Fairy Tail Chapter 330: Trying To Be Funny

Comments:
Wow, this weeks chapter in Fairy Tail was pretty much a disappointment. Obviously nothing much happened, though we finally were introduced to the matchups of these fights which are Laxus vs. Atlas Flame, Cobra vs. Rock Dragon, Wendy vs. Zirconis, Natsu vs. Mothergale, Sting and Rogue are fighting just some dragons.

It was in some way just a gag chapter where there was some attempts to make humor, sure the perfume guy is trying to be funny hitting the dragon with his armpit smell but it's really not what I'd expect. Zirconis I really like in a way as a character, but his magic was a little bit gag-oriented also, which I'm really not a huge fan of. We'll see what's going to happen but this weeks chapter wasn't a good one.

Recap of Fairy Tail Chapter 330: Zirconis' Magic

-Natsu is on Mothergale dragon with Future Rogue, Rogue orders the dragon to spill some of his/her? eggs to the ground spawning some small dragonspawns.

-Laxus attacks Atlas Flame and hits him hard.

-Cobra arrives to save  the guild of Blue Pegasus who were opposing the dragon with rock skin.

-Then there's Zirconis whose magic erases human clothes.

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Fairy Tail Chapter 329: The Plot Becomes Clearer

Comments:
I somewhat enjoyed Fairy Tail once again, these whole dragon shenanigans are fresh enough for me to enjoy this thoroughly.

So the plot has become pretty clear at this point: in the future the gate wasn't opened and the dragons didn't come through, but it was acnologia who started ruling the world seven years from now. Future Rogue isn't as corrupted as we thought, but still he makes for a bad guy at this point. He does want to stop Acnologia, but still he's fixated on ruling the world himself. At this point we do have seven dragon slayers versus seven dragons, now that Cobra has arrived to the scene. Maybe we'll be seeing from three to six chapter per dragon, which hopefully will be pretty interesting.

But there's a small fallback to all this. For the whole time there's been the mystery of "seven" in Fairy Tail, which I've thought as somewhat intriguing, but if the whole point of the seven was this moment, where seven dragon slayers will be fighting against seven dragons then I'm a bit disappointed. Of course the series won't be ending to defeating these seven dragons, since there's still Acnologia + Zeref left to be defeated. It's pretty interesting how the rest of the series looks a lot clearer at this point, after only one chapter. I might be wrong though.

I believe that the dragons are of course made to be defeated at this point, so that the seven dragonslayers will get their powerup, though I dunno whether Sting and Rogue will get their second one. I doubt that. This actually makes me think about how the "good dragons", who were allied with humans actually foresaw all this and raised the kids to be dragonslayer, we still don't know why they went to hiding, maybe to not to be killed by Acnologia?

Recap of Fairy Tail Chapter 329:

-Natsu is standing on top of the tower, Future Rogue orders his dragon to kill Natsu.

-Natsu tries to attack Future Rogue, but is unsuccessful, Rogue tells him to watch the town below.

-Down on the ground Fairy Tail is fighting against Atlas Flame dragon, Makarov tries to punch it's burning body, but gets burned himself.

-Meanwhile, Sabertooth guild is fighting against the dragon. Rufus remembers that both Sting and Rogue killed dragons when they were young, Sting admits that it's half true and we see that the dragon in fact told Sting to kill him.

-Rogue says that Skiadrum was ill so he just assisted him to die.

-Then the scene changes to Natsu and Future Rogue, and Future Rogue drops the bomb: in the future there wasn't dragons ruling the world, but a single dragon, Acnologia.

-Natsu then hits and drops the dragon that Future Rogue is flying on.

-The chapter ends when the seventh dragon slayer arrives, Cobra. Next chapter's title will be "Zirconis' magic".

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Fairy Tail Chapter 328: Seven Dragons

Comments:
A great chapter, we got to see a lot of dragons once again which is always pretty nice. I really liked most of things in this chapter and I'm going to tell you why:

First of all, I think it's great that they managed to shut down the gates. There was a slight disappointment about that to be honest, since I actually waited for something else from the "zodiac", than all of the twelve celestial spirits coming at the same time. I was somewhat hoping for something bigger and more impressive, but that's just me. It was just a thing that came to my head during the chapter.

The reason why it's so good that they shut down the gates is pretty simple: otherwise there would be too much dragons story wise. Hiro Mashima would either have to tune down individual dragon's strength to at least make it seem that the Fairy Tail characters have some chance, so this is a lot better way to do it. Seven if without a doubt some sort of magical number in this manga and it's also a good number for dragons against who our heroes have to fight against. There's enough variety in the dragons which I went throught in the last chapter, which is surely a good thing.

So the aim of Future Rogue came clear in one panel, which I found a bit weird. I expect that there's something else to it and surely we will see some sort of flashforward or a story told by Future Rogue how he came to be like he is.

From Fairy Tail as a series I'm hoping for a long arc this time: there's a lot for things that Mashima could do now with all the possibilities. In my mind I see that they would have to plan carefully, train and do all kind of crap to take down even one dragon. That would somewhat keep things in perspective about the dragons actual strength, but I'm not too confident that this will happen. The most likely scenario would of course be that all the guild joined together in friendship manage to take down the dragons.. Which in my opinion would be a horrible turn of events.

