Fairy Tail Volume 40 Manga Review

フェアリーテイル Manga
Fairy Tail Volume 40 Review

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***SPOILERS***

Fairy Tail Volume 40Lucy finds information that destroying Eclipse will cause Future Rogue and the dragons to disappear and return to their own time. However, it takes Natsu battling Future Rogue to destroy the gate by accident. Mavis notes that not one dragon slayer was able to slay a dragon. There’s a fancy party thrown for all the mages, where Natsu finally shows up, wearing the king’s crown. Doranbalt has a conversation with Jellal, where he reveals he’s rewritten the Council’s memories to protect the royal family since Eclipse was actually part of Zeref’s magics. Jellal and Merudy don’t know where Ultear is when an old woman approaches them and delivers a message from Ultear. Fairy Tail takes a coach home when they pass the old woman, whom Gray appears to recognize as Ultear.

Fairy Tail returns to Magnolia to the warm welcome of the town and the rest of the guild.  The returning members are shown that their guild building has been rebuilt. Elsewhere, Mavis meets with Zeref, though he can’t actually see her, he knows she’s there. Raven makes her peace with Fairy Tail and Lucy discovers her apartment has visitors again, this time Erza, Wendy, and Carla. Erza’s a bit concerned about Natsu and Gray being delayed on their job, so the trio sets out to find them. When they do, they find Natsu and Gray have been fighting, and they both nail Erza accidentally and pay the price.

One of the Wizard Saints, Warrod Sequen, puts in a request to Fairy Tail for Gray and Natsu, so Makarov sends Erza, Lucy, Gray, Natsu, Wendy, Happy, and Carla. The retired Warrod has been attempting to reclaim the desert with his green magic.  He reports that the Village of the Sun has been frozen over, including the Eternal Flame. The team takes the job and he sends them there via a tree that grows the entire distance. The village is filled with giants, all of whom are frozen. The Fairy Tail team encounter three members of a treasure hunting guild while all of this is observed by Minerva and one other from Succubus Eye guild. Erza does some investigation and suddenly finds herself turned into a child.


So, when all is said and done, the big red reset button is pressed by destroying Eclipse. The dragons disappear as if they’d never come through, but everyone is still damaged as if they had. I guess what we are going with is that there are multiple universes based on timelines.

I do note with some interest (as did Mavis in the story) that none of the dragon slayers were able to slay one dragon. I guess that gives Mashima-sensei an opening to have his dragon slayers do that in the future, if he should so desire.

Speaking of Mavis, she was pretty humorous in her being at the party but not being able to eat. Yeah, you feel sorry for her, but it was still amusing.

On a more serious front, it is interesting that she knows Zeref. It is also interesting that though Zeref couldn’t see her, he was aware of her presence.

It was also nice getting to see Mavis back when Fairy Tail was first formed during Warrod’s flashback to when he was in Fairy Tail.

While on the subject of Warrod, I’m rather disappointed with the nerfing of the Wizard Saint rankings. Up until now, Wizard Saints were supposedly the most powerful of the most powerful. While Warrod has impressive magic, as seen by how he transported the Fairy Tail team to the Village of the Eternal Sun, his introduction establishes that Wizard Saints aren’t necessarily powerful warriors.

I was stunned to see that Ultear was apparently turned into an old woman as the result of her spell. Mashima-sensei likes to redeem villain characters, and this appears to be her ultimate redemption, based on the symbolism in the artwork. Well, if the formerly deceased Jellal can be brought back to life, then Ultear could be restored to youth down the road if Mashima-sensei so desires.

I’m not sure why Mashima-sensei suddenly decided to have Gray and Natsu bicker with each other again, followed by roping Erza in when the two accidentally punched her. I’m guessing he thought it would be funny, but for some reason, it just fell flat with me. It was a “been there, done that” kind of moment, even if the look on Erza’s face after they bloodied her nose was somewhat amusing. I think this is because the characters had seemed to move on from that petty bickering, so returning to it for no apparent reason just felt out of place.

Finally, as to the new mission, I really have no feel for it. I’m not surprised to see Minerva show up to get some payback on Fairy Tail.

On the Kodansha Comics side of things, it is the usual. The Japanese honorifics appear to be back in place, save for any brother/sister honorifics. The standard extras are all here as well as a couple of pages of translator notes, which is always welcome.

And so things move quickly along from one story arc into the next with very little downtime between stories. Basically, this volume is filled with a big mix of massive action, humor, big breasted fanservice, and even a bit of poignancy over Ultear.

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6 Responses to “Fairy Tail Volume 40 Manga Review”

  1. SL from MH says:

    Well u will see more fanservice down the road, but the arc that started in this volume is sort of an important one and serves as a base to the next big arc, where a lot of things happen. Also a surprising character makes an appearence in this arc.

    On the note of Mavis, i am not sure if u know about it or not but recently 2 new side-story relating to the FT series have started (and they are considered to be canon). Also both of these series are monthly releases on a newly lanched magazine called Fairy Tail.

    The first one is called “Fairy Tail Zero” and it follows the story of Mavis and the creation of the guild Fairy Tail. It is done by Mashima-sensei.

    While the other one is called “Fairy Tail Ice Trail” and it follows the story of Gray between the timeframe of after Ur’s death and before he joined FT. This series is being done by one of Mashima-sensei assistant.

    • AstroNerdBoy says:

      Well u will see more fanservice down the road, but the arc that started in this volume is sort of an important one and serves as a base to the next big arc, where a lot of things happen.

      I’ll keep that in mind as I move into volume 41.

      On the note of Mavis, i am not sure if u know about it or not but…

      I was completely unaware. I’ll have to see about looking into those.

      • SL from MH says:

        Well both of those new series are being scanlated by ‘MS’ for now and only 3 chapters (for both of them) had been released until now (since its only a monthly release and the publishing started in July). So, it won’t be a problem for you to catch up to them. Maybe you could even do monthly reviews on them like you did for MSN and now do for UQH and a few other series.

        Another thing, the one doing “Ice Trail” is ‘Shirato Yuusuke’. And since its another mangaka, the art style is quite different for it.

        One more thing, the arc you are reading is going to end in volume 42 (it would be around chapter 355), but the one following that is a big one which is still going on (i.e., from chapter 356-401+), and has alot of things going on in it.

        At last, the thing relating to Mavis is that she hadn’t appeared in the story since chapter 340 (as off chapter 401). Not sure why she had been missing from the action though.

        • AstroNerdBoy says:

          I just read the three chapters from both series. Fairy Tail Zero certainly has my interest, but that’s because I like Mavis and I think it is interesting to see how Fairy Tail was formed as a guild, and how Mavis became its first master.

          • SL from MH says:

            So, are you gonna review them (chapter by chapter), or wait for the volume compilation (which could take a few months to happen and we don’t know whether these would get picked up by oversea publishers).

          • AstroNerdBoy says:

            For Fairy Tail Zero, I’m thinking chapter reviews. For the other one, it hasn’t gripped me, but I thought I’d do something.

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