#end notes rambles

Oh hey wait. That looks kind of like the cloak he wears in the Celestial Spirit world. A bit different, but same idea. Gray should wear cloaks more often. He usually only wears winter jackets.

Honestly these Celestial spirit clothes were cool, especially the male versions. There’s a decent variety of designs that aren’t just palette swaps, and that's fun. I miss when Mashima allowed himself to experiment with clothes that are cute without emphasizing hourglass figures, like the green dress Levy’s wearing. 

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? 

Okay but I geniunely love Mash as a character for how fun his personality is.

Can you believe this dumbass is teasing Gajeel through a jailcell? And he didn’t escape after the council was massacred because his time wasn’t up yet? Like I love him. Please. I love him. He is so blorbo shaped. 

This makes me very happy to read. 

That is one hell of a cool outfit, though. 

This is a weird jump (don’t worry I’m not skipping anything I just wanted to show this Lisanna card) but, hey, I found this card and felt the sudden urge to ramble.

The fact that Lisanna very explicitly dislikes studying gives a reason for 1. why she isn’t shown to be Levy’s best friend, for example. They seem like the two cute girls of the guild, but they rarely interact. So they have a very basic personality difference that set them apart. Which means Levy was probably super ecstatic to befriend Lucy because other than Laki, Lucy was probably the first to be as much into books as her. 

I believe this isn’t as prominent in the anime, so I’ll be raving about this right now-- the design differences in these three suits are so subtle but actually they’re really??? good??? Very subtle differences that make them three different people in a team, completely distinguished and not palette swaps or copy pastes of each other. 

Hibiki, of course, looks very similar to Loke. He’s the most basic one, he wears his suit neat and normally. The stripes on his pants and wrist cuffs make him look taller, even though Ren’s technically taller I think. He’s designed to look like the ‘template bishounen’ of the trio, and he looks just like one. 

Ren’s suit is actually the plainest, because all his design focus goes to his cheetah prints. Also that is a tan, he is not black. But I am ignoring that. 

Eve actually has the Magic Council cross on him to represent his roots. And he’s the only one wearing white shoes, like a boy in school. 

Natsu's slightly awkward first attempt at the one-sleeve thing.