This statement is one that I've seen pop up very often. This always comes up whenever the discussion comes to her in-series role post-Edolas. As the argument goes, she was important to characters before she was thought to be dead. But when she came back, she had little to do with and was pushed to the sidelines.
A few years ago, I would have probably made a different post than this. What I would probably have done is defend Lisanna's usefulness in series to characters after her return. I'd maybe even blame the fandom for how things ultimately went down and point out the hypocrisy of this statement.
However, I've thought about this particular statement more as I think more about changing the series as a whole. One of the tricky things about what I want to do is make stuff that didn't happen in any form of Fairy Tail seem at least plausible. To do anything important, I have to justify my decisions with
I want to (and plan to) give her more stuff to do, but there's kind of a limit. Like, I could absolutely do stuff like make Lisanna about as important as Lucy to the series if I wanted to. She could be a member of Team Natsu who gets her own major fights and substantial screen time. However, at that point, I feel like I'd go too far past what could have happened.
And, after the whole thing with Mashima in France, I started to ask myself a different question: Would we, as a fandom, actually want Lisanna to do more in the series after coming back?
Off the bat, part of me is skeptical of this question because of the reaction to stuff like additions to the anime. Shinji Ishihara and his team added a ton of stuff about Lisanna that wasn't in the original manga. While I think that they're all amazing additions, especially when they deal with her impact on other characters, this isn't the consensus opinion. To many people, this is exactly the kind of thing that drove them to believe that she was going to do more stuff in the future. They wish this kind of stuff wasn't added so they wouldn't get their hopes up for the future.
But, that might just be me being pessimistic. I mean, after all, that's the anime. Any changes from any manga into anime usually are met with some level of hostility by fans. It would be insane of me to think that they could just add more moments for Lisanna and it not get ripped apart as stuff that didn't happen like most other anime-only moments.
And, of course, it's not like every addition the anime made was treated well by fans. Some (usually the Nalu-oriented stuff) are well-liked, but fans considered the anime-only arcs to be among the worst, usually citing Daphne arc as the worst arc in the series. (Not for long, though.) And Gruvia fans aren't too happy with how Juvia was treated in some of those arcs.
What about if Mashima himself decided to incorporate more of Lisanna in the manga? That's definitely worth thinking about for a bit.
After all, we apparently almost got a love triangle between her, Natsu, and Lucy. Would we be able to handle the implications of Lisanna getting enough time for fans to genuinely be convinced that she might end up with Natsu? (Not that what we got stopped fans like me, to begin with.) What's more, would this fandom be okay with the possibility of her actually ending up with Natsu?
And I know some of you may be thinking, "That would be weird, Natsu and Lisanna wouldn't be that popular." What if it were? What if Mashima actually wrote the series so that more people were convinced that Nali was going to happen over Nalu? Heck, what if that wasn't the case and it just happened that Nali ended up actually being the more popular ship?
Of course, that's only ships. There's plenty of other ways Lisanna could have been more important in the series after her return. For instance, what if she actually did join Team Natsu? Yeah, what if probably of the only things I like about those "Lucy leaves" stories actually end up happening and Lisanna actually gets to work along with Natsu, Lucy and the rest of the main gang?
What would that be like? How would she stack up against some of the more serious threats in the series? (Hopefully, her Tartaros matchup would be better than Lamy.)
But that's not the only way she could have become more important. What would it be like if Lisanna were to actually get more important moments as a side character?
Here's a simple one: What if she were the one to take Wendy's place in the Grand Magic Games, instead of Elfman? That would mean she takes them up to compete in Labyrinth, she's the one who gets to fight Bacchus (for herself and Mira, no less), and she'd still probably end up severely injured after the fact. Is that something that would honestly be seen as okay for Lisanna to do?
Now, I'm not going to pretend that I absolutely know how the fandom would react to these questions. However, I don't want these to be questions that the fandom as a whole considers. I feel as though you should ask yourself some of these questions. I think it would be irresponsible for me to do this and not give my own opinions on this.
I'd absolutely love to see more of Lisanna. I'd love to see how a potential romantic relationship, successful or otherwise, would be written between her and Natsu with a love triangle in mind. (Though, I'm absolutely not disappointed that we didn't get a love triangle.) I'd love to see what it would be like if she were an actual member of the strongest team. It would be cool to see how she would act in a fight post-Edolas. I mean, she showed more progress in her magic than Elfman.
On that note, I don't know that Lisanna going instead of Elfman is that insane an idea. Obviously, it didn't happen, but it's not like it couldn't have happened. Lisanna proved to be better than Elfman at Take-Over magic before going to Edolas. With enough training, she could probably outdo Elfman again in terms of skill. Of course, I say that and I'll probably make it so Elfman goes like in canon proper.
The one thing I would be worried about is that I'm not sure how getting more of Lisanna would impact her character. As the series went on [insert specific characters here that we all disagree got worse over time] were written as worse than they were introduced to us as. Of course, the rest of the series fell off after [insert point when the series fell off we can't seem to agree on]. However, it especially hurts to see characters act against established motivations of and learned lessons from previous arcs.
With Lisanna, we didn't have as much time to establish her character as, Juvia or Levy, secondary characters fans argue got worse as the series went on. However, a basic idea for her character was set in the moments we got. I'm afraid that Mashima would either turn away from her gentle side and turn her into just a prankster or turn from her playful side and only make her a sweet character.
