フェアリーテイル
Fairy Tail Volume 15

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Poluchka (Porlyusica) arrives at Fairy Tail and demands Levy take her to where Makarov is. Upon seeing him, an unusually tearful Poluchka asks Levy to bring Laxus here as Makarov doesn’t have much time.

At the same time, Laxus is recalling when his grandfather Markov kicked Laxus’s father out of Fairy Tail.  His thoughts are interrupted when Mystogan arrives, pleasing Laxus since he felt Mystogan wouldn’t participate. Laxus acknowledges Mystogan’s strength but discounts Erza’s power (though he admits Erza is getting there) and poo-poo’s Gildarts, whom Mystogan finds even more powerful than himself. The two clash with Laxus finding his church HQ destroyed and himself thrown into the air where a giant monster opens the sky to eat him. However, it is all an illusion, which Laxus breaks.

The two continue to battle as Erza and Natsu arrive when Laxus blasts off Mystogan’s mask, revealing the face of Jellal.  He tells Erza that he is not Jellal though he knows him and takes his leave as Laxus blasts the stunned Erza.  Natsu challenges Laxus and takes a beating. However, Natsu takes advantage of Laxus grabbing him on the wrist by grabbing Laxus in return and the two begin exchanging furious blows. Natsu eventually gets knocked away and Erza re-enters combat.  Natsu is frustrated that Erza is butting in and lets her know that he cannot destroy Laxus’s lightning devices around the city because of the organic link.

Erza dons her Thunder Empress Armor and leaves Laxus in Natsu’s care while she goes out to take out all the lacrima devices at once, something Laxus says can’t be done. After hearing a warning from Natsu about staying alive, she leaves as Natsu continues his battle against Laxus. Natsu figures Laxus really doesn’t want to destroy the town, but has no way of backing down and saving face at this point.  Meanwhile, Erza discovers she cannot summon enough swords to take out all of the lightning devices but gets help when Warren sends a telepathic message to Fairy Tail regarding the devices.

Fairy Tail takes out Laxus’s Thunder Palace, though they pay a price for it. Laxus goes nuts with rage over this and takes it out on Natsu. Gajeel saves Natsu from a finishing blow.  Natsu reluctantly decides to team up with Gajeel and the two go full out.  However, Laxus is not much phased by the might of their dragon power. The two are surprised when Laxus reveals himself to be a lightning dragon slayer and he unleashes on them before preparing to cast the powerful spell, Fairy Law.

A tearful Levy arrives to give the news about Makarov, but Laxus no longer cares. He casts Fairy Law to slaughter everyone in Fairy Tail, but the spell has no effect.  The injured Freed arrives and explains that though Laxus cast a perfect spell, Fairy Law only targets those the caster sees as their true enemy. Since Laxus really doesn’t see Fairy Tail as his enemy, despite his bluster, the spell did not harm anyone.

Laxus and Natsu begin battling again and Laxus tries his best to kill Natsu, but Natsu keeps getting up. Gajeel takes a finishing lightning attack from Laxus instead of Natsu, allowing Natsu to come in with the ultimate, dragon slaying attack to hit Laxus with, defeating him.  With that, Natsu roars.

In the omake story, Mirajane recounts to Lucy the tail of when her little sister Lisanna helped Natsu hatch a giant egg that turned out to be Happy.

Well, there are a lot of things to talk about here.  ^_^

First, regarding renaming Porlyusica to Poluchka, I asked translator William Flanagan about this. His response was that when she first appeared in the Del Rey releases, they didn’t have the official spelling from Mashima-sensei.  However, the official spelling was provided at a later date and so starting with volume 14, her name is officially Poluchka.

Anyway, for her to just show up on her own and have tears for Makarov, I still think that she’s his wife.  They really do act like an old husband and wife couple who may not spend much time together, but do still love each other a great deal in their own way.

Next up is Mystogan.  When his face was revealed, I thought, “You’ve got to be joking me.  Jellal again?  Are you serious?”  I found that to be completely disappointing.  I guess Mashima-sensei is in love with the character or the character design (since I think that’s a carryover from Rave) but I’ve no clue what he’s doing here.  I guess that the question of Mystogan will come up soon once the Laxus story arc has concluded.

The reveal that Laxus is also a dragon slayer came out of left field, but it makes sense in many ways to explain why Laxus is so powerful.  Natsu has been shown to be very powerful when he reaches deep and a few years from now, Natsu would likely be one of the most powerful members of Fairy Tail.  After all, it does appear that Natsu has defeated Laxus here.

I do find it interesting that Makarov had to kick out Laxus’s father. I’m not sure who Laxus’s father even is or if he’s been name-dropped.  Since a flashback Laxus mentions his father is apparently in charge of a new guild, I can’t help but wonder if that’s whom Gajeel is working with, though Gajeel certainly is putting on a great act by taking so much damage in the name of Fairy Tail.

So, if Laxus’s true feelings are that he doesn’t see Fairy Tail as his enemy, whom does he see in this light? How does he have this much rage and not have a focused target for it?  I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

I found the omake story to be very interesting, in some ways, more so than the main story.  We get to see Lisanna for the first time and see that she was apparently somewhat close to Natsu back then.  (As an aside, I wonder if we’ll get to see the whole story behind her death.)  Seeing Mirajane as a slutty-dressed teen girl was amusing in light of how conservatively she dresses now (her pictorials in the magazine aside).  I enjoyed seeing how frustrated Gray and Natsu got with Erza as Erza battled Mirajane frequently since Erza denied Gray and Natsu the opportunity to fight.

Interesting that Happy was born from an egg.  I figured he would have been a fairly normal mammal, but I guess not. Still, it was a cute story and it explains why Happy is so close to Natsu. ^_^

So, a very action-packed volume with some interesting elements thrown in on the side.  I’m looking forward to the next volume.