Fairy Tail is TRASH... NOT! (And here’s a retrospective)

fairytale is beyond awful i have been a long time hater of fairy tale for a while and i have my reasons for it fairy tale is actually good anime boy it is my contention folks that fairy tale is the absolute worst most popular series in the world to start this video i want to say something i love fairy tale i don't love it ironically i don't love it and say it's trash i don't love it just because of the hot girls no i love fairy tale and think it's a really good maybe even great anime despite its downsides okay are the people who would have disliked this video no matter what i say gone yep yeah all right so to begin if you haven't watched or heard a fairy tale you're either living under a rock or you don't watch anime i would say if you haven't watched it to do so to know everything before i basically spoil the entire show and meticulously talk about every aspect in detail i like in every arc but well there's 328 episodes of the show i'm making this video mostly for people who already know about the show and or have watched it so if you mind every spoiler possible about the show being ruined for you then click off if you've either watched the show or don't mind that well welcome to this retrospective i normally wouldn't put this kind of message here but i know there's going to be those people who shout no spoiler warning really and i didn't want that otherwise enjoy the video and hopefully don't crucify me for my controversial takes now i know how much of a controversial opinion it is to love fairy tale let alone like it among anime it's just one of those shows you're constantly told is trash and not worth watching look up fairy tale reviews other than anime america and next taku almost every video talking about fairy tale is some kind of rant about how terrible it is i'd compare the level of hatred for fairy tale and anime to be on a similar scale to little boys in the 2010s with justin bieber or frozen they didn't know why they were supposed to hate these things it was just a simple matter of you're supposed to hate it and if you don't something is wrong with you even with such a standard in the general anime community fairy tale retains a large fanbase of people who tend to not speak up about the series they like from fear of being ostracized for having quote unquote bad taste most people who like fairy tale and want to defend something brought up in conversation about it always have to preface a statement with yeah i know fairy tale is trash but and they would go on to bring up a positive plenty of people also have fairy tale be one of the first anime they ever watch so critics like to point to this and say the only reason several people like the series is because of nostalgia bias back when they barely had taste i tell you being a fairy tale fan isn't easy i'm not saying that because it's hard to like with all its flaws but rather it's hard to be a fan of it when everyone else is always saying how garbage it is i've heard it called a poor man's attempted one piece garbage trash bleach piece and many other insults before i made this video i hadn't watched fairy tale in over a year and had only seen up to right after magic games ended plus i'd heard spoilers about the ending being really bad in that time i watched many of the reviews against fairy tale and as my memory dulled about it i started to believe that they were all right and fairy tale was just a garbage show i happen to like because it was when my taste was still developing that's when i saw part of a video made by next taku i didn't watch the entire thing at first because of spoilers but the bit i did see gave me enough of a want to try and give the series another chance i watched the rest of that video after i finished my binge and i'll be mentioning it multiple times because it was really good i had so much to talk about for this video i decided the only way for me to get all my thoughts out would be to cover every single arc yes that includes the filler arcs which fairy tale had surprisingly few of other than the daphne arc that one sucks [ __ ] and can go die in a hole for all i care i guess the best way to start this retrospective review slash many other things would just be to get started it all begins with our introduction to lucy the celestial spirit mage looking to join fairy tale she meets a character named natsu the salamander who is a dragon slaying wizard and happy a blue cat by accident without knowing who they are she almost gets kidnapped and with their help beats her attempted captors then they run off to get lucy into fairy tale from our first introduction to the fairy tale guild hall in episode 2 the atmosphere is laid out perfectly natsu comes in storming ready to punch someone gray and natsu fight often and he's known to take off his clothes elfman preaches about manhood khanna drinks like a group of sailors loki womanizes it's all so much to take in but right away you can tell it feels like a real home for all the weirdos living there they might be the weirdest most eccentric people out there but they feel at home and aren't afraid to show their true selves to their guild mates mira jane is seen as the most normal among them and she's getting thrown around just as much without a care in the world because this is so normal and she genuinely enjoys it of course for when the guild gets too rambunctious there's the guild master makarov even really early on we get to know about his character he breaks up fights among his basically surrogate children he raised but he understands why they do what they do because he's a [ __ ] loony guy himself the entire guild works so well together because everyone feels at home and like a family the bond is shown further when natsu helps romeo get his dad macau from the mountains when he goes missing because just like romeo natsu and the other members of fairy tale have all felt lost in some way and don't want that burden on other members it's a home for the outcasts from society who have nowhere other place to go and can just act like the people that they truly are without being judged after that event we get to meet urza the older sister type character to not sue and grey she's seriously feared by the other members for being so strict and constantly splitting up gray and natsu's fights but she still shows compassion for them in her own awkward way other than her there are the other strongest members loxus and mistigan just like it's the norm for characters to act the way they do in the guild when mistaking shows up to get his jobs he puts everyone to sleep so they don't bother him adding really well to the mystery of his character loxes is mostly just a passive figure in these first few arcs but he's mostly just a jerk around this time is when we get to the first character focused plot one of my favorite aspects of fairy tale is that it allows several of the characters either seemingly big or seemingly small to get major plot points in the series rather than having one be-all end-all protagonist that gets all the backstory and character moments the reason behind this is simple and i think nux put it the best that the guild itself is the main protagonist of the series we don't have just one guild member we follow throughout the series among the large cast natsu is a prominent figure but he actually doesn't have too many moments before tartarus where he's more the sole focus of the series his main character goal is to find igneal and while eventually we do get some time devoted to this as he meets more dragon slayers and slowly moves the plot along with him in all that in between we get to see the journeys of so many other members in the guild as a character one of nazi's other main goals is to protect the ones he loves and help them with their own issues and those friends all reside within fairy tale the main protagonist all the characters come from are connected by protect together and hopefully return to as a safe haven for them again referencing nux on a meta level you feel like a member of the guild yourself fairy tale is an open place where weird people with the right ideas can all congregate and hang out you don't even necessarily need to be a wizard just a do-gooder who has the ideals of fairy tale it's a cozy resting place everyone likes to be around when they aren't off on their own adventures in real life that could just mean going through your day-to-day as the weird person you might see yourself as and coming home to feel welcomed while watching fairy tale all the members have their own quirks so they can express freely in the guild just like you would like to do in your own spot for hanging out with friends and by extension you feel a deeper connection to all these characters you see as guild mates when they go through trials with other members at their side the creator hiromashima always said fairy tale was based on his experience drinking out with friends at a pub and you feel that kind of earnest energy with fairy tale getting to the first character arc gray and his backstory are the first really explored up till this arc gray has just been the weird rival to natsu who takes off his clothes for no reason but in fairy tale even some of the smallest traits can be made from tragic pasts gray was once a regular kid whose village got attacked by deleora a demon from the book of the dark wizard xerath while his family didn't survive gray was saved by a passing icemage and her pupil named ur and leon during his time with orr all grey could think about was learning magic for revenge or specialty being icemake magic to access this type of magic one has to start by stripping down in the snow to become one with the cold as their training continued the three became more like a small family of their own until gray learned where delior was going next and attempted to intercept it in the end there was very little he could do and orr had to step in to take it down she tells gray and leon to leave because of how powerful it is but leon isn't ready to accept that ohr might not win you see his entire reason for studying under her was because he thought she was the strongest wizard possible and he strived to try and surpass her seeing this possible loss as a betrayal in that moment of blind rage he tries to use the forbidden spell ice shell without knowing the side effects of its use war knocks him out and tells grey to tell leon that she died rather than her using ice shell herself what ice shell does is it encases your foe in a powerful almost unbreakable ice but the cost is the caster's own body becomes that ice she doesn't want leon to know since he'd spend his entire life trying to turn her back grey tells leon what ur wanted and he walks away calling grey a murderer for what happened it wasn't long after that when he joined fairy tale all that time after he'd been training to try and honor his master's wish for him to become stronger and look towards the future unfortunately he still couldn't forget his past and denied having been responsible for ur's death for a full decade until it came to a head on galuna island it starts off as him retrieving natsu lucy and happy from going on a higher class mission they weren't supposed to go on when he and the others run into the frozen body of deleora being melted essentially killing ore in the process the melters turn out to be the citizens of gray's old town looking for revenge against deleora and using a spell called moon drip to melt the ice and allow leon to defeat it the main point of this arc is trying to move forward versus always being stuck in the past leon doesn't necessarily care what deleora did to people or that ore's body is covering him up all leon cares about is defeating deliora to prove he's superior to orr and worthy of being her students gray spins this arc coming to terms with him being responsible for what happened and trying to make good on it even attempting to use ice shell himself to stop lyon natsu obviously stops him because just doing what his master did isn't going to solve the problem and there are other ways to beat leon that don't end in death this is one of the first moments we see the true colors of grey and natsu's relationship they fight and call each other idiots and such but they're still part of a family and can get through conflicts without urza always needing to be there the motivation helps greater beat leon by seeing through his arrogance trying to use one hand instead of two to make ice creations thinking he's mastered it and believes this only further proves he's surpassed or who used two hands the reason he was taught to use two hands however was so his creations were more solid and sturdy gray uses this to his advantage and beats leone but deleora is still unfrozen it looks like natsu might fight it but deliora takes a single swing and falls dead this is because ohr's magic had not only been keeping the demon hostage she'd also been weakening it to the point deleora died a long time ago the situation is just a perfect summation of why trying to return to the past instead of looking towards the future can only cause pain and suffering for no return leon and the villager spent three years spying ou deleora with the hope he'd beat it but they couldn't fight something that already died with leon left reflecting on this the others returned to the guild only for another problem to rear its head their way [Music] the phantom lord arc starts with a tragic event in the destruction of the guild hall no one was there to be harmed by the destruction but this was still an act on there and really sort of our home this action cements phantom lord as a petty guild willing to destroy property when no one else is looking but they aren't considered worth retaliating against until a character named levy and her crew are crucified in town for all to see phantom lord didn't need to do this to get their message across and it wasn't even in their plan gaggio the iron dragon slayer just did it to provoke them further and seeing those members of the guild however small they may be hung up and shown to all the other members only helps the audience sympathize with them as if members of your own family have been harmed each member of fairy tale we see whether powerful or not is treated with the respect any other member has the sentiment is only further shared when lucy is kidnapped as well after a botched rescue mission at one of phantom lord's guild spots not so unhappy you're able to find lucy and get ready for an all-out attack from phantom lord's huge moving base with a jupiter cannon attached to it for reference one blast from this would be enough to destroy the entire guild in one shot phantom might seem unprovoked here but the reason they're doing this isn't out of the grudge or anything like that but rather they're getting lucy for her father i'll talk about him later but right now the guild needs to fend off phantom lord destroy the jupiter cannon before it fires again and win the battle all without the help of makarov who was taken down in the rescue mission lucy contemplates giving herself up in the beginning but the entire guild collectively says they can't allow her to do that since she's part of the family now and family doesn't give up members the battle starts with natsu destroying the cannons lacrima in a mostly uneventful fight but the golem created from the base is still casting a spell that could wipe fairy tail out the key to stopping it is beating the element four of phantom lord and natsu just beat one of them so the base starts to get slower as grey reaches the base we get introduced to juvia the rain woman she has a pretty simple backstory no one ever wanted to be friends with her because she would bring rain and gloominess everywhere she went she tried everything to not keep being hurt by people including sowing hundreds of dolls called terutero bozu which are made with the express purpose of wishing for good weather she hated herself for the disdain she brought from her melancholy personality so she completely closed off her emotions to all other people she starts showing emotion again when she meets grey the first person to genuinely show concern for and be kind to her she goes on to have a major obsession with grey throughout the rest of the series but i think it's perfectly justified from her perspective and she still has her own character after she decides to join fairy tale when the battle's over other than juvia's fight with grey the major battle i want to talk about is elfman's battle with lesol natsu's battle with gaggio had its own highlights but elfman as a character developed way more in his battle getting some backstory on elfman he and his sister lozana and mira were banished from their hometown when mira absorbed the soul of a demon to stop it from causing trouble and she was labelled one herself they traveled all around fiore trying to look for help getting mira back to normal until they reached fairy tale and met makarov he was the first person not scared of mira's ability and taught her siblings to use similar takeover spells so she could feel like she was one of them the only one who struggled with it being elfman many years later the three went on an s-class quest and elfman took over the soul of a beast he wasn't able to control and before we learned about this there was always an underlying tragedy about what happened to lazana since she isn't hanging around the guild hall when elfman confronts seoul soul looks into elfman's memories to see that lazana died when she tried to calm elfman down while in beast form this is a guilt he's been living with for years thinking he killed his younger sister he was trying to protect and this backstory plays into why he's always preaching about being a real man the permanent scar on his eye reminds him every day of what he did when he as he saw it couldn't be man enough to protect his siblings soul scans his memories of this and creates marionette like copies of lazana putting elfman in a state of still guilt this gives soul the chance to almost entrap elfman in a rock layer that would have had him stuck in a cycle of remembering his tragic past forever by going through his memories of lazana elfman realizes she would have wanted him to live and when mira cries out to him as she's about to die herself he gets the courage to finally control a full-body takeover this moment where he controls the takeover beats soul and rescues mirror jane is such a great character moment for him and shows tamira that he's more capable than she thought once the dust of all battles have settled and all is said and done makarov recovers and deals the final blow to phantom lord by beating the master jose using fairy law for the first time giving some decent foreshadowing to the three most powerful fairy spells at first glance for people who watch the ark this might seem like it isn't the end because phantom lord has other branches all over fiore but that's what mystigan was getting up to while he was gone the guild thinks he was just too good to show up but he was really defeating every single branch and phantom lord without telling anyone about it all we got to see is him leaving all the other phantom flags to drift in the wind like the mysterious badass he is mystican's one of my favorite characters to talk about but don't worry that'll be for another arc back to lucy in this whole mess she sees all her guild mates cheering for finally winning and getting to keep her with them but she knows she has one last task to do she leaves home and heads for the heartfelia estate the reason phantomlord was after lucy in the first place was because she's a runaway from home but not just any home she's the daughter of one of the richest men in all of fiore but chose to run away from that to pursue a dream of fairy tale that might sound selfish under normal circumstances but to lucy it only made sense because she wanted to find a true family her mom who was a celestial spirit wizard herself and gave lucy her first keys died when lucy was really young growing up on a huge plantation with no other kids to play with she first looked to her dad for help but he was always working the greatest summation of their relationship is when lucy gives her father a rice ball of his face sort of just to be nice to him and he not only doesn't care he reprimands lucy for interfering with his work and yells her out of the room not realizing that it's her birthday he was never a father to her lucy had to be raised by all the staff around and some of her only friends to interact with were her spirits like aquarius fairy tale was such a big deal to her because despite not being there for long she finally felt like she had become part of a massive caring family when lucy does decide to come back the staff all surround her and get her ready to meet her dad but he himself stays at his desk waiting for her to come up despite her being gone for over a year at that point once lucy does get up he starts out by scolding her for running away and joining a guild without a hint of remorse for how he treated her before in fact the only reason he wanted her was so he could marry her off to some other [ __ ] to expand his estate lucy obviously tells him off in this great moment where she rips off her dress and says if you come after fairy tale she'll defeat him just like any other enemy the chances to talk are gone now because lucy can't trust him and this moment hit especially hard with me because like i said before fairy tale isn't just the characters guild it's your guild and when a member of your guild sticks up for you above their blood relatives it really helps you know just how strong that guild's bond is she leaves her father's room for the last time and goes back to fairy tale as she should before i move on to the next big arc though we gotta talk about loki at this point you've hopefully noticed all the members of fairy tale carry heavy emotional baggage that led them to the guild in the first place and the show isn't done revealing backstories and motivations but sometimes when the past of a character and fairy tale has revealed i'm seriously shocked you're telling me that loki the womanizing pretty boy who's been mostly absent from the series so far has a not only tragic but well set up and foreshadowed backstory yep surprisingly his ark only lasts two episodes but it's shocking just how well paced it is up till now we've known little about loki we know he's a womanizer sort of gentlemanly below the surface which is shown when he fights for lucy and gets her keys back and most importantly he has bad relationships with celestial wizards and fears lucy the arc starts with loki anonymously quitting the guild and breaking up with all his girlfriends after he tells lucy he doesn't have long to live she finds him at the grave of a celestial wizard or more specifically his previous master loki it turns out is a spirit himself who was banished from the celestial spirit world after he supposedly killed karen what happened was he leo the lion and his friend aries zaram were both owned by an abusive user named karen who took out her frustrations on spirits in private loki tried to end the cycle by opening his own gate and demanding karen releases the two from their contracts i forgot to mention this but when humans get celestial spirit keys the user makes a contract with the spirit for when they can be summoned loki expected karen to break but after a month of not getting jobs she went off on one and ended up dying loki didn't mean for it to happen and it really wasn't his fault but he shouldered the guilt of the incident and was banished from the spirit world for technically breaking the celestial law of the spirit never killing the master and the thing about spirits in the human world is they can't stay there for long consecutive periods of time loki had been there for three whole years subsiding off the magic he got when he first summoned himself progressively he kept getting weaker and weaker until eventually he started deteriorating the only reason that he kept himself occupied with girls was to mask the pain that he felt from being in the human world he only came to karen's grave so that he could stay there and wait for himself to drift away into nothingness lucy tries to force loki to go back to the spirit world and claims whoever said he killed karen needs to know that they're wrong so she and loki get an audience with the celestial spirit king in an act using up all her magic lucy summons her spirits all at once to tell loki it wasn't his fault for what happened to karen and that dying would only cause more sadness for all the people that care about him the spirit king hears her plea and agrees to let loki back in after that loki gives lucy his key symbolizing their stronger connection as characters and yeah this was a really small arc but i think it was worth talking about nonetheless and thus we're brought to the confrontation of urza's past after some old friends kidnap her and knock out the others at a casino they need to try and get her back while she has to deal with what happened in her absence to her old friends one of the first things we hear from urza's friends is them asking why she betrayed jalal and to understand that we need to look at urza's childhood she and her friends were once child slaves captured by a cult trying to resurrect the black wizard zerath using a tower called the r system among urza and her friends was jalal who gave irza her last name based on her hair and took the fall for one of the other's plans when it went wrong being sent off to be tortured during his stay in solitude he comes across an apparition that claims to be zera himself and that only jalal can see him because he was chosen to carry out zeref's work then the being crawls inside jalal's eye i kinda thought that would have been the explanation for why he has that weird eye tattoo but no he just always had that though coincidentally the being also went inside the same eye that the eye tattoo is around at the same time urzan cites a revolt in the prison and helps everyone escape to lifeboats during the battle she's almost fired on but is saved by a character known as grandpa rob who once belonged to the fairy tale guild he crumbles away and in that moment ursa awakens her magic potential and takes up the random weapons and supplies around her to attack with explaining why she ended up choosing to use requip as her main set of magic and i find that pretty clever she tries to get jalal to come with them but he has other plans wanting to resurrect xerath himself now by using the r system to take him and the others to paradise urza chooses to run away instead and jalal says that's fine but if she ever tries to tell the others about jalal's intentions or decides to come back at any point he'll kill them all from this fear urza ran to fairy tales so she could try and get stronger for the others and maybe come back someday obviously jalal tells them lies but of them a character named simon knows it wasn't the truth and helps urgent navigate the tower along with the others when they arrive most of the fights before jalal aren't too important urza informs the others about jalal's trickery and tells her guild mates about her past the gang has to deal with a few members of a mercenary guild called trinity raven and juvia shows she's able to be more than the person she was in the previous