フェアリーテイル
Fairy Tail Manga Volume 02 Review

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SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Natsu, Happy, and Lucy arrive in Shirotsume Town for their latest quest. Natsu and Happy are off to find grub and Lucy changes into a maid outfit, not realizing that Natsu and Happy had been joking about using her as a fake maid candidate for their target Duke Everlue.  After consulting with their client, Kaby Melon, their mission is clear — get the book Daybreak from Duke Everlue and to then burn it or otherwise destroy it.  With the reward having gone up from 200,000 to 2-million, Natsu is eager to get started.  Lucy poses as a maid candidate but Duke Everlue is not interested in ugly maids, even though his stable of maids are all very ugly.  Lucy is offended and it is off to plan B.

Breaking into the mansion, they quickly locate Daybreak, which Lucy discovers was written by the famous author Kamu Zaleon.  Duke Everlue bursts up from the floor and has his hired bodyguards, the Vanish Brothers, make an entrance.  Lucy is already reading the book and makes a discovery.  As such, she asks Natsu to buy her some time.  As Natsu makes quick work of the Vanish Brothers, Lucy uses her Gale-Force-Reading-Glasses to quickly read the entire book and discover its secrets.  The Duke snags her briefly until Happy saves her and in the ensuing battle, Lucy reveals that she knows the whole story of how the Duke had taken the author and forced him to write a book with the Duke as the hero but the author purposefully made it a bad one.

Lucy summons Cancer and the Duke summons Virgo, the rather large, “gorilla-looking” maid, who arrives with Natsu clinging to her, something that should not have been possible. Quickly defeating the Duke and Virgo, Lucy returns the book to Kaby, who’s upset it hasn’t been destroyed. After revealing the remaining parts of the story of Daybreak‘s creation (Kaby being the son of the author), the book transforms itself into a new book called Dear Kaby.  Kaby and his wife are grateful and Natsu says they can’t accept payment.

Returning to Fairy Tail, the powerful female warrior-wizard Erza returns with a giant horn from a beast she dispatched as part of a job.  She has another job and wants Gray and Natsu to join her.The two are not happy at being forced together but their fear of Erza overrides their irritation.  Mira asks Lucy to go with the group. After Lucy introduces herself to Erza at the train station, Natsu says he’ll only go on the trip if Erza agrees to fight him again, which she agrees to.  On the train, Erza punches the ill Natsu in the gut and has him sleep on her knee.  She briefs Lucy and Gray about something she overheard whereby the “Death God” (assassin) Erigor is after Lullaby, a death weapon from the days of the dark wizard, Zeref.

After accidentally leaving the still ill Natsu on the train, Erza and company give chase while on the train, one of the Eisenwald members, Kageyama, decides to take advantage of Natsu’s condition.  Natsu ends up escaping right to the vehicle Erza had procured.  Erza uses a great deal of magic to speed them to the next town, where the banned Eisenwald guild have taken over the train station.  Erza and company quickly discover that the army unit sent in to take care of the situation have been eliminated. Because Lullaby is a flute, Lucy believes that Erigor will play it over the loudspeakers and thus kill a great number of people. However, it seems that Erigor has other plans for this small band of Fairy Tail members.

Thoughts/Review:

Mashima-sensei’s twisted sense of humor is something I like a lot, even if it doesn’t actually make me laugh out loud.  For those of us who follow anime, manga, and Japanese culture, we all know that maids are a big thing in Japan and that there are certain requirements for a maid, such as beauty.  So having Duke Everlue only interested in what we’d consider to be ugly women was just awesome.  *lol*  Then there were things like Lucy summoning Cancer and he’s a stylist (but also has some combat skills).  There was Erza’s way of dealing with Natsu’s motion sickness.  There were some other things too but the bottom line is that I just enjoy these twisted things that frequently pop up on the page.  ^_^

Speaking of humor, I do like Happy as the comic relief character who also proves quite useful in battle.

Story-wise, the first story is just OK.  There’s nothing wrong with it but the job they took wasn’t all that interesting to me.  However, Mashima-sensei did the wise thing by not dragging it out. When Natsu squared off against the Vanish Brothers, I figured we might get some extended fight but Mashima-sensei lets Natsu pretty much kick arse and enjoy himself against opponents who didn’t appear to be weaklings.  I guess that shows just how powerful Natsu is.

The second story is much more interesting and that started with the arrival of Erza.  I did get a good chuckle at the reactions everyone in Fairy Tail have to her, especially Gray and Natsu.  If Natsu is as powerful as he seems based on two volumes of manga, then how much more powerful is Erza, who has beaten Natsu in the past.  So, I presume that we’ll get to see the two of them spar down the road and that could be interesting.

That aside, as I said, the second story here, the Lullaby arc (I did cheat to see what the official arc name is called since it goes beyond volume 2), has my interest in a way that the Daybreak story didn’t.  Then again, the stakes for the Lullaby story are much greater than some son of an author wanting a book destroyed.  *lol* So, I look forward to seeing where this goes.

I don’t know if it means anything or if it is another one of Mashima-sensei’s twisted humor moments, but I couldn’t help noticing Loke’s sudden change of attitude toward Lucy once he learned she is a celestial wizard.  Well, since he hit on Erza and apparently got beaten to within an inch of his life, maybe he had an even scarier experience trying to score with another female celestial wizard in the past. *lol*

There were some rather interesting extras included here.  The floor plan of Mashima-sensei’s studio intrigued me.  Seeing it, I remembered that even back when I lived in Japan, it was not uncommon for Japanese workers to sleep at their jobs, such being their dedication to what they did for a living.  You’ll note that Mashima-sensei’s studio is pretty much like an apartment in layout, including a sleeping area.  There’s no doubt in my mind that Mashima-sensei and his crew have grabbed bits of sleep there, especially when there’s a looming deadline.  However, they also enjoy taking breaks and playing video games.  So, in my mind, Mashima-sensei has a pretty great place to work, even if there are some insane hours put in.

I liked how he gave a shout out to his staff (which I believe is larger today than when this volume was first published).  Those guys are often the forgotten and underappreciated aspect of a manga series.

Having Mashima-sensei’s notes on the names and his thoughts as volume 2 came to an end were nice to read as well.

On the Del Rey side, no complaints.  ^_^

So far, this is just a fun, action series that I think I can get into.  I’m going to keep reading and see where we go.  ^_^