Then there's Natsu who seems to have done some bodybuilding in the span of getting beat up by Future Rogue and now. Natsu really did get his ass handed to him the last time they fought, so I'm really not expecting him to go against the Future Rogue + most likely immensely powerful dragon. I'd find it too weird for Natsu to suddenly powerup so much that he would take both of them down.

Recap of Fairy Tail Chapter 328: Zodiac

-The dragons are flowing through the eclipse gate

-Lucy is trying to close the gate by pulling the lever, but she doesn't have enough strength. Arcadious notices this.

-Yukino comes running to the scene and says to Lucy that they will use all twelve celestial keys to close the gates.

-Together they say "Celestial spirit of the twelve golden paths, lend us the power to seal this evil" "Open, twelve gates of the Zodiac". Then all the 12 celestial spirits come at once and try to push the door shut and finally they succeed.

-Seven of the dragons came through however. Future Rogue comes to the scene and says that seven will suffice: his motives are coming clear, he or someone he works for wants to control them.

-Future Rogue announces the era of dragons where human species shall become extinct. He then uses the secret art of domnating dragons, Dragon manipulation magic and rides away along with one of the dragons.

-He then says that one of them can stay and do as he pleases: coincidentally it's the one dragon they met at the dragon graveyeard (Dragon's grave), Zilconis.

-It seems though that another one stayed too called Atlas Flame, dragon whose body is covered in flames.

-The guild of Sabretooth are trying to take down the one who has a weird head. Blue Pegasus are attacking the one with rock/earth body. They soon realize that dragons scales are too tough.

-The chapter ends with Natsu being on top of a tower, planning to attack Future Rogue who's flying over him.

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Fairy Tail Chapter 327: Dragons Are Finally Here!

Comments:
Ok, this was somewhat expected, but I still enjoy the current events pretty much.

First: Dragons are alwasy cool and I pretty much enjoy Hiro Mashimas designs of dragons. He manages to create a lot of varity between the dragons which is a great thing to do. The entrance of the first dragon was pretty much well done and was visually impressive.

Here are the different kind of dragon designs which we got, basically all of the dragons in Fairy Tail chapter 327, except for the one dragon in the first picture. We got a rock/earth dragon (Rock/earth dragonslayer, anyone?), some unknown, but rather cool looking dragon. I'm looking forward to see more of different kinds.

Second: This turn of events hopefully represents a whole new "chapter" in Fairy Tail story: The arrival of ten thousand (It would require pretty much continuous stream of dragons for a very long time to actually make ten thousand of them go through the gates)  will pretty much be a huge threat to the existence of the people of the world. I'll be very interested in seeing which way it will go, but I believe that we will at least be introduced to some new interesting characters, including the gods of Ishval.

There are couple of things that are pretty much shrouded at this point. First is the reason why the parents of dragonslayers, Igneel, Grandine etc. Disappeared. I would like to believe it's a separate event and it has been made clear that they are not coming through the gate since they knew about Natsus and Wendys progress in this timeline and were apparently hiding somewhere in the world. However the timing of their disappearance and the date of current happenings, which is "coincidentally" 7th of July.

It's still pretty much a mystery why ie. Future Rogue wanted the gates to be opened even though he must have known that the dragons came through the gates. The whole different timeline shenanigans need some light to be shine upon them, as I really don't feel like parsing them down.

Recap of Fairy Tail Chapter 327: My Share

-Lucy is yelling for everyone to close the doors.

-She is saying that door isn't an eclipse cannon, but a door connected to 400 years ago.

-Then suddenly a tremor hits which is originating from the castle. Then we see it: A huge dragon is coming through the Eclipse gate and stars destroying city surrounding it.

-More and more dragons are coming through the gate, Lucy is trying to close the gates with nearby trigger.

-The gate is in fact a device that puts together magic from the book of Zeref (Zelef in this translation) and celestial spirit magic. The full moon tonight is corrupting the magic so it connected with 400 years ago, in time in which dragons existed.

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Fairy Tail Chapter 326: Dragons Coming Through Eclipse Gate?

Comments:
Pretty good chapter this time.
Believe it or not, but I'm a bit happy that Natsu got beaten up and not defeating Rogue with the power of friendship. Maybe it shows that Mashima hasn't gone too overboard with it. (even though he already has :). This chapter offered a couple of interesting points, which require some parsing:

First Rogues white shadow dragon mode was pretty cool, I liked the idea and design. He obviously got it by killing Sting, but somehow I would have liked that to be left in the shadows and let the readers deduce that themselves, even though it's a bit obvious. I recently watched a video where a very wise man said pretty well, that a good movie doesn't explain it's message, but rather shows it leaving the interpretation up to the watcher.

From Rogue, where he can actually become a shadow made me have some sort of an epiphany where Natsus and other Dragon Slayers where they could become the element that they represent, pretty much like Logias in One Piece.

Then we get to the good stuff which is the Eclipse Gate. I think that the dragons are in fact in another dimension and are going to come through the gate, this would explain their sudden disappearance. This is where the plot goes a little bit more complicated, but it may look a bit like this:

The first timeline: This is where the dragons appear, people are killed and Lucy escapes to the past: as she herself said, in her time she didn't close the gates.

