フェアリーテイル
Fairy Tail Volume 11

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SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Sho overhears Erza’s tale and is shaken, confronting Erza with his account of how Jellal told them that Erza had betrayed them and destroyed the ship that was to carry them to freedom. Simon arrives and says that he has always believed Erza, which is why he didn’t kill Gray even though he could have easily in the casino. Meanwhile, Natsu finds Millianna’s cat-themed room while looking for Happy and dons the head of a cat costume character. Wally and Millianna arrive with Wally wanting to kill this fake cat and Millianna not wanting this. However, once she’s convinced Natsu isn’t a cat, she goes on the attack and Natsu has to play “Bambi eyes” to get her to stop, allowing Happy to come in and Natsu to defeat both.

Jellal summons the Trinity Raven from the Assassin’s Guild and with the aid of magic mouths all over the tower, he informs everyone that his intention is to revive Zeref and Erza is to be his human sacrifice. Further, he lets them know that the Magic Council is very likely to send down the wide-area destruction magic Etherion to destroy the tower. Sho places Erza within one of his playing cards and flees to protect her.

Elsewhere, Natsu leaves Wally and has Happy fly them up when the owl-man Fukuro from Trinity Heaven intercepts them and sends them back into the tower through a wall right in front of Simon. Simon summons darkness but that does not affect Fukuro with his owl abilities. Fukuro uses his large rocket pack to snare Natsu and make him suffer from motion sickness before devouring him and immediately begins to absorb Natsu’s abilities.

Still elsewhere, Juvia finds herself teamed up with Lucy to look for Natsu.  The glam rocker-looking Vidaldus arrives and attacks with his long strands of hair. Lucy has to duck and dodge but Juvia is unaffected. She places this member of the Trinity Raven inside a her Water Lock spell but his hair absorbs all the liquid.  He then uses his abilities to enslave Juvia, changing her appearance to a glam rocker groupie called Succubus. Vidaldus makes Juvia fight Lucy who discovers while trapped inside of Juvia’s water attacks that Juvia’s actual mind does not want to do the things her body is being forced to do. As such, Lucy summons Aquarius using Juvia’s body.  The annoyed Aquarius does her usual “blast everyone” water attack, which Vidaldus begins sucking up.  However, when Lucy grabs Juvia’s hand to save her, the combination causes them to unwittingly cast Unison Raid, a rare and powerful spell fusing both of their magical abilities with which Vidaldus is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of water and defeated, returning Juvia to normal and leaving her and Lucy exhausted.

As Siegrain convinces the Magic Council to go with his plan, Gray arrives to learn that Fukuro has consumed Natsu.  Fukuro attempts to consume Gray but after a short battle in which Gray is motivated by his memories of Erza’s arrival at Fairy Tail, Gray defeats him and frees Natsu.

In another part of the tower, Ikaruga shows up and quickly defeats Sho, revealing that her swordsmanship is able to reach inside the spacial containers of his playing cards.  Erza is thus freed from the card but her armor is destroyed. Every armor and weapon package Erza summons is easily destroyed by Ikaruga.  After her strongest armor is destroyed, Erza tells the stunned Sho that she’s never been as strong as he thought and that she has always hidden behind her armor.  As such, she summons a simple outfit of hakama pants and a wrap for her breasts along with two katana and prepares to do battle with the unimpressed Ikaruga.

Thoughts/Review:

Zeref continues to come up in the manga and assuming he somehow gets revived in this arc (beyond having control of Jellal), would seem to be something of a major force for Fairy Tail, specifically Erza’s team, would have to deal with.  That could be quite interesting.

Seeing Fukuro made me wonder if Mashima-sensei has a thing for owls. I couldn’t help but remember the retired couple in California who had an owl box installed with cameras and a mic where people all over the world watched barn owl mates raise a family, right down to the eating of rodents. Since Mashima-sensei’s story contained the consumption of a person, I also wonder if the man is a bit of a vore at heart.  ^_^;;;
With Juvia and Lucy teaming up and casting Unison Raid, I suppose any rivalry between the two will now be resolved.  I don’t have a problem with that though I admit that Juvia’s remarks to Lucy over Gray have been humorous.  Mashima-sensei again does something to try to boost Lucy’s battle stock.  I realize that neither she nor Juvia have any idea of what they did but I would bet that Lucy was the key to it and thus should Lucy discover she can use Unison Raid with anyone else, she would become an even more valuable support member of the team.

Now that we’ve seen a bit more of Erza’s past, I’m now unsure as to why Gray and Natsu fear her so much.  Gray is shown being a child punk to Erza who was startled by her tears from her remaining eye. The events as Gray remember them explain only why Gray would respect Erza and not why he would be afraid of her.  I guess that aspect of the story comes later.

Again, the Fairy Tail of several years ago is shown to be filled with children.  By my reckoning, Cana, Gray, Natsu, Erza, and Laxus were all child members of Fairy Tail but there are none today.  Maybe it was just easier for Mashima-sensei to have several of his characters have a past tied to Fairy Tail but it would be neat if the tradition of taking in kids continued.

Going back to Erza, I hope her destroyed armor and remarks about hiding behind her armor doesn’t mean she’s abandoning it for good.  While it may have been mostly useless against Ikaruga, it has been shown in the past to be quite effective in different circumstances.

Regarding Ikaruga, it will be interesting to see how Erza defeats her.  Maybe Ikaruga will lose balance on those platform geta shoes.  Egad!  Those things just don’t seem practical at all. ^_^;

Finally, there’s the chapter image for chapter 83.  I couldn’t scan it without ruining my book and the scanlations from the original magazine publication are filled with advertising text.  However, the image is of Natsu, Happy, and Lucy on a disco dance floor in an obvious parody of John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever movie from 1978.   For me, having spent my early childhood in the 70’s, it is a pretty iconic image of the time.  I am curious if any of you “youngsters” recognized it or not.  Do let me know.  ^_^

Sadly, I only have one more Del Rey volume of Fairy Tail before having to wait for Kodansha Comics version to come out.  See you at the next review. ^_^