Fairy Tail, Chapter 537: The Power of Life
"At long last, Fairy Tail has begun its final countdown!" At long last indeed, writer. At long last.
Mavis and Zeref have this long, long exhaustingly convoluted talk about love, and then contradiction, and just trying to be poetic and talk about how everything they've been through is contradictory and stuff. Yeah, no shit, it's called inconsistent writing and making shit up as you go. Some talk about how if Mavis loved Zeref, she would able to kill him, but at the same time she wants to live forever. Then she goes and rants about how Zeref should die, acting like a little child, then lies next to Zeref, going "die (don't die)" and stuff and they disappear in a light, because, shit, I dunno. Zeref basically dies because of love. Or something. I have no idea.
I cannot pretend that I understand any of the backwards logic here, and maybe that's what the author is going for? Create some absolutely convoluted justification for this whole mess that is Mavis and Zeref and all their motivations, and wait for the fandom (what's left of it, anyway) to string up some panels selectively and point out how Zeref's motivations totally somehow in some weird way makes complete logical sense.
Because, holy shit, I tried re-reading this chapter and all I got from it is a migraine.
You know what, though? Zeref's dead, and so is Mavis, so it's cause to celebrate. Goodbye, emo whackjob! And goodbye, pedophile enabler! Won't miss either of you, no sir.
Also, yeah, Zeref and Natsu's climactic fight was just that. A punch to the face. So yeah, last chapter was just a stupid conclusion to the story of Zeref, and it ended with not a bang, but a whimper.
Oh, and Makarov totally wakes up. See? See what I tell you? The old dumbshit isn't dead. Fairy Tail is all happy and shit, and no one is allowed to make a dramatic sacrifice. Not that Makarov has been doing anything right since the Alvarez arc started, mind you. Without getting into another rant about how his death is stupid... let me point out that his resurrection is also equally stupid. Because, shit, is there any reason that he comes back, beyond power of unexplainable friendship between two immortals, who, for some reason, ends up resurrecting Makarov?
Yeah, none of this bullshit makes sense. I've read fanfiction better than this.
Not much to say here. I have a backlog of superhero TV shows to watch, even if Fairy Tail reviews somehow get easily triple the hits any other manga or TV episode reviews do. I dunno. Is reading me talk shit about a shit manga that entertaining? In any case, I'm not going to bother really trying to analyze dung too much.
I think the implication is supposed to be that, like how Zeref inadvertently (nearly) killed Mavis way back when by loving her more than anything else, Mavis figured that repeating the process on each-other might be enough to break the curse... which is really nine kinds of dumb if it means that Zeref literally knew what the way to break his curse was (someone sharing it loving him) and sat on it for so long. IDK if it's supposed to be an "I don't want anyone else sharing my fate after what happened to Mavis" or an "I won't sacrifice anyone else's freedom to this curse" (even though he's perfectly willing to ret-gone the entirety of the timeline to fix his own, so random acts of selfishness - especially with the whole "curse of perpetually-contradicting feelings/desires" shouldn't be that far out of the ball-park for him). Either way, it's anticlimactic to say the least.
ReplyDeleteEven more anticlimactic is the fact that.... well, personally speaking, a good writer could have at least tried to put in some kind of message even for this. See, I got to thinking, and the reason Zeref's curse of contradictions ate him up so much is supposed to be that he loved life... or in other words, that he valued the lives of others over his own (although he selfishly experimented with life and death because he couldn't let go of his little brother and couldn't move on/have happiness in his own life otherwise, but we know better than to expect consistency, right?). Simply put... I personally feel that a writer with even an ounce of creativity would have at least *tried* to exposit that a lot of Zeref's suffering was because he never had enough value in his own life - the curse kills life in proportion to how much you value it... meaning that if it's cast on someone who values their own life more than others, it'd have killed themselves.
In short, Zeref could have been developed as having the character flaw of never seeing the value in his own life as it was - he either needed someone else's life (Natsu, Mavis, etc) or for everything else around him to be perfect because he simply couldn't see himself as singularly worth anything; a self-depreciation issue that made him the perfect victim of the curse because, simply put, it had a really easy out - if you can just find value in yourself and come to prioritize yourself, you'd be free of the torment, but so long as you resent yourself you'll just keep suffering. And yeah, it's kinda ripping off of what Itachi did to Kabuto with Izanami (learn to love who you are if you want to be free of the misery you get trapped in), but I still feel it'd work better and do more for these characters as, well, *characters* than this convoluted crap.
Honestly though, what pisses me off is that I was actually starting to think Makrov wasn't going to wake up - with how many characters have just been off-handedly given anticlimactic deaths like August, Eileen, Bradman, Lacarde (not that those last three were all that interesting personality-wise, though) and now Zeref and Mavis, I actually thought that only a dozen chapters or so that Mashima might just let a character who should have freaking died long ago just up and die. Why in the fuck did I actually actually let myself hope that, shit death that it was, Mashima would let at least one member of the Fairy Tail guild rest in peace?