The second timeline: It seems to me that Future Lucy and Future Rogue possibly came from different timelines + Rogue came several years later. This is where Rogue in fact wants the dragons to invade the land for one reason or another

The current timeline is where Lucy somehow senses that the dragosn are going to come through the gates and wants it to be closed. I wonder though how people are going to react to her as she said just moments earlier that she wouldn't do that.

This is pretty much how I see this plotline and it makes somewhat sense, however I recalled in the middle of writing this the moment at  where we are shown the scene of chapter 101 where Igneel and Grandine meet and talk about Wendy and most likely Natsu. This contradicts pretty much with this theory, but maybe it has some truth in it so I'll leave it like that.

Recap of Fairy Tail 326: Natsu vs. Rogue

-The day has changed to July 7th, which is the same day as when the dragons disappeared

- Eclipse Gate is about to open.

-At where Natsu and Rogue are, Rogue says that Lucy will definitely close the gate.

-Natsu activates Lightning Fire Dragon mode.

-Rogue, however actiavtes white shadow dragon mode, he is possessing the properties of both light and darkness.

-Rogue then damages Natsu with White shadow dragon rough silk. He then says that it's the power he stole by killing Sting.

-He is about to deal finishing blow to Natsu, but Ultear comes and interrupts him.

-Meanwhile, the gate is opening, but then Lucy senses something and says that they have to close the door.

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Fairy Tail Chapter 325: Eclipse Gate Is Opening

Comments:
Pretty decent chapter, a build up one but that's ok. I think that from this point things at least should be starting to shift pretty quickly and considering the set up I believe that we should be up for a ride.
This chapter actually made me doubt the future that we have been led to believe in. Future Lucy is of course dead so no more information for her, even though she didn't give much to think about anyway.

There are currently couple of mysteries present at the moment: Is the future of ten thousand dragons even true or is this all some kind of master plan of some entity? Also the whole Lucy shutting the Eclipse gate / Eclipse cannon thing seems a bit odd. Natsu said at the end of the chapter that he feels some kind of evil energy coming from Future Rogue. The whole setup of everything seems way too weird that it's pretty much impossible to make sense what's real and what is not, so like every time, only time will tell. For me it looks like the Eclipse Gate is already pretty much opened, so the "Lucy not allowing the Gate to be opened" was pretty much bogus, so this would mean that Future Rogue has some hidden reason to kill Lucy.

The last and the greatest mystery foe me is that who the hell is Yukino? I've been following every chapter of Fairy Tail weekly and I honestly don't remember anyone called Yukino so I'm pretty confused why she deserved a couple of pages in this chapter. Better check Fairy Tail wiki to be sure.

Recap of Fairy Tail Chapter 325: Union

-It's time for Natsu vs. Future Rogue, Lucy escapes from the scene.

-Meanwhile, Mirajane is yelling for Yukino, who she finds soon after.  Yukino seems to be angsting by herself and Mirajane goes to comfort her.

-Then the scene changes to the Eclipse gate and Princess Hisui is ordering her underlings to prepare the eclipse cannon for the Dragon's attack.

-Lucy, Wendy and the cats are hiding in the bushes near the eclipse gate. Arcadios orders them to show themselves.

-Lucy and her group explain the situation about Future Rogue etc. to Arcadios and Hisui.

-At the same time King of Fiore, Toma E. Fiora is explaining to Makarov the situation including about the ten thousand dragons. The king then asks for the help of the magic guilds in the upcoming battle.

-Finally the gate is opening, next chapter will be Natsu vs. Rogue.

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One Piece Parodizing Fairy Tail / Homage To Toriyama?

Eiichiro Oda parodizing Fairy Tail?
I think that based on the latest chapter I belive it's somewhat possible that Oda has decided to (more or less) subtly parodize Fairy Tail in One Piece.

Fairy Tail has just got out of a Tournament arc which didn't deliver to some the fans as they would have hoped. Even though it can't really be called a bad arc per se, this must have been a chance for Oda to make some comedy out of it since he most likely has been planning to make a tournament arc for a long time.

The most evident sign of this is of course in One Piece chapter 703 when Luffy is signing up for the tournament he almost spews out his real name but ends up using "Lucy" instead. Lucy just happens to be one of the main characters of Fairy Tail and the series just happens to be getting out of a Tournament arc. Also, there just happens to be some "fairies" who stole Zoros sword. I'm sure some people may think that this is just a coincidence, but I tend to think about Oda when he was either designing / drawing the latest chapter that he could not not have realized the connection that he was about to make. Whatever the reason these are the kind of small things which make reading good series just a little bit more enjoyable.

So why would Oda be compelled to make such minor notion? In Fairy Tail there has been a bit more evident resemblances regarding character similarities between One Piece and Fairy Tail.

First example is the resemblance of Gildarts Clive and Red-Hair Shanks, Gildarts happens to be the strongest mage of Fairy Tail and maybe one of the strongest mages in the whole series. Shanks however is considered as one of the strongest pirates in the world of One Piece and I have to say that they do look pretty much alike.

The second example is Bartholomew Kuma and Hoteye (Richard) of Oracion Seis. Both are huge and are for some reason or another holding a giant book near their chest in the same manner. They are however using different hands to hold their books so it may be too farfetched ;P.

