フェアリーテイル
Fairy Tail Volume 24 Review

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Highlights in this volume begin with Mystogan, aka: Prince Jellal, defeat Natsu without magic, which Natsu says is his personal way of throwing a farewell party for Mystogan. The members of Fairy Tail are returned to Earth-land, but so are the Exceed. Carla wants nothing to do with them until they confess that the whole plot to kill dragon slayers was a lie and that Carla has psychic abilities to see the future. Panther Lilly also comes to Earth-land as Gajeel’s cat as he cannot retain his humanoid cat size for long periods of time. He has captured Lisanna, the supposed dead sister of Mirajane and Elfman, who reveals she was never dead, but instead was sucked to Edolas, where the Mirajane and Elfman there took care of her even though they knew this wasn’t their real sister, who really was dead.

While the guild celebrates, Cana is depressed and crashes at Lucy’s apartment, where she clues Lucy in on what’s wrong. Master Makarov announces the new S-class trials, which will feature Natsu (who partners with Happy), Gray (who partners with Loke), Juvia (who partners with Lisanna), Elfman (who partners with Evergreen), Cana (who partners with Lucy), Fried (who partners with Bickslow), Levy (whom Gajeel decides to partner with), and some dude named Mest (who partners with Wendy over Carla’s objection). The group heads to the secret Fairy Tail island of Tenrou (Sirius as it is translated to in the manga). The trials start, with each team having to choose a path, so when Lucy and Cana are left with one final path, they have to battle Bickslow and Fried, who take a dive to repay a favor to both girls, allowing Cana and Lucy to proceed to the next stage.

You know, in many ways, I despise this volume.  In other ways, I did enjoy it.  So, let’s get the bad over first.

For starters, this volume is one big massive retcon after another.  Indeed, I jokingly mentioned on Twitter that I should just calling Mashima-sensei “Retcon-sama” because of this volume.

First, there were the Exceed.  So, for the whole Edolas arc, they are villains for the most part, even though we get to see Happy’s parents and Carla is royalty. However, they come to Earth-land, and their whole evil plot to first kill the dragon slayers, which was then modified to capture the dragon slayers, is now, “Oh yeah, about that, we were lying. We never had any such orders sent to you. It was your latent, psychic ability to see the future that caused you to think these things and such. Yeah, that’s the ticket.” *_* Seriously, it was so pathetic of an excuse, I wanted to barf on the spot.

Second, there’s Lisanna. So, she’s on a mission in the past with her older siblings, Elfman and Mirajane, and she dies. Heck, Elfman and Mirajane make a yearly pilgrimage to her grave, rain or shine. Her death caused both of them to change — Elfman couldn’t perform full beast transformations and Mirajane went from a cocky babe to a soft, kindhearted babe with mad, S-class skills. So somehow, Elfman and Mirajane buried someone while their little sister had in fact been sucked to Edolas without Elfman and Mirajane knowing about it. I’m sorry, but this too made me want to barf, then go take a dump to completely purge myself.

To add insult to injury, we’re supposed to believe that when Lisanna saw her comrades from Earth-land, she just decided to keep quite about the whole thing and pretend she didn’t know them or the like. I figure Mashima-sensei decided, “I made a mistake killing her before the manga started. I want to do stories with her in it. So, this is the way I’ll bring her back. Yeah, that’s the ticket.” Going forward, I’ll obviously accept this, but for now, it has a bitter taste in my mouth since I don’t like retconning like this.

Third, there’s Juvia.  Actually, I think happened much earlier in the manga, as I know I’ve discussed this with some of you fans back when I first started the manga.  Still, when Juvia joined Fairy Tail, she was an S-class wizard. After all, she was one of the most powerful members of Phantom Lord, part of the feared Elemental 4 team.  So for a while, she was still seen as an S-class mage. Then that talk faded, and now, she has to try to become an S-class mage again, only if I didn’t know any better, I’d say this is her first time being selected to be an S-class mage anywhere.

Finally, there’s Mest. I can’t say for sure that he’s a retcon since I haven’t bothered going through all the earlier volumes to see if he’s in one of the many character sheets done for the nobody members of Fairy Tail.  It is possible that he’s been there, but it is wrong that he’s made so important all of the sudden. I figure he has a death flag on him as Mashima-sensei may be looking to kill a Fairy Tail member without it being someone we care about. We’ll see what volume 25 says.

So, what did I like? Well, I actually like the concept of how guild members get their chance to become S-class mages. I like how some people with have to fight other teams, as Lucy and Cana did, and some teams will have to fight an S-class mage. I look forward to seeing how these fights go, starting with Natsu and Gildarts.

On the Kodansha front, base honorifics are there, but the brother/sister honorifics aren’t there, which is a bummer. I’m not a fan of renaming Tenrou Island “Sirius Island”, even if the name Sirius and the name Tenrou mean the same thing. I’m just not a fan of renaming anything from what the Japanese have named it, whether it is a person, place, or thing.

The other usual extras are there, including some translator notes, which is always a good thing.

So, I have mixed feelings about this volume, but hopefully, this new arc will be a good one.