Manga/Fairy Tail

Well at least his Star Dress is legitimately impressive?

You always talk like this and its like....someone has to be the fall guy. May as well make it a character who's moer or less an accessory.

....I mean, you gotta rise to fall.

I get what your saying, but giving him some good victories will actually help him in his role. Because then the defeats will have actual weight.

Edit: Plus, varying things up a bit would be good. Don't have the same character always do the same thing.

Then again, almost all of Lucy's spirits suffer The Worf Effect for the sake of the plot anyway, so maybe I'm just wasting my time.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Dec 16th 2020 at 11:50:50 AM

I don't have any particular attachment to Lucy's spirits as characters soooo.

...well you need to lead with that man!

Like, don’t let me waste time debating with you on this stuff if you don’t care.

My bad.

As someone who cares, I have to ask, which of Lucy's spirits do you guys feels are the most useful? And comparatively, the least

Aquarius is her best, followed by Leo. The actual worst would be her silver spirits because they're all Useless Useful Spells, but for the gold ones it would be Taurus. You'd think it would be the guy who's only power is cutting hair, but sadly he has a better track record from what little I remember.

Edited by VeryMelon on Dec 17th 2020 at 9:20:25 AM

The best is probably the clock spirit who constantly shows up and shoved naked people inside him to save them from attacks

I love Cancer. Him granting her duel wielding blades with her Star Dress to use against Brandish was so cool!

I also like Scorpio and find his powers cool, but oddly enough, it's his Eclipse form and duel with Cana that got me into the franchise. Weird. Him and Max should have a Unison Raid.

Chapter's out. So everyone loses just cause now. Sure why not. And Lucy forgot how her powers work for some reason. Pretty sure she knew about her spirits getting stronger when she does before.

Well....that's bullshit

I mean they're underlings for the Big Bad, should we be surprised by this?

Also, it's so good to see most of Lucy's spirits again, plus her opponent was kind of a weird evil mentor, like yeah she's grown, but she still has a long way to go, so I'm looking forward to see how that develops.

Sorta...I don't think they ever lost this badly to the underlings before. They might struggle, they generally win in the end. Here, they straight up got stomped.

You know, I'm starting to realize we tend to undervalue any victories the cast has if they didn't beat the Big Bad or The Dragon of an arc.

I don't think that's fair.

That's on Mashima; when you portray your cast as more or less steamrolling the opposition, it kind of makes it difficult to see them ever losing convincingly. So losing without any real justification is uh...weird.

Yeah. Mashima is bad at making his villains threats, so when the heroes don't steamroll them, it comes off as really bad.

Anyway, my usual place for checking out 100 Years Quest is down, so I'll have to wait to give my thoughts.

Kind of feel bad for Lucy; just when you start thinking that she's finally made progress towards keeping up with the rest of the team, she's once again pitted against an opponent that's simply too much for her to handle. And then being outright told her spirits are weak because of something she lacks.

Yeah. I'm not shocked at that. Mashima is just always gonna play her that way. Well, that's my more cynical thoughts on it. I'm hoping this will go somewhere. She has the Star Dress Mix, and there's still the matter of getting back Aquarius. This may result in a further power-up on her part. She's always had some potential for some good combos with her spirits: Summon two spirits, one of whom is Gemini, have Gemini transform into her, then Gemini Lucy summons another two spirits, then both real Lucy and Gemini Lucy put on a Star Dress. That's five spirits, and two extra powers as well.

Of course, I say all this while having not read the chapter yet.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Dec 30th 2020 at 10:38:27 AM

Its honestly not even her fault tbh. Its not like she's weak. As you said, she's got plenty of utilities and combos at her disposal; by "normal" standards, Lucy is one of the most versatile mages in the series. Its just that the threats they frequently face are anything but normal and far above her weight class. She started the series being already below Natsu, Gray, Erza and their contemporaries and they've all gotten stronger too. So it really makes Lucy look worse than she actually is simply because the people she faces are just freaks of nature that would give her equally freakish friends trouble.

She's Ussopp to put it simply

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Dec 30th 2020 at 5:45:58 AM

Damn. That's a good way to put it.

It also doesn't help that she has two very big weaknesses in a lack of mana and just stealing her keys either. The other's don't really have that.

Because as I said, they are freaks of nature.

Nobody holds it against her for the most part, but it really kind of sucks how out of her depth she tends to be. To her credit though, she never stops fighting despite frequently being outmatched.

Alright. I was finally able to read it.

Yeah, it's just Mashima giving his villains really unfair powers again.

The Sorting Algorithm of Evil strikes again.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Dec 30th 2020 at 11:13:22 AM

Alright, I have caught up on the sequel a while ago and I must say, it hasn't been bad at all. While it has its weak points, it's giving the vibe of the Fairy Tail I remember to have greatly enjoyed before around the time of Tenrou arc. Even then, I never came to truly dislike Fairy Tail. I saw this series as Mashima-sensei only trying to be mindless fun and not tell an actual story like Rave or Edens Zero because he does show he's good at developing plot points when he wants to there. How the writing decayed in Fairy Tail was the natural outcome of any manga being forced to continue past the point the author ever wanted it to because it got too popular for its own good.

I don't know, maybe it's just that I already have low standards with shonen action manga. If there's well-defined, charismatic characters who get to do something funny and/or cool without staying too useless for long and the plot isn't too incoherent, I'm going to enjoy it. The only real problems I can have with the genre anymore is when blatant and gratuitous fanservice deteriorates the quality of the characters and/or takes over the plot in its entirety. Like Lisanna turning out to have never been dead with an explanation that didn't make much sense when her death was a big part of her siblings' development, just because the anime shipped her like crazy with Natsu. But eh, seen way worse. Mashima-sensei can go overboard with the nudity and weird fetishes in Fairy Tail, yeah, but I at least appreciate he has kept some decency in not sexualizing Wendy because I know other mangaka wouldn't hold back there.

Fairy Tail's characters aren't that interesting, but I enjoy their chemistry for the most part and they can shine a lot when given the chance so I can like them quite a bit when they're the focus like the sequel is doing. The giant Gajeel vs wood dragon scene has been one of the funniest manga scenes I have seen in a while .