Of course it is always possible for either of the authors to make these things unconsciously, but the most important thing is that it's not bad to do such things in my opinion. It brings a bit more to the fans who recognize this stuff and it's good as long as it's done in good manner as opposed to copying too straightforwardly.


Odas Homage to Akira Toriyama?

As a child, Oda has been influenced by Akira Toriyamas works greatly. I think that the most of the people have seen in the past couple of chapters that Luffy wearing the fake beard, sunglasses and the shirt really looks like Master Roshi from Dragon Ball. This one, I believe is almost certainly a homage to Akira Toriyama and it's very well done I might add.

Do you have any other examples? Please share it with us in the comment section - you can do it without signing up.

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Fairy Tail Chapter 324: Awesome Fight Ahead

Comments:
Pretty decent chapter, I'm pretty much satisfied with the turns of events, but not too excited to be honest.

We did get some new information in this chapter, Future Rogue explained to us about the two ways of using the Eclipse gates and that (Future) Lucy closed the gates or at least that's what he thinks happened. There's one reason why I like this 'twist' and that is that it really looks seemingly impossible for her to do such thing especially now that Rogue revealed that it's going to happen. It leaves a lot of room to speculation and I have to say that I really don't have the faintest idea what the real reason could be that the gates were closed.

I do hope that the conclusion for this isn't something too lame of an excuse for Mashima to have built up these events, but I like to stay somewhat optimistic even though Fairy Tail hasn't made really any excellent twists in the past. The most of the charm of Fairy Tail for me came from the obvious shonen qualities that the series has, but I'd hope to see more clearer character growth development. It's been a bit too shallow for a bit too long and I'm pretty much hoping to see some kind of change to that.

Regardless of that I'm interested in seeing where the story will progress from here and I'm very happy to see that the manga is in such place where so many possibilities are at hand and I can't really even hope to predict what's going to happen. It's always better to leave at least something behind curtains.

Now of course it's most likely time for Natsu vs. Future Rogue (I did actually mention in one of my previous Recaps that Rogue is one of my favorites in terms of abilities and would have hoped to see more of him: this is may be even more than what I hoped for ;), but what will happen after that will hopefully be interesting rising the series into new heights in terms of enjoyability.

Recap of Fairy Tail Chapter 324: The One That Closed The Gates

-So the Rogue from the future has appeared in front of Natsu and others.

-Hisui is about to open the gate and Jellal + his group are on their way to the castle.

-Rogue explains that there are two ways of using the Eclipse, one is to travel through time and other is to use it as a weapon (Eclipce Cannon). With the cannon they could defeat the ten thousand dragons. He also explains that seven(!) years from now the dragons will have conquered the world.

-He then says that it's Lucy Heartfilia who closes the gate and attacks her at the same time.

-Future Lucy however jumps in front of her taking the possibly fatal hit from the attacks. She says that she never closed the gates.

-Natsu punches Future Rogue strongly, he's crying and is promising to protect the future.

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Fairy Tail Chapter 323: Rogue From The Future

Comments:
Pretty good Fairy Tail chapter this week. Things are starting to make more and more sense right now. Couple of pointers:

I believe that the future Rogue is in fact having good intentions: why I've come to this conclusion is because of the moment that Rogue and Frosch had where Rogue said that he wanted to become a man who treasures his friends - after losing he felt completely invigorated. Him having malicious thoughts about the people in daimatou enbu wouldn't make at this point very much sense so I believe that the scene previously mentioned is the key in all this. You could perhaps say that he was somewhat blinded by the aiming for power -mentality in Sabertooth and has somewhat reached clarity now (which is of course the concept friendship..)

I think that in the future something bad happened (10 000 dragons attacking them?) and Future Rogue ultimately wanted to come and make things to go some other path. It's also noteworthy that Future Lucy who's from near future and Future Rogue seem to be from completely different timelines, at first I didn't even think about this, but considering how much Rogues outlook changed I think it's pretty much obvious.

Anyways I think that the Shadow Dragonslayer is ultimately one of my favorite ones, I could imagine so much amazing stuff in fights with it which would only be limited by imagination, but I feel that Hiro Mashima isn't using the possible potential of each characters set of skills. I think I've seen too much spells and skills which only change by name (he's often adding some adjectives like secret, ultimate, super etc. but the spells look basically the same). One example would be Laxus vs. Jura fight. Basically when Mashima manages to make some new stuff in the fights and reuses very little some of the stuff that we've seen already that's when I enjoy Fairy Tail the most. One example would be Laxus vs. Mistgun fight, that was pretty awesome.

Well, at this point Fairy Tail feels like decent, enjoyable series which hopefully has a lot to offer for chapters to come now that Daimatou Enbou is behind us. I do hope that Mashima would keep the future stuff to minimum if he doesn't figure out some very good way to use it - there's just too many "paradoxes" that's ultimately linked to time traveling so they too often stumble on some details which are easy to miss when making them.

Recap Of Fairy Tail Chapter 323: The Returning Shadow

-So, Fairy Tail has managed to win the Daimatou Enbu.

-There's a scene of Rogue and Frosch where Rogue says to him that he wants to become a man who treasures his friends.

-Inside the castle Natsus group is fighting against the soldies and the Garou Knights

-Suddenly a huge shadow appears and swallows all the soldiers inside it.