arc of the battles before jalal the most important was definitely urza's battle with ikaruga a character whose blade could cut through any medal this battle shows urza she can't rely only on her armor to not only protect her body but also her heart from the feelings of other people as a character urza's always been serious about everything and really powerful but from that during moments of down time she comes off as awkward from the time spent hardening her heart to not be damaged again at the moment she finally understands her friends can help her move on past her old relationships towards new chances however she gets clear hard clothing increasing her speed and attack power at the price of defense with it she easily beats igaruga and goes on to face jalal with her heart open unfortunately for her jalal is anticipating it as they're fighting jalal's other part of the plan is going into the works with his brother sea grain and his assistant ultier they've infiltrated the magic council the highest authority when it comes to wizards and convinced the members to fire the ethereon cannon at the tower a weapon that could destroy entire villages in one blast and needs the approval of a percentage of council members to fire though one member of the council named mr yajima stays firm on not firing the cannon it gets ready to do so urza gets jalal to his knees but knowing of the upcoming aetherion blast and still having feelings for him decides to spare his life and hug as they wait for their imminent deaths that is until they don't die instead jalal's true real actual plan begins when the tower absorbs the energy of the aetherion and becomes one giant lacrima the only thing keeping it from activating is a human sacrifice and among the people in the tower at this point there are only simon jalal urza and natsu at least until sea grain shows up out of nowhere in actuality they were one in the same the entire time just with split magic power ursa tries to fight back but back during their embrace jalal manipulated urza's drop guard to implant a bind snake so she wouldn't be able to move when he sacrifices her natsu comes to the rescue but doesn't seem to stand a chance against jalal having exhausted his own energy natsu tries to keep fighting for urza but right as jalal's about to fire a most likely fatal spell on him urza moves in the way to block it but before she can take it simon steps in in front of her and takes a blast full force he confesses his long-lasting love for urza and her spirit and he dies making urza finally drop for the first time and cry over his death when all seems hopeless natsu decides the best course of action is to consume the e fernando of the tower which is basically pure magic energy and fight jalal with a temporary power boost he beats jalal but many people are critical of the scene for natsu getting a random power boost that only lasts for this scene and no others to counter that point i'd like to for one last time refer back to next taku's video where he explains better than i could that this arc isn't just about urza opening her heart to others and beating jalal it's about choosing between overcoming your past for your new family or succumbing to it under the corrupt morals of your past jalal is everything urza stands against and used their bond as a way to manipulate her and the other slaves he used her and tormented her mind to the point she was left crying natsu standing up for urza and her set of principles in the name of her true family is one of the most fitting ways to conclude that message he shouldn't be stronger than jalal he should lose but he doesn't i won't say this scene is perfect but the emotional resonance surrounding it is great after everything finally cools down ersa's past and present collide together in a party where she can accept and cherish both now that the meddling influence is left ultimately merza's old friends decide to leave instead of joining fairy tale but she makes sure they don't leave without a touching goodbye it's sweet humbling and a perfect way to cap off one of my favorite smaller arcs in the series right when the gang gets back to fairy tales some big changes are happening to the guild gaggio along with juvia have become new members of the guild and at first everyone's hostile towards the idea but levy out of all of them has chosen to forgive gaggio so they choose to tolerate him that is other than jet and joy these guys are the two that were hung up along with levy and to get their own revenge on gaggio they attack him and think he's all talk when in reality it becomes clear he just isn't fighting back levy reasons he's doing this to gain their acceptance and is confirmed when loxa shows up absolutely beats on gajiel and almost hits levy when he gets back up and defends her with loxus's arrival he wants to make some big changes as guild master starting by taking it over with his small set of friends the thunder god tribe his reasoning is the guild has gotten the reputation of being weak and he also still holds a grudge against his grandfather master makarov for kicking out loxes father when he got up to some shady [ __ ] he starts his takeover by freezing all the girls with the stone eyes ability evergreen has under threat of shattering them so the guild complies and he uses his right hand freed's enchantments to not only keep makarov from interfering but also so traps can be set up around the city where members of the guild have to fight against each other for some reason natsu and gagio also can't leave even though the enchantment only keeps people over 80 in the guild hall so this gives some subtle foreshadowing in advance to when things come back up urza is able to break out since one of ryze's artificials so evergreen's spell didn't completely work on her she goes after and defeats evergreen pretty easily getting all the girls freed meaning loxis has to get some new hostages to achieve this the mad lad puts thunder lachruma all around magnolia that'll explode if any guild member goes off for help just one of these exploding is enough to seriously damage the attacker so they have to obey or magnolia is just gone all the girls go ahead to fight other than levy who stays behind to rewrite freed's enchantments to get the dragon slayers out first gray and lucy beat this guy bixlow it's a standard fight nothing too worthy of note next kana and juvia get caught in one of freed's enchantments and like all the others are forced to fight juvia defines her character some more and really cements herself as a member of fairy tale when instead of fighting she attacks the lacrima above so she can fall instead because of course true family doesn't hurt each other after this mirror jane shows off her magic for the first time and we finally get to see what her takeover power is that being demon takeover magic and it's just as awesome as it sounds with all his minions beaten loxus is steaming mad when mystician of all people shows up natsu gagil and urza also show up as they're fighting and that's when we get the big reveal of mist again he's jalal or should i say he is a guy that looks like julo foreshadowing there's a surprising amount of it so early on in the story well anyway natsu and gagi will fight them together and while doing so they realize loxus doesn't just use lightning he's also a lightning dragon slayer but he wasn't raised by a dragon his father actually implanted a dragon lacrima into loxus as a kid so he'd be valuable as an asset later on he's what's called a second generation dragon slayer during the fight natsu and gazil are still doing pretty well against loxes since michigan wore him down and the guild has simultaneously taken out all the lacrima at the same time by each shooting one other than urza who just took out a [ __ ] ton loxa's plans are falling apart around him and he isn't just pissed because he's not succeeding it's because due to him not succeeding he has to go further and further or else he'll have to admit defeat from the start he didn't want to have everyone hurt or take hostages he just wanted to make the guild stronger and tried to go about it by following what his father would have done and only when reaching these later stages does he understand his father's way wasn't right loxus doesn't even realize it for himself until he tries to enact fairy law the basic gist of the spell is it's an all-powerful judgment spell that destroys everyone around you you see as an enemy he casts it and lo and behold no one has vanished or been harmed despite all he did everyone he hurt all the threats he made luxus never saw anyone in the guild as his enemy he may have been able to trick his own mind into thinking he hates fairy tale but his magic showed what he felt in his heart in the end natsu and gaggio barely squeezed out a win and loxus goes to the guildhall for one last time makarov does exactly what he did with flox as his father and excommunicates him from the guild there on the spot and loxus was expecting it before he goes though fairytale has one last gift for loxus before he leaves back when loxus came in and staged the coup he and his friends were interrupting plans for the fantasia parade a yearly celebration the guild takes place in and back when loxus was a kid going to the parade for the first time he coined a symbol that makarov could look for and see to know he's watching over him always even though he can't see him during the current parade all the fairy tale guild mates hold up that same symbol for loxus he had a misguided way of trying to improve the guild and took things way too far but the others understood that and though he had to leave they gave him one final message letting him know their bond wouldn't be severed i love this scene and after he leaves to go and find himself on some distant journey loxas will just continue to grow as a well-developed character from his somewhat generic base as just some douche the arashion says arc starts with a simple explanation of the barm alliance who are the three most powerful dark guilds in fiore connected to all the other smaller ones across the land natsu and co need to beat one of these three the arashion says with the help of other top guilds from around including leon from galuna island who's joined lemia scale the manly men of blue pegasus and a smaller guild named kate shelter that's brought the new wind dragon slayer named wendy who just like natsu has a flying cat named carla or it might be charlay or charlay or something like that but that's much harder to pronounce as you can see so i'm not gonna say that for the rest of the video it might seem excessive for four guilds to be called in just to stop six people but you'd be wrong as hell because these guys aren't to be messed with in the beginning the whole crew gets ambushed and their asses are whooped urza is poisoned and wendy is taken away to heal someone for the sace these guys aren't just strong wizards either each of them other than the leader were slaves to the r system's construction and each holds a prayer for what they want out of life their main goal however is to use an ancient weapon called nirvana to destroy other guilds this arc is around the point where there are a [ __ ] ton of fights in each shark so i'll mostly be breaking down those individual battles the first major one is gray and leone vs racer in the beginning they have a difficult time even touching him because he's so fast then leone notices something and decides to freeze grey up high and take on racer on his own he's about to be beaten when leone explains what he noticed was a bird was moving unnaturally fast thus concluding that racer wasn't actually speeding around he was just altering their perception of time to make himself look faster and with grey out of racer's range atop a point he got a perfect sniper shot when grey reaches leone racer tries to blow them both up using some bombs but leon takes a hit and is able to survive this battle doesn't have anything major emotional wise it's just clever and i wanted to mention it since it shows both grey and leone's determination and ingenuity with ice magic and what was racer's prayer to be able to run away so fast people couldn't see him elsewhere during this battle it's revealed the saves were able to find jalal's body in the remnants of the r system and they want windy to heal him with her magic she shows herself to have a history with jalal so she heals him real quick wendy's story is that after the dragons disappeared she wandered around until she found jalal who was really kind to her and they traveled together until he left her with the guild when he now resides in kate shelter unfortunately whether this story is true with the dralol we know can't be found out since he's actually lost his memory with the high levels of efernano he hung around for so long i sometimes roll my eyes at memory loss because it's kind of a worn out trope but it works for jalal specifically since he didn't start out as a bad person he was just possessed by something to make him give up and change so drastically and jalal does slowly get his memories back so thankfully it isn't permanent natsu and carla safe wendy just in time for the next battle lucy vs angel angel as a character radiates a really similar vibe to karen from loki's past she uses her spirits poorly has a massive ego and generally has a quite punchable face which i guess is fitting considering she's the one who killed karen on the job she couldn't handle and as the person who beat karen angel has aries key and makes her fight loki when lucy summons him she also has the zodiac scorpio for when lucy summons aquarius because they're dating and wouldn't fight angel's last zodiac is gemini who can take the form of lucy and command her keys to harm the actual one because you know she's technically lucy she has the voice and she has the keys she's just not what undo's angel's plan is when lucy cries out for her to release aries from her contract to find her own happiness and not take lucy's own spirits if she dies gemiini doesn't deal the final blow because they envy her spirits and the love lucy gives to them whether it be sticking up for or fighting alongside them angel only ever used her spirits as tools so they never felt that kind of love from someone it looks like lucy might be killed again when hibiki of blue pegasus shows up normally it would be a good thing but before this fight a confused jalal tried to stop nirvana from activating by using a destruction circle he didn't know what nirvana was or even he was just that he needed to destroy it so evil couldn't take hold urza finds him in an amnesiatic state and tells him to not dare forget his past sins and that makes jalal cry out of possibly hurting an ally and believe the best way to pay for his crimes would be to put a destruction circle on himself as well for a moment it looks like jalal is going to die stopping nirvana but urza reprimands him for basically running away from his forgotten sins instead of trying to repent for them and give his all towards that brain the leader of the face appears and is able to disable the seal rather easily because in a twist we learned brain was one of the heads of the r system and taught jalal the magic he knew after he was taken over by zeref or should i say ultier impersonating serif remember ultier the girl subservient to jalal on the magic council when he was seagrained yeah she was actually pulling the strings from the beginning and works for grimoire heart another one of the three guilds in the barm alliance getting to the point urza stops jalal from dying but nirvana is unleashed in its first stage and sends out energy that can change the hearts of people teetering on the sides of good and evil to the opposite of what they were before it looks like hibiki might have changed but really he didn't he was only going behind lucy so he could use his archive magic basically google only available to a few magic users and upload how to use a certain spell directly into lucy's brain the info helps her beat angel for the last time whose prayer was to fly away into the heavens like an angel held back by her wicked ways of trying to achieve that of the people who are affected by the energy one is the safe member hot i who goes from talking about wanting money and being able to get anything with it to talking about love conquering all hadai was always the one member of the sace who wasn't sure what he was doing was right his reason for being obsessed with money was also he could try and save up enough to find his long-lost brother who turned out to be one of the members of urza's old friend group after that he stays on the site of good for the rest of the series helping the others fight to stop nirvana speaking of which around the time all the battles i mentioned finish nirvana finally shows its true form in a giant walking city with a massive cannon attached to it everyone who's still standing including urzan now having been healed by wendy converged the city to fight the remaining members brain cobra and midnight natsu vs cobra was an interesting fight due to cobra's special ability of hearing thoughts he's not a straight up mind reader but he can sense movements breathing heart palpitations and use those sounds to predict his enemies movements first natsu tries to beat him by turning off his brain and following instinct but that doesn't really help so instead he uses cobra strength against him and roars so loud his eardrums burst jura of lamia scale beats brain rather easily despite his status as leader but that's when he and the others see something strange the tattoos the long brains body are beginning to disappear more and more as the sais are defeated this is because the sais aren't just linked by their prayers they also have bodylink magic attached to brain that keeps something within him sealed as long as at least one of them is standing the realization doesn't do them too much good though because erza and jalal are already taking midnight who uses illusions and manipulation magic to fight erz is able to beat him by using her artificial eye to see through his tricks and get a good hidden but that's when a new person is released from within brain the true guild master of the arashion says called master zero as far as fairytale villains go he's on the weaker side he's just a guy who wants to cause destruction and starts by aiming nirvana to head straight for wendy's guild lucy natsu grey and happy gather to fight zero after jura gets knocked unconscious while saving the others from falling rubble but they don't stand a chance already tucked out and lose all seems lost when nirvana reaches kate shelter and gets ready to fire but from nowhere bombs drop on nirvana and change the trajectory just enough to save the guild those bombs come from members of blue pegasus including hibiki and members of lamia scale including leon flying the damaged vessel of blue pegasus the christina i didn't mention it in the beginning but blue pegasus had a magic powered airship they were going to use in the fight but it got blown up by the arashion stace in the beginning so this comeback was really surprising the first time through other than stopping the blast hibiki came on the airship to inform everyone through his google hangouts feature or telekinesis that he found the weak points of nirvana six lacrima attached to each foot of it sucking in magic from the earth take all six out simultaneously and nirvana along with the canon to stop jalal urzah and ichiya blue pegasus each take one lacrima but three more still need to get the others and zero is waiting at one of them so someone will have to fight him in a moment of desperation all the members of the alliance cry out for the four who fell to zero to get up and just like the christina the four beaten down members all barely make it to their feet through the encouragement of their friends so they can destroy the lacrima natsu blatantly chooses the one that has zero because they might not know which one he's at but natsu's nose can sniff him out pretty easily when everyone gets to their respective lacrimal natsu picks right and faces off with zero at first he's getting his ass kicked then jalal shows up now at this point natsu doesn't know jalal's forgotten most of his memories so he attacks jalal out of anger and jalal throws fire back at natsu so he can eat it jalal came to the lacrimal because he remembered having wronged natsu and to make up for it came there with the flame of rebuke basically it's a flame meant to help natsu out and get him to beat zero i do like the emotional implications here with natsu accepting the flames to be a representation of his trusting jalal that he's changed for the better at least in the moment and natsu uses dragonforce for the first time and that's cool but i can't deny it is a random power-up that came out of nowhere and isn't brought up again i think the emotional resonance and character dynamic changes related to it is enough to be forgivable especially when fairy tale isn't always just about the fights but the significance to how the characters change because of that fight but i can understand why people don't like this scene anyway once zero is beaten all six lacrimal are destroyed at once saving kate shelter from nirvana you might be asking what about jalal's lacrima but wendy took that one for herself everything just seems hunky-dory now the sais are beaten one of the safe members and jalal are on the good side now and helped beat nirvana kate shelter is safe but wait consequences can still be a [ __ ] sometimes when the entire gang tries to leave they find themselves an enchantment like freed but this time made by the custody enforcement unit of the magic council led by a man named lahar they came to arrest the irrational seize members after the guilds were done beating them and more importantly jalal adai happily goes with the guards wanting to do his time and come back out a free man later on and jalal is willing to do the same when of all people not two shouts out against it ursula was going to make some kind of move herself but right before she does anything not soon the others speak out he knows urza will be incredibly shook up about this and doesn't want to see her cry like jalal made her due back at the tower so we reasons jalal has to say for urges sake and they probably would have won if they wanted but ursa puts a stop to it she of all people knows joel has many crimes to pay for and even if it would make her much happier to let him stay and grow to be the person he was before ultier interfered her moral code won't allow her to let a criminal who infiltrated the magic council go free without repercussions it hurts her on the inside to do it since she's told she'll never see jalal again the equivalent of losing another friend but she knows it's the right thing for her to do the gang calms down and lets the guards escort jalal away but in the moment before he leaves jalal remembers who hers is because of her scarlet hair that he used to give her her last name a bitter into the reunion of ursa and jalal but a powerful one and this scene highlights all versus best attributes her strength her fortitude and her courage if i wanted to tell people erz's character in one scene this would be the best possible one the next day with all the unpleasant trees out of the way the crew tries to cheer up by having a party at kate shelter with its members but the celebration is short-lived when we find out the sad truth that being that kate shelter isn't a real guild at all and every member is nothing but a spirit created by the guildmaster he decided to create the spirits when wendy was dropped off in an abandoned guildhall by jalal who told wendy he was a guild when he was lying the guildmaster created all the spirits with their own unique personalities based on his old friends of an ancient civilization also when he could have people to be loved by the guildmaster himself is also an apparition in fact he was the architect behind nirvana originally it was created to end wars and keep peace so the people of the man's village built the city on top of it unfortunately the magic dispense caused not only some people to become peaceful and stop wars but it eventually made the peaceful people atop nirvana become ravenous and bloodthirsty to the point the old man stood as the sole survivor of his people and culture both in life and death he guarded nirvana and just so happened to meet wendy along the way and with nirvana destroyed he and the other spirits could now rest in peace wendy is mortified by the information as she sees all the people she got to know in her life disappear but the old guildmaster is able to comfort her by saying wendy doesn't need those imaginary friends anymore with the many she's made on her adventure urza then steps forward and hugs wendy because just like her she knows what it's like to lose a loved one and encourages her and karla to join fairy tale both of these events happened in the same episode too so my heart was just [ __ ] obliterated with these two big scenes holy [ __ ] so yeah wendy joins fairy tale and becomes part of the gang just in time for the first filler that i don't want to talk about because it's trash it's only three episodes but i hate it and i think it's so boring so i'm just gonna move on to the great arc that happened after this mechanical dragon [ __ ] was done and over with okay good one thing though before this show reaches its next important arc the audience is introduced to the objectively strongest wizard in fairy tale gildarts for people who like to call fairy tale a one-piece knockoff this is their [ __ ] holy grail these two characters are incredibly strong have slicked back hair with a very similar color have missing limbs and act as father figures to the main protagonist of their respective franchises hiromashima is a hack fraud who never should have been allowed to pick up a pin for his copy and paste [ __ ] is the common argument you'll hear and i do agree that the characters look pretty similar but they also have completely different relationships with the main character throughout the story that sets them apart as characters also just to bring this up gildarts had more dirty blonde colored hair in the manga and he also had a hairstyle that was sort of different it was more the anime's interpretation that made him look more like shanks i'm not saying there aren't a lot of similarities but it just seems like the anime tried to make it look even more similar regardless as i was saying shanks had sort of a brotherly slash friendish relationship with luffy and luffy's entire quest in one piece is to become the pirate king so he can fulfill his promise to shanks and give him his hat back shanks does come into play in the story on special occasions but when he does it's never while luffy can see and happens few and far between as far as it goes in a way shanks is a goal luffy wants to strive for as a captain one that he can only reach when he finishes his journey and gets the one piece guild arts is much different he shares more of a fatherly connection with natsu but in a much more active fashion unlike shanks gildarts returns to the guild hall every month or so to hang out with the rest of the guild and catch up with people he humors natsu by getting into fights with him the guild arts knows he'll win they play catch together they share a