#alvarez arc

[and-the-rest-of-the-universe]

Lucy & Natsu’s big team-up fight in the Alvarez arc being them pretending to get frisky to embarrass an assassin into letting his guard down (and consequentially inspiring Mavis’ plan to defeat Zeref) vs Gray & Juvia’s big team-up being them forced to fight each other to the death and instead choosing to unalive themselves to save the other sure is something

[awesomenikie]

Love that a lot of Nalu batshit insane moments in the Alvarez arc were a result of the one year apart. One turned into a demon and the other rewrote a demon book without knowing the consequences just because they didn’t want to be part again.

[oulkheir]

it's a bit hard on alvarez arc to say it's a bad arc when it's mostly less good than many others. you can't say it's totally bad when every character had a last meaningful fight, had closure for their insecurities and personal arc. even family histories have been elucidated (natsu and lucy's fate being intertwined is def my fav), and i don't think that some plotlines being rushed strained the whole series. mashima gave everyone their time to shine without forgetting to talk about what all of them were looking for during the whole story. you could say some characters should have died or fight better than this but in any way, fairy tail has never been about its ending but way more about the process. the ending isn't even an ending. the guild just had one of its biggest battle but it's not the ending of a story. the 100 year quest proves it. it could go on and on for an infinite number of arc.

it was probably hard to finish a story that the only purpose was adventure and family bonding and self-improvement. unless you go until the characters' death(?). so please go easy on alvarez arc. just because the others look better doesn't mean it's bad.

[sakurakitsume-art]

[bumblebeehug]

Natsu trashing dimaria the goddess of war so hard he traumatized her into becoming a farmer

I fear he slayed (her)

[penguilie]

Lucy against Jackal will forever be my favorite fight in the whole serie <3

It was such an amazing fight from the start to the end. Her luckily being the only survivor, fighting alone against 2 demons and the other thing, opening 3 gates simultaneously, summoning the celestial king in order to save her friends by sacrificing Aquarius, one of her most precious friend, unlocking star dress and wining against jackal with urano metria. Like everything in this fight was just perfect?? She was just amazing in this fight and with the discover of star dress it was an opening of how her magic can improve.

That’s why I’m still so mad at Mashima for not giving her a real proper fight like this one in the final arc.. During the disband, she trained hard to unlock all of her star dress, I was hoping she could have a big fight where we would have been able to see her full potentiel not just some small fights or the one against Brandish.

At least in 100 years quest she have some really good fight but I still wish she had gotten more in the original serie :(

[moltensmusings]

Time to rant about the Alvarez arc and issues I had with it once more now that I've posted some spriggan redesigns. This might be long.

The largest reason Alvarez and anything following Tartaros fall so flat is because you can almost tell Mashima was checked out by that point. That his excitement for the series had dwindled.

I have this theory that Tartaros was meant to be the last arc of the series but there were still things unanswered meaning that he was forced into adding more on. Now I don't say this as someone who thinks tartaros should've been the end, but because none of the villains after this point have any weight to them when honestly they should. All the reveals feel like they're done to surprise the audience more than flesh out the story.

I'm someone who always hated the Irene as Erza's mom plot because we really didn't need it. It was a trend of "villain is a blood relative" twists mashima kept throwing in and by that point it was honestly more annoying than anything. Erza never had questions about her family. She was never focused on her past so introducing her mother felt so out of left field. Irene literally could've just been the person who was in charge of creating the tower of Heaven, maybe she was even the on who corrupted Jellal, and that would've done far more towards making me invested in a showdown between her and Erza than anything in canon.

In general the Spriggan 12 being set up as characters involved in the various arcs would've been so beneficial because it would've given readers actual reasons to be angry or upset. What if Invel was the one who created Deliora and consistently tried to create new ice demons to impress Zeref. What if Layla's death was originally believed to be an accident but as time goes on Lucy uncovers more deaths and incidents connected to her mother that eventually lead back to Brandish. The tartaros group answering to August, who is still devote to Zeref, giving us a more solid reason to believe him as a Wizard king and actual tangible terror at the thought of facing him if tartaros itself would bend to him.

And this isn't even getting into how all their designs seem so slapped together causing them to look more like mid level/filler villains than actual final arc antagonists. Compare them to any of the tartaros characters and it just instantly becomes so obvious which ones Mashima actually cared about. By that point he knew he just had to make the women scantily clad and his die hard fans would ignore everything else. Jacob Lessio is one of the first Spriggan I think of whenever I get angry over how rushed their designs are.

Even Zeref himself felt so disappointing as a villain because any hype built for him really peaked during the tartaros arc. I was sure he'd be the one to appear instead of Mard Geer. It felt like that's what tartaros was building to. But instead we someone new and Zeref was pushed back. We could talk about him torturing Mavis and how Mashima still wanted to paint things between them as romantic because heaven forbid Mavis actually be a human with emotions who gets mad and vengeful when she's hurt, but we'll move on.

Beyond just this, Alvarez kingdom could've been so very interesting to have in the background, mentioned every now and then off handedly by side characters or guild members when discussing the world around them. This idea of it always existing but just never seeming important to our leads who aren't thinking about the political side of things. Us getting Alvarez hints early on and Alvarez only increasing in importance would've been something for fans to hold onto and engage with.

Mashima really dropped the ball on the series following Tartaros from the gray villain arc that amounted to nothing, a 1 year time skip setting up Natsu and Lucy collecting guild members that ended with everyone miraculously back at the guild with no persuasion necessary, to his final antagonists carrying non of the weight he wanted because titles don't create fear. And it makes me so incredibly furious because all it would've taken was actual care and interest in his own creation.

[miraakuniverse]

Welcome back!

And rest in peace again 🕊️

(btw look at these pretty eyes and at this big a...)