フェアリーテイル
Fairy Tail Volume 27 Review

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The highlights from this volume start with Leo facing Caprico, aka: Capricorn, whom he discovers has been possessed by a human. After freeing Capricorn, we learn that Lucy is Capricorn’s true owner, and his key is transferred to her. Natsu finds Ultear and learns she was the guy he’d battled before. Lucy tells Cana what she figured out about Mavis Vermilion’s grave, causing Cana to put her to sleep while she goes off to find the grave and become an S-class wizard. Kain comes upon Lucy and goes to stomp her just as she wakes up. He’s able to easily defeat the various Celestial Spirits Lucy calls. Their fight takes them to where Natsu is battling Ultear, so Natsu and Lucy team up. Kain uses his doll magic to have Lucy fight Natsu, but when Happy steals the doll and Natsu ends up with it, Lucy defeats Kain as a result.

Ultear quietly leaves the fight before it is over and is spotted by Gray, who tracks her since she looks like Ur. Mest, aka: Dorabalt, returns to the damaged Magic Council warship, where he learns that the council is planning to use Etherion on the island to stop Grimoire Heart. He asks for time since he thinks Fairy Tail can overcome Grimoire Heart. He lets Natsu and some others know what is going on. Elsewhere, Merudy takes on Erza and Juvia, focusing on killing Juvia first. When Juvia learns that Gray is Merudy’s primary target, she brings her A-game and sends Erza to help others. Merudy counters by linking herself, Juvia, and Gray together so that Gray will experience pain that any of the others feel. Juvia prevents Merudy from killing herself, thus saving Gray, and in the process, manages to cause Merudy to back down from her cause. Gray, now free from the link, is found by Ultear, who reveals to him that she’s Ur’s daughter.

I have no idea why, but for whatever reason, I never even suspected that Caprio was a Celestial Spirit, much less being Capricorn. It was only blatantly obvious now that I look back, but I guess he never really registered with me as a character since I never mentioned him prior to this entry. Then he takes center stage to battle Leo and suddenly, everything becomes clear.

The voodoo doll stuff with Kain, Lucy, Natsu, and Happy has a lot of cliched elements to it, but the jokes, though old, still work well. Plus, I just love Natsu’s sadistic mind when he used his own flame on the doll to make Lucy have his flame to defeat Kain.

I liked seeing Juvia actually rising to the occasion and showing why she was an S-class wizard at Phantom Lord. I didn’t care for the ending of that fight because it just made Merudy seem like a fraud, or someone without true convictions. Maybe I’m being too harsh, but what was supposed to be a heartwarming moment when Juvia makes her impassioned plea that reaches Merudy’s ears just made me cringe. I guess I’ve been around too long.

On the Kodansha Comics side of things, chapter 224 raises some serious red flags with me.  Capricorn’s dialog here has his normal Japanese honorifics replaced with Western ones (“Sir”, “Lady”, or dropping the honorific completely). From what I’m told, Capricorn addresses just about everyone with the “-sama” honorific. Since the rest of the volume seemed to contain all the proper Japanese honorifics, this sudden change of style is VERY puzzling and even annoying, especially since William Flanagan is usually pretty good with honorifics (only dropping the brother/sister honorifics).

Update: The editor informs me this was an editorial decision. Characters that were addressed with honorifics from the go will still get that, but new characters, like Capricorn, will get what I call “forced translated” honorifics. Thus Capricorn, who in fact DOES address everyone with “-sama”, will now address people with a wonderful Western honorific, or none at all, the later case completely changing how he’s addressing the person.  I’ve never understood this forced translation mentality. I know Fairy Tail isn’t set in Japan, but it isn’t set in the West either, so why not just keep sticking to Japanese honorifics and have done?  After all, you’ve established that in this Fairy Tail universe, folks use Japanese honorifics. That’s why seeing a Western honorific (or a lack of any honorific when the pattern has been for there to be one there) always jars me because it isn’t natural for this universe. Now, I can expect this awesome hybrid crap from here on out. *very heavy sigh*

As an aside, I probably sensed this change in honorific usage was the case since Kodansha Comics no longer has the “commitment to honorifics” page like they used to, making me suddenly miss Del Rey again.  I’d been wondering about honorific usage and Fairy Tail for a while now. I was thrown off the scent somewhat by the fact that honorifics were mostly retained, making me think that these moments where I’d question what I was reading was just some mistake, or someone making a tweak decided to just remove honorifics for whatever bizarro reason. Sometimes, I feel like we are going back to the 1990’s for no good reason, but I digress.

(Man, I feel depressed now.  It is stupid, but it is like the bottom has collapsed under my feet while the wind has left my sails. So much for my getting to the next volume of Fairy Tail right away.  I don’t even want to look at it right now. *_*)

Otherwise, the book contains the normal stuff one would expect. I like how Mashima-sensei acknowledges certain mistakes and the like that creep into the manga. I also like that there’s an extra discussing the naming of many of the characters. I guess he didn’t realize that “Charles” is a male name when he named Wendy’s female Exceed companion (named “Carla” in the official English translation), which is something I found interesting.

Story-wise, this volume was fine. Kodasha-wise…