Hey, this’ll be my review of chapter 512 of Fairy Tail titled Sting the White Shadow Dragon.

We start off without a cover page and jump into the fight we left off with between Sting and Larcade.

I’m surprised that if Natsu is your concern, why aren’t you going after him Larcade? So Sting powered up is charging in while Larcade tries to send out his RIP sleep magic at Sting.

But Sting is using his own power to stop RIP while using Rogue’s power to attack Larcade. Don’t see why it’s specifically Rogue’s powers that’ll do the damage. We saw last chapter that Sting’s white magic was hurting Larcade.

Also this is a tiny tangent. I’ve heard people complain about how this stuff isn’t light but rather white talismans. Well that’s because Sting doesn’t eat light, he eats white. As established in the Fairy tail world there is a thing known as white magic, things that are holy. Sting is the white dragon slayer and Rogue is the shadow dragon slayer. That is a very cool thing with Shadows being an absence of light while white is an absence of color. As be have seen when Sting first appeared he ate an arrow that was WHITE. If Sting could eat light itself he would just be eating to sun’s rays. The reason I bring this up is because some don’t remember or assume Sting is light. I’m sure if your reading this and know this, i’m just wasting your time but it’s been a problem I wanted to address.

Well Larcade is producing a massive amount of talismans which seems to be to much for the others. Hey umm... if sleep is your ultimate desire why didn’t you lead off with this instead of the orgasm wave. Once again I’ll say maybe this attack doesn’t have as much range as the pleasure wave.

While Sting is fighting off the urge to sleep, Larcade monologues (again) this time about how thanks to manipulating desire he is the only one capable of fighting off Acnologia. Yeah, don’t you remember in chapter 494 where he said he was zeref’s “secret weapon”. I guess this could work but I assumed the key to beating Acnologia was with a dragon slayer. Maybe Zeref lost faith in the 5 kids and went with Larcade as a back up option.

Okay this will be my greatest issue with this part of the fight, the shadows heighten senses. Why would Mashima include something so dumb and only working in a metaphorical sense, when he could easily say “Enter the shadow’s you’ll be out of range of Larcade’s attack”. That would be simpler and not have this dumb abstract concept thrown into it.

Well he’s having trouble going into the shadow. Wow Sting, it is sad that when Gajeel got the same shadow power up like you he was able to learn it faster than you.

Well with Kagura’s assistance Sting is able to enter the shadow realm (insert yugioh 4kids joke here)

Using this power Sting gets the drop on Larcade and gives him white shadow dragon’s rough silk.

Okay I hold on this panel not just cause it’s the final blow but the art on this panel is very un-Mashima. With all the lines and shading, this seems power like something I’d see out of Jojo’s bizarre adventure. (And not saying that just cause of Sting’s pose) This isn’t bad art or anything just not something I’d she Hiro draw.

So Larcade is beat. Now this comes down to a big question, a spriggan was beat was it good and satisfying. Well I think any fight can be good if executed well. But with Larcade’s dumb magic and a lot of clunky action in the last chapter, I can’t say this was a good fight. But as for satisfying, well his fight gave us Spriggan who could actually do damage to multiple opponents as well as he took a lot of effort to put down. As well he was defeated by letting side character’s shine. something this arc should’ve been using in fights, one FT member fighting a spriggan is pretty dumb because often they have to pull something out off their ass or make the spriggan look incompetent (excluding fights like Gajeel vs Bradman and Laxus vs Wahl). But an FT member plus a member from another guild is good writing. You can have your FT member look cool but instead of the spriggan being turned into a joke, have a member from another guild assist. This allows for many things, an interesting fight, a side character getting a shining moment, and an idea that this is war that effects everybody not just FT. This fight was won ultimately by team work something that a series all about friendship should be using more of. So was this fight satisfying. Yes.

However, some issues are this possible defeat means August was wrong about the whole “only his mother could stop him” and ruins the plot thread of Natsu and Mavis meeting this man.

