フェアリーテイル
Fairy Tail Volume 18 Review

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Some highlights from this volume feature Angel forcing Ares to fight Leo before dispatching them back to their world. Gemini rebels against Angel and doesn’t kill Lucy, allowing Hibiki to implant magical knowledge to Lucy to allow her to defeat Angel. Erza encounters Jellal, who in turn attempts to destroy Nirvana and himself as well. Brain thwarts Jellal and takes control over Nirvana, a large, mobile city. Happy flies Natsu to battle Cobra in an aerial combat. Cobra reveals himself to be an artificial cobra dragon slayer, but is still defeated by Natsu. Midnight battles Hoteye, where Hoteye appeared to win, but then Midnight wins. Jura battles Brain while Wendy uses her magic to temporarily cure Natsu’s motion sickness so that he can stop Nirvana’s march on her guild, Cait Shelter.

One of the interesting things about Mashima-sensei’s battles is seeing how he gets his heroes out of dire straits. Take Lucy’s battle with Angel. Angel is revealed to have killed Karen, Leo’s former owner.  She’s a “badarse” member of Oración Seis.  Yet how does Lucy defeat Angel? Because Gemini rebels against Angel, allowing a deus ex machina moment for Hibiki to upload a spell to Lucy, thus allowing Lucy to defeat Angel.  Now, did any of this raise any red flags?  Nope.  Lucy had long been established as having a special relationship with the Celestial Spirits, thus the reason some will use their own magic to pop in and give her aid (as Virgo did in this volume to provide her and Natsu with fresh clothing). So Gemini deciding not to kill Lucy worked for me. And Hibiki’s magic was established previously, so it works too, even if the specific magic is the deus ex machina part.

While on the subject of Lucy, since she obtained Virgo after defeating her former master, Duke Everlue, plus the fact that Angel acquired Ares after defeating Karen, combined with Gemini’s rebellion, I figure that all of Angel’s Celestial Spirits will show up for Lucy.  Actually, I hope they do because that could add to the humor of Aquarius being summoned since her boyfriend is Scorpio.  If Scorpio is also a sprite of Lucy’s, wouldn’t it be funny if he goes, “Sorry Lucy. Aquarius really wants to take a trip to ‘X’ so I can’t stick around to help you.” *lol*

A while back (I’m way behind on blogging Fairy Tail), someone mentioned that there’d be a dragon slayer in Oración Seis.  I didn’t know, but it turned out to be Cobra. I do wonder where Mashima-sensei is going with the fake dragon slayers (like Laxus & Cobra) vs. real dragon slayers like Natsu, Gajeel, and now Wendy.

With Jellal being found, and Mystogan being Jellal, I wonder where Mashima-sensei is going with this.  Clearly, it seems he’s establishing that there are actually two Jellal’s for some reason.  At the same time, Mashima-sensei is rehabilitating Jellal, which is pretty common for former Fairy Tail opponents.  After all, former opponents Lyon and Sherry are here as allies, though Sherry goes evil for a short time here.

Natsu’s method for defeating Cobra was actually funny to me, using a dragon roar to accomplish this. Well, Mashima-sensei is inventive on how he has his heroes defeat their opponents, as I mentioned earlier.

On the Kodansha side of things, we get the standard extras of Mashima-sensei’s notes, the “Mysteries of Fairy Tail Explained,” the Japanese fan art, and a few translator notes.  Also, there’s a large preview for volume 19.  Were there problems? I didn’t notice any, but then I didn’t look that hard.

Well, this was certainly an action-packed volume, but I’ve got two more sitting to be read and blogged. As such, I’ll move along, but I will say that I enjoyed every moment of volume 18. ^_^