-Arcadious and Princess Hisui talk for a while and it is revealed that the person who Hisui met wasn't Future Lucy, but some man. Jellal coincidentally comes to the same conclusion at the same time.

-The other person from the future is revealed as Rogue.

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Fairy Tail 322: End Of Daimatou Enbu

Comments:
This week was a pretty decent chapter and after last week it felt a bit better since I didn't expect much. I'm pretty much thankful that Gray & Juvia vs. Chelia & Lyon ended pretty quickly since that battle didn't have much to offer. The Ice-molding magic has a lot of potential to be amazing sight to look at, but somehow it hasn't lived up to my expectations. Also it has come clear that being a God Slayer, which in itself sounds pretty amazing, means basically nothing in the Fairy Tail world.

Erzas armor of Nakagami was pretty cool making her able to slash through magic and make her sword invincible, the reason why she pulled the armor at this point wasn't as bad as I thought since considering her growing in power hence being able to use the armor makes a little bit sense.

The moment with the Sting + remaining Fairy Tail mages was a decent one, I liked them just looking at him while waiting for him to do something, but I did find Sting just surrendering a bit weird. Also Lecter dying was in my moment "a good" in scale of Fairy Tail since it made the Sabertooth guild look truly ruthless, but that illusion has now somewhat shattered.

It seemed to me that Hiro Mashima almost wanted to end the Daimatou Enbu very quickly and I'm somewhat relieved that it has ended. It did manage to amuse me and in that way it wasn't very bad, but it truly had potential to be ten times more amazing than it was. But it is as it is and I hope that Hiro Mashima will exceed himself in the coming arc, especially if the Dragons happen to attack the place.

Recap of Fairy Tail Chapter 322: Gloria

-Daimatou Enbu is reacing its end

-Gray and Juvia are going all out using teamwork, Chelia gets distracted by them. Gray and Juvia win with Water Nebula + Ice Geyser

-Meanwhile Erza has released her 'second origin' and is fighting against Minerva

-Minerva attacks Erza with her magic, but Erza slashes the magic itself. We get an explanation that because of huge amount of magic the armor of Nakagami consumes, for 10 years no one has been able to wear it.

-The wearer of armor of Nakagami is able to break the rules of magic and their sword is invincible.

-Erza beats Minerva with Nakagami-Starlight

-Sting is the last one remaining apart from Fairy Tail mages. All of them get together at where Sting is and they are about to fight.

-Sting is about to attack them (for the sake of Lecter), but everyone from Fairy Tail are just watching him and then finally he just can't.

-Then Millianna approaches them holding Lecter, he wasn't dead after all.

-In the castle Arcadios is yelling for the princess, the princess is making a remark of the prediction coming true. The prediction seemes to be "All of the Fairy Tail members undefeated and Sting surrendering"

-They talk about taking Eclipse 2, eclipse cannon to the surface.

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Fairy Tail Chapter 321: All Time Low

Comments:
I many times thought that I wouldn't make recap of this chapter since it sucked so much. I've been a bit disappointed lately with Fairy Tails plot development, meaning that every possible enemy is defeatable with powerful feelings and 'friendship'. Those cliches used very sparingly they would make a good impact to the reader, but Hiro Mashima is honestly spewing it very needlessly around. Couple of things that I didn't like about this chapter

-Mavis speaking her pretentious crap, I understand what Mashima was aiming with it, but it didn't really work for me - it lacked depth and was too forced.

-Laxus thinking what Natsu would say "I'm getting fired up", that moment also felt very forced and it somewhat changed the image that I had of Laxus - to the worse. Even though Laxus' obsession for getting rid of weaker Fairy Tail members was a bit weird in my opinion, he was the only character that didn't really beat anyone up with the power of friendship, but with the power of awesomeness.

-Laxus beating Jura: this was absolutely the worst thing in this chapter. Jura was very highly hyped to us as being the strongest human alive and Laxus managed to beat him in one chapter. This makes me wonder that was this victory only to satisfy fans with the sight of their favorite character winning over one of the most powerful mages in the series? It will be interesting to see how and what he will plan to make after this, since one of the things that in my opinion makes some of the battle shonen good is the unclear power hierarchy that the reader has in back of his mind making them speculate of what's about to come.

-Erza getting up and "releasing second origin" and exquipping "Armor of Nakagami" (Mashima should have named it "armor of nakama" to at least parodize himself), what is this? I feel like I've seen this same thing about a hundred times in Fairy Tail alone and no, it doesn't get better each time. The whole thing of her leg getting crushed was to make the fight with Minerva a serious challenge, but Mashima decided to fix that with a spell that we haven't seen, which mysteriously healed the injury (or at least makes her ignore it, or maybe she ignored it anyways) and apparently gave some (much?) power to her. I believe that this spell has a backlash of reducing Erzas lifespan or something, but I think that this solution was somewhat a lazy one plotwise. Also "my anger is my guild's angers" seriously dude?

 (half a star because Laxus vs. Jura fight actually looked pretty good)

Recap of Fairy Tail Chapter 321: Laxus vs. Jura

-Laxus had just hit Jura with an uppercut. Jura counters with raising earth pillars from the gound.

-Laxus attacks with Lightning dragon's heavenward halberd, which gets blocked by Juras Talus.

-The fight continues and they fight in melee for a while. Laxus hit with seemingly powerful lightning attack, which makes Jura say that he's astonished.

