Fairy Tail 274: Bad Omen
A Joint Review
Beneath the Grand Magic Tournament lies a hidden force, the Reviewer Guild, driving us to provide you with our pearls of wisdom, or lack thereof, if you prefer.
Welcome to the second Fairy Tail Joint Review.
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Last Week On Fairy Tail
We enter the last part of the Battle first round tournament. After Lucy unfair defeat against Flare from Raven Tail, it is Jellal turn to fight. But his opponent is one of the Ten wizards faints Jura from Lamia scale. Will Fairy Tail former enemy be able to give the guild its first points ?
Analysis:
After dealing rapidly with the other guilds battles, it's time to focus back on Fairy Tail with Team B match. The guild is in desperate need for points in order to restore its pride.
The battle contestants are, on Fairy Tail side, Jellal impersonating Mystogan and on Lamia Scale side, Jura Neekis one of the most powerful mage alive.
Looking at the past, this battle is quite odd since a former enemy will fight for the guild against someone who was one of their strongest ally of the Oracion Seis arc.
Not only is Jura earth magic powerfull, it also makes photogenic battles. The spectators are happy and so are we. (I'm not sure here but the earth moving pilars kinda reminded me of some naruto battle, but i'm not a naruto expert...)
Desperate to win in order to recover Fairy Tail trust, Jellal uses some of his own magic spells such has meteor and Grand chariot. Are those spells or the revelation of a part of his tatoo the way Jura recognize his true identity ? Anyway, in contrast to Lucy match, Jura is fair play and does not use it in his favor. But the fact that Jura knows will certainly have some importance in the future.
Unfortunatly for our beloved guild, Mashima has decided it is still to early for Fairy Tail to win and as for Lucy, the match ends with Fairy tail humiliation and , we reader, are frustrated of seeing the results of a huge attack for the second time (Mashima you meany !). Why are Meredy and Jellal linked through her Sensory link is yet to be revealed, but this could explain how Meredy knew that Jellal lied to Erza when he said he had a fiancee.
Aside the battle, we have a strange behaviour of the First and another shot of the knight squadron chief to remind us that something bad is about to happen.
And since all chapters seems to end with a gloomy mood recently, this week we have another of Charle premonition. This is the second time Mashima use it as a cliffhanger (let's hope it does not become to much a habit). In the end, the first one was not as bad as it first appeared, but why would Levy write such a formal message to Lucy ? The answer in a next review
Impressions:
At the end of the previous chapter, we were left with the cliffhanger of Jellal, as Mystogan, about to face off against Jura. I looked at the chapter title, "Bad Omen," and I made the assumption that Mashima was foreshadowing that unfortunate things were going to happen as a result of the magical "fruit" that has been referenced lately. Now, I thought to myself, there is no way that this chapter can be any worse than the previous chapter where we just watched Blue Pegasus and Sabretooth roflstomp their opponents or the chapter before that where Obra robbed Lucy of her win over Flare, but no one noticed. We were promised immediately after Lucy's loss, that we wouldn't have to face the trolling again. I don't want to use the word trolling in a review, but there's really no other way to describe what happened.
Considering that Jellal, either as Mystogan or as himself, against Jura had promise, I expected great things out of this chapter. Boy was I wrong...We get what looks it could be a great chapter, but instead, we just end up with the same trolling that we saw in Lucy's match, even though Mashima had promised us that we weren't going to have to witness any more trolling. This time, instead of the opposing team stepping in and stopping Jellal's True Heavenly Body Magic: Star Destruction as was done to Lucy's Uranometria, we have Ultear using the oddly attached Sense Magic on Meredy to prevent Jellal from fully revealing himself, resulting in Ultear knocking out both Meredy and Jellal, giving the win to Jura. We even have Jura asking if this was okay...
You know what, readers? It just wasn't. We could stomach outside interference once, but not a second time. Moving on from this, the scoreboard reveals that Fairy Tail B is still in 7th place with 1 point and Fairy Tail is still in 8th place with 0 points...The magical fruit is still ripening, and we end the chapter with another pointless Charle prediction. Remember the last Charle prediction with Lucy's lifeless looking hand? That's right, we get another one, but this one has Levy telling Lucy that bad things are going to happen in the future, most likely because of the "magical fruit" and Zeref...Why I am not excited?
There were positives and negatives from a character aspect in this chapter. On the one hand, we have Mashima using Mavis for a terrible loli/moeblob moment, but we also have Jura and Jellal making useful comments. Jellal decides to go all out, foregoing his need for concealment, in order to atone for his wrongs against Fairy Tail, and not just Erza. As soon as Jellal pulls out his Heavenly Magic, we have Jura understanding who Jellal really is, but apart from those two, all of the minor characters in the chapter contributed nothing. We have the fans making pointless mocking comments as well as overdone disappointed looks on the faces of Makarov and Mavis.
I wish that there was more to say about the art in this chapter. It was good overall, and sadly it was the best part of the chapter. Now, art is supposed to be one of the parts of a good manga, but it's not supposed to the be the
only part that was good for a given chapter.
Overall, I give this chapter a 2/5 for the repetition of the Lucy battle and the repetition of an overly obvious Charle premonition that we know will not come to pass as promised. So much more could've been done with this chapter. A lot more drama could've been added if Jellal's probably ultimate magic KOs Jura and he's revealed as Jellal; instead, we get Lucy version two.
Predictions:
Even though this chapter discarded the possibility of Fairy Tail to be viewed in a different light, the future holds promises that things can change.
As it was mentioned above Mashima's promise of Fairy Tail winning was not delivered, however we can still nitpick and say that Fairy Tail has 2 teams, so we can count the two failures as separate.
That is why one possibility is that this nitpicking has some basis, and in the future Fairy Tail will prove its worth in the tournament.
One counter to this prediction would be that the events that will probably interrupt the tournament are near, however it's still a possibility.
So in the end from what we can gather from the events until now, is that the tournament will be interrupted and Fairy Tail will play a central part in the saving the day. This will balance the humiliation suffered in the tournament so far, even if officially they won't be recognized as number 1. This would also serve as a reconciliation between Jellal and a small part of the magical world, and hopefully a cooperation between Jellal and Jura, as a continuation of their show of strength in this chapter.
This is I think the most accurate prediction we can come up with in the long run, because this manga always concludes arcs with a happy ending, so this way the universe "after 7 years" won't be overthrown, but Fairy Tail will still be seen in a favorable light.
How does this prediction reflect on the events of next chapter. Well that is pretty much unknown, because of the cliffhanger, which implies a role of sacrifice(either Lucy or Levy), which is totally different from the events that happened until now. There is also some mentioning that there will be a second day of the tournament, so Mashima is at a point, where he is not constrained to what path he should choose, as he is still laying the groundwork for this arc.
P.S.
All in all, the chapter, while not perfect, leaves good possibilities for the future.
We thank you for your time and willingness to make it through the review.
For the FT 276 Joint Review, we have at least one new member joining our crew, and that would be [USER]Jyten[/USER]. Our wisdom will again be brought to your shores for the next chapter.
Thank you, from the entire FT JR team.
If you feel inspired to participate in this, or any other, Joint Review, drop by the
Reviewer Alliance HQ Thread and give us a nod.
Credits:
Thanks to all of the people involved.
[USER]Benelori[/USER] and [USER]k-dom[/USER] for being our reviewers, along with myself ([USER]FrostyMouse[/USER]).
[USER]aphabeta[/USER] for being our taskmaster.
[USER]gintara[/USER] for making our FT JR banner.
---------- Post added at 09:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:04 PM ----------
Here it is, I find it better if the panels are centered, don't you ?
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