Fairy Tail 543 Review: Looping Around

Fairy Tail, Chapter 543: Hearts as One

So for the past few chapters of Fairy Tail, I have tended to be more verbose than my usual manga reviews simply because it's so much fun and therapeutic to make fun of this piece of shit. But now it's looped back from being "so utterly and hilariously shitty that it's entertaining to watch" back to "maaan this is some badly written shit". Like, my god, when I actually can bring up other shitty end-manga villains like Juhabach or fucking Kaguya from Naruto and unironically say how much better a villain Kaguya was than Acnologia...

My reactions exactly.

Anyway! This chapter begins with a cover page of Avatar. God, remember these morons? I certainly didn't. The Avatar arc is quite literally the most horrendously conceived piece of shit filler arc with zero relevance, zero effort and have no point to it other than reaffirming that Mashima has absolutely no intention of allowing his characters to grow at all and they have to remain static caricatures of 'yay friends forever'. Can anyone seriously tell me they remember the names of all seven unmemorable fuckheads? I certainly can't remember any of their names, and can only barely remember the powers of like two or three.

The chapter begins with the ships being blown up! Good job, Acnologia, for destroying the ships and not the people because of 'instinct'. That instinct bullshit, by the way, was a huge point of the last chapter so much that the final panel and the title was 'instinct'. Remember this point, that soulless, split-body-and-soul Acnologia instinctively destroys boats instead of people, and remember it well, because Hiro Mashima gives so little fucks about his manga that he will contradict this thing later. 

Gray, meanwhile, wants to stick with the (utterly stupid) plan of putting Acnologia on a boat, and for the first time in the past thirty, fifty chapters, uses magic in a way that makes sense beyond beams and/or glowing punches. He wants to build a ship with ice.

Meanwhile, everyone holds hands. Like, literally, there is a panel devoted to Cana and Gildarts telling a bunch of generics to 'hold hands to boost our magical powers'. Has it come to this? To some Care Bears level bullshit? Also, was it really that necessary for that panel with Happy and Lucy to show gigantic boobs for no real reason? There is a string of random dialogue of 'wah we will believe in you' and other reactionary bullshit. And Freed, bless him, wants to create a huge jutsu thing... yeah, Freed, sorry. In another, better-written manga, your magical runes might be one of the more interesting powers ever, but here? Sorry, man, you're just never ever going to be relevant, especially not here. 

Random flashback to chapter one! It's just half a page, though, as far as these things go it's not actually horrible. But the lack of good content in the rest of the chapter is certainly horrible. 

Acnologia, meanwhile, talks about how "I will not leave a single dragon's head in the world" while everyone lies bleeding on the ground. WELL THEN FUCKING TO IT ALREADY,  LIZARD BRAINS, like, what the fuck, all seven of them are on the ground, one is a ten year old girl, two of them are not even real dragon slayers. Can you take Acnologia seriously? No I certainly can not. Like, when some other crap villain like Juhabach is taking his sweet time not killing Ichigo at least it's for some mystical incomprehensible destiny bullcrap, but that's at least a reason. Acnologia? Don't even justify Mashima's lack of giving a shit by pulling out some 'oh he is just toying with his prey' or 'oh he is just trying to milk out some challenge out of the dragon slayers' because he then goes on this huge rant about how he only exists to slay dragons and he will kill them all... while standing perfectly still.

Natsu then goes on a huge, huge rant about how "but you're a dragon toooo hurrr durrrr" because that argument makes so, so much sense. And then he goes about to talk about how he's a human. Because he thought really hard to choose it in that godawful dream sequence. Then Natsu goes on to talk about how the real dragons are noble gentle and strong and all that bullshit... mother fucker you have only ever met two dragons in your entire life, Igneel and Atlas Flame. One is your father, and the other is your father's minion. 

Also, hypocritical much, Natsu "plagiarize the castle with gigantic words made out of fire to leave message for my twelve friends" Dragneel? Piece of self-centered filth.

And then in response to my last week's rant about how Acnologia didn't have any proper backstory, he then grits his teeth and rants about how the dragons "killed my family, burned the city, EVEN KILLED A LITTLE GIRL". Putting aside how utterly moronic that the writer feels like it would give an extra oomph of showing a dead little girl (when burning an entire city to the ground would've been far, far more horrible), this still explains nothing. It explains why Acnologia killed all the dragons, sure. It explains why Acnologia wants to kill Natsu and company (also Laxus and Cobra don't count), sure. The rest of his plans? Destroying the world and shit? Nope, if anything else Acnologia's backstory contradicts his huge big game plan of destroying the world. But then in this one paragraph I probably tried to make sense of Acnologia far more than the writer did.

Then Acnologia makes huge explosions, and Natsu survives it for no real reason other than main character bullshitery. Actually, whatever happened to the whole 'devourer of magic, master of the ravines of time' nonsense? At least when they hyped Kaguya up she actually pulls off some cool-looking moves that's not just bwaaa big explosion bwaaa laser beams that never hit anyone.