-Erza vs. Minerva is continuing. Minerva says that his War God magic allows her to manipulate anything within her field of vision. "Territorial Magic", she says.

-Erza however has seen thorough it and manages to damage Minerva slightly.

-Erza releases her second origin which makes her a bit buffed up. She exquipped in to Tengami's armor, which is a new one.

-Grey and Juvia are saying to each other that they'll defeat their enemies with their teamwork.

-Laxus uses Dragon Slayer secret technique: roaring thunder defeating Jura of the Ten Wizard Saints.

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Fairy Tail Chapter 320: Jura vs. Laxus

Comments:
Pretty good chapter this week: the Daimatou Enbu is reaching its climax and I have to say that it's about time. I admit that it has been pretty enjoyable since we've got to see some very interesting fights, couple of good new characters and couple of decent plot developments.

In this chapter Orga the Lightning God Slayer getting downed instantly was a bit anticlimax, but it's good nonetheless: he going down really served a greater purpose. Laxus vs. Jura will be so much more interesting that seeing a Lightning God Slayer, since it most likely doesn't vary much from Laxus' skills except that it's colored differently.

Jura being the strongest human wizard alive really makes me wonder whether Laxus should even win this fight: it would be a little bit weird considering that then he would be considered as the strongest. There has been a lot of talk lately how Hiro Mashima solves every fight with the power of friendship, love and feelings: then he actually confirms it in the last page of this chapter "skills don't matter, but the feelings you put in your fists", what a load of crap in my opinion. I still think that Fairy Tail is some good entertainment, but that kind of stuff is a bit too hard for me to swallow and enjoy.

Aand finally we get some subtle hype about the "Four Gods of Ishval", who aren't even human. That is seriously interesting since we haven't really seen much creatures except Exceeds who could be considered as intelligent beings.

Recap of Fairy Tail 320: Violent Thunder

-The Daimatou Enbu is reaching its climax.

-Minerva is bashing Erza around saying that it will be Titanias public execution

-Gray & Juvia vs. Lyon & Chelia is going on at the other place, they are attacking each others using Shotgun, Tenshin Dance and Mizuchi

-Meanwhile Jura vs. Orga vs. Laxus is about to begin.

-Orga begins with Charged Particle Cannon Of the God of Thunder attacking Jura.

-Jura however punches Orga in the face making him unconscious.

-Some old granny mentions Jura ranking 5th among the Ten Wizard Saints. The four others, the four Gods of Ishval aren't even human, so Jura is the strongest human wizard.

-Jura vs. Laxus begins

-At the beginning Laxus charges, gets hit by Jura and goes down.

-Laxus however counters with an uppercut punching Jura in the jaw. Chapter ends.

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Fairy Tail 319: Short But an Incredible Battle

Comments:

It's great how Hiro Mashima has actually realized how much value it brings to the reader not to drag fights from too long. This was a prime example how you can make a fight so aesthetically pleasing and quick so that it satisfies the reader as well as makes the story go further on with a good pace.

The battle between Gajeel and Rogue was awesome. The whole Shadow Dragon consept worked very well and was very cool to read of. I'd certainly like to read more of it, but unfortunately if Rogue doesn't join Fairy Tail (how awesome would that be? They'd receive an exceed at the same time) it may be that we won't be seeing much Shadow dragonslayer stuff in the future.What trivials me a bit is what the whole Shadow entity was all about that escaped Rogue's body after the fight, even Mavis made a remark of some evil magic that she didn't know of. I think that it could possibly be something that links to Zeref and his evil shenanigans.

It also seems that Colonel Arcadios is taking action: as I previously predicted, Future Lucy doesn't necessarily have evil intentions and this chapter further confirms my prediction. It's more plausible for the Princess to be having evil intentions.

Recap of Fairy Tail chapter 319: The White Knight

-Gajeel has transformed in Iron Shadow Dragon.

-Gajeel becomes a shadow disappearing in front of Rogue and attacking him behind with Iron pillar.

-Rogue also transforms into a shadow and they both roam as shadows.

-Gajeel grabs Rogue while being a shadow, pulls him out of it and attacks strongly.

-Gajeel then attacks Rogue with powerful Iron Shadow Dragon's Roar which is massive and hits spot on.

-Gajeel defeats Rogue and Fairy Tail receives one point. The shadow that was possessing Rogue escapes.

-Inside the castle Natsu decimates soldiers with Fire Dragon's Wing Attack followed by Loki's Regulus Impact. Wendy is joining the battle with Sky Dragon's Roar.

-Colonel Arcadios puts on the battle armor of the White Lily and goes after princess. He has deduced that the one who is lying is the princess.

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Fairy Tail ep 168: Laxus vs. Raven Tail

Comments:

Fairy Tail 168 was a good episode. Millianna vs. Semas was sort of a filler battle, Eve vs. Rufus battle was interesting one to watch, however the final bomb came with Laxus vs. "Alexei". I had already forgotten about this whole "Lumen Historie" case in Fairy Tail, so it was a surprise even to me as I've read the manga. Next episode which is titled as Wendy vs. Cherie will be interesting as we will have conclusion to the Laxus vs. Raven Tail battle as well.

It indeed was a clever twist to make others see just a illusion of Laxus and 'Alexei' fighting.

