Fairy Tail Manga Volume 09 Review
フェアリーテイル

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SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Upon the casting of Fairy Law, Jose is defeated and Makarov easily dispatched Aria, telling him to take Jose away and never return.  Natsu has a chat with Gajeel, where they both learn they have similar experiences with their dragon guardians having disappeared. Makarov has the guild begin work on reconstructing their guild building as Lucy takes off to visit her father.  Natsu, Gray, Happy, and Erza discover Lucy is missing and decide to follow her.

When Lucy arrives at her family’s enormous estate, the staff are all excited that she has returned.  After getting Lucy to change into more appropriate clothing, Lucy visits her father, who states that he would have crushed Fairy Tale if he had to in order to get Lucy back.  As it is, she is to marry Duke Sawarr.  After Lucy’s father has his say, Lucy tells him off, warning him not to mess with Fairy Tail again.  She also tells him that in refusing to do as he wishes, she would have been supported by her deceased mother to do what Lucy felt was right.  With that, Lucy leaves and goes to visit her mother’s grave where she is joined by Natsu, Happy, Gray, and Erza.

Returning to Fairy Tail, the group finds that Laxus has returned and is causing trouble. Lucy is surprised to learn that he is the grandson of Makarov.  Meanwhile, Erza decides that since she, Lucy, Natsu, Gray, and Happy work so well together, they should officially form a team, an event which cements the notion to Makarov that he cannot retire.

Lucy and company take a job working for a theater manager and end up working as actors, causing destruction but also success.  After another mission, Lucy and company run into Loke, who irritates Lucy by avoiding her. Erza, Gray, and Natsu decide to get into a pillow fight at the ryokan they are spending the night at, which becomes a little too much for Lucy. She goes for a walk and is found by two male wizards and trapped until Loke saves her. Lucy manages to get Loke to go bar to thank him for finding her celestial keys but ends up slapping him when he makes what appears to be a bad joke.

Upon returning home, Lucy is with Happy as she summons Old Master Cru to attempt to figure out what could have happened in the past to cause Loke to react so negatively to celestial wizards.  Old Master Cru can only reveal that Loke once had a relationship with a celestial mage named Karen.  When Gray tells Lucy that Loke has disappeared, Lucy finds him at Karen’s grave and reveals she knows his true identity — the celestial spirit Leo.  Loke confirms this and says that he has been banished from the celestial world for allowing his owner Karen to die.  He tells the story of how Karen abused her female celestial spirit Aries by not only using her as a shield during fights but also making her service the men Karen would pick up.  Leo could not stand this and so took Aries place and prevented Karen from sending him back.  As such, she could not summon Aries and Leo began using his own power to stay in the human realm.  Karen refused to budge but without her ability to summon celestial spirits, she was killed on a mission and Leo was punished as a result.

Lucy does not find this fair and manages to gain the attention of the celestial spirit king in order to keep Loke from dying. After pleading Loke-Leo’s case and even managing to summon all five of her gold key spirits plus Plue, the king decides to allow Leo back but in return, Leo is now Lucy’s charge and protector.

Thoughts/Review:

This volume makes an interesting departure from the normal stuff that Mashima-sensei does.  The volume is not only lighthearted in nature but also rather poignant.  I guess this shouldn’t be too surprising since action-filled manga stories take a lot out of the manga-ka and his/her staff.

So, Laxus is Makarov’s grandson.  Well, that would certainly explain why he feels he can be as much a punk as he is. Obviously, Makarov has never laid the law down on his grandson.

It was interesting seeing where Lucy comes from. I find it odd that she was taught magic at all, considering how her father is. Yet her elderly mage instructor was there and I would guess it is from him that Lucy learned specifically to be a celestial wizard.  Maybe Lucy’s father saw some advantage in having Lucy learn mage skills or maybe her mother had some say in that.  The more I think about it, I’d bet her mother was the reason as it seems her mother likely would have supported Lucy’s independence.  I wonder how Lucy’s mother died.

The play story reminded me very much of a similar incident in Slayers, where Lina Inverse’s team had to put on a play to help out someone and in the process, ended up destroying the place when a mercenary lead a bunch of monsters to fight them.  Of interest here is that Lucy summons Lyra to help with the play.  Mashima-sensei has laid down the rules on celestial spirits and Lyra’s hours were limited to three times a month, IIRC.  However, if they were doing multiple performances, did Lyra decide to allow herself to be summoned more often or just hang out the entire time in the human realm with Lucy’s magic providing the means?

Finally, there’s Leo-Loke.  Mashima-sensei had established early on that Loke was afraid of Lucy and that was done more for comical effect until now.  However, I’d noticed that Mashima-sensei had Loke appearing to watch Lucy from a distance and now we know why. As Leo, Loke must be very powerful indeed to open his own gate at will and prevent Karen from banishing him.  I know that Aquarius can send herself back without Lucy’s assistance but I wonder if even she can summon herself.

Regardless, I’ve been saying that Lucy is quite weak when it comes to being of use in a fight, especially without her keys.  I guess Mashima-sensei must have decided to show a glimpse of Lucy’s potential when she not only caused the celestial spirit king to appear, but summoned Aquarius, Cancer, Taurus, Sagittarius, and Virgo as well as Plue briefly to her side and without their keys. Loke had said during his flashback that no celestial mage could summon more than one spirit at a time and Lucy summoned six at once.  Should Lucy be able to summon more than one spirit at a time, she would suddenly become MUCH more valuable in a fight.

Now that Lucy has Leo’s key, she owns half of the gold keys.  I don’t suppose it is too much of a bet to say that she’ll likely end up with them all.  I wonder who has Aries now?

So, a fun and poignant volume.