But it's not like I'd expect the majority of the fandom to catch on to that anyway. I don't see a lot of good fan characterizations of Lisanna. That's not just from the perspective of "I can't believe that you idiot Nalu shippers would write Lisanna as even close to how you do when she kicks Lucy off Team Natsu" I took well over a year ago. Like, I can count on one hand the number of writers I've seen give good, canon-based portrayals of Lisanna Strauss in fanfiction. Everyone else usually writes Lisanna as “Diet Mirajane, with a twist of Lucy” or just “Diet Lucy”. Then again, half of the writers who write Lisanna in a way I like ship Nali and agree with a lot of the stuff I've said about it over the years, so take that for what you will.
And this goes back to the main question at hand: would the fandom actually want more Lisanna Strauss in canon? From what I can tell, most people don't even know that much about Lisanna in the first place. Of course, a good part of that is exactly why the argument for more of her happens at all. However, you're not getting a whole lot of it from the perspective of wanting more of her. You get it from the idea that she shouldn't have been brought back or existed in the first place.
The difference between the two is important. One is seeing how awesome a character could be or already is and wants to see those interesting things brought out more. The other is comes from wondering if something could somehow be made to be more useless than it already seems. One of these mentalities results in a character like Levy getting more screentime than originally intended. The other results in characters taking pot shots when the anime gets abridged.
There goes me being pessimistic again...
In Conclusion:
Regardless of how you feel about Lisanna's handling in canon, it's interesting to think about how she could have gotten more of a chance to shine. Still, I'm doubtful if the fandom wants more or less of her.
Oh, by the way, I participated in r/anime’s 750k writing competition a while back. I wrote in defense of the idea that Fairy Tail is a series that has good ideas with bad execution. If you’re interested, especially if you aren’t following my rewrite series, check it out. Be warned that I was a bit “stuffier” writing that essay than I normally am here and I don’t think it’s some of my best writing (as some people commented).
As you might be able to tell from the title, I do plan on talking about both time skips. However, there's not much to say about the second time skip. I think there's little reason to change it from the way it was. In trying to think about it, I ended up writing the first draft of the previous post about how training is and should work in the series.
About the only thing I think needs to be addressed is why the guild didn't get together earlier. Honestly, I'd just say that no one would likely want to be the one to break the ice, even as they all clearly want the guild to be back.
Now, back to the main question. Should anything about the first time skip happen?
This is of serious importance. The only question that may be more important that I've asked so far was Natsu and Lucy's relationship and I'm not sure anything else in the series has much of a more direct effect to the series than the first time skip. The reasoning should be obvious.
But, just to be clear, we should take a bit of a step back. Why have a time skip at all?
I think that one of the cool things about time skips is that time fundamentally changes everything. Rather, things have to change as time goes further. It's easy to see how the characters of a series have changed over time. However, I think that time skips matter because of the things that happen in the world around them. Having time pass and showing changes is much easier than building up those changes over time. That's not a bad thing, especially if those changes aren't the focus of the story.
In Fairy Tail, there's a bit of a twist to this structure. Before the time skip, Fairy Tail is the top guild in Fiore. After the time skip, they're barely relevant. In the Fantasia arc, there were close to 90 members fighting each other. Seven years later (closer to six years and five months), there are more people trapped in the Fairy Sphere than were in the guild proper. The message is clear: the guild got worse over time. That's not even taking into account how other groups were doing better around the same time.
I'm not just getting this from my interpretation of the series. In the afterword for volume 30, Mashima basically says this is the point. His idea was that the world around the main cast ought to change while they stay the same. This is something that would add variety to an already over the top plot twist.
If you can't tell by now, I think this is actually something good. One of the big problems with Fairy Tail (the series) is how it makes Fairy Tail (the guild) seem better than it ought to. Of course, this makes sense considering the series focuses on the guild. However, this leads to them seeming justified even and especially when they are in the wrong. Up to this point, none of Fairy Tail's enemies have posed too great of a threat to the guild, especially the boogeyman that has been the Magic Council. They needed to be humbled in some kind of way.
This would also have been the right time to do it. For all the weight Gildarts's speech to Natsu should have been given, Natsu has trouble with this enemies, but he doesn't show much growth in regards to fighting enemies he's weaker than. However, the defeat by Acnologia is a sign to everyone on the island that they still have room to grow. And the realization of how bad their guild has gotten since they left is part of the motivation towards getting better (in addition to the money).
There's one major problem with this though. The time skip barely matters in catching up.
The members of the guild catch up with the world in months. Not years. People are able to catch up with other members of the world after a couple months of training. Thanks to Second Seal, most of the main cast got there after a few weeks. The idea that the guild needed to improve got sidestepped, ironically enough, just in time for the guild to be shown as amazing. And that's the base issue with this across versions of Fairy Tail.
If you were reading Fairy Tail as it originally came out, this issue happened within a matter of a few months when it was coming out. Now, you see the disparity between the two in a single volume. And wouldn't you know it, it would be volume 31. The volume after Mashima explains what's so good about the idea of the time skip. In chapter 258, the first chapter in the volume, it's revealed that Fairy Tail has become the worst guild in Fiore. By the time the volume ends, Team Natsu got Second Seal and Elfman made serious gains.
Of course, the anime has the Key to the Starry Sky arc before the Grand Magic Games. While I don't have a problem with the structure or content of it, a big issue with it is that the issues involving the time skip don't come up until after the arc ends. Like, I’m really supposed to look at the fights the guild members have with the Zentopia crew and Neo Oracion Seis and not remember this is almost right after coming from Tenrou Island?