deep emotional connection as not only a sort of father and son duo but as close friends who know each other really well guild arts is a fun guy with a charming personality that shows his passion for the guild all the time while still being a bit of a loner with how often he goes on jobs alone in his last bout with danger he took on a century quest and came back pretty tattered and beaten having lost one of his arms and legs he wanted natsu to know it was from a dragon similar to igneal called acnologia but that natsu shouldn't look for him because he's more powerful than natsu can imagine the info is only conveyed in this episode and gildarts doesn't explain much else beyond that but at this point you should know your boy is ready to scarf down any hint of foreshadowing for future arcs and speaking of which the arc i'm about to get into if you would just chill the [ __ ] out [Music] so out of the main cast of characters including wendy now who among them hasn't gotten the spotlight shown on them that's right happy and carla from the beginning of the show we've been getting subtle hints that happy and carla aren't exactly normal in this world like for example i'm sure if you've never noticed this it's quite a subtle detail but did you know these two characters are cats that talk and have weird colors attached to them and can fly as their only form of magic and came from eggs out of nowhere does that not at all seem a little suspicious apparently happy never thought about that when he first met carla and realized there were other cats like him carla up until before this upcoming arc has just sort of been kind of snobby and distant from all the other characters besides wendy since she's carla's only real friend this is by choice as carla doesn't want to associate with the others as long as she has wendy but she always had a particular distaste for happy granted he's trying to hit on her and give gifts to her at every waking moment but she mostly stays passive-aggressive until one instant where she blows up at him for no good reason beyond she can't tolerate someone who doesn't know who they are implying she knows something about happy even he doesn't wendy chases after carla to see what's up with her but at that exact moment mistigan arrives at the guild and recognizes wendy yeah remember when wendy's backstory revealed she and jalal used to be friends that traveled around together well that was actually missed again who looks exactly like jalal because he has come from a parallel world of sorts the same one happy and carla came from the only reason he came back at this moment was so he could warn wendy he quote unquote wasn't able to stop it it being the thing that made mystin abandon wendy in the first place magical holes appearing across fiore that suck magic from the world into this parallel one mystican was trying to close them all on his journeys but he was unable to close the one appearing right above magnolia at that moment the city starts to disappear into the hole leaving only windy not too happy and carla behind you and lucy also stay behind but we'll learn about that deal later shh obviously carla has some explaining to do since she knew this [ __ ] was going to happen but didn't try to stop it or even warn people because she sucks and only really cares about protecting wendy above all else for starters she and happy aren't just regular cats but mystical creatures from that previously mentioned parallel world called etilis the whole sucking magic from fiore and the entire continent of ishgar are called the anima and are taking magical beings things because their world is running out of it as a limited resource happy and carla were sent on some kind of mission imprinted in their heads at birth but happy doesn't remember it at all for some reason making carla resent him for it they come to the conclusion they need to go after their friends so wendy and natsu are carried and mock speed into the anima so they can cross over into etalis it's a nice world and all with floating islands and rivers but the view isn't quite as nice when carla and happy lose their wings causing them all to fall what's just as bad as natsu and wendy can't use their magic either during their search for answers and help they find the fairy tale guild hall the weird issue here being it is the fairy tale guild hall with all its regular members but most of them act different to or opposite to how they used to act in earthland causing carla to come to the conclusion this is the edalis's version of the guild characters who grew up in the endless environment their entire lives her theory is only further strengthened when the guild's chased by the fairy hunter ur's a night walker because they're considered a dark guild for using magic in edelis's limited state other than not having carla are happy in this version of the guild whom they seem to be afraid of edalis has one thing earthland doesn't lazana lizana has always been a character natsu cared deeply about in the story from a young age they helped hatch happy together they built a small fort in the forest and when she died natsu built a grave for her by her favorite place to see the sunset so yeah he's gonna be bawling when he sees her again for the first time but that subplot isn't important right now at the moment natsu and co need to get to the capital of edelis to try and find everyone with etilis lucy's help they reach their first checkmark and are about to be taken when earthland lucy shows up and is able to use her magic at first i thought she was going to be an exception because she has a large magic capacity and her spirits come through other dimensions but nah it's simpler than that she didn't get sucked away because one of her spirits saved her and she and gaggio can use their magic because mistican gave them some pills to help them out lucy joins the group on the adventure and when they do reach the capital city they see it's doing fine with plenty of magic lacrimas and toys meaning the king has been hoarding it in the city for the upper class he does want all of edelis to have magic so that's why he stole magnolia and turned it into a giant lacrima that could power the city for a decade but being a power-hungry king that isn't enough natsu almost freaks out once the king strikes a lacrima containing their friends that breaks a piece off of it but lucy holds him back so they can plan a way to get them back edelis lucy has abandoned them at this point but the night comes where the gang wants to break into the castle to learn the king's plans and karla remembers having access to the king's underground tunnel and draws a map of it for reference they break through all the barriers necessary until they find themselves captured by the royal army that was waiting for them the entire time what's even more shocking is when the guards all bow down to happy and karla for quote-unquote completing their mission as the great exceeds are expected of doing carla's especially shocked about this because she thought she'd abandon whatever mission she had so learning this incident was just part of the mission burnt into her memory makes her question if she even has free will her being the reason behind wendy and the others being captured doesn't help either next thing the gang knows happy and carla are woken up in a palace being heralded as heroes natsu and wendy are being drained of their magic power for being dragon slayers gagio's about to enact a plan to save the others with a version of himself and etilis and lucy's going to be executed starting with carla and happy's perspective the first thing we hear about their whereabouts is from this ichiya cat fittingly named nichia who's the head of the xc'd royal guard and explains their inextalia a floating island above the clouds where the warship exceed race live according to nichia and this guy named nadi the exceeds have always been superior to humans because they're the only beings and endless that are born with magic power and can use it on demand whereas it's used like a resource for items otherwise above them all stands the queen who is seen as a goddess that can decide who lives and dies on command while nietzsche is explaining this carla tries to tell him that she failed her mission and gone astray from it so nietzsche confirms her fears of losing control by saying he and the queen were giving subtle messages for her to understand and that she was basically their puppet from the beginning oh and what was this mission to eliminate or capture the dragon slayers at this realization happy starts bawling along with carla the idea but happy isn't having any of this [ __ ] and tells him off of the moments in this arc i find this one of the most powerful for pretty obvious reasons we've known happy for the entire show as this well happy go lucky mascot type character who's always cracking sarcastic remarks and smiling but in this scene he just [ __ ] goes off on these guys for claiming their relationships they had were false and that their lives were made for them this one image i'd say is on a similar level to the moment during the usj arc of mha when all might shows up and he isn't smiling the fact hiro would give some pretty great character development to what seems like the simplest of characters has always been one of the things i love about his writing this is also the moment where carla calls happy by his name rather than just tomcat so it shows development for her as well they escaped from the royal guard being now known as fallens or fallen angels who've lost their divinity to stay hidden from the guard they meet an old married couple who themselves had their child taken from them when 100 x-seed eggs were sent to earthland and were banned from the city when they tried to speak up about it during their time there happy is able to convince carla that she has control over her own emotions and that they aren't just puppets but fairy tale wizards ready to help their guild after grasping that they're able to use their wings again they couldn't before because once they arrived in edelis their homeland they'd never seen they felt alienated and didn't know who they were at that point these two are also happy's parents but they don't tell him since it isn't the right time or place carla and happy save lucy right before she's executed and go off to save natsu and wendy as this is happening the paranoid king has to say to execute plan xc total destruction first by turning the exceed guards into a giant lacrima and then planning to crash the giant lacrima containing most of fairy tale into xtalia making it so magic rains down from the sky and becomes accessible to everyone in the kingdom that small crystal we saw before only contained urza and grey who gaggio is able to free with his dragonslayer magic and gives them the ability to use magic by feeding them those same pills he got from mystic again called xballs it comes in handy when carla happy and lucy are about to be captured by ursa nightwalker because at that moment earthland urza and gray burst in to [ __ ] some [ __ ] up ursa takes on herself while the others go and look for a way to stop the king from using a cannon with a hook that had chained the crystal and smashed like a wrecking ball into extalia coco the king's errand girl takes the key from him when she realizes her friend and soldier panther lily is fighting gagil on the island holding the lacrima and a blast from the canon would probably kill him other fun fights take place ending with lucy being seen as a hero by coco for beating the king's right hand by rogue gray shattering the key but being able to make an ice replica when he wants and wendy and carla going to excelia to warn the citizens there's just one issue of that plan for their entire lives the exceeds have been told they're more powerful than any human and that the queen could destroy an entire village if she accidentally sent a paper football in the wrong direction so wendy and carla's warnings are trashed as lies and they get pelted with rocks until the long cat tries to get the crowd to stop after the cannon is fired and the lacrima starts heading towards extalia the queen comes out and shoots down their praises by saying she nor any of the other exceeds have excessive power she doesn't even have two wings and can only predict human deaths with her clairvoyance leading to them thinking she could command a human to die at a given point the purpose behind her and her council's lies was because the xseed have always been frailed and easily picked on so the one way to help them survive was to lie about having magical superpowers with this knowledge having come to light the queen begs carla to strike her down and live on by making the other exits leave unfortunately they all want to stay with the queen and just accept their fate so they stay to be by her side in a moment of defiance carla gives a speech about how stupid she and the others are being by giving up so easily instead of trying to do something about the impending meteor possibly destroying xtalia asking why it is they feel like some goddess is needed to do anything then she goes off on her own to try and push the meteor back herself luckily for her the fairy tale gang hitched a ride on koko's flying beast and helped push as well along with gaijin and pamper lily remember when i said he and gazia were fighting previously well they formed a bond during their fight and after gashio won pam for lily agreed to join fairy tale as gazil's cat so he could have one just like natsu and wendy panther lily also never really wanted his homeland destroyed he just felt anger at them for being exiled himself and what was his crime saving a lost boy out in the desert from starving because exceeds aren't supposed to help humans panther lily does get to make up with the queen when she and all the other exceeds moved by carla's speech go out to protect their home and show they can actually be strong when they fight together speaking of that lost boy he comes into the picture soon revealing himself to be missed again or as he's known in edelis prince jalal the missing heir to the endless throne and suddenly everything has connected itself in that little pocket jalal of edelis was a runaway prince who ended up in earthland to try and stop his father's plan to take the magic from it and he met windy along the way he would have kept adventuring with her but his duty kept him bound and he didn't want her getting in harm's way the real reason earthland july didn't know wendy was because he really didn't ever meet her rather than the cause simply being his memory loss it all makes so much sense when put together it also explains mystician's magic type involving items he uses staffs and weapons like that because his body doesn't channel magic energy on its own once the others are able to push the lacrima back from extelia mistigan makes sure to be able to enact the spell he's been working on to send everyone back through the anima lily and jalal's reunion is kind of cut short though by nightwalker who's brought an entire battalion to deal with the exceeds in humans and to make matters worse the king used all the magic he got from wendy and natsu to power a mechanical dragon to fight the men so now wendy gaggio and natsu have to take care of that as well it all seems lost on the fight against nightwalker's army until atlas lucy shows back up with all of edile's fairy tale the reason she'd left before was originally just to bail from the plan but she got inspired by lucy and natsu's words to fight back so she brought some friends to help with it checking back on the king vs dragon slayers fight it gives a good amalgamation of how some characters have grown in the past arc or two i'm mostly just referring to wendy because she's gone from shy and always hiding to actively participating in the battle and helping the others confidently gaggiel also shows a bit of development with how he's able to work with the others much better they finish him off in the end but an even bigger battle is going on in the skies above between nightwalker and urza this battle represents more than just winning or losing a fight it's a battle of ideologies one believes people are naturally vile and need magic to survive while the other thinks people are more genuine than that and can survive without it ultimately the fight ends in a draw but nightwalker lets urza claim the victory submitting to urza's point of view that atlas will live on without magic just as they are by the time most of the fighting is done jalal finally explains his main plan to pan for lily jalal actually created a way to use a reverse anima that sends all magic and ethelus over to earthland leaving it deprived of any with the people in disarray over their loss of magic appliances and such someone will need to serve as a villain who took the magic and be beaten by a hero reuniting edelus under strong leadership jillal originally planned to use himself as the sacrificial lamb of sorts but that long cat guy heard everything and told natsu who has other plans for how this will go down wendy gagio and natsu play the part of demons to scare the town's people into thinking they took the magic and propped the helpless king up at a glance it might seem odd to make the king seem innocent but you have to remember that everyone in idolist believes the king is just a man who wants nothing more than to please his people so knowing him as a tyrant with a dragon mech suit would only cause more discourse and outrage among the people jalal tries to stop it at first and offer himself as a sacrifice but natsu knows it's too late and challenges him to a good old fist fight this method is perfect because it shows someone can prevail without the use of magical weapons that's when natsu gives jalal the fairy tale farewell ceremony don't devote secrets about the guild don't contact any client you've worked with previously and though our paths might stray always live your life to the fullest never question your worth and don't forget the friends you made along the way after that natsu falls while jalal is able to stand and unite the kingdom as a new ruler just one of the really few instances where a member of the family needs to leave it can make you tear out just a bit with that settled all the fairy tale wizards who've got magic flowing through their body fly up with the anima and leave edelis for one last time it's too bad we'll never get to see this interesting world again but the journey we took along the way was worth it all the time the guild members come back to earth and bring the x-seats along with them and we finally get an explanation for carlo's imprinted message to put it simply there never was one the queen foresaw extalia falling with her clairvoyance and only sent the eggs off to protect the next generation everything said about the dragon slayers was completely made up and the reason carla had these thoughts is because she also had clairvoyance but when she was first born she didn't know how to process it so she assumed it was some kind of mission she needed to follow so why is it that karla has clairvoyance when all the others don't okay look at queen shaggott now look at carla check out carla should i got carla look at yourself look in the mirror do you see tears well that's not really important right now check out hugs carla and cries about how great it is they can see each other now yeah they're related that's the twist they're related just making that really clear in case she doesn't tell carla but you can tell by the hugs she can probably catch on lily's also back in a smaller cute cat form and he found a suspicious person none other than who was thought to be the endless version of lazana at first everyone thinks she's endless as lozana but she explains she's the earthland version back all that time ago when she got hit by elfman a small anima opened above her and sucked her into edelus apparently the endless version of lazana had died so when she returned the others thought it was a miracle and luzana just ran with it for two whole years with her back now elfman and mira are pretty surprised but in a good way with that the endless arc comes to a close i've always thought of this arc as my personal favorite because it feels the most well planned from mystican's conception he was a mysterious guy that no one knew about who was incredibly strong the reveal of him looking exactly like jalal was confusing at the time but makes plenty of sense as of this arc wendy's memory of jalal was thought to have been cleared up with jalal losing his memory but it was really missing in the whole time happy and carla's true origins were always a mystery even within the ark some of the plot twists in here are just top keck in quality from why carlos specifically had the idea there was a mission to jalal being the last prince to lazana being from earth it all fits together perfectly in a way that shows way more mystery and suspense than most other arcs in the series carla and happy's relationship in this arc being strengthened was also good to see and the arc in general was a good way for the characters to grow substantially the entire world of edelis was really well thought out and in many ways is much more expensive than that of earthland despite only being in one arc fairy tale isn't really as much about the places as the strange and wacky characters men in those places but still i wasn't expecting a full government with histories and false gods and [ __ ] this arc also has one of the best opening themes in the series called the rock city boy it doesn't affect the story or anything i just really like that opening another small thing i want to mention before moving on is that gaggio got some truly precious moments in this arc near the end with pamphlet lily considering gazil's regular personality this is just so wholesome all right next ark [Music] other than the alvarez empire and maybe magic games arcs tenro island is considered the most controversial arc of fairy tale and by controversial i mean disliked and you know what i can agree there are some problems with it but the positives outweigh them by a heavy margin so honestly i don't really give a [ __ ] the basic plot behind it is the s-class promotion trials are about to be held for eight teams of two they go to tenro island each year because the tree gives fairytale members strength and it's where the grave of their first master is the teams end up being natsu and happy gazillion levy lucien khanna elfman and evergreen freedom bixlow lizanna and juvia gray and loki and wendy and messed um i'll talk about him later but for now you just need to know he claims to be mystican's pupil it's a bit of a weirdo this exam is especially important to kana because she's tried five times before this and every time she lost saying that if she loses this time she'll quit the guild because she won't be able to face him otherwise spoiler it's gildarts who is her dad kana joined fairytale a little while after her mom died because she wanted to meet gildarts but he didn't recognize her she spent years waiting to tell him and she decided the best time would be after she became an s-class wizard like him but she's failed every time before so this exam will be her last the reason kana drinks so much is because she hung around the guildhall for so long beer and other alcoholic drinks became second nature to her i always find it quite interesting how mashima takes characters with wacky traits and make those attributes have deep rooted painful backstories behind them it just makes the guild feel more alive and like the people there could exist in real life and that makes sense considering that mashima based most of the members of fairy tale off of his drinking buddies so anyways they make it to ten row island and each have to take a different path where they either fight each other or an s-class mage to break down each gazil levy got lucky with a serenity route connor and lucy beat freda mixlow because they were holding back to pay their debt to lucy juvia and lazana lose to urza evergreen and elfman beat mira jane by catching her off guard mest and windy loose to loki and grey and finally there's natsu's fight against gildarts under normal circumstances a fight between natsu and guild arts would always start and in with him punching natsu into the stratosphere really easily but this is different natsu needs to prove he has the potential to become an s-class wizard so gildard isn't going to hold back the true power of him is shown when natsu fights with all his might using his strongest attacks and the best he can do is get gildarts pushed back a couple feet natsu wants to keep fighting even though gildart says he passes so gildart shows off his full might natsu that's so powerful he trembles in fear for once natsu has come to an opponent he can't beat and he admits defeat gildart still lets him pass for having the ability to know when he can't win a fight and submit but god damn if natsu isn't struck in terror afterwards natsu doesn't get that much development in the story but this moment is surely a memorable one when the remaining teams gather the last task is explained the remaining groups need to look for the first master's grave somewhere on the island and whoever finds it first gets the promotion as this begins carla and lily also get on the island to warn wendy that mest isn't who he seems when members of grimoire heart another one of the three guilds in the barm alliance appear on the island before you ask though no mest isn't a member of the dark guild he's a spy for the magic council who used his mind manipulation magic to make people think he was always there all he wanted was to bust fairy tale for something and take them down but his plan failed because there was nothing to report the real question here is why grimoire heart is on tenro island to begin with and that's to try and get the black wizard zerif off it apparently zerath has been alive all the time he was said to have been dead which is about 400 years and natsu has a brief encounter with him other than mest and wendy the first group to be attacked on tinro island are leviangaggio who faced this chicken and goat duo while gajiel is fighting them he tells levy to run and tell the others about grimoire giving some good character development between them and he pulls out a win just barely i haven't read the manga version of this fight but from what i've heard this fight was heavily censored in the anime when it was pretty gruesome in the manga like holy [ __ ] in the anime he just uses his iron dragon claw and gets a little sword through that but in the manga his hand just gets [ __ ] obliterated with a sword that goes straight through it that he grabs onto it's a little bit more badass than what's in the anime the fight is still nice and emotional but letting the show get a bit darker for that scene was sort of a missed opportunity if you ask me that was just a reconnaissance team though the main forces the seven kin of purgatory arrived only a little after each fighting a different person when they didn't expect it the first fight is master makarov versus the master of grimoire heart hades who was actually the second fairy tale guild master before makarov and fell into a dark state after learning about the true origin of magic makarov loses and hades returns to his ship like the fight was nothing he isn't dead but makarov is