August 7th, 2012 
AstroNerdBoy フェアリーテイル
Fairy Tail Volume 20 Review
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Highlights for this volume start with Gemini taking Lucy’s place so that Gemini, Wendy, Gray, Erza, and Ichiya can target five of Nirvana’s legs as Natsu uses his incredible dragon slaying abilities to defeat Zero and take out the sixth leg. Once Nirvana has been stopped, the new Magic Council troop, led by Lahar, arrives to arrest Hoteye, who learns from Erza that his brother Wally is OK. They also move to arrest Jellal, which doesn’t sit well with Natsu, but Erza puts a stop to him since Jellal is ready to accept his fate, remembering how Erza got her last name, “Scarlett.”
The Cait Shelter guild welcomes the allied guild folks, however, Master Robaul reveals that the guild is actually an illusion and that he is actually a ghost, the last member of the Nirvirt, who created Nirvana. When a boy named Jellal came by with the young Wendy, Robaul created an illusionary guild so Wendy wouldn’t be lonely. Robaul vanishes as well, so Erza, Gray, Natsu, and Lucy take Wendy and Carla to Fairy Tail. Lucy now has the keys for Gemini, Ares, and Scorpio, who wanted to be with her. Wendy is welcomed to Fairy Tail with a raucous party.
Gildarts returns from a failed Century quest, despite his great power. Wendy encounters Mystogan, the Jellal she remembers, who has a dire warning about Fairy Tail. Carla is disdainful of Happy for not knowing what he really is as Gajeel goes looking for his own “cat.” Elfman and Mira head to church to remember their dead little sister. An anima storm wipes out Magnolia and Fairy Tail, leaving only Natsu, Wendy, Happy, and Carla, who explains that the world of Edolas is trying to suck magic from this world, and that she and Happy were sent to this world to help that. Happy and Carla fly Natsu and Wendy through the opening to Edolas, where they encounter a Fairy Tail who’s members are the same but opposite of the companions Natsu and Wendy had known.
That Natsu would defeat Zero was a given. Mashima-sensei keeps bringing up the dragon slayer aspects, but never seems to go anywhere with it. That might change with this Edolas storyline, but we’ll see.
As I thought, Lucy scored new Celestial Spirits, but she only scored three of the four that Angel had, at least that’s all it appeared to me. Well, the more Spirits Lucy has, combined with the fact that they are often willing to help her of their own accord, Lucy’s stock actually rises as a guild member. If she could somehow increase her magical powers so that she could have two Spirits (or more) at a time, that would really make her a force to contend with.
I had remarked a while back that Fairy Tail used to be a guild with tons of kids in it, but no longer. After all, Erza, Gray, Natsu, Cana, and Laxus were all kids who were guild members. Now, with Wendy joining the guild, Fairy Tail finally has a kid member again. I kinda like that, even though Wendy is a special case since she’s a dragon slayer. I didn’t expect Wendy to become a member though, as Mashima-sensei came up with one of his unexpected plot twists, making Wendy’s former guild suddenly non-existent. *lol*
It was nice seeing the long-spoken of Gildarts make an appearance. The fact that the town would magically realign itself for him to have a straight path to the guild made me chuckle. I did find it interesting that even though all the dragons are supposed to be gone, Gildarts found a bad one, implying that Natsu may have been trained to take it out.
The Edolas storyline has me interested, much more so than the Oración Seis ever did. It wasn’t so much that Fairy Tail’s guild building (and people within) as well as the town of Magnolia disappeared, but the fact that when Wendy, Natsu, Happy, and Carla cross over to that world, they find another Fairy Tail guild were the members are the opposites from what we’ve come to know and love. As such, it is humorous to see Gray wearing too many clothes and madly in love with the ambivalent Juvia. It is funny seeing Cana as a chaste, sober young woman. Lucy, as a tough, immodest girl is also humorous. I hope we get to see her Celestial Spirits. I can’t wait to see where this goes.
As an aside, the splash page with Erza wedding dress was quite nice. I know those images don’t mean anything, but it was still a sweet image.
On the Kodansha side of things, we get the notes from Mashima-sensei, some Japanese fan art, some translator notes, and a Japanese preview for the next volume. The normal honorific glossary is missing, and the table of contents decided not to be bothered with identifying the chapters, nor the pages said chapters started on. What it us with that? Once again, Kodansha Comics shows poor quality control. I really hate saying this ’cause I like Dallas Middaugh and his work at Del Rey. I can’t believe he’d run things so crappily, so I have to believe that the Japanese side of things is the real problem here.