Recap of Fairy Tail episode 168: Laxus vs. Alexei

Third day of the Grand Magic Games: 

-Raven Tail is holding the first place currently, Lamia Scale second, Sabertooth third, Mermaid Heel fourth place with the Fairy tail A team, Sixth place goes to the Fairy Tail B team. Blue Pegasus and Quatro Puppy are 7th and 8th.

 -First match of this episode is Millianna of Mermaid heel vs. Semas of Quatro Puppy.

-Semas uses Wild Spin and starts spinning around with his huge Body, Millianna counters with Cat Binding Tube, but it doesn't have effect.

-Millianna uses Cat Blast which actually strenghtens Semas.

-She uses Cat Binding Tube once again but this time he manages to stop Semas and beats him, Millianna wins the first battle of this episode.

-Second match of this episode is Rufus Lohr of Sabertooth versus Eve Tilm of Blue Pegasus.

-Eve starts the battle with Snow magic: White Fury, which doesn't hit.

-Rufus confuses Eve and hits him to the back. After that Rufus attacks Eves snow clone with magic.

-It is revealed that Eve belonged to the Council before.

-Eve attacks Rufus with White Blizzard.

-Rufus counters with Memory Make, ancient spell (magic) which gives form to memories. He uses Rage of the Burning Earth which hits Eve hard. Rufus of Sabertooth wins the second match of this episode.

-Third fight begins, Laxus Dreyar of Fairy Tail B vs. Alexei of Raven Tail.

-"Officials" of the event as well as Fairy Tail is keeping an eye for the Raven Tail.

-Alexei attacks Laxus instantly with physical attacks. It looks like Laxus is getting his ass kicked.

-However, it's all an illusion, hallucination magic so that everyone else can't see or hear their true bodies.

-All of the Raven Tails elite appear begind Alexei and Alexei takes off his mask and turns out to be Ivan, Laxus' father.

-Ivan wants to know the location of Lumen Histoire.

-Laxus vs. Raven Tail battle is about to begin.

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Fairy Tail 318: Gajeel The Iron Shadow Dragon Slayer

Comments

Read Fairy Tail chapter 319 Comments and Recap here

 It was a good chapter. The shadow lending power and in the end overtaking Raios completely was an interesting plot development.

I think that Jellal, Ultear and Meredy recognized some residue flowing from Shadow as Zeref's power or something like that. There can only be good guesses what the entity inside Rogue is, but I think that it could be linked to him killing his own Dragon teacher Skiadrum (or it could be some kind of residue of late Skiadrum) or to the Lacrima implanted to his body.

Also it's great to see that Gajeel is surpassing himself once again by changing himself into an Iron shadow dragon. In a way he is still walking behind Natsu's step in developing himself as a Dragon slayer, since Natsu did the same thing with Lightning and going into Lightning Flame Dragon mode.

Recap of Fairy Tail 318: Gajeel vs. Rogue

Future Lucy is leading Natsu's group through the basement. The Royal Army however finds them and runs towards to capture Natsu and others. Arcadios and Yukino had vanished before, going their own way.

Natsu and  Loke are going to take care of the Royal Army with their magic. Carla feels anxious for some reason.
Future Lucy lying or being fake obviously creates anxiety in Carla.

At the same time inside Rogue there is his Shadow awakening.  The shadow is saying that it lends Rogue some of his power, Gajeel gets hit strongly by him them.

Rogue's appearance changes and he introduces himself as the shadow that controls destiny.

Gajeel uses Sword of the Iron Dragon and Shadow dissolves attacking Gajeel with Shadow Dragons flash of the waxwing. Frosch doesn't recognize Rogue, or rather Shadow.

Shadow then blends into Gajeel's shadow and attacks him with Shadow dragon's slash. Mavis is making a remark of never seeing evil magic as such.

At the outskirts of the town Jellal, Ultear and Meredy (I think) are sensing the magic arising from Shadow and saying that there's no mistaking it..!
I think that it's possible that they recognize Zeref's magic in Rogue or something similar.

After a while Shadow Rogue is holding Gajeel from his neck and is about to annihilate him.

Then Gajeel starts "eating" the shadow inside and says to the shadow to get out of Rogue's body.. and that Rogues name is actually Raios.

We are then shown that Gajeel has transformed into an Iron Shadow dragon.

Will be continued in chapter 319: The White Knight.

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Fairy Tail 317: Future Lucy is lying?

Recap and Comments of Fairy Tail Chapter 317: Lucy and Natsu

Future Lucy has finally told to Natsu and his group that a herd of 10000 dragons is approaching. Naturally they freak out a little bit.

Carla had a flashback concerning sorrow just before Daimatou Enbu and now she understands what that is about. She then asks Future Lucy what happened to them and she implies that Natsu and everyone dies.

Future Lucy begins telling about the eclipse, how she somehow managed to open the gate and that she accidentally managed to come to the past on the 4th July of X793, which was few days ago.

She wants to meet Jellal and the others, since she told him everything and that Jellal should be thinking of a strategy.

We get Archadios' flashback of princess saying that there's another way to use eclipse: Eclipse 2. Princess says to him that the magic has reached about the same power as etherion, which is the powerful weapon possessed by Magic Council.