Also Natsu then goes on a huge speech about how there are 'good dragons and bad dragons'... and, again, mother fucker, you've only met two dragons in your life. Ever think that maybe Igneel and Atlas Flame are the exception rather than the rule? Of course you don't, you twat. You're the kind of horrible person who will enforce your viewpoint on life on every single person, just like how you instantly denies Wendy from staying in Blue Pegasus or Gajeel from staying with the magic council back in the oh-so-memorable Avatar arc.

Acnologia is equally confused as to why Natsu survives the magic blasts, and then everyone stands up. Wendy wants to 'cast all our powers into Natsu-san'... mother fucker, again, when have you ever been able to do that? You heal, you buff, you do the odd sky dragon blast or whatever, when have you been able to transfer powers? Also because this manga does not have a shred of originality left, we get yet another rehash of the Jellal and Hades fights where everyone, for some reason, has to thrust their power into Natsu. Who turns everyone's power into a flaming fist, the power of 'seven fire dragons'. Seven fire dragons, mind you, not seven good dragons, or seven human dragon slayers, or even seven friends. Does any of this make a god damn lick of sense? Nope!

Also, I would say that I called it that Natsu's going to just punch Acnologia in the face with a flaming fist, but anyone who honestly expects anything else clearly hasn't been reading this manga properly.

Gray and Lyon built a boat! Hey, remember way back up in this review when I pointed out how last chapter Acnologia's instinct is to destroy boats and not people? Well, now he's standing on top of a bridge roaring loudly at Erza and Mirajane who's floating around. Not destroying the boat. Instinct my ass. Mirajane and Erza don't even have the silly and lazy glowing aura of magic like last chapter with whoever was tasked to draw Acnologia away! No, the dumb lizard is just... standing there. Roaring. Waiting patiently for Gray and Lyon to make the boat. 

Also what was the point of finding the book? The secret is apparently 'hey everyone hold hands', something that Elfman and Evergreen figured out without finding the book. The book is worse than a deus ex machina, it's a deus ex that doesn't even do anything. 

Erza goes naked for no real reason, shouts some lame-ass line, and then summons a barrage of swords down onto Acnologia, which whacks him down onto the boat.

Say that again. Last chapter (or was it two chapters ago) we had this whole thing about how Acnologia cannot be hurt by physical weapons unless it's imbued with Wendy's dragonslayer magic. So yeah, this entire scene is just stupid and makes no sense internally. Would it have made sense if we had Juvia use her water magic to lift the boat up to get Acnologia on it? It certainly wouldn't contradict the whole 'Acnologia can't be hurt by magic or physical weapons' thing, but clearly Mashima just does not give a crap about whether the fights make sense anymore. 

And then Acnologia falls down on top of the ice boat, and he gets motion sickness. Yes, that's right, the motion sickness actually gets pulled off on Acnologia. I would say that I am enraged that the final villain of the manga gets taken out by a goofy-ass running gag, but that would be lying because I have no respect for Acnologia as a villain or a threat. Naruto pulls the harem jutsu on Kaguya, sure, but that was just a distraction-joke thing and how she's taken out is certainly not directly caused by that... and my god, again, I never thought there would be a day where I would look back  at the Kaguya arc and say with pure sincerity that 'yep, this is better'.

We get a scene where everyone holds hands in a circle to cast Fairy Sphere, and Lucy goes through a generic speech. There's a hilarious bit where Chelia, magic-less Chelia, gets pushed into the circle for no reason (I bet her magic gets restored for no reason here). Then Lucy screams "Fairy Sphere Activate" really, really hard. What's the point of the book sub plot, then, if holding hands and shouting those three words is what it took? Also gratuituous random panty shot, again, for no real reason. And then Natsu screams.

So yeah, it's just a hot mess that ignores all sort of continuity. And I haven't ranted about the whole stupidity that the last two or three chapters have been devoted to nothing but getting Acnologia on the boat. Which is a stupid-ass plan, coming from an even more stupid-ass writer because the damn thing worked! A fucking running gag, and it worked -- it would be tantamount to if the final battle of Naruto ended with Sasuke being defeated with a reverse harem jutsu, or if Nanatsu no Taizai ended with Meliodas groping the supreme deity goddess.

Add that to the actual continuity problem that this raises, too -- this very manga has already established that the motion sickness was more of a mental problem than anything, with Natsu not having a problem if he rides on Happy or whatever, so their perception matters. And Acnologia is... soulless? Also there are people saying that Mashima once gave the explanation to the motion sickness in the Eileen chapters that it's tied to dragon senses being super-awesome and the humans' semicircular canals cannot take it -- I can't be arsed to check nor do I care either way -- but if so, then add that to the pile of continuity problems and contradictory asspulls that this sorry excuse of a manga chapter has done. 

And with two more chapters left, is there any hope at all that this would end in something that will not insult my intelligence? Certainly not. God, every single time I think 'this is rock bottom, there's no way they can be worse than this chapter', Fairy Tail does it. Hella fun to rip it apart, but it's just as well that there are only two more chapters left. Can't take this for much longer. 

Fuck this thing. I'm going off to read Hunter x Hunter. Togashi overexplains every single goddamn detail in his manga, but that is so, so infinitely better than pulling random bullshit out of your ass and not having any continuity at all.