UPDATE! OK, my bad. I normally don’t look for TOC pages, but I happened to see this one and noticed that there were no chapter pages listed. What I didn’t know is that there is a SECOND TOC page, wherein the actual chapters are listed. *_* Not sure why we need two such pages, but there you go. So I was wrong, the chapters are listed, just in a second table of contents page.
So, a good volume that wraps up a mediocre story and starts one that seems rather interesting at the start. Let’s hope Kodansha pulls their head out for the next release.
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The Edolas arc isn’t that noteworthy except for a pretty big retcon at the end but don’t be put off, the next story is easily one of the best and so far longest in the series
Hmmm…well, it seemed that it could be quite interesting. Still, I will continue to read on.
Don’t get me wrong there are some awesome fights and twists,i just felt like the arc isn’t really the sum of it’s parts, if you don’t judge the whole arc on how you feel about the ending(which i do and in hindsight probably shouldn’t) you should enjoy it 🙂
Well, this is Mashima-sensei we are talking about here, who has a penchant for just writing what he feels like. As such, I take the series in that light, much as I do with Ah! My Goddess.
Hey — starting with Vol. 21 I’m taking over as editor of this series. If you ever find any specific problems that you’d like to mention (in future or previous volumes) please let me know on Twitter @benapplegate. I would appreciate it.
Will do sir, and thanks for stopping by. ^_^
In the short summary you posted “Jellal goes looking for his own cat”, but it was actually Gajeel who was searching for the cat.
On another note, as i had pointed out before about the side story regarding Happy in volume 15, well this arc covers that part.
Well it is really difficult to contain the amount of info i have (since i follow every chapter until the recent 295) and write about things while not giving away important points.
But i would say that, you should not get your hopes up for the magic used in Edolas.
Also just a heads up regard the things related to Dragon Slayer’s, as it is going to get more confusing in the future.
And at the end of this volume, Lucy presently has 9 of the 12 Golden Keys (the 10th one appears in the next arc after this and the other 2 in the later arc which follows the next arc).
Well i was also a bit sad that Lucy didn’t get Caelum since it is would have been a pretty good Key, but form what i read on the wiki of FT, it seems Caelum isn’t actually a Celestial Spirit but is a Celestial Spirit Item and thus not a sentient being and thus didn’t join Lucy like the others.
Also do you have any idea when your next summary is going to come out as you are still 14 volumes (plus a few chapters) behind.
The way you are going with the reviews, i don’t think you would ever be able to catch up to the latest chapter (there is a gap of 126 chapters presently) unless the story ends, since there is still a gap of 14 volumes between Japan and US releases, which i also noted back in your Volume 17 review.
I will concur with this person and suggest you catch up and do weekly reviews; with the magic, adventuring and blatant fanservice it could become your new negima
@SL — thanks for the correction.
As to the next summary, considering the time factor, I’m thinking of just reading ahead and worrying about writing something later. I do want to weekly-blog this manga.
Well if you have decided to read the scanlations then i should tell you that some of them might make a big confusion regarding Jellal & Gajeel’s name.
Normally the difference for Gajeel’s name is only in the spelling like some translators use Gazelle or Gazille for example, which could be easily understood. But the big problem would be Jellal who is normally translated as Gérard. Also Carla is normally translated as Charle.
Well on another note, if you speed read the chapters (normally possible if you saved the series in your PC like i do), then you could easily finish this arc in say about in 1-2 hours (the present Edolas arc has 30 more chapters after ch 169).
The next arc has about 53 chapters and then there is a small pre-arc part of about 10 chapters, and after that we have the present arc which had about 31 chapters as of yet.
As for writing the reviews, well you could presently do an “Arc Review” if you want before you catch up with the present chapters (i.e., if only you are going to start following the scanlations).
Regarding the names, I knew about “Carla” being “Charle,” though I guess Kodansha decided on “Carla” because the romaji actually spells her name as “Charlie” (from what I understand). The other names were official English spellings from Mashima-sensei to Kodansha.
As to the review choices, arc-reviews does sound like a way to go for sure.
Didn’t know that you already knew about the naming problem.
Well that aside, i think it would be best if you pick up and start reading the scanlations now (if you haven’t yet started). Thats because the present arc is soon going to enter a stage which seems to be quite important to the whole story (though the way the story is progressing, my guess is that it would atleast take a minimum of 5-6 chapters before that stage starts, which would give you sufficient time to catch up).
I believe William Flanagan addressed some of the naming things early on in the Del Rey release of the manga. I found out about the Carla thing later.
Anyway, I haven’t started reading yet (still burning through other things), but I expect to start soon.
Just informing that the manga story has gone into a sort of break for 2 weeks. Instead we will be getting 2 side stories for the time being.
So the story would get back on track from September 26 (officially).
So, a good time to read. ^_^