The whole Zeref/Mavis thing isn't just anticlimactic, it's also stupid. Like you said, either Zeref is being a little emo shit, or he's just dumb, and a little bit hypocritical too. Either way it's a shit ending, one that doesn't even carry the punch of "yeah, decisive emotional finale" that something like Naruto at least had. Like, Naruto's finale was godawfully stupid, but at least it isn't an anticlimax like this.
DeleteThere are so many ways to make the Zeref/Mavis connection work into an actual story, and with any modicum of effort put into writing that final scene it could've actually told a story. But it would require decent writing on the writer's part, and honestly, I don't think Fairy Tail's writer even really cares anymore.
Also, come on. Makarov is a part of Fairy Tail and the bond of friendship and all that jazz is powerful enough to allow a fire punch to go through godlike fairy-demon-god-king aura stuff. Of course Makarov's going to come back. I never doubted that Fairy Tail is anything but so asininely stupid that they wouldn't revive Makarov. T'was a matter of when, not if.
Well, yeah, I knew Fairy Tail was that stupid, but for god's sake I thought that with, what, nine chapters or so left that I could have just a tiny inkling of hope that Mashima couldn't fuck things up worse than he already had so far. As it stands though, with this latest "development" (and I use the term loosely), I'm honestly now just sitting back waiting to see what the hell he comes up with for the whole "Natsu's life is tied to Zeref" thing.
DeleteFriendship ex machina, obviously. Failing that, because she's Erza.
DeleteZervis moment was so cringe. Combine all the cringe you can get in the entire series, mix it up and you get the latest chapter.
ReplyDeleteAnd Makarov is just like, "Hey guys!"
Fuck it, might as well bring back Hades. At least that might make me slightly happy.
Bring back Hades and have him be as irrelevant as the likes of the Oracion Seis or Warren? Yeah, I'd rather he be resting peacefully in death. He was the last real decent villain in FT we ever had.
DeleteWell I think it doesn't matter since Mashima shat on him anyway through the flashbacks and Historia.
DeleteLaxus fanboys are still wanking about how an injured Laxus defeated Historia Hades.....a sad day for a Hades' fanboy like me.
I don't see how defeating a Historia version of Hades is noteworthy, though; as Erza proved, you can apparently just will the things away with the power of heart, regardless of how strong they themselves were :/
DeleteAt the same time though... honestly, it's not the idea of Mavis and Zeref dying together that I found cringy (and I daresay it's nowhere near the cringiest, even in context to how bad this arc alone's been). What I found cringy was how it was executed and how it, like nothing else, felt like it fit into a single cohesive story rather than jumbled bits being dropped in here and there.
One big bit of wasted potential was how Mavis admitted that her feelings for Zeref waffled way back when, in that she was too insecure to commit to love. That plays into something I'd suggested way back when during Makarov's (revoked) sacrifice, in how the supposedly-immortal Mavis could have cast Fairy Law (since she taught it to Makarov in the first place) and would have had a higher chance living through it than the elderly old man doing so would have, but yet she just sat there and let him toss his life away. I'd thought that, if FT had at least a better writer - not even good but just a competent one - they'd have written it as Makarov not trusting Mavis plan because her isolated nature and propensity to treat people like chess pieces in many cases meant that no plan she made would likely be used if it involved putting herself, the proverbial king of the game, at risk - something no parent worth their salt would hesitate to do.
That in turn could have tied into an ending like this way better, in that it could have better contextualized Mavis as being someone who fundamentally didn't have any better an idea what love was than Zeref - only inverted in that she'd inadvertently/subconsciously prioritize her own value while Zeref would always depreciate his. Something that would play into them having been opposites or foils to each-other, or highlight character flaws in that, where Zeref couldn't imagine life having any value without others, Mavis couldn't contextualize equal value of others to herself - and that Makarov dying could have been the wake-up call to show her first-hand that no amount of logic or planning is going to make up for being unable to comprehend unequivocal and unconditional love; no matter how many strategies you think up, you can't possibly have the conviction needed to protect anyone if you aren't able to reflexively put your life on the line for others the same way you request them to.
Is that corny? Is that sappy? Does it make Naruto's finale look subtle by comparison? Fuck yeah it does, but I still think that saccharine-filled aseop-hammer would have done more to form an actual interconnected framework for an arc plot, because at least than the events that take place would have had interconnected meaning for each-other as opposed to being one asspull after another - yes it'd still be sappy, but I at least think it wouldn't have been as completely retarded as the story ended up.
Agreed, I mean, it's not like another main character just literally shouted very loudly and that scared several other Historia ghosts off.
DeleteNo, it's not at all the idea of Zeref and Mavis's death together. Done right it could actually be sweet, a nice end to an otherwise bland, unoriginal and boring love story. But it's just not. What you described would actually have a climax that makes sense, though, and is just the type of ending that, like I said, would at least give the closure some modicum of quality, and give Mavis some actual characterization beyond 'mentor loli ghost'.
Because, shit, she's been around for, what, three hundred ish chapters, and had a spinoff dedicated to her, and I still can't tell you jack shit about her as a character beyond "your average Fairy Tail member. But a ghost."