Only one guild to fight Tartaros…
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Hiro Mashima
Translation: William Flanagan
What They Say:
The demons of Tartaros are murdering Council members to try to get a secret weapon with the power to wipe out all who would oppose them in one fell swoop. But what is this weapon? How could killing ex-Council members help them get it? And how do they even know about it in the first place? Natsu and his friends need to solve these mysteries if they hope to stand up to the demons!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
This is past where the Fairy Tail anime is and I forgot just how exciting it was to experience Fairy Tail without the drudgery that is anime filler. Just a few more seconds on each scene, and extra other scene here and there, makes it killer to sit through a series. But I just read like seven episodes in 40 minutes. It’s great!!
The manga Fairy Tail is a lot easier to look at too. The first anime series, as far as I remember, didn’t have too many characters that were off model. This second one does and it’s BOTHERSOME. I can’t believe that they would look so weird in close shots, but they do. I’m glad to be able to see Mashima’s artwork in a longer form like this (I also read the chapters on Crunchyroll manga as they come out…I really like Fairy Tail!).
I’m starting the Fairy Tail manga review journey right in the middle of Natsu’s fight against Jackal and it’s just the kind of fight you’d expect from Fairy Tail. Natsu literally wins by walking it off and punching the other guy harder. It’s how it always works and it always feels good.
A good portion of this volume is spent on some rather disturbing fanservice. Erza is chained up naked and beaten. Mira seems to be assimilated into…some creepy thing, while naked of course. And Lisanna and Natsu are left in a jail cell by themselves, yep you guessed it, naked. It’s not titillating; it’s disconcerting. No one should want to see these characters in these situations and I’m flipping the pages hoping that the escape is closer than I thought and that they get clothes and fast. Mashima even goes out of his way to put them into more and more compromising positions, like Lisanna trying to pry Natsu’s restrains open with her legs…please stop Lisanna. And the more disturbing tentacle monster that gets just close enough to Erza to be enough. The book needed to be closed, but this needed to be written more. It brings down an otherwise pretty good volume of Fairy Tail. And my problems stem from it not being for the sake of titillation; Fairy Tail is for the sake of entertainment. If this was hentai, I’d be complaining that there’s not enough shown.
But there are other things going on that are more interesting, like Jellal breaking out the Oracion Seis. Fairy Tail as a guild is very reactive. They’re happy with their lives as they are and they don’t want anything interrupting that. But when it does, be prepared to fight against hell for what you did. Jellal has bigger fish to fry and his name is Zeref. He’s enlisting all he can to the cause, which he needs after losing Ultear. He chooses the Oracion Seis, a guild on the repair after Fairy Tail beat them down a while back. As far as I recall, they haven’t really come back yet, but I’ll be excited when they do.
Oh also there’s a doomsday device that’ll knock out all the magic on the planet, thus leading to Tartarus’ ultimate take over. So there’s that.
In Summary:
Fairy Tail is some really good shonen when it’s on. But it has a few down moments that stop it from being so consistently good. There’s also the fact that there’s not a lot to chew on in Fairy Tail aside from cool fights—not that there ever isn’t anything to chew on, there is. But Fairy Tail is about a feeling of excitement deep in the gut following your friends doing something cool and breaking onto the scene in the last moment. This volume was very much setting up some bigger stuff and I can’t wait to get back into it.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: October 28, 2014
MSRP: $10.99