What do I think can be done to fix this?
As it stands, I can't just remove the jump from x784 to x791. That messes up with the Fairy Tail timeline as a whole and I can't justify doing that much. However, I also think that the time skip as it happens isn't good.
Here's what I've come up with.
Acnologia still attacks Tenrou Island and the members are still trapped in the Fairy Sphere. However, instead of seven years, they're gone for seven months. As it stands, there's no real reason that Fairy Sphere has to last seven years. They escape Fairy Sphere on April x791 because that's when it stops. I see no reason to change the time Fairy Sphere lasts. I debated whether to have it last shorter, but I think that seven months is just the right amount of time.
That deals with satisfying the event taking place within the series, but what about the guild getting worse? For this, it's time to make good on a threat made within the series. Before the exams start, the new council head says that if Fairy Tail has another incident, they'll disband them. After getting in a fight with another guild, the council has the right to destroy them. However, he doesn't.
Obviously, he can't because not having a Fairy Tail guild means not having a series. However, within the series, he may want to keep a closer eye on Fairy Tail. In the manga, when word gets out that the members who were on Tenrou are back, he mentions how they may be connected to Acnologia. He may want to keep them around to make sure this isn't just a coincidence.
That being said, they'd still be placed under sanction by the council. They wouldn't be as free as they normally would be. Job offers would likely be lower during the sanctions, both purposely and by the threat of association. After all, you don't want to trust a sketchy guild, right? At any rate, the time in between December x784 and April x791 would still result in Fairy Tail becoming a worse guild overall.
However, because important characters are still around, they'll have opportunities to get stronger and develop new skills. With fewer jobs, they will have more time to focus on getting stronger and developing new skills. After facing Acnologia, they'll be more motivated to do so than before. It will make more sense when they beat enemies.
Not to mention, this helps with Natsu's search. I plan to talk about this more when I inevitably talk about Natsu. However, with the skip, Natsu will have time not only to train and develop Dragon Force but to make a more focused effort to looking for Igneel.
As drastic as changing the nature of the time skip is, it improves multiple aspects of the series. The Magic Council gets an opportunity to show their authority over Fairy Tail. Guild members have believable motivation and means to get stronger. Natsu gets to search for Igneel. And, most importantly, the guild still gets knocked off its pedestal as the world mocks them. These are the kinds of changes I want to make with the series: keeping what's good about the series and making it better.
Obviously, I've already talked about what the plot of Fairy Tail should look like, especially in contrast to other series. But there's something that discussion kind of purposely ignored: themes guiding Fairy Tail. While part of it talked about the idea that searches for something don't always go exactly the way one plans them out, there was more to Fairy Tail than just that.
Or at least, there could have been. I think that Mashima had themes that he tried to get across with this series, but the degree of success with those different themes varies. I feel like it would be wrong of me to ignore the themes that do exist and guide Fairy Tail in rewriting Fairy Tail. However, it would also be a mistake to act as though they are all good and should stay the same as they do in the original.
There are three potential themes that I would argue run through the series.
The first is forgiveness. No matter how bad certain characters actions are made out to be or can seem to people both inside and outside of the universe, many get forgiven for their actions. Probably, the best example of this is Gajeel and Levy. The fact that Levy did forgive Gajeel, to the point of having her kids, has been considered by many almost too great an act of forgiveness to be believable.
The second is friendship. We all knew this was coming. There's not a whole lot I feel needs to be said about the idea that friendship is a theme that Mashima attempts to handle. I don't have much to say about it here.
The third is the value of human life. This one doesn't get as much attention as I think it should. Part of the reason that major events happen in the background of the series is that of an ongoing argument for whether or not humans are as important as certain characters believe so.
Here's the issue: are these themes handled well and are they big enough to be considered the main theme? Of course, I think this series has all these things, but which one should be the lens I view the events of the series through.
I feel as though it would be insane to note every single instance where any one of these themes is brought up and see if it is a good representation of that theme in one post. Even as I will spend many posts in this series addressing how characters and events circle back to specific themes, it wouldn't be feasible to do that for every character and every moment. However, I do think that it's worth seeing how these themes generally work throughout the series.
When it comes to the theme of forgiveness, the biggest complaint that I see is that it happens so easily. People are shocked that people are so quick to forgive in this series. Shouldn't it take longer in some cases and in others just not happen? In some cases, I actually have a bigger issue with the opposite happening. Jellal, after everything that's happened throughout the series, hasn't seemed to let go of the things he did for the construction of the Tower of Heaven.
But as it turns out, I don’t think this theme is actually one that could be called one that is a central theme to the series. It would be insane of me to say that this isn’t an important theme for some characters. However, I don’t think that it’s so big a theme that I can say it could be the thematic core for the series.
The theme of friendship, as it pertains to Fairy Tail, is a bit of a misnomer. Fairy Tail isn't necessarily a series that promotes the idea of friendship, whereas I think it shows how amazing the guild is. This actually gets to the point of being almost hilariously cartoonish. Like, there are things done by characters we're not supposed to be rooting for that mimic the actions of Fairy Tail characters.