So we return to Natsu’s heart. Where for some reason Rogue is the manifestation of his subconscious.

And now the origin of Natsu’s scarf. I really like this, I like when something that’s been a part of a character plays into a larger tapestry. I loved it when Oda did it for Luffy’s Straw hat and I loved it for the reason why Ichigo’s hollow is white. This also clears up why Igneel a titan sized dragon has a huan sized scarf. I also like this us of Anna. Thank god she is not a completely pointless character, as well as this being more affirmation that Zeref and possibly the dragneel families are close.

And know time for the worst scene in the entire chapter.

Now before I say anything. This has NOTHING TO DO WITH NALU! okay my issues with this moment has nothing nothing to do with a ship. I myself am impartial to Nalu, If you love Nalu great, if you don’t more power to you. But this scene is bad not because of anything to do with ship preferences, I wanted to make that abundantly clear.

BULLSHIT!! This is down right the stupidest thing I’ve read in awhile. Porlyusica is forsaking her own credibility as competent character with that line. Body heat an emotions, what kind of magical healer are you. Now first off, Yes, the taking off your clothing, so not to interfere with heat transfer, and sharing body heat is a way of warming a person’s body but this way is finite. It will warm the body fast but not for long and to the point of keeping someone alive, it’s better to either make a fire, which they can’t with no supplies but, in that case start layering the body. I mean look around, you have enough clothing for that. Only way this would work is if everyone there, including Lucy, took off their clothing and warmed natsu. Second, Porlyusica you’re a doctor (healing expert) shouldn’t you be the one taking off your clothes and doing this rather than asking a bystander who has no experience with healing in any fashion to do this. Third, before someone can say this is a world of magic and science doesn’t apply. Well I’d retort that, yes, in a world of magic I can believe in things that are medically inaccurate: like forces that can heal you instantly or transferring your blood into someone without knowing their blood type and the receiver living, to people being frozen completely and not dying of body temperature dropping. But, this issue with natsu, his “tumor”, and possible death is trying to use medical drama to make it seem more threatening. Even using ways that’ll medically stop it, like making it so small it’s benign. But saying warmth and feelings will save him is poor writing, you can’t have both in a situation you can’t have a magical issue while trying to solve it with a real and made up solution when your trying to go for a logical medical issue.

Now on the actual topic of ships, people are blaming this on Nalu, which I disagree with. This is just bad writing by Hiro and he was going to pull something like this eventually. This is not Nalu’s fault. Just imagine for a minute if someone other than Lucy, like Brandish or Evergreen, was asked to do this. It’ll still be stupid but people will be blaming it more on actual problems rather than the ship. Was this related to pandering, maybe, but it’s not nalu’s fault for being caught in this stupidity.

And then there’s Happy and... I really like this scene. I’m not kidding I really dig that in this arc a humor character is being used in a way to add to the weight of the drama as Natsu’s closest friend. He doesn’t want his friend to die and only he knows how he’ll die, it’s a really great way of humanizing  happy. Anyway yeah in his hysteria Happy reveals that beating Zeref will kill Natsu.

The chapter ends with Gray awakening.

So post chapter follow up. This was an odd chapter. The fight while satisfying did highlight some desired aspects that this arc could’ve achieve. There also is an issue of a possible story thread being cut off before all it’s potential could be achieved. There some good scenes that really help this chapter such as the scarf backstory and Happy’s pleas. The issue with this chapter is that one scene. It is just an atom bomb of bad writing. This isn’t near “she’s Erza” level of bad writing but it’s close, and really ruined a lot of enjoyment I may have gotten. Gray at the end will probably reveal that Natsu’s END and then we’ll most likely cut to the Irene vs Wendy fight (oh joy)

Final Verdict is 5/10

Some scenes are very well done

The fight ended in a satisfying but not really good

That single scene of stupid was probably the strongest reason for this chapter not getting higher than a 5