out of the fight for the rest of the ark the first battle with the seven kin is between natsu and zenkro zenkro is mostly this kind of insane loyal type that destroys his men for recoiling from battle but he's also like natsu but upgraded he's a fire god slayer so natsu can't even eat his flames at first natsu is able to come up with a plan where he lets his regular fire magic run out so it doesn't clash with zenkro's fire god flames making it so he can eat it and defeat zenkro using those flames against him meanwhile mira is facing off with azuma this guy who can manipulate plants and she ends up unconscious after she shields lazana from a bomb azimus strapped to her ultir is also on the island and captures zerath while he's still in a weak state elfman and evergreen run into this guy named rusty rose whose magic allows him to create anything he wants as long as it comes from his imagination while fighting he lets them in on grimar hearts ultimate plan that being to create a world with the help of zerath where only the top 10 percent of people live it'd be a world ruled by the strong where magic is necessary to survival elfman tries to take a stand for all the people who can't or don't use magic but he and evergreen are defeated around the time they're beaten lahar arrives with other ships to try and save mist but he thinks the rest of the island will be destroyed by another ethereon blast to stop grimoire the next battle to take place is with lokin grey against capricorn one of the 12 zodiac keys just like loki he's been in the human world for a long time but capricorn has been able to stay for the past 17 years due to his key holder zoldiyo was once a servant of laila heartfelia lucy's mom and was given one of her three golden keys to keep zoldio broke a taboo of magic and used a spell that traps the souls of humans on capricorn a spirit leading to zodio taking over his body loki tricks zoldio into leaving capricorn's body to take over his but capricorn's ready to keep that from happening with him out of capricorn's body zodio basically disintegrates into nothingness because of the taboo he committed lucy helps kana figure out where to go and kana knocks out lucy so she can complete the trial herself when lucy wakes up she along with natsu and happy fight kane hikuru this guy who uses voodoo magic after they beat him juvia faces off with ultier's in a way adoptive daughter melody and no i did not mispronounce that name it is spelled meridie she's a character that doesn't show much emotion other than when she's talking about grey where she hates him and wants him dead more than anything because of what happened to ultier meridie cares about ultier because she saved her when her village was destroyed by the seven kin and the only time she ever saw ultier saddened or hurt was when she thought about her backstory with grey and her mother or that's right ultier is not only the person who controlled jalal into constructing the r system she's also the presumed dead daughter of or grey's master back to merity her specific type of magic involves sensory link meaning people are linked together and feel the same things as one another to an amplified degree so she attaches herself to juvian gray the main purpose was so melody could kill herself and therefore kill grey and juvia along with her but with the sensory link she starts feeling juvia's love for grey overcome her hate and juvia lets her know that there's more to life than just dying for someone at around the same time kana finds mavis vermilion's grave and along with it finds the spell fairy glitter something haiti's second in command blue note is looking for she finds the others while blue note is just wailing on them and tries to use fairy glitter but isn't as powerful as she wanted because it's her first time using it at that moment before she almost dies guild arts comes to fight blunt himself showing kana she doesn't need to be an s-class wizard to get the respect and love of gildarts though he doesn't know yet at this point at the same time gildarts is dealing with blue node azuma makes the fairy tree fall causing the members to all lose their power that is other than urza whom he's intentionally kept the power of so he can fight to see the true power of a warrior if ursa wins ozma brings the tree back up if she loses it stays down and the members of fairy tale all lose the battles they're fighting because the tree is directly related to their strength during the battle urza hears the voices of everyone she's fighting for including jalal and comes to the conclusion she wasn't protecting her friends all those times she thought but they were protecting her and thus she needs to repay the favor the main reason she's able to beat asma though is because the magic of tenro island's tree can't be used to harm fairy tale wizards only protect and help them and azuma is directly trying to use the power of the tenro tree making it impossible for him to actually beat urza because she would only absorb that power rather than be harmed by it several people see this as just another power of friendship win because urza mentions the connection she has with all her fellow guild mates but it ties into the fight with how the power of the tenro tree can't be used against any members and also they're all connected through it so it does tie back in with his loss azuma helps the tin rotary rise again at the cost of his own life giving gildarts the strength to pull out a ko easily on blue note gray also officially meets ulti for the first time at that moment at first it comes off like ultier is on grey's side she says she doesn't blame grey for ur's death and that she wants to get rid of hades but the only way to do that would be for grady used i shell on him with that in mind grey immediately figures out her ruse and stops ultier right before she kills an unconscious juvia that's how the fight between ultier and grey starts in the beginning it almost seems like gray has no chance of winning due to old tier's arc of time magic allowing her to speed up or slow down the process of non-living things such as speeding up the process of evaporation so grey's eye sublimates that's when gray pulls off the ultimate badass move by cutting himself in the stomach and infusing his eyes with blood a living material making it impossible for ulcer to use her magic on it with her back to a corner ulti resorts to the ice magic her mother once taught her rey gets her into the sea and she remembers her childhood as a child she blacked out and remembered being carried away by her mother then waking up in a strange facility run by brain of the irrational seize she was tortured day in and day out to increase her magic power and whenever she cried to see her mother the staff said that her mother left dual tier there to become stronger one night ultier escaped from the facility and got back to her old home only to see ore training gray and leon thinking she'd been replaced ulti returns back to the facility to become even stronger so she can seek revenge her goal is similar to the other seven ken she wants to live in a world where only the strong survive but it's also a world where she and the others think they can reclaim lost happiness ultier only ever wanted to get back to a time period where she was still loved by her mother at that same moment in the water she starts getting blanks filled in for her memory by orr who became one with the ocean after her body melted and swept into it post deliora being released all that time back or actually gave ulter to the organization because she wanted to quell ultier's abnormally large magic power and when she came back to see how ulti was doing the organization claimed she died from her power all this time ultier had been living a lie and committing horrible actions because she thought it wouldn't matter when she reached this new world where the strong survive and she could start over with melody but there was no reason to because ohr never abandoned her ultier then loses to grey and he reconvenes with the others after all this fighting most of fairy tale is either beaten up or down for the count but they know there's still one major body left to fight hades who spent the entire time waiting in his flying ship and is fully charged to battle mess tries to make them reconsider and go with him but the gang knows that as their land in sacred area they have to protect it with all they have natsu grey lucy wendy and urza take on hades at once while the exceed crew looks around the ship to try and find a weak spot the attack squad does their best to beat hades altogether but they stand almost no chance against him in his overwhelming power most of them can barely stand by the time an old face comes back into the picture to help loxis he felt the pain of all the members and the damage sustained to the tin rotary so he came over to check out what was happening and came upon haiti's ship he fights hades but doesn't believe his power alone is enough to fight him so he transfers all his remaining power to natsu turning him into a lightning fire dragon slayer for a short period the first time this happens it comes off as weird and out of nowhere but after this fight it becomes canon the dragon slayers can consume each other's elements to become mixtures of them but from what's been shown they can only do this with one other element in this fight natsu unleashes all he has in a lightning fire dragon roar with the others chipping in too but hades gets back up and shrugs it off like it was nothing ready to show his true power to the fairy tale members this magic involves going to the depths of its dark origin and using it to the full extent possible of people and hades would have beaten them for sure but thankfully happy and carla found and subsequently broke the large heart within the ship from which grimoire heart got its name you gotta keep in mind that makarov is 88 years old so that makes hades like like probably a billion years old or something and he would need something to keep him from going for all that time so there you go a massive demon heart that contains all his magic with it destroyed the team finds the strength to deal a last round of blows ending with hades finally losing to the might of fairy tale and yes it's pretty epic despite how low scale it is with him defeated makarov gives a speech to hades that magic is both freedom and life and that it doesn't matter where it comes from but the way you choose to use it that matters in the grand scheme of things while the fairy tale guild celebrates their victory hades and his few remaining seven can attempt an escape in their ship but they're confronted by zerath the very person they were trying to take from the island hades tries to get answers about the true origins of magic but xerath doesn't want to hear it all he says is that he lived in peace for hundreds of years but now the new generation has made him lose touch with the beauty of life and ushered in a new era of suffering xerath is known as the black wizard not only for the monsters he made with the book of zerath but also because he kills anything he cares about with his curse of contradiction something that he couldn't use the full power of until hades made him lose his morality in that moment xerath easily kills hades and leaves before he left however he forewarned the coming of the beast known simply as acnologia and with that the forces of the magic council decide to withdraw and ultier plus melody trail off the island in a small boat ultier tries to kill herself after thinking about the weight of all her actions but melody saves her so they can repent for what they've done together on the island everyone is celebrating and khanna tells gildarts the truth of who she is to which he grips her and mentions the woman she knew khanna was the daughter of and that he loved her more than anyone else unfortunately dear viewer you've forgotten one clear aspect whenever a fairy tale arc ends there's some kind of repercussions or sacrifices from the fairy tale guild hall being destroyed to simon dying to lochus being exiled to jalal being taken away and kate shelter being imaginary to all of ellis's magic being taken and never seeing missed again again something always happens and this arc is no different during the celebration acnology appears on screen for the first time and he is powerful the entire guild tries to take him on but they can barely land a hidden on him that does any damage whatsoever it doesn't help that they can't fight at full strength having just finished all their respective battles with fear running through the hearts of the guild natsu remembers what he learned from guild arts sometimes you have to face the fact that a fearful enemy is unable to be beaten and use that fear the best you can with agnologia readying to fire another blast all the guild mates join hands and ready themselves to die they've accepted their fate and are ready to die standing next to each other agnologia fires the blast and tynro island just disappears this moment really [ __ ] with me on my first viewing i hadn't seen such a wow that just happened since toy story 3. it actually radiates really similar vibes to it though in this case they were all ready to die and didn't seem to be sad about it obviously with over 200 episodes left after this episode they aren't dead but well the next episode cuts to seven full years later fairy tale is in ruins with all its most powerful members and friends gone macau becomes the new guild master but in their absence the guildhall was repossessed and they had to move into a smaller hovel nab still hasn't picked a job in seven years troy got fat the guild is constantly harassed by this other guild that they're in debt to it's pretty depressing overall blue pegasus and lamia scale tried to help for a long time in searching but nothing ever came up all zach and bisca the magic gun wizards are still searching on their ship and one day the floating spirit of mavis vermillion appears on top of the water and raises tanrow island from the ground fairytale was saved from agnology's blast because in holding their hands together in unison they shared their magic power to cast another of the three most powerful fairy tale spells called fairy sphere it's an absolute defense spell that puts a protective barrier around someone to protect them everyone is safe and in fact they haven't aged a day in seven years so when they come back and show those other guild douchebags a thing or two it's quite satisfying seeing the shriveled up version of the guild to give them all a warm welcome back those seven years wait hard though lucy wanted to see her father in all that time that she'd been gone but she couldn't because her father had died a month before what's more shocking is what she sees when she goes back to her apartment the landlady kept it clean every week waiting for her return and lucy's father sent a present in the mail every year on the same day her birthday for seven years he always remembered and he also paid lucy's rent every month so it'd be the same when he knew what she would come back something i forgot to mention was shortly after the phantom lord arcs lucy's father lost all of his money at first he was sorrowful and begging for money but soon he came to the conclusion that this was a good start to try and start his life over and rebuild his fortune from scratch so he lost his estate and made little money but he still paid for lucy's rent every month for seven years and sent her a present to show he knew she'd come back it's a really touching scene and i'd be lying if i didn't say i shed a tear on my first watch through a while after that news comes in the churches across the country are being destroyed and a mysterious distant relative of lucy's named michelle shows up with a large key left behind by lucy's father before i go any farther i should explain the complex relationship this arc has with the canon fairy tale technically this arc is filler it was never shown in the manga and is exclusive to the anime despite that it still counts as canon this arc was created because hiromashima believed the anime was getting too close to the manga so he helped write the story that he wanted to do in the manga but couldn't and the events of this arc are mentioned on multiple occasions in the manga so it's canon and therefore worth talking about so lucy and co look into the key and discover it's actually a large clock handle but around the time they figure that out a few familiar faces show up looking for these guys are part of the legion platoon a strong group working for a massive church called zintopia they're also the earthlands version of characters we got to know in etolis including coco and two of those generals from before after some fighting they get the key and lucy looks into her old home's attic for clues finding a book called key to the starry heavens written by a man named will neville that shows the locations of all the other pieces the legion platoon happened to have the same idea and some new faces coming to the picture this guy named dan and a rather intelligent xseed called samuel they also find out where to look and at this point it's a race to find all the pieces of the clock through a series of fun but mostly uneventful battles fairy tale receives all the pieces and meet back at one spot to complete it at the meet-up spot coco and lucy bond just like she and koko's counterpart didn't editless but the earthling leader of the legion byro isn't having any of fairy tale [ __ ] he claims that fairy tales a blasphemous guild that helps people only for their own profit whereas the legion platoon wants to handle what's known as the infinity clock to keep the world from going into chaos out of all of them happy has a speech where he chews out the legion platoon in general for claiming to follow a holy mission while hunting other people in the process fairy tale and other guilds might take jobs for rewards but they stay true to their principles and help others any way they can without trying to see justice in a narrow view where anyone that isn't on the same mission as them is seen as their enemy for attacking the doctrine of zyntopia byro believes them all to be heathens so he tries to use the spell that would kill them all only to be saved by koko who deflects the shot and is moved by happy's words in a blind rage bairo tries to kill koko as well for her betrayal when the others all make it stop him with all the pieces assembled the infinity clock forms and this is where the plot starts going off the hinges but also getting much more interesting the oration says return as the neo-arashion sace with new members and they wanted the infinity clock the entire time but were unable to individually get the pieces so they waited for fairy tale to assemble it for them fairytale is forced to retreat with the help of blue pegasus and by rereading the book lucy understands she was given the clock piece to keep it separated from the rest rather than bring it all together come on lucy you have to read the fine print of these things this is how you get scammed out of 50 grand to a nigerian prince putting that aside lucy and the others do some research on will neville and discover he was not only a celestial spirit mage but he was also once a zintopian priest with many disciples whose whereabouts are unknown but before they can focus on that the crew knows what they have to do connie uses her magic to divvy them up into teams so they can find and subsequently defeat the neo arashion says at the same time another fairy tale wizard who joined around seven years ago named kinana starts hearing voices and writing messages it turns out she's actually cobra's old snake cubelios whom he's been looking for and was put under a spell until zero was defeated elsewhere elsewhere lahar is investigating into zootopia possibly helping the arashion says escape spoiler they did and he gets the help of doranbolt who is just a messed and still calling himself mess the betrayer of fairy tale because he thinks wendy and all the others are dead because of him lahar recruits him to help in the investigation and they find racer about to kill a celestial spirit mage named kacha before he attacks her katja explains she and the other celestial spirit mages who were descendants of well neville's followers have been treated well by the church but that all of them carry the curse of a link they have to protect racer stabs her with a blade of light called an anti-link blade and it doesn't kill her but her magic is diminished and her spirit goes away meaning her link's been severed that's when the pieces fit into place the arashion sais weren't going after the churches alone but they wanted to sever the links the celestial spirit mages had to the infinity clock as the descendants of will neville's disciples at that same time gazil and juvia find out that the legion more specifically its new member gut and the cleaner has been destroying their own churches as ordered by the high priest juvey and gazil are able to defeat him but elsewhere with the arashion says the final link has been severed so midnight activates the infinity clock's true form a huge ass fish i mean obviously elsewhere on another of the fighting arashion says missions wendy and bixlo fight erigor a guy that appeared a few times in short bursts near the beginning of the series that has gone full brain dead mode and can barely remember anything through fighting wendy makes aragor's memories resurfaced leading to her defeating him and erigor getting his old self back to make the overall situation worse while investigating gildarts and lockheed find the true michelle lobster someone that's been under medical care for a long time meaning the michelle that's been with lucy this whole time is a fake michelle lucy natsu and elfman had been one of the groups sent to take on a member of the arashion seis named jackpot and they defeat him only to find he's the unofficial seventh member meaning one member of the irrational seize is missing michelle then reveals herself to be a member of the irrational seize named imitation and not only that she also has the seal of the archbishop of zootopia meaning she works for them and byro who is also there has to heed her orders she takes lucy and puts natsu in a cell only for getting elfman who hid so he could go tell the others about what happened the rest of fairy tale all meet back up and discover the true power of the infinity clock is a spell called true nightmare which distorts a person's sense of time memories and completely destroys their sense of self lucy is just a means to give the arashion says control of the clock and will fuse with it staying in a perpetual state of sleep for 100 years fairytale then goes on to storm the infinity clock using the help of blue pegasus and their new ride the christina advance back to lahar and doran bolt they find evidence that the archbishop's second in command named cardinal lapointe helped the arashion says escape and has been controlling the archbishop from the beginning so they head out to the church to ask lapointe himself if he's guilty of doing it back to natsu he breaks out of the cell and takes coco with him but they need to face gutten again at the same time gildarts and loki sneak into the archbishop's room to find lapointe who challenges gildarts to a battle at the same time as that meera is fighting racer and when he asks her why she's faster than him she explains that he's doing mental anguish to his body by running and he comes to understand he wasn't going fast but running away from his fears causing him to break down in tears back to natsu and koko they make it past gutten to reach the archbishop's room and interrupt guild arts and la pointe before they fight before la pointe can do anything biro cancels his magic knowing that he's been had and natsu recognizes the point smell from master zero of the arashion says that's when it's discovered that while lapointe was controlling the archbishop he himself was controlled by the irrational seize and only existed as a doll created from master zero's hair you're confused yet it makes sense they're sort of a set up to their being doll-like creatures when gildarts and lockheed discover all those mannequins but god damn if it isn't hard to explain before la point is destroyed he does say the only way to stop the clock is to kill lucy so byron believes that's what he needs to do guildhart stops him and lets the others pass to try and save lucy from the sace cobra tries to stop the rescue team but urza goes up against him to let the others pass once again next they encounter angel and gray steps up to fight this time finally gaggio faces midnight only leaving koko elfman and natsu to save lucy whilst imitation is guarding her during urza and cobra's fight he hears keenan his voice since she's come out to look for what she's been hearing and it gives urza the chance to knock cobra down and defeat him grey's fight with angel goes similarly she was using a type of magic that would drain her life as she used it so gray made her see through the illusion of the angels she summoned as nothing more than parasites feeding off her life with some help from dan angel's magic power is shrunk to a point that her life is returned and her spell cancelled defeating her in the process i found this fight rather impactful because it showed what could happen to someone when they're almost swallowed by their own ambition angel wanted to be one of the holy but in the process she sacrificed her life to create imitations that made her feel like she controlled them and therefore was one with them when really she was just being used by her own magic back to lucy she started fusing more and more of the infinity clock so to slow it other fairy tale members start breaking the chains attached to the infinity clock to no avail midnight also explains that once lucy is engulfed everyone's memories of her will be erased causing imitation to realize she's been tricked you see her only wish was to be with lucy and have her to herself forever she tries to break lucy out but midnight stops her and reverts imitation to her true form just like lapointe she was a puppet made out of an old doll lucy used to have that triggers lucy's memory michelle had mentioned her and lucy would play together all the time and make clothing from things like leaves so it makes sense that she was a doll that lucy got from her mother to play with lucy only forgot about michelle intentionally after her mother died because lucy didn't want to face her and remember michelle was only brought to life by midnight to help in the fight against fairy tale at the thought of that memory midnight stomps on michelle and rage like the [ __ ] [ __ ] he is so we know natsu's about to open a can of whoop ass on him michelle's story is honestly so tragic and heart touching you feel like she's shown herself to truly be lucy's spiritual sister and even more than that a member of fairy tale in her own right it also makes a ton of sense in the grand scheme of things with the foreshadowing in place so i tip my hat to this twist natsu is able to beat midnight but lucy's already become mostly one with the infinity clock levy telepathically tells the others the only way to help lucy now is to break the anti-lock on the celestial spirit mages that guarded it and lucy has taken control of