#ch179

These hall remind of the Tower of Heaven. It's a similar, locked-in brick hallways structure.

This scene resembles previous Lucy-gets-saved scenes, of course. The quotes ring of the Fairy Tail raiding Phantom Lord scene, including the chaos shots of enemies getting blown away.

And Lucy being the weakened one reminds me of her getting beaten by Gajeel and the moment Natsu saves her. So, it's nice that it's Gray and Erza this time, and Natsu is the one helplessly sitting around for his moment to shine.

I like the idea that this theme of 'my friends will come save me, even if it seems impossible/too risky for them to show up' gets emphasized when the fight changes from 'us against the Royal Kingdom' to 'the Royal Kingdom against us and Extalia'.

It continues, vaguely, the arc parallels from before, this time in the direction of Phantom Lord. Because while everything up till now emphasized on characters, Gray emphasizes in this moment on "You have antagonized our guild specifically', because it's now about Fairy Tail as a family and how much it means to Lucy, Happy, and Carla in times of strife.

Discussions on this post got me to thinking about that room… how long it’s been there… and how Baldo thinks he’s keeping secrets from Sebastian.

In ch179, Baldo finally follows Sebastian’s clue to discovering the armory. There seems to be some confusion (in the linked post comments) about how it survived the attack and fire, but I say it’s because it’s underground. Almost completely underground. I get that from Baldo’s confrontation with Dagger and Beast during the circus arc.

There are apparently two kitchens in the manor; either that or the kitchen is divided into a main kitchen and several store rooms, like a buttery, pantry, etc. They might all be underground, but the room where Baldo keeps that Maxim machine gun (and ignites a fine cloud of flour) is definitely underground. It has a high window that gets light, but that window is at ground level. And the armory goes down another level, deeper than the kitchen.

I grabbed these ch33 pages from online, and they are just fan translations, but it doesn’t matter too much, as we can see that Beast and Dagger have to go into a basement to end up in that kitchen, where Baldo was waiting for them.

Because of this, it would help explain why certain things escaped the fire… like a cookbook of family recipes that had been used by Vincent and Diedrich. As well as the ledger that Tanaka uses to show real Ciel how many servants the lord of the manor once employed.

So, I do believe that the armory predates Sebastian’s and our earl’s contract. Makes me wonder what else might be stored down there….

In a comment on the linked post, @thedarkestcrow came up with a good (and hilarious) reason why we never see Sebastian use any of the weapons kept in the armory: our earl forbids him from doing so… so, he uses table knives and forks. It’s basically a way to make things harder for the demon. 😆

Also, I’m pondering what else, besides the Maxim gun, Baldo thinks he’d been keeping secret from Sebastian. It’s highly unlikely Sebastian didn’t know about it. Even our earl knew about it, as Baldo says he will have to put a hold on mass production of it. Goodness. Does that mean our earl was also in the business of manufacturing weapons… not just toys, candies, perfumes, etc?

Remember, the marines are a military organization. Commanding officers don’t just let their subordinates run around willy-nilly without orders. On one hand, what Smoker is telling Tashigi here is completely absurd, which goes a long way to explain her confusion.

On the other, I really appreciate that Smoker is letting her develop her own sense of justice. He’s just had an encounter that has completely turned his understanding of the situation (and pirates in general) on its head. Remember, they came to Alabasta thinking that the Straw Hats were in cahoots with Crocodile, not fighting against one another. 

And it’s not as if the situation is in any way under control. Smoker isn’t sending his junior officer out on a cupcake mission for a little bit of experience and a confidence boost. Alabasta is in very real danger of falling, and as a logia Smoker is one of the only fighters to have any realistic hope in taking Crocodile out. 

NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YORIICHI HAD DONE HIS GOD DAMN JOB AND KILLED HIS BROTHER