FAIRY TAIL ZERØ ch 12 review
フェアリーテイル ゼロ 12
Fairy Tail Zero chapter 12

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Yury confronts Mavis about Zera (Zeira), who refuses to believe Zera isn’t real. Zera says that when she died on Tenrou Island, Mavis’s illusionary magic kicked in and she unconsciously created the illusion of Zera. Because of this, only Mavis could see or hear Zera. Zera says her goodbyes to a sobbing Mavis, who doesn’t want to be alone. Yury tells her she won’t be alone.

Zera embraces Mavis, reminding her that fairies exist in her heart, therefore Zera must be one of them. She tells Mavis that this isn’t goodbye as she’s just returning inside of Mavis. After they say their final farewells, Yury is suddenly able to see Zera. Zera turns to him and says she’s leaving Mavis in his hands.

In town, both Warrod and Precht hear Zera’s voice and understand that Mavis has accepted the situation.

Outside town, Mavis promises Yury that she’ll move forward.

Thoughts/Review:

Most everyone knew Zera (or “Zeira” — funny how official name spellings often mess up unofficial, or even official guesses, especially in Fairy Tail) was dead and last chapter confirmed this. For chapter 12, we get an explanation of things, which I found to be weak at best.

Mavis created an illusion unconsciously because she couldn’t deal with the death of Zera. That illusion had its own identity and personality. It had memories. It could touch (apparently). I’m good with all of this.

Where things fall apart for me is the explanation that because of the way Mavis created this illusion, only she could see or hear it. Because Mavis doesn’t think the illusion is an illusion, it can’t be seen by anyone else? In my mind, this is the perfect illusion because it has fooled the creator. How such an illusion is invisible to everyone else makes no sense to me.

The only way this could make sense to me is if Zera wasn’t a true illusion, but rather a manifestation of Mavis’s mind, formed to deal with Zera’s loss, and formed when Mavis’s power was newly formed, thus making her manifestation something with a presence so weak, it could not be seen by anyone but Mavis.

The other element here that would have made this more believable is if Zera were a fairy of some sort. There was an allusion to this in Zera’s remarks. In this story, fairies are not seen and Mavis wants to see one. So a fairy, taking pity on Mavis, took the form of Zera, but because they only reveal themselves to whom they choose, no one else could ever see her. This would fit with her becoming visible at the end to Yury and passing Mavis over to him.

But, that’s not how the story went. Instead, we have this much more difficult to believe case of Mavis’s self-aware illusion being such that only Mavis can see it. It may work for other fans of Fairy Tail, but it just rings as a weak excuse for why Zera was never mentioned in Fairy Tail (because Mavis can never recreate Zera).

All that being said, Mavis’s and Zera’s farewell was quite sad and totally believable in terms of emotions. Zera had been Mavis’s lifeline for seven years of solitude on Tenrou Island. As awesome as Mavis is, she is still a child and it is remarkable that a child could survive on her own for that length of time.

I did like that Yury was able to see Zera in the end. That’s kinda why I wish Zera had been a fairy.

Well, only one more chapter. It is not hard to guess that this chapter will see Fairy Tail be founded. I’m looking forward to it even though I’m a bit sad this series is already almost over.