the infinity clock so she focuses her magic into beams of blue light to help break the anti-lock once the anti-lock is broken the pieces all scatter along with her and natsu runs off to catch her before she hits the ground as this is going on kinana finally finds cobra and asked if he was the one she was hearing the voice of in her head and he says no at first but after he peacefully leads into custody with lahar and dorembolt they exchanged looks and it's implied they know the legion platoon gives their apologies to fairy tale the next day and make up before leaving on a new quest to seal away the pieces of the infinity clock left over thus setting up the next dark in the series for an anime exclusive arc this was surprisingly good mashima did help in writing it and the story is technically canon but still this level of quality in general isn't something you'd normally expect from anime exclusive content the first half of the arc was rather slow and kind of tedious setup but once the arashion states get into the picture the entire story soared in quality the story could get a little confusing sometimes but with the characters i love the dynamic of all the members of the sace giving up something to try and be stronger with it ultimately deteriorating their bodies or minds in the process the sace in general gets so much more character development and felt much more sympathetic than some of them were back in the nirvana arc michelle's story and character were also just top notch and gave me something i wasn't expecting if i had to make one complaint about this arc it said there wasn't enough scenes of the greatest characters in this series and probably literature history the jiggle butt game yes you heard me correctly these true scoundrels topped the list of antagonists in fairy tales entire history higher than xerath hades jalal everyone really there is no comparison to try and hold any of the other villains to this standard would be treason against the butchical gang's holy divinity now let's get to one of the most divisive arcs in fairy tale the grand magic games arc it comes to this arc you either love it or you hate it there's little in between if you're asking me then i assume you are since you've made it this far in the video i think the grand magic games is in the top three best arcs of fairy tale my top three being grand magic games tartarus and at the top etilis one of the greatest aspects about this arc is it allows all the key characters of the guild to shine in their own epic moments and showdowns that are so hype and most of the time have great payoffs the main idea of this arc is after the seven year gap fairytale has gone so low as to be seen as the weakest guild in fiore for the past several years the grand magic games has been held and every time fairy tale has come in dead last the new top guild is an upstart band of newcomers called sabertooth who have their own set of twin dragons and really powerful wizards makarov's banished son ivan has also started his own guild called raventail with the express purpose of destroying fairy tales so they'll have to be ready for them as well this only motivates the characters to want to fight for this even more obviously they want to make it up to all their friends and family that they left behind seven years ago so the fairy tale crew is ready to train like crazy unluckily for them they decide to go and have a party in the spirit world and it turns out that one day there is three months human time so when they get back they only have a few days left to train before they try and train with the little time they have left they actually run into ultier but she's become an ally to fairy tale and guilds all around the world with her own independent guild crime sorcier the only members are her melody and jalal but they formed long ago to try and pay for their crimes by doing good deeds such as taking down several dark guilds that have been causing trouble in the past they decided to meet with fairy tales so the two of them can cooperate during the grand magic games because a mysterious presence has permeated there each year ultier also helps them get stronger by unlocking their second origin a reserved for magic power that not many wizards can use but if they want to it costs an extreme amount of pain there's also this tense scene between jalal and urza that i quite liked because they want to be together and morally they're on the same side and jalal has gotten all his memories back but jalal is still a wanted criminal and urza is a member of an official guild so at least for the time being it can't work at all moving forward to the actual games before the preliminary event fairy tale encounters sabertooth's dragon slayers rogue and sting and oh boy these guys are smug [ __ ] as dragon slayers do they have x-seed companions and they're [ __ ] too the moment these guys show their cocky attitudes on screen you want to punch them and see just how powerful they really are for when fairy tale beats their asses into the ground they think of themselves so highly because supposedly they got the title of true dragon slayers by killing their dragon parents it enrages natsu hearing they could be so heartless but for the time being all of fairy tale needs to focus on the events originally for their team fairytale had obviously gray lucy urza natsu and wendy but she got ambushed by a member of raventail while she was sightseeing so elfman steps in as her replacement when fairytale first comes into the stadium they're booed and ridiculed no one in the audience is on their side and they only barely made it through the preliminary stages in eighth so there's low expectations but they didn't just get one team unbeknownst to them makarov put together another team for the tournament consisting of meera gajiel juvia jalal cosplaying as missed again and loxus yeah in between arcs makarov made gildarts the fifth guild master after makao but he didn't want to be master so he made two decrees before he stepped down in a matter of days he reinstated loxus into the guild and made makarov the sixth master and that's such a guild arts thing to do so you can't really help but laugh so yeah fairy tale has two teams and they'll be going up against six other guilds saber tooth raven tail lamia scale blue pegasus quattro cerberus and mermaid heal the first half of this arc is almost entirely fights with small bits in between so i'm gonna analyze all of them the first event is just hide and seek basically sabretooth's member shows this impressive power by attacking everyone at once and winning and fairy tale comes in last with zero points because the raventail douche is only attacking grey and juvia after that the battles begin starting with lucy fighting a raventail member named flair the fight seems to be going fairly until flair threatens all zach and discus daughter in the stands so lucy has to stop fighting her else flare almost goes as far as to burn raventail's emblem over her fairy tale mark before natsu notices flare's hair in the stands and stops it lucy is about to cast a huge spell that would have won her the match for sure but she stopped by one of the raventail members weakening her magic causing her to lose she was beaten down by an unfair opponent she overcame the odds to cast a grand new spell but she was made to look like a fool from the crowd's perspective this looks like her not being able to control her magic so they boo her and continue to look down on fairy tales sitting at a pathetic zero points natsu helps her stand again encouraging her that zero points is a great start to try and make a comeback jira and jalal also have a short fight in an attempt to win jalal almost blows his cover and ultier stops it not too interesting other than making fairy tale continue to look bad and lose the next day the event is a moving platform race and which look at that gajiel natsu and sting were all picked for it it comes down to them being dead last and sting being content to give up with his motion sickness but natsu and gaggiel are going all out sting sees this as them only trying to get the favor of the public opinion instead of just doing what they want like he knew them as a kid but they explained it isn't as much about the tournament as making up for the friends they left behind all those years ago the guild suffered for seven years because they left so they're just trying to make up for it and to them every little point matters sting and the entire sabertooth guild's philosophy is winning big with overwhelming strength but during this tournament they tend to try and take the easy way out with their strategies as i'll explain later sting comes in last thinking he and his guild will just keep stacking up the points and the battles continue this scene is a small one but it embodies the entire arc perfectly despite their position and dead last and it's seeming impossible for them to get back up to the top after being beaten down so many times fairytale as a guild persists through the games in the name of their friends and family all to reclaim their lost credibility and help those who suffered for them in the next battle elfman has to fight a really strong opponent named bacchus who uses a form of martial arts that makes his deadly hand movements with his drunken fury elfman is clearly outclassed in the beginning and can't keep up with bacchus's speed but he comes up with an idea to compete all-out defense at that point it becomes a battle of wills to see who'll give out first from either getting hits inflicted or being damaged by throwing those hits at an immovable shield and at the end it looks like bacchus won by standing up but he almost just as soon falls down and emits defeat to elfman giving fairytale their first major win this fight is awesome and nerve-wracking after this fight elfman is out of the tournament from just how much of a beating he got and i loved it elfman hasn't gotten many moments to shine since phantom lord and i lived for these character moments during this fight lucy and wendy were both in the infirmary and taken by some random hired hands we don't know who sent them but natsu was able to take them down pretty easy the next fight is a literal swimsuit competition and it is amazing the entire thing goes so out of hand over time to the point every wizard joins in and if there was one mangaka who could literally make a swimsuit contest an actual plot relevant moment it's our man hero anyway mira jane wins against her opponent by doing the one thing she couldn't handle actual fighting raventail and lamia scale have a fight not important the last fight of the day comes between a celestial spirit mage of sabertooth named yukino and the leader of mermaid heel kagera before the battle begins though yukino has a little wager for kagura nothing too serious just their lives you know give it up to the person who wins pretty typical friendly gambling yukino has all the other celestial spirits that lucy doesn't and even a 13th ki but kagura slices up all her spirits without even unsheaving her sword kagura spares yukino's life but her master is not happy at sabretooth's guild meeting the night after the event the master makes yukino strip down in front of the entire guild to lose her dignity then forces her to remove the saber-tooth symbol and leave forever giving some insight into what sabertooth is like as a guild they aren't connected as a family that works together willingly like fairy tale if you can't be 100 great all the time gma doesn't see you as fit to be a member sabretooth's entire aura gives off more of a totalitarian dictatorship than anything resembling an actual guild elsewhere during the night urza comes face to face with miliana her friend from the tower of heaven who's joined mermaid heal on a quest to try and kill jalal khangara is also on a mission to get revenge and the reason she won't draw her sword is because it's bound to not open until she's able to fight him back at the in fairy tales staying at yuki no goes there to give up her keys to lucy but she doesn't accept them since she knows yukino loves her spirits just like lucy and it would be wrong to take them after hearing about her departure and why natsu goes into full rage mode and storms saber tooth if that wasn't cool enough he runs right up to the master and challenges him to a fight the only thing that stops it from going full blown is minerva the daughter of gemma stepping in and holding happy hostage to get natsu to back off not to impart some wisdom about how a guild should be a place that treats its members like family and we move on to the next day the first event is a strategy game the way it works is you draw lots and whoever goes first picks a number of monsters to fight it could be a weak monster or the strongest there is but you need to fight and win to get points for your team you can take on as many monsters as you want but planning your moves is really important when urza steps up first it looks like this could take a while but she finds a way to simplify it to break the game entirely to take on all the monsters at once it's so simple but also the type of plan only urza would have the metaphorical balls to try and attempt after she absolutely destroys the tower and everything in it the other members have to do a simple strength test to determine their rankings khanna goes last for fairy tale b and uses fairy glitter because mavis gave it to her to help her win it's a funny moment that makes sense when mavis childish tendencies after that you already know what's coming up battles miliana beats a quattro cerberus guy first then loxus has to face a member of raventail called alexi on the surface it seems like a perfectly bland matchup but underneath an illusion the two haven't moved at all loxus is ready to take him on for real but before he does alexi reveals himself to be ivan lotzis's father whom to clarify isn't supposed to be allowed to fight as the guild's master but he isn't alone either the entirety of raventail accompanies ivan as he asks loxus about lumen histoire fairy tale's secret weapon that only guild masters know about loxus is given the opportunity to win in ivan's illusion if he gives up the info but loxus doesn't know about it at all or care for that matter all he wants to do is fight all of raventail by himself loxus easily dispatches all the members before ivan and he tries to play the old blood ties card but loxus isn't having any of that because fairy tale is his family and anyone that wants to destroy it is his enemy once the illusion vanishes and all the members of raventail are left lying there with the crowd in utter shock loxus walks off and acts like it was nothing my god what a legend after all the beating down and pain and suffering raventail put through fairy tale to try and hurt their bonds and make them give up locks his whales on them all with ease and doesn't even claim the kill because he knows he doesn't have to these are the kind of moments i love to see in this arc they're some of the most iconic in the series and the moments don't stop there spoiler alert after loxas helps disqualify raventail by exposing them wendy is ready to take on a member of lehmia scale shelia plot twist here like zangro on tin rho island was a fire god slayer the little girl here is a wind god slayer and absolutely insane when it comes to power level in their ensuing fight wendy gathers all her magic into a brand new spell she's been working on and seemingly knocks out shelia until she gets back up with her wounds healed unlike wendy who can heal other people and replenish their magic power shelia can heal both herself and other people's wounds shelia offers wendy to surrender since it's obvious she's at a disadvantage but wendy stays strong and doesn't give up for the sanctity of her guild mates that fought just as hard as her shelia in response fires off her strongest attack but wendy previously used her magic to up shelly his own strength so she overdues the spell and misses her with neither having any magic left they resort to a fistfight ending in the bell ringing and giving us the only true draw in the tournament and a satisfying one at that after that fight jalal's almost caught by the custody enforcement unit and both miliana and kagura see him this leads them to understand that fairy tale is sheltering him for some reason that they can't understand having not been there for the whole arashion seisark debacle following this you're never gonna believe this the next day comes and lucy goes into the next event out of all the events this is probably the most simple try and knock your opponent out of the water when it comes to the last two they both need to stay in five minutes or the person who would be second comes to last after a good bit of fighting it comes down to lucia minerva and this is the first time we get to see minerva's true ruthlessness as the timer begins minerva starts by taking lucy's keys so she can't fight back after that she dishes out gravity attacks heat-based attacks and every other kind of hit you can implore but she doesn't let lucy go out of the ring she keeps beating and beating on her until eventually the umpire calls it and minerva hangs lucy out to dry like a large prize caught after a day of hunting lucy had tried to stay in for fairy tale while taking minerva's hits so she allowed lucy to get second place only to show she controls the matches and lucy isn't anywhere near her level of skill this isn't even the worst thing she does in this arc if this one acts she becomes the other main focus besides sting and rogue for fairy tale to take down for pretty clear reasons the rest of sabertooth also gets some hate points for staring and laughing at this while it happens with lucy out fairy tale is forced to combine teams to make up for the members they've lost so makarov picks a super team of urza natsu gaggio gray and loxus to represent the guild moving forward ichiya has a battle with quattro cerberus not important nietzsche from etalis is back as part of blue pegasus that's about it the real main event here is sabretooth's twin dragons versus natsu and gajiel if mashima knows how to do one thing for fights it's building hype these guys have trashed on fairy tales since they got into the arena sting and rogue believe because they're third generation dragon slayers that being dragon slayers who've had dragon lacrima put into them and were raised by dragons they're superior in every way natsu and gaggio are just remnants of an older weaker generation that doesn't deserve to be considered the strongest they insult fairy tale kidnapped happy basically tortured lucy and now they want to prove they're the best by taking down their old role models in the beginning of the fight natsu and gazil appear to be on top of things but sting and rogue have one major trick up their sleeves they can activate a powerful skill called dragon force at will after that fairytale gets their asses handed to them to the point saber-tooth destroys the arena to take them down it looks like the twin dragons have won when and gagio get back up like they didn't feel a thing they only took the hits by sting and rogue to learn all their moves and how to adequately counter them but natsu doesn't want to just fight them with gaggio by his side instead he knocks gagial into an old minecart and proceeds to challenge both of them by himself sting and rogue try to double team him with a unison attack but natsu counters it and makes them fall finally getting them to realize they weren't the strongest by a long shot and had no reason to be as cocky as they were with this victory for the first time in the arc fairy tale moves to the top spot in the games this is only the middle of the arc but a major change to the show comes after this event the animation style completely changes due to a new studio producing the show what i mean by this is throughout the entire lifespan of fairy tale it's been produced by a1 pictures but in the beginning they got help from satellite and now they're getting it from bridge my point is after the change most people whether fairy tale haters or fans agreed that the changes weren't quite exactly great the colors had become more dulled fight scenes usually aren't quite as fluid and it took a year in real life for this to take place so anime fans who didn't read the manga were left in suspense for quite some time i didn't personally experience that but it must have been annoying on the positive side the art style is updated to make the characters look much more like their manga counterparts before they looked kind of similar to the original wacky art style but it wasn't a fully faithful transition i mean can you imagine if happy first looked like this in the anime this period on the other hand has designs that match the characters from the manga and is less afraid to show off some of the more violent aspects of fairy tale that the previous wasn't able to show the first portion had brighter colors to match the lighter tone but the action suffered from censorship i don't mind the darker colors too much since the main arcs this version covers the latter half of magic games sun village and tartarus are much more serious arcs that fit with the bleaker color palette as a whole i don't mind it too much but i do slightly prefer the earlier animation going forward with the story gaggio finally stops his seven dwarves mine cart ride to find a graveyard of dragons underneath the stadium that he plans to tell the others about gemma of sabretooth is once again really pissed and ready to bash heads at the twin dragons losing and he demands they remove their guild marks lecter sting's exede friend tries to get gma to reconsider but he's appalled at seeing a cat bearing the guild's emblem at all and promptly obliterates him this instinct into a blind rage that he uses to punch a hole right through gym minerva explains that lecter wasn't killed but rather she saved him and sent him to another place for sting to get him back however he needs to win the sports festival and claim sabretooth as the game's victor back to gaziel and fairy tale he leads them back to the dragon graveyard and wendy uses a spell to speak to one of the deceased about what happened to them in the past to end up where they are 400 years ago dragons and humans lived in a common predator-prey scenario but one dragon sympathized with the humans and wanted to make peace rather than war with them he got others to follow his ideology but dragons like the one summoned opposed it leading to war humans were taught dragon slayer magic originally to fight for the dragons that wanted peace with humans but eventually those same humans turned on the dragons and hunted them to near extinction one wizard rose above them all as the most gruesome dragon slayer among them he killed so many he himself became a dragon and used that power to become a king of sorts his name was agnologia the same dragon that nearly destroyed tenro island all that time back with that explained the dragons disappear and the group is confronted by a captain of the royal guard named arcadios with yukino accompanying him he explains that xerath helped in the creation of agnologia and therefore the first step in stopping him would be killing zerif before agnologia comes to be he further explains that yukino is with him as a now sergeant of the military to help his plan of opening the eclipse gate with the help of celestial spirit mages back when kidnappers tried to take lucy it was actually under arcadio's order to do so the games themselves are only used as a way to collect energy for an eclipse gates activation to get the eclipse gate to work and go back specifically 400 years all 12 zodiac keys are needed and the door has to be activated on the 7th of july coincidentally this is also the same day the dragons all disappeared that raised gajiel natsu and wendy arcadio's main plan is to go back 400 years to use it for the purpose of killing xerath before he becomes immortal and the first ever emo thus making agnologia cease to exist by connection arcadios doesn't get to enact his plan though because the entire group is surrounded by the royal guard a man named dalton doesn't want arcadia to go through with the plan so he has him and yuki no jailed for treason and lucy is taken along with them the others are kicked out with the promise that if they win the game they can have an audience with the king and ask for lucy's freedom the next day fairy tale already has a plan set for what to do in the final game of the tournament that being an all-out brawl with five members from each guild fighting around the city for points natsu switched out for juvia while he meera carla happy lily and wendy all go off on a rescue mission for lucy and yukino as the tournament begins fairy tale just sort of stands there not doing anything while other guilds are fighting and gaining points mavis explains the reason for this is because she's been observing the opposing guilds and came up with a strategy for complete victory and with a command everyone goes off to fight the first one of the day comes between a saber-tooth member named rufus and grey rufus is in a library memorizing powerful spells to help aid in his arsenal that being because his magic is memory make magic meaning he can recreate any kind of magic or object directly from his own memory grace struggles at first but is able to overcome his magic by using an ice mix spell that creates too much too quickly for him to memorize in a fluster he goes back to using regular attacks and in a moment of being open gray finishes him off with an ice sword attack going to the escape plan the group finds and frees yukino and lucy but the floor opens up and puts them in a place called the abyss palace basically it's where criminals and thieves go to ride and that's what the princess heaswee accuses them of doing but she doesn't seem content about putting them there the group tries to find a way out but after finding a beaten up arcadios they're confronted by the real reason no one makes it out a group of executioners that work from the shadows for the kingdom known simply as the hungry wolf knights now to be fair most of these guys look like total weirdos that aren't threatening in the least but they're anime villains so those two aspects kind of go hand in hand together with them being split up into two groups natsu lucy wendy and meera have to face four members while an unable to summon any celestial spirits yukino lucy carla happy and arcadios face off with this joker who apparently leaves nothing but the bones of his victims behind yep he looks like the type probably eats children on the way to work so he doesn't get hungry you know that normal stuff in their battle arcadios almost fries his legs off saving the girls from a lava pit but horologium saves him and loki opens his gate to hand lucy and yuki know their keys back arcadios doesn't seem to be phased by the lava as most regular people would so lucy and ukino beat fisherman guy with some good old teamwork oh wait arcadius was fine because he had some jade amulet that works like a talisman and protects him i don't know it seems legit with the other wolf knights panther lily has to fight this guy who uses acid and finds a way to cut through it right to him wendy fights this creepy plant chick and overcomes her mira uses her strongest demon form to eat the poison cast on