In a few cases, Fairy Tail characters act worse. One of the more interesting examples comes from the Grand Magic Games. Bacchus beats Cana in a drinking contest and decides to take her top as a trophy and this is a bad thing. I'm not willing to argue this isn't bad. But, apparently, it's funny/sexy when Natsu decides to grope Lucy as an (I'm not willing to say noble) effort to cover Lucy up. This isn't that far off the mark of what happened previously.
As for the theme of the value in humanity, I haven't seen too many people talk about this at all as a theme. It's not that I don't think that it's there, this wasn't and isn't a point that matters to a lot of people analyzing Fairy Tail. I find this weird considering, as far as I can tell, this is the best theme to have to guide Fairy Tail.
In some ways, it might explain some bad things Mashima did. It might be a partial reason for the idea of redemption of characters. It could be part of the extension of the supposed theme of friendship being important. Stuff like Mashima showing that humans couldn't destroy Face but the dragons were to come out of hiding to do it, shows how much they value humans. Having the main antagonists show different sides of what happens when the value of life becomes messed with, Acnologia in his vengeance against dragons who killed life and Zeref in his pursuits to bring back
Though, the issue with this often becomes how Mashima went about explaining how and why there is value in human life. Some dragons want to protect humans but there's no reason why they there is value in protecting them. Zeref says he forgot the reason he ought to believe in humanity, but this never gets relearned. Acnologia's fundamental belief that dragons are bad never ultimately changes and it barely gets challenged.
I feel that what happened is that this got meshed in with the idea that relationships were important. In Zeref's case, Mavis is sort of the one who ended up saving by him by actually being able to love him. For Acnologia, he dies lamenting his inability to rule everyone and passes the title of Dragon King to Natsu after he criticizes this desire. Ultimately, their attachments to the theme of human life don't matter too much.
Of course, there is also one issue that is worth talking about that I've yet to mention so far. Somewhere between the last two themes mentioned of friendship and human life, there is a bit of a pseudo-theme which seems to run through much of Mashima's works in general: don't die for your friends. It feels so important to the idea of Fairy Tail, I was originally going to address it as its own theme, but it makes more sense to do this here.
I don't know that this is a totally bad thing. I think that it's a good thing to encourage people not to throw their lives away needlessly. But, that's not what this theme is. It's about not dying in order to protect the lives of people you care about. One big problem that I have is that I think it can and often does, lead to people not dying. I don't think that the lack of death in a story is a bad thing. But it's not a good thing to bring a character basically to the point of dying and then stop them too often. I'm sure I don't need to give a specific example of this into play.
However, I want to mention that another problem I have with this is that it casts some shame on the concept of sacrifice. Like, I can think of times where characters sacrificing themselves actually is/should be needless and not worth doing within the series. But aren't their situations where it makes sense for characters to sacrifice their lives for others?
Like, in-series logic aside, I think that Makarov being willing to sacrifice his life with Fairy Law is absolutely something that makes sense for him as a character. Would it actually be a bad thing if he were to give his life away to protect the rest of the guild? More importantly, shouldn't that kind of death actually be honored? Judging from what we saw, my answers to these issues aren’t the same as Mashima’s.
Going with this means that I have to account for gaps in this reasoning and address the sacrificial moments that happened within the series. Of course, this means some events and things within the series ought to change in order to be consistent with this theme. And of course, these changes need to result in similar ends to the original
However, I don't think that I'm coming up with something that isn't entirely new to the series by saying that it should focus on the value of life. Characters like Gray, Gajeel, Jellal and, to an extent, Wendy and Erza, already deal with this theme in their own way, on a more personal level. The scene in Tartaros during the fight with Franmalth tells me that Natsu and Lucy have stuff that they live for.
This is a weird question for me to ask after being a fan for so long. Weirder if you consider most of the content I've been making for Fairy Tail up until this point. If you asked me at different points of being a fan, I'd give you different answers. A few days before officially launching my Fairy Tail blog, I said it was my third favorite anime. A year later, I would say that it's pretty bad, but not the worst. At certain points during the last arc, I almost lost all hope that it could be enjoyable again. I figured that I was on a ship that probably sunk not long after leaving port. Now, I'm not sure that it was exactly that bad.
Almost a year ago, I made a post about an interesting defense for actions done in writing: because it's fiction things aren't going to make the same sense as they would here. My main point was that because something is fiction, the problems are more infuriating because it was made up by someone. The fact that something is fiction doesn't mean logic ceases to exist. While this was partially directed at Mashima, I still had the thought of crazy fanfiction ideas in my mind while writing it.
As often happens, I got a response to the post. I'm not one for responding to additions to my posts. I made that rule a while ago. But something about this one has made me think about it every now and again. When I first saw it, I saved it onto my computer with the idea of responding to it, but not I'm not sure that I need to.
I'm going to link it here if you want to see it, but one of the most important takeaways from it is that a lot of the things Mashima does has logic behind them. It just so happens that many analysts make no attempt to understand the reasoning behind it. Often, we've already rejected any explanation that could exist for it. We have concluded that thing in the series can't make sense.
To be clear, I don't think this is always the case. I honestly think that there are a lot of things about Fairy Tail that happen and don't have a good reasonable explanation for. The exact ratio of sensible to nonsensical isn't something I'm willing to guess on. But I can safely say that the nonsensical side includes decent and important stuff to Fairy Tail.
Still, I don't think that a lot is actually wrong if Fairy Tail. At the very least, so much that there is no way that it could only work if so much about it that makes it what it becomes unrecognizable to fans of the original.
So, why does any of this matter?
