning of the arc, which ends up being absolutely contradictory to Zeref's claim that everything he does is because he's pissing his pants because of Acnologia. But Acnologia's entire role? Even counting the fact that he arrived on the battlefield late, kills God Serana and goes off to kill or hunt the other dragon slayers... surely it wouldn't take him THAT long just to reach the Eileen/Wendy/Erza battlesite? And, of course, because he's such a fearsome being [/sarcasm] he spends all of two chapters just doing nothing but stomping on a dead corpse. And then absolutely fails to even damage Wendy, or the Pegasus ship, and takes forever to even wound Jellal.
Hell, I'm not expecting this to suddenly be all seinen and see Gajeel, Sting, Rogue and Cobra all get murdered by Acnologia in quick succession (though it'd be better than the tripe we're getting) but you can have Acnologia not coming off like a senile, ineffective twit.
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DeleteWell, for what Acnologia was introduced as, I thought that actually worked for him. Back during the Trenou Arc, Acnologia's looking down on people despite not being able to kill them, in my opinion, fit him because he was portrayed as a malevolent force of nature rather than an actual character - he didn't gloat, he didn't boast, he didn't monologue, he didn't even *talk*; his actions and the observations of others (i.e, Gildarts) did that for him. Back when Mashima had some semblance of sense on how to write, Acnologia worked as an antagonist for FT because, unlike all the other opponents the guild had faced before that, there wasn't any reasoning with or deconstructing of motivation or talking to him at all; he was just there and he wrecked what was in his way by simply trodding over it like bugs, uncaring if they survived being stepped on since there were just an afterthought to him. And when he did decide to stomp on the bugs, he stomped down hard.
DeletePersonally, I think the point where Acnologia began to decay was back in the GMG arc, where he was retconed from being a malevolent dragon that looked down on everyone like insects to being just a power-drunk human-turned-monster. Than it kicked into high-gear during the Tartaros Arc, where his personality was basically established as a less-nuanced version of Natsu's, hard as that is to believe - namely that of a blood knight who's sole motivator was "I wanna big fight! Big fight = Big fun!" Couple that with sheer boredom apparently being the reason he didn't blow the world up as opposed to the wandering storm he was originally portrayed as before, than the tidbit that he apparently spends most of his time as a human when not drawn out by something. Finally, add in how as of the Tartaros Arc he spouts the same one-liner boasts that all other villains before now have used, and Mashima's ruination of the character was complete - arguably in large part *because* he wanted to push Acnologia as a character rather than a force. At best, you could say Mashima tried to make him FT's version of Kenpachi from Bleach, but even "battle is life" Kenpachi arguably had more personality to him than Acnologia.
For instance, let's look at the whole "Eileen/Wendy/Erza" thing - when he got there, he *knew* everything she'd said about her being the creator of Dragon-Slayer magic. That in turn implies that he was actually THERE THE WHOLE TIME, watching the fight from a distance to see how it played out - all because, according to his newfound (and shoehorned) characterization, he doesn't find enjoyment from jumping in and dominating fights... even though doing exactly that was the whole reason Zeref thought a war would bait him out to get taken down; is he a blood knight who just wants a fight, or is he a bored ruler who wants a reason to fight first - which is it, Mashima? I at least get that the writer wanted to give characterization whenever possible, but if it clashes against what the character was and even lessens them for it, maybe it's just not something that needs it - the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" isn't foolproof, but there are instances where it works, and Mashima, with his constant back-and-forth retconing and noncomittal wishy-washy stortyelling, just never seemed to learn that.