her by this girl who uses paper in different ways and natsu takes down this guy who uses scythes pretty easily after they're all taken care of natsu and ko find a strange person in a cloak that opened up the door for them and it's also explained he swee was in on the eclipse project and arcadios just took the fall for her she explains that she needs to use the eclipse's secondary feature as a canon to protect the kingdom as she was informed by a person from the future he sweet isn't certain if the events will take place but if one team makes an unexpected victory in the games like this person from the future says he's we will consider their words as the truth she isn't the one in the cloak though instead it's lucy well to be more specific it's a version of lucy from the future who use the eclipse gate to come back and warn everyone about dragons showing up out of nowhere and killing everyone that's a pretty tall order to believe but right now we've got something more important to take care of the most hyped fight in this arc other than the twin dragons versus natsu and gagio urza vs minerva vs kagura dear lord what a pairing up you've got urza with a grudge against minerva for what she did to lucy minerva being shown to be a powerful wizard that wants to defeat them both and show how powerful sabertooth is and kongera who's secretly been holding a grudge against urza for harboring jalal what kind of fight could take place here well it seems the three are all mostly evenly matched they can inflict damage on each other at steady rates but none seem to be better than the other with minerva fearful of what might happen she decides to bring out a hostage she took earlier in the fighting miliana with their friend in danger kagura and urza are forced to fight each other and the one remaining will take on minerva well forced is a strong word kagura definitely wants to fight urza but urza doesn't really want to fight kagura so it's more like giving that nudge to send them right over the edge speaking of kagura and urza clashing over jalal he goes over to melody and ultier about future lucy's prediction and gets them to help evacuate the citizens after the games back to the battle kagura is cutting through all of urza's armor and tells ursa the reason she wants to kill jalal is because she's actually simon's sister and heard about how he died from miliana remember that guy who sacrificed himself for urza back at the tower of heaven yeah that's a guy mirza reasons with kagura that if it's anyone's fault he's dead it's hers but that she won't die because it would dishonor his sacrifice in a fit of rage kagura unsheaves her blade and charges at urza but she ends up losing the fight right before a boulder goes over kagura urza saves her just then remembering their connection back at the old village simon and urza lived in when the raids happened urza gave kagura a hiding spot while driving the cultists away to charge after her leading to urza's eventual capture with that in mind kagura takes it all in and is ready to surrender her victory and points to urza but that's not going to work for minerva guess why don't you just guess what this absolute piece of [ __ ] human garbage does she comes out of nowhere and stabs kagura with her defenses down claiming the win for herself and ready to do the same to urza who got a broken leg and is already beaten up and you know what that isn't enough to hate this character after kagura mentions meliana while bleeding on the ground minerva returns her with heavy wounds all over her body the reason she was bored and wanted to have some fun during her weight okay holy [ __ ] somebody destroy her right now and that's exactly what ursa intends to do this whole game she had actually never been using her second origin to fight all the accomplishments she'd already achieved were just basic urza before the intense unlocking of more power with her second origin she uses a brand new armor set called nakagami starlight an armor that costs tons of magic power but it allows the user to bend the laws of magic itself and using a rally of strikes she takes down minerva in a rather satisfying if not short way during my research for people's general thoughts on fairy tale and why they liked or disliked parts of it i found a few popular videos talking about hating the chapter this battle comes from chapter 322 in the case of fairy tale i've never read the manga but the events played out in a similar fashion to the anime personally i didn't mind this fight at all the hype was there and the want for urza to take down minerva was boiling inside me and bringing the second origin back into the story was something i found clever since it wasn't mentioned much after they actually unlocked them i do think the fight was a bit short as are most of the others i'm about to describe but i still do very much enjoy seeing urza overcome minerva in a way that does make sense for the other battles luxus goes against jiren orga a lightning god slayer juror uses a fake out strategy to take down orga and loxes barely defeats jura in a hand-to-hand magical battle juvia and grey at the same time as this are battling shelly and leon what ends up undoing the lamia scale pair is their inability to fight as a team giving grey and juvia a chance to do a similar move to rogan sting's combination attack and knock them down finally among the fights is gaggio's battle against rogue one-on-one gazil actually has a heart to heart with rogue about why he's doing this and that while he might think he doesn't really have any friends he can rely on in the guild he'll always have his exit companion frosh it looks like rogue will give up the victory to gaggio but at that moment rogue's taken over by a being claiming to be his shadow and attacks gaggio in that moment he decides to pull a natsu and eats rogue shadows to become a shadow iron dragon slayer with that boost he beats rogue and gets the shadow out of him but the battle isn't over yet other than frosh having a cute moment where he tries to protect rogue when he's down and gaggio promising not to hurt him sting hasn't moved the entire game his big strategy for taking down fairy tale and winning the tournament was to lie and wait for everyone else to be defeated so he could swoop in and take the kill against already tattered and beaten fairytale members all of them struggle to carry each other to the center point of town where sting's waiting and they stand there ready to battle sting is about to come at them when suddenly he drops to his feet and he begins to cry then he hands his victory over to fairy tale stating he can't beat them even though if he breathes too hard he could take him down this is the real moment everyone was steamed about when it came to chapter 322 the reviewer saw it as a major compound that sting should have won with no problem and that it's far too bullshitty to be taken seriously and yeah from the basic way i described it you could get that impression but personally i don't mind the scene it could just be my own personal interpretation from what happened but the way i saw it sting was ready to attack the guild members when he noticed they were all standing together in solidarity as a team despite their injuries unlike people like sting who were willing to give up so fast in events like the moving chariot race fairy tales members all took the punches and through their agony got back up to join in one last battle fairy tale as a guild had a plan from the beginning that relied on everyone working together in unison to make it happen and sting just stood by as people he didn't really care about all went their separate ways to deal with the problem on their own and in the end they all failed sure sting has made it through without a scratch on him and therefore held an unfair advantage when it comes down to the final moment but in that underhanded way he felt like he wouldn't have earned a victory for his guild or even himself he wants to get lecter back but all he would be doing here is taking down his idols that he revered for so long to fill his own ego whereas fairy tale had the reason of helping their long gone friends escape the torment they suffered for so long like natsu told him in this moment it all hit him and he understood he didn't deserve to win and by extension he knew his own pride wouldn't allow him to try and win so he gives it up to fairy tale i don't see it as a moment of him being a terrible character or the worst in fairy tale history i see it as a moment for the character to finally humble himself down from his ego that accumulated over years of praise i could just be looking too far into it like i said before but that's how i interpreted the scene and in the end i'm happy fairy tale was able to achieve the goal they set out to do meanwhile in the royal castle the rescue squad's fighting off tons of different wacky characters when they asset clip into the floor or more specifically a shadow engulfs all of them from another time traveling character in the form of future row with an even more emo haircut than current rogue he lets in on the fact that the eclipse was built with the help of a celestial wizard in xerath that cost tons of magic power to open it's also the source of magic crime sorcier had been sensing for years he came back not only to warn the others about this but to stop someone from closing the gate leading to 90 of people dying to the dragons like in future lucy's timeline he reveals it to be lucy herself and tries to kill her but future lucy takes the hit and dies from the injuries in the grand scheme of things it shouldn't be too sad since future lucy doesn't have as much effect on the plot but seeing a version of her sitting there in agony wishing to go on more adventures before dying is still kind of gut-wrenching what's even more bittersweet is after she dies she finds all her friends from the timeline where everyone died and follows them off to the afterlife natsu being his usual brand of piss tries to fight future rogue but is almost engulfed by a shadow only being saved by ultier at the last second the gang goes to talk to princess he-swee but she says she's already about to open the cannon as said by her source who is a man that's when it dawns on natsu and the others that future rogue was the one who informed the princess about the eclipse being able to act as a cannon and not future lucy the eclipse can only really open a gate to the past and when open to 400 years ago that's where the dragons as predicted come from lucy and yukino are also the two who close the gate by using all the zodiac keys to press it closed leading seven dragons left over that rogue plans to use to take over the world as the new dragon king he originally was hoping for all 10 000 to help destroy acne logia and rule but with his own form of dragon taming magic he thinks it'll be enough and starts terrorizing the capital city lucky they have some true dragon slayers and sting and rogue but oh wait no they aren't their dragons forced them to kill them because they thought it would help the two grow up stronger there are still plenty of wizards and six dragon slayers but with seven dragons they need one more to balance it at that moment doran bolt and lahar release serpent from the arashion says to help out thus begins the battle against the dragons in a twist that no one really could have seen coming natsu starts the battle by getting some help from one of the dragons that's like subservient to igneel and during that fight the dragon rogues riding on births a bunch of smaller dragonish things that the rest of the wizards have to fight everyone including natsu starts getting into bad situation after bad situation until ah this uh no i did not edit that or anything gray straight up gets lasered right through the [ __ ] skull and many other places that isn't all either lucy dies when she takes a wrong turn gagial dies when he predicts the wrong movement sting and rogue die bankers dies makko and wakaba jet and troy loxes just everyone for the most part all of fairy tale and crew are dead and you might think okay fairy tale you got me where's the fake out this dream right the illusion you can't trick me no you're full listen they're dead dead ultier has a solution to try and save everyone but they did actually die there what ultier proposes is using a spell that rewinds time but at the cost of the time of its user she hopes it'll be enough to try and bring everyone a few hours back before the dragons at least but she looks at the clock and finds it only sent time back a minute to her it probably looked like she went through all that pain and gave up her life energy but failed her guild mates fairy tale the entire world really but that one minute turned out to be just enough time for people to save themselves from death in those many split-second decisions that killed them before the wizards were able to remember and correct themselves to not be harmed and rather succeed in the chaos lucy comes up with the idea of destroying the gates so future rogue and the dragons couldn't be there and at around that time natsu helps headbutt a dragon into the eclipse sending the dragons and future rogue away future rogue says it's inevitable that he'll become this way after ferocious killed a year from now and natsu swears to not let that happen in the celebratory banquet proceeding fairy tale and saber-tooth make up with sting as the new guildmaster kagura and urza have a good talk there's a moment hinting at gale the only ship that truly matters natsu acts like he's the king and the night ends with everyone dressing up in pumpkin hats and doing a dumb dance did i [ __ ] stutter it's a pretty charming night overall the next day everyone is ready to go dorm bolts erase the memories of the magic council so they don't know about the eclipse and possibly revolt against the kingdom meldy and jalal get a final message from ultier in a letter and as they're driving away from the kingdom gray looks out to see an old woman looking at the sun longly he knows that it's ultier having lost her many years but for once she's smiling knowing that she's accounted for her crimes and feels free at long last fairy tale is constantly berated for not killing off too many characters but in moments like simon giving his life or ulti giving up much of hers it leaves a major impact on you that you remember for how meaningful the sacrifice was i'm not saying there aren't some infuriating instances of the old bait and switch as i'll talk about in the final arc but this moment right here is really hard hitting with a character that's been intertwined with the story for so long this arc in general was full of devastating moments of sadness high feelings of triumph and badassery from different members of the main cast including some we don't get to see as often people don't like raventail too much since they're mostly constrained to a nuisance that tackles over fairy tale and keeps them from getting points but i liked that bit about them because it gave such an awesome moment for loxes to take down his own father and that guild that was giving fairy tales so much trouble elfman's battle of endurance was amazing urza breaking the game grey out doing rufus natsu taking down the twin dragons and challenging the master urza finally slashing minerva down ultier's redemption future lucy's sacrifice and dare i say it sting forfeiting the fairy tale so many iconic moments happened in this arc and i find it a great bit of fun loss in action this arc really does show the guild as the main character rather than just natsu and lucy i won't say this arc is perfect that's what tartarus is for but among tournament arcs this is probably in my top three what isn't in my top three anywhere is the filler arc that comes after this i get it you needed a bit of time to slow down from the melodrama of the magic games but damn did you have to make it so boring plus the manga cannon arc following this one is meant to do just that and it's much more interesting the arc i'm referring to is called the eclipse celestial spirits arc it's about the celestial spirits being put out of whack from the eclipse project and the guild needing to fight them to change them back to normal on paper it sounds okay but an action it's not worthy of your time other than the horrendous daphne arc this is the only true larger filler arcane fairy tale i like some of the designs of the eclipse celestial spirits but you know what i don't like a full episode about gray [ __ ] ice skating against a really gay lobster man okay to be fair that moment was actually kind of humorous but otherwise [ __ ] this arc i know how about we get kana to play yugioh but worse wow that sounds like a great idea we need to get that furry action in there too turn gazil into a cat why not levy playing useless trivia throw that on the leftover ideas pile i'm sure it's fine helfman wins by using his own sweat you already know that's approved a few more uninteresting straightforward fights later bam boom it's done move on there's no reason to watch this [ __ ] not even terrible just boring the only really good moment that happened between the magic games and sun village arc was episode 220. at first i thought it was going to be another filler episode about juvia pining for grey but as i looked into it after finishing i thought it was actually manga cannon and that made sense with how serious and well good it was juvia wants to give grey a present for a random day after they met so she goes around asking and decides to knit him a scarf what she doesn't know is it's also the anniversary of orr's death so grey rejects it at first and throws it on the ground afterwards gray digs it back up and thanks juvia having come to the conclusion that a day's worth is what you make of it and the past doesn't need to be all that dictates how you feel during that date it's sweet short and a moment for juvia that i really appreciated for a character the first arc to really get back into the swing of the story is called the sun village arc it's just fairy tale going on another job but this time it's been assigned by one of the founding members of fairy tale along with mavis named warren he's a dream man nuff said he's gotten them together to try and unthaw this village of giants that's been covered in a weird form of ice magic at the same time a treasure hunting guild is after a sacred artifact of the village called the eternal flame and minerva is there with a demon guy from the book of xerath and they're part of this new dark guild that doesn't really matter besides the fact that these two are in it the demon guy's main talent is turning people into younger weaker versions of themselves and grey outsmarts him by using the ice around the village that hurts the demon because it was created using demon slayer ice magic urza is able to scare off minerva with little pushback after that flair from raventail also shows up to help since the giant city is actually her home she was raised by the giants and her hair was gifted to her by the eternal flame but she left randomly without saying goodbye and wants to help them out now being separated from raventail gray finds a way to evaporate the ice around the eternal flame by channeling it through his body and it turns out to be the dragon that helped natsu back in magic games the guy who froze the city mistook the dragon for a demon and tried to slay it the nearly dead dragon uses the last of his power to unfreeze the rest of the village and flair is welcomed back into her village with open arms minerva also discovers her new guild has been trashed and soon she finds herself kidnapped this arc was mostly just a calming down sort of adventure really simple setup simple execution mostly just helping in foreshadowing for the next arc nothing much besides that just another fun fairy tale adventure of the gang and yet how fast that joy the characters feel can be ripped from them in the blink of an eye i'm talking about none other than the tartarus arc going to be straight up here i said endless was the best arc in the series for me on a subjective level but on an objective level it's no contest that tartarus is the best it was the arc everyone was hyped for because as a collective it was pretty outstanding from the beginning you can tell this isn't going to be a normal lighthearted fairy tale story you know why it starts with the entire magic council being killed along with lahar leaving doran bolt to watch as the only other living member is slowly killed the guy who destroyed the place is jackal one of the nine demon gates of tartarus the final of the three dark gills from the barm alliance he and his eight colleagues are all demons from the book of zerath led by their master mard gear with the intent of summoning xerif's most powerful demon e and d after that attack mr yajima a kind old man and friend of makarov from the old magic council almost dies to another of the demon gates when his restaurant is attacked and destroyed loxus and the thunder god tribe are on the job so they beat him but before dying the demon turns into anti-magic particles called bane particles which when ingested by people decay the magic from within them and kill them from the inside loxis tries to stop it by consuming as many bane particles as he can but over 100 people still die from lingering particles with lexus and the tribe out of commission fairy tale discovers tartarus is going after all former council members for some reason in an attempt to help fairy tale divides into teams and goes off to protect them first up we got natsu taking on jackal and at first jackal has a clear advantage with a different type of magic called curses what are curses they're magic but better that's what i got from it it comes from the same source as magic but curses carry a darker side to them overall with jacqueline particular touching him causes a magic circle to be placed on you that explodes on impact natsu solves the issue with the same way he would solve most issues if he could by punching jackal then consuming the flames caused by the explosions with nowhere left to run jackal attempts to blow up the entire village in a final send-off but happy swoops in and carries him up to where he can't hurt anyone saving the day you might think these guys are dying a little too quickly and easily and yeah that's because they have regenerative chambers that allow them to come back at any time after they're dead as long as this lab is up they're immortal in other news uh everyone else failed no one made it in time other than elfman and lazana who got a front row seat to the death and puppeting around of a former council member at the same time dorenbolt's doing some of his own research into tartarus and discovers through cobra that their big plan is to kill former council members with a body link spell to a weapon called the face for this info dorenbolt lets all the safes back out but before i get to that side plot the only other members to make it to someone before they're dead are mira and urza when they find the chairman of the magic council is fine in fact he's more than fine he's in cahoots with tartarus and tricked erza and mira into drinking drug tea so that he could bring them back to tartarus with him urza is tortured for info with some weird hentai squid after tartarus discovers jalal is the last one with a body lang but she doesn't know where he is natsu tries to storm tartarus and gets frozen by the guy who accidentally froze over sun village leaving only happy to run back to the guild for help at the guild elfman is forced and mind controlled by the demon gate he and lazana ran into to either blow up his family and home that raised both of them or be forced to choke his little sister to death under the whim of this single demon gate kana tries to stop them but the bomb lacrima has already been set so she uses her magic to put all a fairy tale into a deck of cards right as tartarus is floating over them oh right by the way tartarus is on a giant moving cube with its own gravity that's besides the point right now so kana puts everyone into these decks of cards and gives them to the exceed so they can fly up to tartarus and release everyone on the cube to help in fighting the guild hall blows up but everyone is safe meanwhile the chairman finds a way to transfer the final body length to himself and is promptly killed so the face can activate really he should have thought about transferring it to someone else in the room so as not to be immediately stabbed meanwhile as this is going on iracio and stace is free once again it'd be easy to think that they'd just go on another rampage with brain as the leader but yeah you know the old definition of true insanity repeating something over and over expecting it to change so midnight handles that by putting a hole straight through his pops jalal and meldy subsequently show up not to put them back in a cage and take away their freedom but to extend a hand towards joining their guild he holds his own against all of them but out of nowhere zero comes out of brain's body and attacks jalal obviously it's just another albeit more powerful one of midnight's illusions but jalal sees right through it by damaging his own eyes with them defeated the new arashion cinco all agreed to join jalon meldy in crime sorcier under their actual names richard sorino sawyer macbeth and eric no matter how much less cool those names sound back on the tartarus cube natsu anderson break free natsu finds xerath just sort of randomly showing up to enjoy the show and to tell natsu about end apparently it was so powerful even igneol couldn't beat it xerath doesn't show himself to the demon gates that want to get to him because he wants to see how everything will turn out before then with urza she makes a huge hole in the cube for the rest of fairy tale to climb into and lucy happy and natsu all reunite in time to fight one of the demon gates this guy's special quirk is that he absorbs the souls of people and gains their powers and he just so happened to come across haiti's old body and take his power natsu discovers that his weakness is actually rock since it's something he can't absorb so natsu smashes a bunch of pillars onto him and the demon releases all the souls he's captured including hades who in his final moments tells natsu to tell makarov to use lumen histoire for the crisis at the same time wendy found the location of the face and went looking for it with carla but you guessed it she has to fight a demon gate wendy's always had a hard time keeping up with everyone else in speed and power but as the series has gone along she's really grown in the beginning she only really supported others in atlas she fought alongside them in magic games she could fight a battle to a draw on her own and now with all the ether nano in the air around the face she consumes it to do none other than finally achieve dragon force for herself this moment is so hype in the show it's amazing wendy uses dragon force and beats the demon gate while destroying the face in the process all on her own it's such a proud moment for her unfortunately the face's activation timer is still going off and with not enough time to get out carla and wendy prepare to die by using a destruction circle on the face to finally blow it up they're saved by doranbolt thankfully but if [ __ ] didn't just get real there back on the cube mira