In a tradition older and bigger than myself, I've decided to take the series and write a version that I think might be better. Much of the future posts I'll be making here will deal with how I change or enhance aspects of Fairy Tail.
In my mind, there are two ways to rewrite a series.
The first way is to change the fundamental fabric of the series into another series. This isn't a terrible thing to do, assuming that the series is fundamentally flawed. However, I don't think that we need to scrap the entirety of Fairy Tail to make a better version of it.
So I've decided to take the second option: rearrange existing elements of the series to make a better series. This kind of thing is more in line with how good abridged versions of series are written. And, considering I've grown accustomed to multiple elements of the series, I favor this method for rewriting Fairy Tail.
To do that, I'll need some rules to help me stay in line with how I make changes.
My goal is not to make a new series that's better than Fairy Tail. My goal is to make a better version of the same series. And with no clear guidelines, that's not going to be easy or possible.
Which is why the first and most important rule is that I am not allowed to add major events or arcs to the series that didn't come from any chapter or episode of Fairy Tail. I can make things that happen more important or less important than they may have been in the original. I can make things happen in different ways. However, nothing added to the series won't come from the original material in some way, shape, or form. There is one obvious exception to this - the end. By virtue of various different things happening, the ending of my rewrite will look very different from the official ending of the series.
The second rule is that character motivations and progression has to come from pre-existing material regarding the Fairy Tail universe. Obviously, can mean that if characters had good character arcs in the original, which does happen, they stay in the rewrite. However, other character arcs can come from taking events in the series and making something that would make sense for the character. In some cases, I may also want to use information from statements from Mashima in interviews, afterwords or other special things that have come out with him talking about his characters.
At the heart of this project is the fact that I’m changing the way things happened in the series to make it more sensical. As such, my third rule is that major and important elements from the original story can be changed or tweaked. However, this can only be done if the original intent behind the events is kept intact or enhanced in some way. This will definitely result in certain elements which were kind of downplayed becoming more prominent. At the same time, some elements which were already good may become better or more expanded on. Of course, there are some elements which will be downplayed or removed. As a general rule, this should only happen if they’re useless or run counter to other elements which may be deemed more important.
When it comes to arcs, one thing I really don’t want to mess with is the order of arcs the series. There’s very little reason that I see for most arcs to happen in a really different order and trying to change the series so such a thing happens would border making a new series. However, the order of events can be changed, as long as they result in a similar end to the original series. This doesn't just mean events from one arc stay within that arc. Some moments may also need to happen earlier or later depending on how much sense they make.
Also, arcs that follow each other can be combined with others. This may not seem like a seriously necessary change now considering the length of some arcs. However, coupled with the previous rule on order of events, this can and will lead to some important differences to the original. I'll admit that I've already started to work on changes and many of them are fairly dependent on this rule.
The last (and by no means least important) rule is that I’m making changes to the story that I’d want to read. That’s not to say that other people won’t find enjoyment in the series. That is to say that many changes I’m making to and things I’m keeping from the original are done simply because, as I stated earlier, I enjoy them from the original. I’m not trying to make a version of Fairy Tail that I wouldn’t want to read, even if it does make more sense than the original. I’m also not trying to write a series on the level of Fullmetal Alchemist, My Hero Academia, Hunter x Hunter, Dragon Ball or some other series. I’m trying to make a version of Fairy Tail that strikes the balance of being a well-written story and a fun version of Fairy Tail.
There's also that nasty bit about having to rename, if not nickname, this project. I've decided to take a bit of inspiration from the most popular anime rewrite I know of, which is that of the modern Evangelion movies. Instead of the Rebuild of Evangelion, this project will be known as the Rewrite of Fairy Tail. And as (more of) a tribute, the actual title will be "They (Might) Have Tales". I'm only so creative.
This will take a long time to make. Consider that I'm adapting a series that's eleven years long, including elements from one-shots and the anime. As I'm getting this ready to be posted, I have a few posts about some of my changes I'm sitting on and, let me tell you, this version will likely be different from the Fairy Tail you know. But the hope is that it won't be so drastically different that you don't recognize most of it.
If I could make an ideal makeup of this story, most of what will happen should make sense within the original world of Fairy Tail. This is either because it happened in the original or something that was unclear is clarified or because a change was made that works within the series as I see it. I have to put a percentage, it would be about 80%. About 10% would account for those changes needed to make sense of the series. The last 10% involves special changes that I want to happen to make this a fun read for fans of the original. After all, this has to be different enough from the original to justify its existence.
Of course, that's the ideal. I may end up with something that looks too different from the original to seem like it has the same name. I may end up with a version that looks way too similar or not similar enough. My hope is that I'm able to explain my reasoning the entire way along.
There's one last thing I need to emphasize about this series that I think is important. I don't believe that my way of changing the series is the only way to do it. Plenty of other people have and will make rewrites of Fairy Tail in order to make versions of it that they believe makes more sense and/or is more interesting than the original. Some changes others have made that I haven't or won't make may seem more sensible to some of you. I will even acknowledge changes I could make and see feasible but decide against for one reason or another.
However, I do think that there are some things that only I would be willing to do in a large scale series rewrite. I also think that in explaining my thought process, a better understanding of why things failed and how they could be fixed will come across that if I were to just stay on the sidelines.
The Rewrite of Fairy Tail: Part 2 (The Strongest Team)
Is something wrong with Natsu and Lucy working together?
What, you didn't think this was going to be on the chopping block?