Archadious knows that Future Lucy told the princess about Eclipse 2 and that she lied about her coming on the 4th.
What reason does he have lying to Natsu and others? I believe that as she knows what will happen she doesn't have any bad intentions. I believe that her lying is her thinking that if she'd told the truth it would make a unwanted reaction especially in Natsu. So in the end this is a trick used by Hiro Mashima since now readers get a feeling that there's something evil about Lucy at this point but the solution to this may be just what I speculated.

 Natsu comforts her thanking her for protecting their future and they will definitely change it.

Somewhere outside the city Ultear, Jellal and Meredy are talking, they speculate whether what Future Lucy said is true. Jellal come to conclusion that either what Lucy says is false or Lucy herself is a fake.
This is a powerful way to create doubt in the readers, but I stand behind my theory ;). 

Meanwhile at Daimatou Enbu Gajeel has overpowered Rogue who's panting on the ground. Rogue starts telling him how he admired Gajeel in Phantom Lord and that he knows how Gajeel joined Fairy Tail because of their friendship. Sabertooth doesn't have that consept, they were more like a army in which orders are absolute. Gajeel "comforts" Rogue by saying that at least Frosch (exceed) is his friend, and he's right.

Suddenly Rogue hears a voice which is saying that the enemy is still in front of him. It's saying that Rogue should kill Gajeel. He's seeking for the source of the voice and realizes that it's his shadow which is speaking, that is to say it's his Shadow dragon's power. It's saying that it will lend him power to kill Gajeel.

It was a good chapter, the doubt with the Future Lucy lying is a good twist to the plot, which I earlier speculated may just be a diversion created by Mashima. We still don't know the reason why she is lying but I think that if Future Lucy herself isn't fake then I think she has good intentions for lying.

At the end it was a interesting consept of Rogues shadow dragon power coming "alive" and speaking to him like to a paranoid schizophrenic. Of course this means that Rogue will have serious powerup due to his shadow lending him power, but at what cost? In chapter 318 we see Gajeel versus Rogue, which will be a interesting battle to see. Of course we still have Laxus vs. Orga vs. Jura, Erza vs. Minerva etc. Which I'll be eagerly waiting.

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Fairy Tail 316: Herd of Ten Thousand Dragons

Recap of Fairy Tail 316: The Future Runs Toward Despair
By Hiro Mashima

Last day of Daimatou Enbu
Saber Tooth is leading with 54 points
Fairy Tail second with 50 points
Lamia Scale third with 49 points
Mermaid Heel 43 points, but they have basically lost already.

The story continues with Erza, Millia, Minerva and Kagura. Minerva finally frees Millia, gets the points from her and Erza goes to her see how she's doing. She sees that Minerva had tortured her by slashing her back. Erza gets furious from this.

Scene changes to Gajeel and Sting, they clash some and Sting makes a remark that Gajeel is not as strong as Natsu: Gajeel doesn't like that remark.

Finally we get to see some more Laxus and Orga who aren't even clashing yet, but someone arrives at the scene. Jura of the ten saints comes and now things are looking very interesting with this matchup Laxus vs. Orga vs. Jura.

Juvia and Chelia are having a cat fight, but then Gray and Lyon arrive to the scene at the same time. It will once again be Ice vs. Ice battle.

In the castle, Natsu and his group are lost while trying to escape, they talk a little bit nonsense until Future Lucy wakes up. She tells them that se remembers them escaping and then getting captured again by the Royal Army. That doesn't seem like reasonable prediction, since they could beat up anyone opposing them. She explains that while escaping eclipse happens at the bad time and they are unable to use magic, hence getting captured. Future Lucy says that she came to change the worst future.

The princess is going through her head about the prediction that Future Lucy gave her: that despair is awaiting them as a herd of over 10 000 dragons are about to attack their country.

The Princess will make her decision based on the prediction Future Lucy left her about Daimatou Enbu, and the chapter ends there.

Will be continued in Chapter 317 "Frog".

Comments and Highlights

What a great chapter. Even if we didn't have much action this time, there was huge buildups towards the chapters to come. Couple of points:

Why are the dragons attacking the country?

Of course at this point we cannot say anything but speculation about why such thing is happening. It is obviously linked to the dragons disappearing in 7th July of x777. I think that the disappearance is linked to someone higher up that ordered the dragons to withdraw and now come back to destroy humanity. It also obviously links to the previous war between men and dragons. I wouldn't be surprised that some kind of the appearance of Acnologia is the reason for this to happen.

What is the prediction of Daimatou Enbu?
 
 We have three possible results that can happen: Either Saber Tooth wins, Fairy Tail wins of Lamia Scale wins. Prediction of Saber Tooth winning in my opinion is really not a prediction at all, but sure it's possible. I'd like to focus on Fairy Tail and Lamia Scale at this point, since that would be more believable since the princess is actually doubting the outcome. Fairy Tail winning would of course be suitable thinking the general flow of the story, but Lamia Scale winning would be one heck of  a surprise element even though they got very strong people fighting. I think that it could go either FT or LS way.

The other possible prediction may not even be about who's going to win, but even more detailed analysis of what's going to happen: if someone does (or did in the future) something so unpredictable that Lucy could prove her point in this way then I think this is a very convincing way for her to do that since I think that the fights between these three could go basically in any way.

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