gets out of her prison of sorts and destroys the regeneration lab that way the 9 demon gates can't respond anymore and have to finally start playing on hardcore like true gamers if you aren't keeping track that means that so far forearms and transformer guy are down for the count looking at mirror in the lab she takes over the ability of her opponent using her satan's soul takeover magic to make elfman sneak attack her and win in the end mira still doesn't want her to die so she absorbs seyla to be another one of her takeovers with the news reaching marred gear he punishes the dominatrix chick the tortured urza for her pupil failing and activates allegria a spell that binds everyone in a weird type of vine other than lucy and turns the cube into something called the plutogram now lucy's being hunted by the rest of the gates and pushes herself by opening three celestial spirit gates at once to fight multiple demons she can't keep it up of course and it looks like jackal and shark guy are gonna kill her but aquarius comes up with an idea celestial spirit wizards who've achieved a deep bond with their spirits can use the key to summon the celestial spirit king the most powerful of all the spirits the cost is that the key will be broken and unable to be used ever again aquarius being lucy's oldest spirit and tsundere friend gives her the idea to make lucy destroy her key and though lucy is reluctant about it she activates the gate of the spirit king and he comes blazing through the sky to cut the plutogram in half and send it falling the spirit king then takes on mard gear by himself and gives lucy aquarius his power to fight jackal he only stops after lucy defeats jackal and collapses from exhaustion because the spirit's length being summoned is paramount to the magic energy of their wielder with the last of his time in earthland the celestial spirit king cancels out allegria and frees everyone to fight the remaining demon gates this moment is such an amazing scene for lucy she achieves one of her few truly amazing moments by sacrificing a friend she's had her entire life to summon the king of the celestial spirits and take on jackal all by herself she saved the day all on her own and no one was expecting it but it was great after everyone's freed it comes to light that there are over 3 000 faces besides the one windy destroyed and it'll take a lot more to get rid of them all we can't worry about that right now because urza is fighting a new version of minerva that was modified in the now destroyed lab during this fight we get to know her backstory of why she always wants to battle so hard to win as a child gma forced her to always fight to win or be punished only the strong survive and if she couldn't make it she just wasn't fit to be his daughter he got her to kill family friends and survive on dangerous forests at a young age so it was ingrained into her that she would need to win if she wanted any rest ursa understands this and doesn't blame her for everything during magic games wanting to start anew by not fighting forever minerva eventually warms up to the idea of change but mard gear shows up to try and kill him both so she still isn't doing great she's saved by sting and rogue who received a letter from arza earlier about helping out but only just got there they distract mard gear by fighting him as minerva and urza run off to find lillian happy happy's got a mushroom on his head that turns out to be transforming guy so minerva uses him to get to the control center where the faces are being operated to go off i've yet to mention what the faces do haven't i imagine 3 000 giant bombs which don't destroy anyone but take all magic in the continent away the only people who could still fight would be tartarus since they use curses instead and could wipe out all their enemies in the blink of an eye so yeah it's kind of a big deal while that's going on gray is fighting the ice demon slayer known as silver and recognizes him to have the same face as his dead father asking whom he is reveals the man inhabiting silver is none other than deleora the monster that destroyed gray's original home killed his parents and took ur away his explanation for his appearance being brushed off as it was just another body laying around he could transfer his conscience into in their following battle gray notices ice doesn't work on a slayer type so he uses ice cannons full of iron balls to stick a hole right through deliora except it really isn't deleora that is grey's father and he did die back when delior destroyed their village he's only alive right now because another of the nine demon gates named keys is a necromancer that resurrected his corpse 17 years ago he learned demon slayer magic to fight demons rather than join them and thinking his family was dead he planned to take down tartarus from the inside that plan changed when he saw grey was alive during magic games the deli aura story was nothing more than a tale to get gray to finally overcome the one thing always holding him back in life that being his traumatic experience not being able to defeat deleora and avenge those he loved silver wants gray to kill him but greg can't get himself to since julia is fighting keys at that moment he telepathically tells her to kill keys and by extension him for grace sake juvia kills keys and silver is able to pass on but not before also passing on his demon slayer magic to grey and informing him he learned that type of demon slayer magic because end is a fire demon with a new sense of purpose to destroy end once and for all grey goes off to help the others natsu and gajiel are currently in a fight against shark guy but he brings in a lake of water mixed with bane particles and they both almost drown in it before levy comes in and gives gaggiel some air gazil absorbs the carbon in the water to mix with his iron to turn himself to steel and is able to beat shark guy with them exhausted gray and a sick luxus come in to take care of the new version of bane particles guy and beat him pretty easily with grey's new abilities sting and rogue also have to fight a new version of giamma that gave up his humanity to become strong this fight isn't too long but it represents them growing as characters and being able to beat their old masters it's i also also ursa is battling dominatrix chick and fights her with all her senses gone other than her feeling which is turned up to the highest pain index a gust of wind is like a storm of daggers on her but she uses this to her advantage by feeling where the pain hurts most and slashing kyouka in those spots she still isn't fast enough to stop face's activation though and to make things worse acnologia has appeared in search of end can you guess what happens next if you haven't seen the show you wouldn't have a chance of guessing but igneal the dragon natsu has been looking for for years comes from within him and starts to battle agnologia while he's doing that natsu goes after mard gear on the request of igneal to get the book of end he's been carrying grey joins in to help natsu fight and though natsu isn't able to damage mard after he transforms into his true form he was only really fighting to give grey the best shot to take him down with the demon slaying ice but what about the faces you might ask have no fear all the other dragons from before that disappeared on july 7th 777 also come back to destroy all the faces across the land i should really explain what's going on now because otherwise this might sound like pure insanity the dragons back on that fateful day in 777 all used a secret technique to sort of burrow inside the dragon slayers they did this to place antibodies in their system so they wouldn't end up becoming like acnologia a former human that became a dragon after too long they also hid inside the dragon slayers to come out at the right moment and try and defeat acnologia like ignil is attempting to it's quite a strange out there twist but it does sort of make sense in the greater narrative of what happened to the dragonslayers and we get the final pieces of the puzzle filled in in the final arc so don't worry you're pretty little heads getting back to the battle ignile gets agnologia's arm and agnologia gets almost everything other than igneo's arm like damn that is some carnage right in front of natsu the person who's been searching seven years for him and only had a brief reunion before forever having his dad taken from him nonetheless agnologia losing his arm scares him off and zereth reveals himself to take the book of end from mard put mard back in his own book and destroy him having served his purpose he redisappears after that and the dragon slayers all get to reunite with their dragons including sting and rogue apparently their dragons put false memories in their heads that they were dead to help make them believe that they were stronger and pushed them to try and reach new heights the dragons then ascend into nothingness as they'd lost their souls over 400 years ago when agnologia killed them and the only way for them to survive to this point was by being in the dragon slayers with a tearful goodbye they all go to their final resting place and natsu has a new goal in the form of taking down agnologia minerva is welcomed back into sabretooth lovingly juvia tells gray about being the reason his father is dead and he thanks her for putting him to rest natsu and happy go off for a year-long journey to train and makarov dispense the fairy tale guild wait wait what right that happens for reasons we don't know yet that isn't even the strongest twist at the end of this arc doran bolt is told by makarov that he was always a member of fairy tale named mess grider what happened was he infiltrated the magic council and erased his own memory until makarov would come to show up and discuss what had happened in the past month lahar mentions at some point temest when he doesn't have his memory that makarov visits him a lot so he then gets the idea to infiltrate fairy tale as mess grider the pupil of mystigam point is he's a real member i don't want to explain this again because it hurts my brain too much but yeah that's that that's what happened the next season of the anime goes on a bit of a well-needed tension and gives us the backstory of why zerif is the way he is and mavis his story of founding fairy tale first zerath he was a regular kid with a regular family in an old civilization city that is until his family and home were both destroyed by dragons he spent the next several years learning magic to try and bring back his dead brother but by dabbling in the darker side of magic he was given the curse of contradiction meaning everyone he loved that got close to him would die his thoughts contradicted themselves to the point he would never know what he wanted as he went on with his research he grew more and more hopeless with his immorality and not being able to love someone without them dying so he created the creatures of the book of zerath to try and kill him at last after his work was finished he was able to finally revive his brother in the form of a nefarious demon that was also meant to kill him this demon was known simply as a furious natsu dragneel or e ind for short igneal couldn't kill end because he chose not to so he could raise it as his own ultimately his true purpose in life is to kill zara for good and yet with his curse of contradiction once zerev dies his brother as a creation of xerath will cease to exist as well quite a twist to know not only is one of our protagonists a demon but that he's related to someone considered the black mage of death involuntarily the way other wizards and cultists taught him observe was this evil wizard who created his monsters to spread havoc across the world but as early as tenro island it's easy to see that isn't or should i say wasn't in his nature he was a pacifist that wanted nothing to do with the affairs of mortals or to harm them after so long he only wanted death the only thing that seemed so far out of his reach before natsu was reborn as end master mavis vermilion the founding fairy tale guild master is actually intertwined with the story in her own way uh mavis has a simple story she was a young child on tenro island indebted to a guild her parents worked at before dying she makes friends with the guildmaster's daughter before it's destroyed and the villagers of the city killed in a war with a rival guild mavis and her friend are the only survivors and stay there for seven years before anyone else comes looking around on it in that time mavis takes in the knowledge of her library and practices using illusion magic she gets a group of treasure hunters to take her along to find a sacred stone that got stolen from the island back during the fight and she slowly gets to know them better yuri dreyer makarov's dad is a short-tempered but well-meaning con artist who charges into danger head on warred the tree guy from before is a calmer jokier member of the group and he helps get the others out of trouble when needed correct or as he comes to be known hades is quiet and reserved but he also tries to help people no matter how awkward it may be these character traits manifest in their magic once mavis finds xerath and gets him to teach them how to fight warred uses support magic with the ability to help others precht uses a precise chain and yuri uses powerful but destructive lightning mavis also learns a few powerful spells from xerath including fairy law but she uses it before taking the time to master it so she stops aging and is stuck in her 13 year old body the friend she'd had for seven years named zara was also nothing more than an illusion mavis made subconsciously all that time ago zara died on that island but made us imagine she was still there until she knew about it from yuri leading to her disappearing i didn't mention her too much in my summary but if you watch the actual show you would know that that kind of hit kind of hits you right there in the wake of that with her new friends mavis forms fairy tale she came up with the name because she doesn't know what fairies are or if they even exist and if they do exist do they have tails you won't ever know until you actually try and go and look to find them under the light-heartedness of it all though mavis didn't just stop aging from using the law spell too early she was also cursed with the same contradiction as xerif she didn't know she had it until after a war she won as the fairy tactician when makarov was born in the newly built guildhall she was actually the one who named him and at that moment she understood the true meaning of life and in a tragic fashion just as the curse itself is makarov's mom dies leading to maeva storming off she tries to die by not eating for six months but her suffering was for naught as she can't die the only other person who understands her pain is xerif and when confronted by him she hugs him and lets him know that she accepts him for who he is in a moment zereth for once thinks the pain of being alone forever is over with mavis and they share a kiss but as the curse of contradiction goes his overpowers hers and mavis dies a tragic end to the time for the one chance theraph had it happiness being slipped away by none other than his own curse making him want to seal his heart and stay at a pure chaotic neutral before haiti's arrival in the tenro island arc he carries her body back to the guild hall and leaves it in the hands of precht he immediately puts her in the resurrection crystal and tries every spell in the book to bring her back to life at some point his endless attempts at spells accidentally created the fairy heart or lumen histoire an everlasting source of magic and secret passed down from guild master to guildmaster that's for another time though right now we need to flash forward to the present first thing i want to talk about for this season is once again the animation this season of the anime is called final series and was animated with the help of cloverworks which is just sort of a rebranding of a1 pictures but this version of the company is known best most recently for shows like darling and the franks with the help of trigger and the promise neverland as you might know if you're in the anime scene all those shows look gorgeous and fairy tale final series is no exception i won't say it's the next one punch man or anything like that but the animation can be best described as a perfect blend of the last two series it has the colors and movement of 2009 with the designs and sharpness of 2014. it's also got some really nice shots unlike anything else i've seen in fairy tales so far if anything this is some impressive animation speaking of the story after a year of the guild being disbanded lucy's a reporter for a magazine and natsu crashes into the magic games at the time to beat the winners all at once he and happy get lucy and they're off to find the others on another adventure to get the band back together the arc that comes following these events the avatar arc is actually pretty short and only really serves as a way to get everyone back together after the time skip basically gray went on a covert operation inside a cult trying to resurrect zerev even though you know he's still alive and we've known it for over a hundred episodes now urza took over as temporary master of fairy tale juvia lived out in the cottage wendy and carla joined lemia scale and carla learned to transform like lily lily gaggio and levy joined the magic council's custody enforcement unit minerva came back to sabretooth the thunder god tribe joined blue pegasus and all the others follow to the guild when they hear about everyone joining back up at first you think this arc is going to be serious with hero introducing us to like nine different weird ass characters with little quirks about them but with their training natsu and gang just absolutely destroy them all super quickly i wasn't expecting it and i thought it was good subversion of the average fairy tale arc it's like we want to resurrect xerath yeah you get in line pal he's been alive for centuries moving past that two people are still missing from the fairy tale group makarov himself and loxus mess shows up to show lumen histoire to urzan crew and he explains makarov went to the alvarez empire to the west of ishgar to try and negotiate a peace between the two nations if negotiations don't go well he'll threaten to activate lumen histoire he disbanded the guild because he didn't want fairy tale on alvarez's hit list as they have a combined might of 720 or so guilds and a special fighting force called the spriggan 12. spriggan is the name of the emperor in alvarez but in ishgar he's known as zerif i mean with 400 years why not start up your own civilization and get that going not like you got anything better to do he doesn't see any of them as more than pawns anyway so they don't die in his presence and his main goal was to destroy acnologia with this new nation but now he wants lumen histoire to do the same thing makarov isn't willing to give up lumen histoire so he almost dies but the fairy tale rescue team is there to save him blue pegasus also helps out with loxus and ichia manning the new christina after everyone gets back to the guild hall mavis lets everyone in on lumen histoire and says it shouldn't be used because of how hard to control it can be with that explained fairy tale has to stop the entire empire of alvarez from storming ishkar and taking lumen histoire [Music] the attack starts with several flying warships headed by the 12 sand mage agile heading straight for the guild hall frida is keeping the attacks at bay using a mass level enchantment urza goes to confront ajiel herself and alzak and bisca are using a newly modified version of that really old jupiter cannon as a sniper to take down warships in his and urza's fight aigio makes a massive sandstorm to overwhelm her and everyone around but using her lightbringer armor urza gives a perfect shot for biscuit to snipe agio right off his ship on the ground a guy named wall spelled with an h because he's special uses weakness magic on lazana elfman juvia mira and grey to create dummies with their biggest weaknesses he uses the same trick with evergreen and bixlow but through warren's telepathy they all overcome the issue by taking on the weakness dummy not meant for them it's also revealed wall is a robot dummy himself controlled by the real one offshore in fact he has a huge blast ready aimed right at fairy tale from a ship but none other than each year protects the guild of the christina and sends out a message to every other guild across the continent to help in the fight i love how this final battle encompasses everyone across the continent that fairy tale has helped out or become friends with over the years and ichiya of all people is the one to send out the message this tiny guy who seemed like nothing more than a joke character in his first appearance has a major role in helping fight the war this isn't even his biggest contribution just you wait other than him lucy's dealing with the 12's resizing wizard brandish who has a weird connection to her she's about to do something to lucy when kana comes out of nowhere to take her down she accomplishes it pretty easily because when ajil stirred up his sandstorm he also moved the pollen of magnolia around activating brandish's allergies i am not joking but it is actually pretty funny so i don't care anyway with time to reconvene mavis comes up with a plan to send groups to each point in ishgard natsu's the only one who doesn't really follow orders because he's natsu and charges to the front line so he can take on xerif if only happy by his side xerath reveals his true identity as natsu's older brother but he doesn't really believe it to show it's the truth zara puts a hole in e and d harming natsu he also goes into detail about how natsu got where he is igneous was actually friends with xerath and natsu was given to him so ignile could raise him natsu and all the other dragon slayers for the matter were born 400 years in the past and knew each other as children it's just that xerath and an ancestor of lucy's created the eclipse gate so she could pass down her notes about it through generations until eventually the time was right for the dragon slayers to come to the present by the help of one of her descendants the date the dragons disappeared was actually the date lucy's mother decided it was the right time to try and open the eclipse gate and like shooting stars the dragon slayers all shot out across ishgar by the time lucy's distant relative and dragonslayer's old teacher found them they were all living their own lives so she decided they weren't to be bothered other than e and d being natsu this twist is something i wasn't expecting ties back into everything in a coherent way and brings back items from previous arcs including back in the battle of fairy tale when natsu couldn't get through the gate because he was over 80 years old technically good [ __ ] natsu still doesn't want to accept it though and plans to use a secret weapon to kill zerif natsu's been talking about a secret weapon he had for beating zerif before and it comes in his arm containing the last of igneal's power xerath mentions that both of them will die and thinks natsu will genuinely kill him but before natsu can deal the final blow happy comes in and stops natsu from doing it burning his hands in the process this isn't a one-off moment either his hands stay burned throughout the rest of the arc while he and natsu are resting afterwards brandish almost dies in her cell to one of her subordinates she treated poorly and lucy helps her out she takes brandish to the infirmary thinking they can talk alone but you know brenda she's still part of the alvarez empire so instead she tries to kill lucy it's revealed the reason brandish knows lucy is because her mother supposedly was killed by layla for the aquarius key at that moment from a puddle of water brand is spilled aquarius herself shows up having had her key respond somewhere in the human world after a year to tell the true story of what happened it's true that layla once gave her three zodiac keys to servants and brandish's mother took her key with her to the alvarez empire a while after that layla takes back all the keys other than aquarius to use the eclipse gate without it she still performs the opening by using a ton of magic power but it only contributes to her ailing health and eventual death before that happens the servant woman travels back to the mansion to ask for forgiveness and she wants to give over the aquarius key for layla to give to lucy layla doesn't ask for forgiveness and instead only wants lucy and brandish to maybe become friends when they grow up when the servant woman leaves she's killed but not by layla rather she was killed by zordio the guy that took over capricorn back on tin row island he stabbed her in a blind rage for the servant woman contributing to leila's death and she agrees it was mostly her fault but asks zordio to not harm her daughter as well zordio breaks down crying and that ends the story randish has had misplaced anger at lucy for so long over something that didn't happen so she starts to make up by helping natsu when happy brings him in apparently over time natsu accumulated an anti-ethernando tumor from over exerting his magic too long so brandish uses her resizing magic to shrink his tumor with natsu back on his feet after the sudden coming and going of a tumor the show cuts to how everyone else is doing on their fronts starting with gray wendy urza loxes juvia and carla at the seaports of hargeon luxus fights the real wall for the thunder god tribe being harmed by him luxus ends up having a hard time due to some lingering bane particles in his system from tartarus but he tricks wall into fixing him up by writing an enchantment he learned from freed making wall want to break it the thing being the only way to break an enchantment is by neutralizing bane particles so loxus is back on his feet and finishes off well for good next shelia joins the fight with wendy and carla against a psychotic girl named dimaria damari is just your average sadistic warrior that has magic men for freezing time so she's about to start attacking wendy carla and chelia while they can't move but suddenly they're able to dodge her their savior comes in the form of an infinitely stuck between the time rift version of ultier she still exists in the real world as an old lady but she also exists as her younger looking self in the time rift she gave her time up to but she can't really help in attacking she can only unfreeze their time for a given period it's a little confusing the point is she helped them unfreeze before dying damaria can't just stop time and fight with a sword though no no that'd be too easy she's a god takeover wizard like mira controls demons and elfman controls beasts she controls literal gods carla almost dies instantly after that but ultier puts her back into the time stop so wendy and shelia will have time to heal her wound rather than watching her bleed out ultier can only hold time for a little longer so the two of them need to finish the battle quickly to win shelia takes on the ultimate sacrifice of unlocking her third origin this gives her all the magic power she'll ever be able to accumulate in her life but once the time starts up again