FAIRY TAIL ZERØ ch 11 review
フェアリーテイル ゼロ 11
Fairy Tail Zero chapter 11

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Yury regains consciousness, where he’s greeted by Warrod. Yury demands to know where Mavis is, so Warrod and Precht tell him that after multiple doctors examined her, including a specialist from a neighboring town’s mage guild, because she used the incomplete version of Law magic, Mavis’s body will no longer age nor grow.

Yury races to find Mavis, who’s pleased to see him. He attempts to apologize, but she says the decision she made was her own. He apologizes and confesses that he had been using her all along. She assures him she’s in good heath, so he tells her that when he was under the control of the Tenrou Jade, he heard Mavis call him a friend. As such, Yury now thinks of Mavis as a friend, pleasing her. She’s surprised that he wants to help her look for fairies. Since he owes his life to her, he wants to live for her dreams. She thinks he should live for his own dream, so he tells her his dream is to protect her from this day forward.

With that settled, Yury wants to discuss Zeira. On cue, Zeira appears from behind a rock. Mavis tells her that she’s got to get used to the others. Yuri cuts off Mavis, telling her he cannot see Zeira, nor can any of the others. As such, he states that Zeira is an illusion created by Mavis.

Thoughts/Review:

Well now, well now. Isn’t all this interesting? 😉

Before we go to the interesting stuff, Mashima-sensei shows where all of this blathering about friendship got started. However, I don’t find it annoying here. For starters, as a very lonely girl, Mavis speaking of friendship is very believable because she wants friends. For Yury, it is believable hearing him speak of being Mavis’s friend and vowing to see her dreams fulfilled because Mavis saved his life. So its all good there and a nice moment between Yury and Mavis.

The most difficult thing a for a person to have to do is tell their friend the ugly truth about something. After all, who wants to hurt their friend?  I mean, if you’ve got a friend who has dragon breath, do you tell them? If they have a body odor because they skipped out on taking a shower, what do you say? (These are extreme examples, of course.) I think it might be easier when one is younger, but as an adult, there’ve been many times when someone in the group has some sensitive issue that bothers everyone, but even though we all consider the person a friend, no one knows quite how to broach the topic, and so we just let it ride.  I’m not saying it is right, but there you go.

This is the situation that Yuri, Warrod, and Precht had with Mavis from the moment they met her. She’s blathering away about Zeira, and the three of them are looking at each other going, “What’s this little girl talking about?” However, as their journey continues and they grow fond of Mavis, she’d been going on about her mysterious air friend for so long, I’m sure none of them knew how to approach Mavis on this subject, especially since it is potentially so sensitive.

Still, in the end, Yury did broach the subject, which took a lot of courage.

Question is, “How does Yury know this is an illusion of Mavis’s creation?”  They’ve seen Mavis’s other illusions quite well, so why not Zeira? In theory, Zeira could be a ghost who only reveals herself to Mavis.  But putting that aside, how does Mavis create an illusion that only she can see?

It may be more accurate to state that Zeira is not an illusion, but a figment of Mavis’s imagination. The term “air friend” was used in Haganai! to describe an imaginary friend. I think that this is what Mavis has done — created an air friend for herself that isn’t really an illusion in the traditional sense. It makes sense that she’d do this since she was all alone on Tenrou Island for several years.

Anyway, I feel badly for Mavis as she is going to have to deal with the reality of Zeira’s death. However, now that she has three companions, all of whom will no doubt care for Mavis like a daughter, I’m guessing this is what will get her through to become the Mavis we know and love in the regular Fairy Tail story.

In the end, an interesting chapter with a revelation about Zeira that most folks suspected. Can’t wait for the next chapter.