I firmly believe that any attempt to rewrite Fairy Tail has to deal with its handling of Natsu and Lucy's relationship. They're the main characters of the series. You don't have a series without either one and changing them, even as individuals, changes a lot about the series as a whole. After all, Fairy Tail is about the guild after they meet together.
However, I don't think that a good place to start is changing Natsu and Lucy as individuals. Rather, I think the best place to start is their relationship to each other. From there, we can determine how the rest of the series will work as a whole and can work from theirs.
Was there a benefit to Team Natsu being together? Note that this isn't asking if Natsu and Lucy teaming up doesn't lead to some kind of net good. That answer is fairly obvious. What I am asking is if becoming a formal team at all benefits Natsu, Lucy, or anyone else that joins them. And my answer is...
Kind of...?
I mean, Gray wouldn't have ended up on Galuna Island if Natsu and Lucy hadn't taken the S-Class Mission to go there and that definitely helped him cope with Deliora. Wendy also benefits from this team by being forced into taking more missions that force her into offensive magic. That's definitely something that helped her with growing as a mage.
But think about Erza's place on the team. She's an S-Class Mage. Why would she make a habit of purposely going on missions with wizards who aren't on her level? I can understand developing mages she thinks could be future S-Class mages, especially considering her opinions of Natsu. It kind of makes sense considering that the team-up between them and Gray is considered to be the strongest team, which is technically the official name for "Team Natsu". However, forming a team with lower status members doesn't give a good impression on the status of S-Class, especially if Laxus is going to be demonized for his view of the status in Galuna Island arc and Phantom Lord arc.
Now I see the argument to this point being that she doesn't have to only work with a single team. She's free to work with them and go on her own missions.
And that's exactly the kind of thing that would make keeping her on Team Natsu stupid.
And it's not like Lucy benefits from actually being a part of the strongest team. The chapter after the strongest team becomes official, Lucy complains about how they barely make money because they're all so destructive. You'd think that the realization that the formation of the strongest team was hurting her bottom line would be more than a springboard for light-hearted fun. And while Team Natsu could also have been an opportunity for her to grow as a mage, that's not nearly as emphasized as it should be, especially when compared to Wendy.
I hinted at that point in an earlier post, but I may have been off at the time in saying it hurts Lucy's abilities to make meaningful bonds outside of Team Natsu. That's still possible and she obviously still learns to love the people in her guild anyway. It makes a bit less sense that she has a great bond with all the members of the guild. But the idea that she isn't planning on leaving the guild is a good thing.
That being said, think of all the time that she spends with Levy, but is still able to call her one of her best friends. Mashima had to shoehorn in a reason for us to care about her and Shadow Gear after the fact. That wouldn't have been as much of an issue if she wasn't working with Natsu and the rest of the team. While that's before they officially become a team in Phantom Lord, it's not like this gets better over time.
Don't get me started on the potential of romance between these two. Look, the idea that I don't like this ship is one of the few things attached to my reputation as a blog. This was going to come up.
If this was based on just the matter of if they clearly became a couple or not, this would be over quickly. Despite the arguments otherwise, there's not really too much evidence that Natsu and Lucy absolutely became a couple at the end of the series. (At least, for now...) But even if they did, their build-up would terrible and include some pretty horrendous acts on Natsu's end towards Lucy that diminish any potential positives that might exist according to some. Even if Mashima said that such an option would be better, he didn't give too much of a reason for me to believe that such a thing would be possible.
But at the most basic level possible, Natsu and Lucy's partnership doesn't help Natsu's character. For most of the entire series, Natsu has been focused on trying to find Igneel. He barely shows signs that such a search may be impossible. But being on an organized team with people limits his own ability to look for him. Also, Natsu isn't searching for Igneel because he's too busy helping Lucy pay for rent, but also not really because he's destroying too much for her to make enough for it to matter.
Obviously, Fairy Tail ended up working out that Natsu found Igneel. There is justification for Natsu joining Fairy Tail, improving as both a person and mage, wanting to become a more important mage and even his drive to protect those around him which can be argued to go back to wanting to find Igneel. But the actual search for Igneel wasn't anywhere as relevant as it should have been, even as it comes up occasionally through the series. I’m not asking it to be the only thing he does. I want it to be a thing that definitely motivates his actions and decisions.
Now, there are two ways to handle this and keep in line with the rules that I set for myself in making this rewrite. The first way is to keep Team Natsu as a formal group. In such a series, Natsu would likely have given up on his search for Igneel a while ago and Lucy learns to be content with the people on her team. Erza has a reason to work with them that makes sense given her S-Class status and the positive benefits of being on the Strongest Team stick with Gray and Wendy. Who knows? Depending on how you do it, this could be the basis by which a good and healthy version of Nalu is written.
But I don't want to do that. Not necessarily because I don't want to write any version of Fairy Tail where Nalu is possible. (hint hint) Rather, because making such a version of the series would involve me giving up on that aspect of Natsu I think makes him special - his search for Igneel. If he were to have shown any sign that this could have changed, I'd take it more seriously. But if the arc where he actually finds Igneel has a moment where that desire is what keeps his soul in his body, there's no reason for me to keep it on the table.
So, on to the other option. That other option being that Natsu and Lucy spend certain arcs separated from each other. Considering the rules I've set up for myself in rewriting Fairy Tail, I only have pre-existing arcs and events to work with. I'm not adding big things that didn't happen in anything attached to for no good reason, and I can't rearrange the orders of arcs. However, the basic structure of some of the arcs that fans have become used to will look different, as will the rest of the series because of it.
