#ft 542

Lucy, Levy and Freed

With the last chapters, I was just... waiting... waiting for something big.

I was a bit upset after chapter 542 and the way acted Acnologia, how Lucy found the book and I don’t know... I missed something. Some hype or tragedy... or “this-little-feeling-of-excitement”.

Plus, to know that FT would end in 4 chapters, I was like “Okay, that’s dead. I will just rester sur ma faim... Anyway, I love FT so much, I will just take what Mashima gives us.”

But here ... This chapter 543 made me feel better. It gave me looooot of feelings! I am really happy of this chapter. Okay, that is “easy” but ... everything is perfect and connect each other. Regarding the whole FT story, I feel like this is the way it should end and... I love it. I love the fact Erza & Mira are working with physical attack to attract Acno. I love that Gray, Juvia et Lyon are working together to create the ship. I love the fact that Lucy reminds Happy : that is here that everything began. That is here we’ll meet Natsu again. I love the speech of Natsu. Because, for once, that’s not a nakama speech but more a real talk. I mean : don’t judge everybody. There is a lot of different people in the world and you can’t sort all of them in one category.

Some people might be disapointed because Natsu will fight Acno alone now. And Lucy is the key point for the battle with body-Acno.

But for me that sounds perfect. Everything began with Natsu & Lucy.

Everything will end with them.

Holy crap, a good chapter followed by another good chapter?! Well lets dig in...

Cover Page is FT Zero... Yeah, I got nothing to say about this.

We open up with Team Minerva not being able to hurt Acnologia. My guess is, Minerva can manipulate space, he can still detect it and eat the space.

Acnologia then fires a blast at Fairy Tail causing the other mages to wonder why he’s even bothering to still do this.

Yeah... Want to see this revelation ruined. Instinct is by definition “An innate, typically fixed pattern of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuli”. While at first I would agree with the idea that the soulless Acnologia being set off by high magic samples to destroy them is instinctual, there’s something later that will come into conflict with this.

We cut to the ravines of times, where Acnologia is thoroughly kicking the Dragon slayer’s assess.

God Damnit, don’t do this! Don’t make dragon slaying magic something you are immune to. The point of these 7 fighting Acnologia is because they have the only magic necessary to bypass Acnologia’s whole “dragon of magic” thing. The dragon slayer property is the reason why these 7 need to be the one to destroy him. I’ll get into this later at the end, but this is just setting yourself up for dissatisfaction.

We cut to Hargeon, where they’ve procured a big enough ship.

Fuck off Erza. No. Gray and Mira are right here, you’re not going to be able to knock him out of the skies and unlike Lucy, you don’t have an actual plan in place. What are you just going to “she’s Erza” it and hope for the best.

Anyway we cut to the FT library...

Because of course, of course Lucy found the book! Okay, people might wonder why I sound angry and that’s because again, there was no reason for Lucy to be here. This was her plan so she should’ve been the oversee most of it and be the leader. It would be an epic moment for Lucy, but instead she has to go find the book with Freed and Levy (who do make sense), even though she has no reason to. We’ll see that she didn’t even come to decode it, but Levy does. Again, why did Lucy have to do this when she could’ve for once played active leader to a massive group. This moment just exists to make it seem important for her and try to justify swindling Lucy out of a leadership position. It just irritates me. (Also panty shot)

Back in the space between time, Cobra is injured, but gives this moment. Which would kinda be more powerful if he had been relevant before this fight.

Back in magnolia we see crime sociere use their magic to start luring Acnologia away. And if people are curious why I sound a bit ranty, even thought I said this was a good chapter in the beginning. Well, you see this chapter has something this finally arc has lacked, character bits. In the next pages every character gets a small panel that shows them doing something while showing off an aspect of who they are. It’s not just in these pages, but in earlier ones as well, with Erza being stoic and Cobra having his declaration. This is a great way to connect with the cast given the situation, without “spotlighting” them. The only ones that do come up weak are the Dragon Slayers because of the nature of being the characters facing down the big bad, they should have had much bigger relevance this arc.

Also...

Yeah, I don’t think you’ll be able to read it well while your flying at max speed.

Back at Hargeon, everyone is readying themselves to cast fairy sphere. But then this happens...

Okay before I get into the biggest problem, lets talk about the how this is not really instinct, but now more a radar sense, because something running on detecting magic and just feeling the urge to destroy does not also equate to, knowing what weakness is. It’s not aware that there are ships, why include this? Speaking of ships destruction, this is what I was talking about earlier when saying this is setting up for dissatisfaction. By destroying the ships and making the Dragon Slaying magic useless, you are making it so that only a deus ex machina can beat him. I was so behind Lucy’s plan because while it hinged on finding this book, atleast it was using established things about the series to come up with a way to beat him. Now by giving more and more handicaps to the good guys the only way they’ll win is due to the magic of writing and not a legitimate win. There will probably be some bull crap friendship moment that suddenly makes Acnologia vulnerable even though there was no foreshadowing. That’s how you make a bad ending, by not earning it. I’ve never seen a story try to sabotage itself like this.

Post Chapter follow up: Cons first, Everything about Lucy’s strategy is messed up and now is going to have to rely on plot convenience. Speaking of Lucy, I am still mad that she did get swindled out of her badass leader moment.

The stuff with the DS is surprisingly unengaging, which is really something you shouldn’t do with the characters that were hyped up for this final fight. Really they’d should be getting more focus.

Now what makes this chapter great is the characters. All these moments of characterization work, really showing off what they can do, or at least who they are. It’s fitting for a final arc. While there are some that annoy me like Erza’s, I can’t deny that that is Erza encapsulated in a scene. This is really something great and one of the best things about visual story telling.

It’s nice to have the side characters like Sabertiooth and Crime Sorciere be the ones who do the hardest part. Showing that they do have the strength and are valuable to the plan. Also this might seem minor, but the pacing this chapter was surprisingly good.

Overall, this is the same thing as last week’s chapter, this is something that is good, but should be a lot better. The good stuff done in this chapter is without a doubt really good, but it’s weighed down by bad moments that genuinely horrible ones. A lot of the bad stuff however, is more it’s affect on the next chapters, so with that in mind...

Final Verdict: 6/10

Great characterization

Bad setup