she'll never be able to use almost any magic for the rest of her life she wins and demario is defeated but shelia has lost what meant most important to her other than her friends after that crime sourcier comes to help and everyone there also has to face off with nine heart this guy who can bring people back from the dead that means something to the opponent to have them act as his personal guard for urza he summons azuma dominatrix chick and the swords woman from tower of heaven for gray and leon they get ore for juvia keys loxes has hades wendy fights forearms guys so on knowing they aren't the real versions of loved or hated ones they all end up defeating their past and jalal deals the final strike to nine heart he also sort of makes up with kagura to the point she can respect him so it's nice to have that little plot thread sewn up at the guild hall another member of the 12 named jacob appears and poofs everyone other than lucy and natsu away to another realm in space time lucy tricks jacob into bringing back brandish and the lackey that tried to kill her so she can bring out gemini and have them change into the lackey that guy's main power is nullifying all space magic so everyone's returned and makarov each jacob out through a window lucy messed natsu and happy then leave with brandish to try and negotiate with one of the strongest 12 members named august speaking of august he's traveling with a guy named god serena to put it simply how strong this guy is there are the ten wizard saints that makarov and jura are a part of then among them there are the four gods of ishgar that ward is a part of and then there is the top dog out of all of them and that's god's arena he's a problem because he decided to leave ishgar to become a member of the twelve so the three lower gods of ishgar and juror try to stop him but he wipes the floor with them using his eight dragon lacrima implanted inside him eight after that the human version of agnologia shows up and god serena is in his path so you think an epic duel is gonna happen between these two but agnologia just one shots him i mean it makes sense in the narrative that as king of the dragons agnologia would wipe the floor with god serena but considering the hype and how much this character was built up i was kind of hoping for just a little more moving to the northern front gaggio levy and lily are supposed to be meeting with blue pegasus and sabretooth but they arrived to see alvarez's army carrying them on poles like trophies gazillion fights this spriggan 12 guy made completely out of main particles and levy tries to help while assuring gazill she's fine by using a mask but vain particles can enter through your skin so levy was just saying that to make gajio feel better he comes up with a way to beat blood men but gaggio gets pulled in with him in a really heart-churning scene gagial tells levy that she was the person who made him feel like he could have a life outside of fighting and that losing that is the scariest thing that could ever happen to him levy wants to help but lily holds her back and it appears like godzilla is dead he doesn't die as shown later on and i do think that's a massive missed opportunity but this scene still really gives me chills every time i see it and once levi and gagio reunite it's sort of a work of beauty just how mwah just how amazing their chemistry still is i'm weirdly not even mad at this bait and switch but that doesn't mean i won't have any grievances with this arc by the end going back to natsu and co they reach august and brandish gets him to consider talking to zerath but at that moment mess decides to be the biggest [ __ ] idiot by using his magic to implant a feeling of brandish wanting to kill august in the back of her head so she would act on it at that moment i get his intentions but still [ __ ] you messed in a well-justified rage august starts going ape [ __ ] when another member of the 12 called irene decides to use a spell that moves everyone around to random places and makes ishkar 1 20th of its old size this is the reason the gaggio doesn't die when he actually was sucked into the portal he was being dragged down to the underworld and right before he enters it the spell is activated and he moves to a random spot in the shrunken continent before this happens connie uses fairy glitter on lumen histoire at mavis's request to free her as it's revealed she was alive inside it after all the resurrection spells with mavis alive and magic returning to her zara is also present since mavis hasn't remembered her yet since maevis illusion magic has gotten stronger zera can actually be seen and heard so she uses telepathy to tell all fairy tale guild mates to come back to the guild hall where mavis is being held captive after the mixing up sends zerath right to her to keep her from being a threat while her power is drained xerath's right hand invel uses a spell to make it so she can't finger act properly besides them the random mixing up also reunites sorino and yukino who are apparently siblings but soreno doesn't want to face yukino or acknowledge their bond until all her sins are made up for at the guildhall the various fairy tale groups have almost made their way there but the nine remaining twelve members all come together and nine heart uses his abilities to bring back god serena bloodman and wall so technically all 12 members are present to fight in what can only be described as an all-out war gildarts also joins the fray because as a member he got the telepathy message from far away the first big fight after all this insanity is grey vs juvia inval used his ice magic to make the two of them fight to the death and the one who survives will get to fight him infel knows grey is much stronger and he thinks by having him kill juvia the demon slaying magic will overtake him and turn grey to alvarez's side unfortunately for him he doesn't know that the two of them already have different plans and instead of fighting each other at the same time they both get the idea to kill themselves rather than each other as a family it pains them to think about laying a finger on their guild mates so much so that it'd be easier on their consciences to let themselves take the defeat and subsequent death grey doesn't die however juvia used a water blood pump type thing to keep him alive and being more pissed than ever thinking she died because of him gray [ __ ] rips into anvil like there's no tomorrow theoretically he should be much stronger than grey but to show just how strong their bond has gotten to where they'd kill themselves for one another he needs to beat envel in this case like many of fairy tales fights it isn't the battle itself that matters the most but rather the emotional resonance relating to character growth and strengthening of bonds accompanying it that's also why i feel it's so satisfying to see grey overcome him he's grown as a character and invel is just the last obstacle in his emotional journey with invale defeated mavis escapes her captivity luckily juvia doesn't die thanks to wendy being nearby but grace still thinks she's dead and after invil informs grey of natsu being e and d he's ready to throw some hands back to natsuinko he takes down nine heart making the three revive 12 go back and demaria stabs brandish after discovering she's siding with fairy tale brandish tried to play it off by re-enlarging natsu's tumor but damara is wise to what brandish could do if she really wanted to kill them and kidnaps the rest of them to do some horrible stuff before she can do so natsu was able to wake up and get inside her time rift to attack whatever it was that got enlarged inside him it wasn't a tumor instead of harming him it turned natsu into the end version of himself that resembles a demon more than anything else and with gray recently finding out who natsu truly is they confront each other and start fighting meanwhile with the hundreds of thousands of alvarez soldiers left irene uses a form of enchantment similar to wendy's magic that increases all the soldiers strength tenfold makarov sees his children in pain and knows there's only one solution to make it stop quickly fairy law one catch that's never been explained with fairy law is the consequence that being for every person destroyed by it the summoner's life is chipped away so once makarov destroys hundreds of thousands of soldiers he dies standing in a triumphant pose arizona mourns his loss but she also sees grey and natsu still fighting after everything having not noticed what happened using her bare hands urza blocks both of their attacks she shouldn't be able to fend them off but her crying and lamenting over makarov's sacrifice gets them to snap out of their petty fight and stop what they're doing meanwhile the last of the 12 to be introduced called larcade is fighting kagura sting rogue and yukino his magic has to do with giving people so much pleasure that they die larcade considers himself the child of xerif but he has the same scent as natsu meaning he's another aetherius sting beats him with the help of rogue's power to become a light shadow dragon slayer and urza and wendy face off of irene in the prelude before their fight irene says she's urza's mother and well you're gonna need to back up for a second on this one because it is truly a mind [ __ ] 400 years ago irene was the originator of dragonslayer magic the reason dragon slayers have motion sickness is because anyone who used it at the time would turn into dragons after too long and the heightened senses that came with it would give them extreme vertigo as irene started turning into a dragon herself with a child on the way her husband locked her up for a while before irene goes full dragon mode and escapes she stays like this for hundreds of years until she meets zerif who's able to give her human form but irene still lacks the basic taste and such of a regular human it becomes such a hell for her that she considers putting her subconscious into her human child to start life anew she wasn't able to do so so she dropped urza off in some random town with no use for her after explaining that irene takes wendy's body as she's compatible with her but wendy does the same for irene's body and gets them to switch back after that attempt fails irene transforms into a dragon and with a single swipe breaks most diverse's bones she then summons a meteor to crash down on urza but with one arm she's able to cut through it and slash irene with a sword urza had wendy enchant this one moment had a major stir in the anime community when it happened and yes i have to agree it's really nonsensical like this is a whole nother ballpark of urza's achievements and it doesn't make sense at all it's [ __ ] i'll admit it after that feat urza can't move or fight anymore so irene is given the chance to strike irza down with her own sword but instead she kills herself the reason for this is because it wasn't that she didn't have the ability to put her mind in urza's it's that she couldn't do it she had chosen not to kill urza of her own fruition she just couldn't kill her child then and she couldn't kill it now with irene dead the continent goes back to normal and ursa and wendy just take a seat to [ __ ] chill after all that meanwhile natsu is knocked out and having this mind journey where his old memories are brought back and we learned the tumor that had been growing inside him was actually two seeds one of those seeds is an inactive dragon seed that all dragon slayers have which usually turns them into a dragon the other is a seed of a demon from being born as such and when these two seeds intersect natsu will die so he has to choose who he is a demon or a dragon he chooses neither because he's a human and with that the inner conflict inside him ends grey reaches zera first in the guild hall and plans to use a version of ice shell called lost ice shell this type of spell will keep xerif entrapped in ice forever at the cost of him not only losing his body but all traces of his existence and memories people had of him will be gone it's the equivalent of him erasing off the earth but the spell defeats xerath while keeping natsu alive so the plan is good enough for him natsu comes in and stops grey from using the spell obviously and he starts going toe to toe of zurif once again the difference this time is xerif no longer refers to natsu his brother he calls him end as he's reached his boiling point for once and wants to die so badly he doesn't care about thinking of this resurrection as his brother anymore in the middle of the battle larcade intervenes from behind and gets natsu in a position where xerath could finish him off easily if he tried for breaking up their fight xerath is so pissed he destroys larcade's existence then and there as he cries out for his father natsu's just an utter disbelief at this and gets into another fight with xerath to try and finish things up elsewhere gildarts gears up to fight august at his full avatar state mode and kana comes in to help with fairy glitter but it basically does nothing since august's main quirk is he studied all types of magic and knows how to copy it august goes on a speech asking gildarts about his relationship to khanna and he asks why most parents and children could share love but xerath couldn't love his own son as they continue to fight gildarts notices his weakness the loophole in his power is he can't copy or deflect magic when it comes from physical objects like khan's cards so gildarts does a powerful blow to him using his mechanical arm but it still isn't enough august prepares to kill everyone in the area with a powerful spell but we're let in on a little secret before then all this time we've been led to believe by august that larcade is zeref's supposed son mavis had a child in her while stuck in the resurrection chamber and precht took the baby up to a mountain before abandoning it he didn't know what to do with the child and it had a scary amount of magic power so he left it the child grew up in search of their father and ended up finding him but he didn't recognize them so the son stayed silent about their relationship his name was given to him by zerath august he was named this as it was the same month he and mavis met and august reminded him of her all this time we thought his question of why the emperor never loved his son was about larcade but the truth was the reason the child was never loved is because the child never told him of his existence august's one wish before dying was to see his mother and feel loved like a normal child would but he closed himself off to it when he decided to not tell zerif another bit august mentioned when referring to the unloved boy was that only the boy's mother could stop his path of destruction and before the spell is cast he glimpses to see mavis running towards the commotion seeing this person he son after so long but thought was dead made him pause and stop his attack but the spell essentially failing of his own choice august brushes away into dust but not before appearing one last time as a child to his mother she doesn't see it but she hears his call and that's all august ever really wanted from her to be noticed several people don't like how this battle concludes and i can definitely understand it is sort of anti-climactic that gildarts finds his weakness but still isn't able to beat him and the only thing that can stop him is seeing his mother but i actually like the way this ended august sees the person he sought after and wanted love from for so long but he realizes whether the spell works or not he's going to die and not be able to get any love from her in that moment he chooses to die rather than kill someone so important to him and he comes in the form of a child for a second so mavis can notice him but not say goodbye or even get to know who he really is it's the tragic tale of a mother and father on opposite ends of the spectrum who never got to know their son if anything i found out a bittersweet end to a character that we know went through so much in the name of his father in other news agnologia has reached magnolia and is ready to [ __ ] [ __ ] up starting by smashing irene's corpse wendy and urzah tell him to cut that [ __ ] out and he's about to attack then jalal shows up to try and unfuck [ __ ] but to no avail as achnologia can consume any form of magic he is about to kill all three of them when out of nowhere ichia the god slams the christina right into him and gets the others on board anna is also there she was the original ancestor of lucy that opened the gate for the dragon slayers 400 years ago she was supposed to be their teacher in this new world but they shot out and found their own lives so she just let them be her main reason for being there is to explain that she found a bit of magic that's neither light nor darkness a dimension of time created from the time traveling that they could push agnelokia into to try and destroy him they try to chase him into it but that fails so jalal tries to push him into the rift but fails then ichia and anna by themselves use the christina to ram right into acnologia so he goes into the time rift along with them he and anna along with agnologia end up not dying but to think such a seemingly minor character would go all out to do something for fairy tale it's pretty epic in its own right back at the guild hall xerath gets mavis and shows that his true intention is to use her power to start a new life where he never was given a cursor or his family died so then he could just sort of live a peaceful normal life by taking mavis power xerif turns white and is stated to have gotten the powers of a god natsu doesn't really care as he knocks zerif down with a punch representing the guild strength burning up his arm in the process and he knows it won't nearly be enough to stop him so he allows mavis to do the rest she comes towards him and talks about their past relationship xerath at that moment comes to the realization mavis just must have never loved him for her to die and not him from the curse but mabus refutes that saying she didn't think as much about their relationship or her love for him after saying she loves him the curse of contradiction forces her to cry out in vain while hitting him about hating him and loving him at the same time with that mavis enacts her grand plan by kissing xerath causing the curse to activate for both of them unlike before and they finally both drift off into the spirit world once and for all xeris agony that lasted for 400 years had finally come to an end with the one person who could truly accept him just another bittersweet end to a story revolving around mavis and xerath you might think natsu will vanish because of zara's death but lucy got a hold of the book of end and rewrote it slightly so that wouldn't be the case it causes her extensive pain but gray is able to heal her with his demon slaying ice really the only way to keep him alive would be something akin to this so it makes sense to me if this were the place where the anime ended i wouldn't have had any qualms agnology is defeated after ichi and anna give their lives the sprig and 12 are defeated and natsu isn't going to die mavis and xerath are able to peacefully live together in the afterlife makarov gave his life for the guild it would have been much better than the ending we actually got yet this is not the end there are still four more episodes after this to go so just let me get through the ending first makarov wakes up after having a dream of seeing zerath and mavis walking in a field i don't understand why he was brought back as his sacrifice meant a lot and it would have been a perfect segue into the next generation taking over but overall it doesn't ruin my experience i guess i see this as probably the biggest flaw with the entire arc the reluctance to kill anybody i mean august and mavis and zarath and a few other important characters did die for good and it was really emotional but other than makarov there were the fake outs of gajiel and juvia with them i can totally understand not killing them in the end and it's shown almost immediately that they don't die but this fake out lasted like 15 episodes so i kind of face pawned when this happened it doesn't ruin the sacrifice and everything that occurred afterwards because of it magrav's still like in a wheelchair or whatever but it does lessen the sacrifices meaning much more on a second viewing also like i said before agnologia isn't dead he instead takes over the time rift he was thrown into takes all the dragon slayers to his lair and splits himself up between his physical and spiritual body the physical body only causes destruction on earthland while his spiritual form tries to keep balance in the time rift while the dragon slayers stabilize it the dragon slayers all break free making his magic less stable and they begin to fight in earthland lucy comes up with a plan to try and trap and weaken agnologia the main idea is to use fairy sphere on acnologia while he's stuck on an iceboat made by gray leone it makes sense as a plan considering it shielded the tenro team from agnologia all that time back so why wouldn't it work to trap him inside while he's sick with motion sickness mira and the others lead the aimless beast towards the harbor with magic power and trap him on the boat but it's able to break free of the spear with only fairy tales power behind it that's when meldy shows up throughout this arc she hasn't really contributed too much nor has crime sourcier they mostly just got beaten up by august and jalal helped fight nine heart the reason melody was gone during the plan taking place and all that was because with the help of mest she got all the wizards in ishgar to contribute their magic through a sensory link to add to fairy sphere with the link it not only connects the magic but amplifies it so altogether every wizard in ishkar uses their strength to hold back acne logia and keep him docile in a montage we see everyone contributing from the element four of phantom lord to the legion platoon to urza's friends to the four gods of ishkar to brandish to that [ __ ] from the first episode to even daphne i hate daphne so much but for once in this great montage i actually for once felt happy to see her during the fight of the dragon slayers at the same time they're trying to go two or three at a time to no avail against acnelogia's spiritual self we also get a backstory for him showing he used to be a doctor that helped dragons 400 years ago suddenly the dragons including a friend of his named acnologia all revolted and called the humans vile wiping out a city and making him crave dragon blood as he went he kept craving more and more until he became the black dragon of death as the fight keeps going agnologia keeps screaming out saying he wants more dragon blood and he starts being weakened by fairy fear until eventually it really kicks in with him not being able to move at all seeing an opportunity all six other dragon slayers give their magic to natsu via wendy enchanting him with it with agnologia weakened and stuck by the power of every acquaintance and friend the guild has met over the entire series natsu delivers a full power blow using all seven dragon slayer strength to slay acnologia a grand majority of people hate this ending how agnology is beaten in one punch how makarov wakes up how zeref should have been the final villain of the ark etc etc i agree that it would have been better to have xerath be the final villain i agree that makarov should have stayed dead i can even agree that it's disappointing how agnologia went down in one hit but i still cannot hate it seeing everyone from around ishgar give their strength to weaken and trap agnologia for the guild and watching natsu use all the power of every dragon slayer to take down acnologia made me smile in the end it felt cathartic to see our guild finish their ultimate foe with the many characters we've come to love for years now it has many flaws and i don't blame you for hating it i have mixed feelings on it myself it could just be because i'm biased towards the series and love the characters so much but i don't hate this being the final fight though it would have been much better if xerif was the final boss in the aftermath of the whole thing a year later lucy finally published a book she'd been working on from the beginning of the series gale becomes a thing groovia becomes a thing the princess takes over as ruler and pardons crime sourcier a reincarnation of zerath and mavis start to get along and near the end of the episode the original opening theme starts playing there's something about the first song that makes you feel cozy and at home it's the perfect representation of how fairy tale makes you feel like you're part of one big happy family with all their quirks and weird traits about them that you can accept because you're pretty weird yourself the tune is inherently nostalgic and at the end of the show it feels like a parting gift before something you loved is about to end in the final scene of the series natsu and happy come to get lucy so everyone can go off on a cinch request just like gildarts tried to do all those years ago this is a setup for the spinoff manga 100 year quest but as far as the original series goes this is the end and it's only fitting that it would finish with the gang going off on another adventure when i look back through the series i see a lot of flaws there are moments where the fights could be bad where the friendship stuff could become a little overwhelming where the ending had many flaws in its own way and i know fairy tale isn't perfect or anything but i still think it's a great experience personally i'll always love the series faults and all because it captures a sense of welcoming and joy that i don't see with too many other anime fairy tales guild is my guild and your guild and our guild and it's something that i really cherish and with that my fairy tale video finally comes to its end 56 full pages on google docs of non-stop writing for two weeks my throat dying from recording like three hours of audio for an additional week and however long it took me to gather video and edit this goddamn thing before i go i'll just prattle off a few more opinions i have on fairy tale because you know why not the best opening is never entail gray is the best character levy is best girl and boys be ambitious is the best ending if you guys like this video and you want me to do anything else relating to fairy tale then i don't know maybe i'll cover some of the spin-off manga because there are a lot of those or maybe i'll make a small video talking about why i think fairy tale is not a ripoff of one piece or anything i don't know the spectrum is pretty large there but right now i'm gonna go to sleep and die in my grave now and wonder about what small things i missed in this video that i'll be thinking about for years now okay goodbye so [Music] [Music] foreign

Channel: Just Stop

Views: 1,064,279

Keywords: Fairy Tail Anime, Fairy Tail Review, Fairy Tail Retrospective, Fairy Tail Rants, The Anime Man, Nux Taku, Fairy Tail Anime Review, Fairy Tail In Depth, Just Stop Review, Just Stop Rant, Just Stop Fairy Tail Review, The Fairy Tail Retrospective, Nux Taku No one Understands Fairy Tail, Fairy Tail Manga, Hiro Mashima

Id: RgHNCZDFU9A

Length: 183min 25sec (11005 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 15 2020