フェアリーテイル
Fairy Tail Volume 12

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SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Erza defeats Ikaruga though takes damage herself. Simon has Millianna and Wally take the unconscious Juvia and Lucy to safety while he convinces the now awake Natsu to go after Erza. Erza meets Jellal and defeats him though she won’t kill him, deciding she’ll die with him to pay for her sin of not being able to save him as the Magic Council launches its Etherion attack.  While the attack destroys the facade of the tower, it reveals a tower of lacrima crystal, which absorbed all of the energy of the spell. The Magic Council is in shock, but more so because Siegrain has disappeared.  In fact, Siegrain was nothing but a thought projection of Jellal’s, which he reveals to Erza as the two bodies become one again.

Erza tries to attack Jellal but finds he’s placed a bind snake spell on her.  Natsu arrives but Erza wants him to leave her. Instead, Natsu gut-punches her and knocks her out to face Jellal, who gets his wish to fight a dragon slayer. The two engage in fierce combat with Jellal causing damage on Natsu, but Natsu is making sure his attacks cause the tower serious damage more than Jellal. As Erza wakes up and sees what Natsu is doing, Jellal becomes enraged at Natsu’s tactics and casts a powerful spell to kill them both so that Zeref can be brought back to life. Simon arrives to take the brunt of the spell and dies in Erza’s arms.

Jellal is ecstatic by this turn of events but is attacked by Natsu, who is now consuming the Etherion in the crystals. Erza wants him to stop and because the effect appears to be killing Natsu, Jellal isn’t concerned about stopping him.  However, a dragon of fire forms behind Natsu and he launches an attack on Jellal and his beating the later.  Jellal decides to cut his losses and destroy the whole tower and just rebuild but takes massive damage from Natsu, stopping Jellal from completing his spell.

With Jellal defeated, Natsu collapses from exhaustion as the damage he did to the tower is causing the Etherion energy to escape and go wild, potentially causing untold damage all around. Erza decides that if she merges with the Etherion, she can channel it into the sky and despite Natsu’s protest, she merges with the Etherion.  As she does, she finds herself floating over a graveside service in the rain with the members of Fairy Tail and the Magic Council attending her funeral. Seeing how her death negatively impacted everyone, which was not her intent, Erza wakes up in Natsu’s arms as he walks to the shore to a group of happy people including Lucy, Juvia, Gray, Happy, & Sho. She then realizes that one should live for their friends and not die for them as she has tears from both her eyes for the first time since her injured eye was repaired as a child.

Thoughts/Review:

So, we have confirmation here that Jellal and Siegrain were the same person.  To maintain a fake personal with a physical form so real that it fooled everyone for a long time is pretty impressive power.  However, he’s now gone and I assume dead though we’ll see if this is addressed in the next volume.  Ditto Ikaruga.

Mashima-sensei really went out of his way to show just how powerful Natsu can become, even surpassing an S-Class wizard like Erza and an even more powerful wizard like Jellal.  I wonder why Natsu isn’t an S-Class wizard already unless its just because until now, he’s not done anything to warrant that classification.

I’ve liked learning about Erza’s past throughout this arc.  As I said before, I hope the results of this arc don’t have her giving up her armor forever. She always looked coolest in some armor or other.  ^_^

Porlyusica was seen in a flashback.  I guess she’s Fairy Tail’s unofficial, and reluctant, healer.  Her relationship with Makarov is humorous.  It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they either are married or were married.

Of course, there’s Juvia, whom I want to see more of.  Looking forward to seeing her in Fairy Tail and hopefully part of team with Natsu and the others.  ^_^

I wonder what happens with Erza’s companions Sho, Millianna, and Wally?  Do they join Fairy tail as well or do they get forgotten as soon as the next arc officially starts?

I realize I don’t have a whole lot that I’m saying here, but its hard to comment on a manga volume that’s mainly action.  I’m glad to see that Kodansha Comics finally put out some bloody cover art for volume 13.  I’ve already pre-ordered it and so hopefully will get it soon after it is released.

As to whether or not I’ll read ahead, I haven’t decided.  I am doing that with two manga series (Negima!; Ah! My Goddess) but we’ll see if I do it with Fairy Tail or not.  I do like the manga a lot, but I’m not at the “must read ahead” stage.  I stared reading Ah! My Goddess ahead of Dark Horse’s publications back when they’d only released content covering eight volumes of manga and I marathoned everything and wanted to read what the Japanese had.  For Negima!, the story got so good that I just had to read ahead to find out what was up.  My preference is to NOT read ahead, but of course that might leave me hanging as I am with School Rumble or in a massive slowdown like I am with Hayate the Combat Butler.

Well, I’ll ponder it some more but in the meantime, I’d like to thank everyone at Del Rey who worked on this manga series.  I’m hoping for equally good things from the Kodansha Comics release.  ^_^