One word as to my current plan for Natsu and Lucy. As the story progresses and Natsu and Lucy chase for the things that they want, there will be an important shift in their motives because of the events after the Tartaros arc. Natsu ends up losing Igneel and Lucy ends up losing Aquarius. This causes a shift in both of their motivations. Natsu goes from looking for someone who matters to looking out for the people in his guild. Lucy cares about the guild, but she goes on to find one of her first family members. In a sense, they change into having the other person's motivations.
Believe it or not, this was actually going to be a post I was genuinely going to release without an actual answer. If you can't tell, I'm not doing this for a few reasons. The first, most obvious reason is that doing that would kind of kill any sense of interest in this issue. I mean, spoiling apparently increases interest in a story, but this isn't the kind of thing I'd want to spoil. As a general rule, you probably shouldn’t feel safe about the characters who almost died but didn’t in my rewrite.
This is not to mention another reason for not doing this. I feel like not giving a proper answer kind of defeats the purpose of making this kind of post for the public in the first place. It would make more sense for me to just make a post like, “Hey guys, I’m considering killing Juvia in the rewrite. Don't @ me!” That could have been its own opinion I’d probably get stoned for.
Finally, this is exactly the kind of thing that will get me destroyed by the Gruvia/Juvia fandom. I'm not big fans of either when it comes to arguments and fan interactions, but I've decided to shy away from being particularly antagonistic towards fandoms I'm not cool with. I especially don’t want to get into it with this fandom.
That being said...
I can't act like the idea of Juvia dying isn't a hard decision. Killing any slightly important character is something that will affect the rest of the series. With Juvia, I'm considering that in addition to the rest of the changes I'm making to the series and potentially her. Not to mention, I'm also dealing with one of my favorite characters potentially dying in a series criticized for not having enough death. This specific character had a comeback that, at one point, I considered to be the single worst moment in the series.
Though, this post isn't dealing with that death. I got the idea for this post from a post questioning if Juvia needed to even be in the series. This is absolutely not something I'd consider doing in the official rewrite. But I can't say that it's not an interesting idea. What would it be like if Juvia wasn’t in the series past the Phantom Lord arc?
This isn't an uncommon theme. I often hear or think of a lot of ideas that would be interesting to see worked into a different version of Fairy Tail. However, it's hard or impossible to see how the idea could actually work and make sense within the series proper. As such, it's hard for me to justify adding in as per the rules I've set for myself.
So, I've decided to make this series and occasionally deal with some out there ideas. Some are ideas I've dismissed outright earlier or get to later on in this series (hint). Others are ideas I've hinted or will hint in other posts past, present and future (hint). I've decided to take today, a day I've traditionally spent talking about Juvia dying, to talk about a scenario where Juvia dies.
There's probably a few different ways that one could make Juvia dying possible. However, as you could probably tell from my hilariously long introduction, there's an easy way to kill Juvia off very early on. In the anime, at the end of her fight with Gray in Phantom Lord, Juvia is almost about to fall off the roof when Gray catches her. So, what would happen if he were to be too late to catch her? I want to deal with the how and the why of this moment.
For the "how" of this hypothetical moment, it's easy to describe and visualize the actual moment of Juvia dying I'm trying to describe. Heck, there's even a bit of a speech about how poetic Juvia's descent is to that of a raindrop. All that needs to happen is for her to hit the ground and die, right?
Well, that's only part of it. I feel like there needs to be some work put into this that can make this actually have weight. Sure, Mashima actually pulling the trigger is rare, but there should probably be a reason we should care about a character who would be introduced exactly nine chapters before she died. What exists within the confines of the series universe that could help with this?
As it stands, what we know about Juvia's reasoning for being with Phantom Lord is that there isn't much of a better place to go. While much of her motivation for joining Fairy Tail is being with Gray, she does end up finding a community that actually gives her the kind of love she's been wanting her entire life.
The actual fight between Gray and Juvia isn't terribly long, it lasts about two chapters. But in fighting with Gray, the idea that Juvia could find a home in Fairy Tail can come to mind for her. When Gray said that he would give his life to protect Lucy, it could be interpreted (read: recontextualized) as something that any member of Fairy Tail would be willing to do for another person. (Just so we’re clear, I don’t doubt this to already be true. I just also am a Graylu shipper.) Though, what would also need to happen, then, is a partial rejection of that idea when Gray mentions how annoying the rain is.
This actually brings up another interesting fact that can help with this. In the spinoff series "Ice Trail", Gray and Juvia actually meet before this battle happens. Well, honestly, it’s more like they’re in the same area at the same time. If I'm honest, I'm not sure that this was a great idea in hindsight. However, it could be that Gray remembers what happened as a child and draws the connection to Juvia being the girl from all those years ago.
And this is where I need to address the second question. Why would this even be something I would consider? (It’s not like I couldn’t make a post that ties into Juvia dying some other way.)
I think that one of the key aspects of Gray's arc is that he isn't able to always save the people he wants to. He isn't able to stop Ur or Ultear from sacrificing their lives in order to protect him. (Again, I know Ultear also went through with Last Ages to protect a bunch of other people. I just also am a Graytear shipper.) Their sacrifices are framed as ways that he learns to protect the people around him.
