#ch161

This cover has so much foreshadow without revealing too many spoilers like the anime, and I love that about it. It foreshadows so much, actually shows us Gildarts, and features Mystogan. Lucy and Gray appear twice, but the way they’re framed, they could be a doppleganger plot, a disguise plot (because Natsu’s also wearing something unusual) or etc. 

But as a graphic design student a lot about this cover bothers me so much I’m sorry can i just take it apart and---

Wendy’s panel is the only one that I feel stands out weirdly in a ‘Mashima didn’t know what to do with her panel’ way. Why is she taking so much space while the important characters of this arc are getting squashed at the bottom? We’ve already seen Mystogan’s face, his face doesn’t need to be hidden like Gildarts.  Doesn’t matter if it’s her introduction to FT, this arc’s mystery character is Mystogan, so she doesn’t need that wide waving shot. It would be cool if she was pictured with Carla, but she’s forward in horror, presumably seeing Mystogan, and Carla’s eyes are in the opposite direction, facing Happy who’s standing outside the panels with Natsu. It would be cool if, like the Lucy and Gray panels, there’s an indication that they’re looking at each other. 

And the bright white around Natsu’s head is weird too, because if it was acting as Natsu’s panel it oughta at least be coloured like the overall colour tone even if he wanted it blank. At the very least, something off-white with some texture, not bright white like that. I’m humouring the idea that the white could represent Lisanna, but even I think that’s very much of a stretch. I’d rather have had a sepia photograph of the Dragon Egg flashback in that place so it could symbolize both the mysterious birth of the Exceeds and foreshadow Lisanna at the same time. But you know, that might be too many characters. So, fair enough. 

Honestly, with the mirorring duality of the colours (Edo Lucy and Gray having blues to match earth, Happy and Carla in Pink,) I feel Wendy and Mystogan should have been the green and Natsu and Gildarts should have had a third colour, because that’s the significant duality this arc’s going for, right? 

It kinda gets lost because Crocodile is such a popular character, but his plan to take over Alabasta probably killed a bunch of people before the civil war even started and displaced countless others. And it wasn’t a kind death, either, as Crocodile slowly squeezed the life out of people he considered less than him for personal power and ambition.

They’ve been writing each other letters for a while, but I don’t know how long. From 159:

I’m not sure how Lau knew that Haku was sending someone to assassinate our earl, since Haku made up his mind to do so while Lau was in Marseille (ch160, and there’s a typo in the manga)...

...en route to England, but Lau might have been going on a hunch that our earl would become a target, thanks to some knowledge of what was going on with the opium industry in England... and our earl’s role in those changes.

From ch161:

Then later, in ch165:

Lau didn’t know who Owl actually was, but he probably would have heard about Haku’s amazingly talented and skilled sniper. And so he mentioned that in a letter, too.

I don’t know exactly how long ago they started corresponding, but it was after January 1886 (demon contract) and sufficiently before Lau arrives sometime in 1887.

To slay a dragon, the Dragon Slayer takes on the same power as a dragon. 

It’s said by Cobra in this arc that originally, only dragons could learn this magic.

Disregarding anything about Dragon Slayer magic we’ve learned so I can talk, I like to think that Dragon Slayer magic wasn’t always called it. Originally, it was just the natural power of a dragon that they train and develop over time, until they mature as a full-fledged dragon capable of fighting other dragons. Only the dragons had a name for it, in their own, beastly language.