フェアリーテイル
Fairy Tail Manga Volume 08 Review

–> PURCHASE FROM RAKUTEN.COM (formerly BUY.COM)
–> PURCHASE FROM BARNES & NOBLE
–> PURCHASE FROM RIGHTSTUF!

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Gray’s fight with Juvia continues until he’s able to defeat her, allowing her to see blue sky for the first time in ages.  Natsu takes a beating from Aria until the wounded Erza arrives to quickly put an end to him.  Jose is angry that his Element 4 S-class wizards are defeated and enters the fray himself.  As Gajeel physically abuses Lucy before nailing her to the wall to toss kunai at her, the wounded Erza sends Natsu to go find and rescue Lucy while she faces Jose.  Natsu finds Gajeel and the two dragon slayers do fierce battle.  The fight is pretty even with Gajeel having a slight advantage, which he improves by consuming metal as Gajeel is an iron dragon slayer.

Meanwhile, Happy frees Lucy from the wall and the only thing she has to help is the new key they got from their last mission. The key summons Sagittarius but Lucy is disappointed to learn that his skills are with accurate arrow firing but no fire attacks.  Now that Gajeel has restored strength thanks to the metal he consumed, he begins beating Natsu fiercely.  During the fight, what’s left of the Fairy Tail building collapses, causing Gajeel to taunt. Natsu manages to stand up and Happy bemoans the fact that Natsu can’t eat any fire to recharge.  Sagittarius hears this and tells Lucy that while he has no fire attacks, he can cause fire, which he does by destroying some equipment.  Natsu consumes the fire which allows him to recharge.  This, combined with his anger at what has happened to his guild and guild mates, allows Natsu to defeat Gajeel.

Despite the massive damage Gajeel and Natsu have caused to the Phantom Lord structure, Jose is simply amused by this as he begins beating Erza, telling her that he’s not happy that Fairy Tail’s reputation is rising. After getting the request from Lucy’s father to bring her home, Jose used the opportunity to destroy Fairy Tail as he could not allow them to have access to the Hearfillia money.  Jose is not impressed with Erza’s statement on Lucy not having access to her family fortunes as Lucy has to earn her money like everyone else.  Jose’s plan is to drain the Hearfillia dry.

Jose’s magical crushing of Erza is halted by an external force which turns out to be Makarov.  Makarov’s powers were restored to him thanks to Mystogan, who arrives at an annoyed Porlyusica’s residence. Makarov orders the members of Fairy Tail to evacuate.  Once they are gone, the two Wizard Saints square off and engage in high-level magic combat. Makarov gives Jose three seconds according to Fairy Tail rules before evoking a powerful spell called Fairy Law.

Thoughts/Review:

Heh!  I love Juvia.  I can’t really explain it but she is just so awesome to me.  I like how Mashima-sensei gave her a bit of character development to explain her current attitude by showing how her powers negatively affected those around her and thus made her ostracized to a degree.  The poor girl even made a teru teru bouzu, which she’s apparently worn ever since, to try to stop the constant rain around her.  From the way I read this, Gray defeating her and his other effects on her causes her to see blue sky for the first time in possibly her whole life.  I’m not sure what Mashima-sensei plans for her as we may not see her again after this arc is resolved but it would be nice to check in on her again down the road.

I liked how Mashima-sensei had Erza quickly defeat Aria. It not only shows how incredibly powerful she is, but it also shows why she’s a good leader as she leads by example.  I figure the only way Aria defeated Makarov was because he ambushed Makarov.  Erza, despite being wounded, was fully aware of Aria and just got the job done.

In addition, this also sets up just how powerful Jose is.  We already know that Erza is very powerful and even wounded, she takes out the S-class wizard who defeated the Fairy Tail master and Wizard Saint.  So for Jose to come along and defeat Erza helps establish his power, but then that sets up just how powerful Makarov truly is when he returns.  We’ll see what this Fairy Law spell does to Jose though.

Nice to see Mystogan actually helping the guild, even if behind the scenes where they don’t know it.

So, Lucy gets another celestial spirit and the reason she was separated from her keys is revealed.  This way, she was forced to use the new key exclusively.  Now that she has Sagittarius, if she were somehow able to summon more than one celestial spirit at a time, Lucy’s usefulness could go up a lot. She’d have a ranged spirit to help cover her melee spirits and that would make her quite useful.  Heck, just having Sagittarius to cover her teammates makes her more useful but then since contracts restrict when and how a spirit can be summoned, it makes this a mute point (though Sagittarius is the second spirit she’s engaged without an established contract).

Speaking of Lucy, I keep noticing that despite his fear of her, Loke seems quite concerned about her.  I wonder what his deal is with celestial wizards

Other observations.

Where are the kids in Fairy Tail?  I ask because in the one flashback when Natsu is joining the guild, Gray is there as a kid as is Erza, Cana, and even Laxus.  So they had kids whom were likely trained and educated by the guild and now those kids are young adults and very powerful.  Today, there are no such kids that I noticed in the guild so there are no “trainees” coming up.  I suppose the guild doesn’t require kids in it but I like the notion of a guild having kids to train who then become guild leaders.

A final observation is the name “Gidarts.”  This person is listed as an official Fairy Tail S-class wizard but we haven’t seen this character as far as I remember.  Indeed, the artwork showing the Fairy Tail S-class wizards doesn’t depict Gidarts.  I guess Jose doesn’t mention Mira because Mira no longer is active.

On the Del Rey side, I was going to go off on the “Mysteries of Fairy Tail” because the text immediately shifts from right-to-left to left-to right, even skipping a page to do so.  However, I’m informed that this is how the Japanese did it for the tankoubon release of volume 8.  That’s lunacy to me but if the Japanese did it, then I can’t spank Del Rey for doing the same.

Otherwise, no problems that I see.

So, an action-filled manga with some interesting little bits of character stuff.  I’m looking forward to seeing how this arc concludes.