Not being able to save Juvia should hit him on two different fronts. Of course, there's the obvious way that he wouldn't be able to stop Juvia from falling. He wasn't able to stop her immediate death at that moment. However, he didn't save her by bringing her with him to Fairy Tail. Obviously, he didn't know who she was when they first met or when they fought. However, now that he does know, he can realize that he could have avoided this situation. All he would have to have done is bring her with him to Fairy Tail all those years ago.
What's more, this would come right after the arc where the issues he had in dealing with his place in Ur's death were brought front and center. So, after coming to grips with the fact that he isn't entirely responsible for Ur's death, he's confronted with another death that he also isn't entirely responsible for.
Now, would Juvia's death be something that he should actually hold himself accountable for? No. However, I don't think that he wouldn't initially blame himself for. He would absolutely need to get taken out of the mindset of blaming himself, similar to how Natsu often had to get him out of doing Iced Shell. It could be him or it could be Erza (something, something Grayza something). Likely it would happen sometime during the beginning of the Tower of Heaven arc. You know, in place of the scene where he’s talking to Juvia about joining Fairy Tail.
However, this also leads to a secondary motive for this idea I'm not as happy about. If Gray feels that he's not strong enough to protect the people he needs to, he'll want to work harder both to protect the people he cares about and get strong enough to do so. I'm not hyped over the option of killing Juvia at all because (ironically enough) I'm not big on the idea that Juvia should have existed to serve as support for Gray's character. I’m not willing to address the “women in the refrigerator” trope (maybe some other year?) or argue if that was her role in the series, to begin with. But if this was how she was to die, that's basically what would be happening.
Still, I think it's an interesting idea to think about as a "what-if" scenario. As I said before, I will be doing these now and again. Usually, they'll be related to whatever post in the main series comes before it. I have a lot of interesting ideas for these and I hope you enjoy them more in the future. See you then!
Regardless of how you feel about Bleach, you’re here for my opinions.
While there are issues with Tite Kubo’s work, some legitimate and others less so, one of my favorite things about it is the organization of arcs. There are four main sections to Bleach: Soul Society, Hueco Mundo, Lost Agent and Thousand Year Blood War. (I read the volumes) Of course, there are smaller subdivisions within these arcs and the anime apparently adds stuff in between those sections. However, it’s super helpful to have those giant divisions when thinking about how things happen, especially when you’re (hypothetically) writing about the series.
So, not long after finishing both series the same week, I started thinking of the simplest way to group the arcs in Fairy Tail. I was able to get five sections the events of Fairy Tail fall under. As this has been and will be helpful for thinking about my rewrite of Fairy Tail, I think it’s worth sharing this.
The first section goes from the Macao arc to Phantom Lord arc. This is the basic introduction to the series. After Phantom Lord, you have a basic and working understanding of many of the main players in the series. While Lucy being introduced into the guild is obviously important, the most important thing in this section, at least in the original series, is the formation of Team Natsu. Their existence will be important for the rest of the series.
The second section goes from Loke arc to the Edolas arc. This part has the most arcs of any section - six in the manga and seven in the anime - but it’s about as big as many other sections of the series. In a future post, I’ll argue that Fairy Tail is about stories and this is the section that proves that the best. Plenty of events that change the series happen during this part. Laxus leaves the guild, Wendy joins Fairy Tail and Team Natsu, the Magic Council changes leadership, Jellal loses his memory and all interesting aspects of his personality (okay, that just might be my opinion) and much more. Character arcs from the other section get further developed during this section. The notable exception is Natsu, who is near unilaterally agreed to have stopped developing after this point in the series and, according to some, make negative character growth.
The third section is where things get interesting. It definitively starts with the visible introduction of Zeref in chapter 200 of the manga. This section covers the Tenroujima, x791 and Grand Magic Games arcs in the manga and includes the Key to the Starry Sky arc from the anime. While this section is where people usually note that the series gets worse, my reason for this separation is the importance of Zeref and Acnologia. Zeref has been indirectly responsible for some of the trouble in the past two sections and Acnologia is hinted at a few times during the second section. However, this is the section where readers can’t ignore either’s existence anymore. Incidentally, this section also has many of my favorite OPs and EDs in the anime.
Speaking of which, this anime presents an interesting dilemma in regards to the ending. For the manga, the end if obviously the Grand Magic Games arc. But the Eclipse arc could be argued as either the end of the third section or the start of the fourth section. I’ll say it’s the end of the third section in the anime because, when push comes to shove, it actually looks the most like the third section.
The fourth section has the Sun Village and Tartaros arcs, including the FT Zero arc in the anime. Personally, I considered Sun Village to be the prelude to Tartaros more than its own arc. This was considered to be one of the darkest parts of Fairy Tail. That claim gives me the feeling that people didn’t notice how dark the rest of the series was. However, the thing that makes this section matter and gives it a separation from the later material is the character affecting losses in Tartaros: Natsu losing Igneel and the guild separating. While FT Zero might be closer to the actual end of the second season of anime, this section chronologically ends with the guild being separated.
The final section, of course, is the last two arcs of the manga. I don’t really have much to say about this arc. For one, the anime is coming soon and things might be added to the adaptation. Also, the events of this section are either fresh in the minds of fans or spoilers for fans. What I will say is that this arc reunites the guild and brings the issues of Zeref and Acnologia to an end and gives the series the kind of send-off that, at the very least, made me satisfied with what I got. Then again, I’m rewriting the series for a reason.
