User blog comment:LordLuminous/Fairy Tail 491: Mother and Child Review/@comment-7418318-20160628070958

Regarding Irene not needing to be a sadist: Well, she IS called "Scarlet Despair" after all, not "Scary but rather nice Scarlet". Also the second pic of Hisui as a mouse was so cute. The little mouse with the tiara still on her. I still hope she'll get turned back soon and the cuteness suffers quite a bit from the tears, but it's still cute. :3 Brandish would probably love it too. ^^

Anyway here are my thoughts on the chapter itself.

I'm not too fond of Gajeel coming back so quickly, but I guess the move with the Tenrou Tree was nicely done by Mashima. Instead of coming up with a new bullshit way to save Gajeel, he went back to something well established. The extreme convenience of him ending up just at the one spot that is capable of saving his life instead of anywhere else on the continent is slightly annoying, but we've seen much worse in this arc, so it's ultimately fine.

I have this small hope that he would die to the MBP if he strayed too far from the protection of the tree and thus is stuck there for a while to let his body get rid of the MBP, but I doubt it'll happen. Still one can hope.

I am also very glad about how Gajeel acts toward Zera. He has no idea who she is, what she's talking about and why he should care in the first place. That's just the way I imagined he would react. Damn... if Gajeel already reacts like this when he just thinks about what he said to Levy, I can't wait to see how he'll act when they see each other again. ^^

Zera... I'm not exactly overjoyed by her being there, but I rather like it. And the explanation isn't too weird either.

Not much to say about the throne-room that I haven't already said in the beginning, though I agree with you on Arcadios. Half the (named) FT members could have done the same thing without breaking a sweat...

That giant eye in the sky gave me some serious Final Fantasy 9 flashbacks. ^^ Garland, is that you? :P

I guess we can take this as (almost assured) confirmation of Irene being Erza's mother... not that we didn't expect it, but still not something I'm fond of.

I was really surprised we not only got to see Laki, but Laki fighting to boot. And even Jet was useful (shortlived as it was), which is something I didn't expect to ever see again... and then there was Droy. -_- Moving on.

The sun and moon girls... just seem like the generic, over-confident mid-level antagonist. Not much interesting about them (yet) except for their appearance. Though that Glue Magic? Sticky Magic? something is certainly not a power often seen.

Wait... did Cana's card cut into that guy's cheek and stick there? oO Ouch.

So the trouble twins are aiming for Mira with the next chapter being "Elder and younger sister"... *sigh* Lisanna's going to be a burden again, isn't she? Please Mashima, either let her be usefull or get her out of the way. I'm tired of her being nothing but a burden on people around her!

Overall a nice chapter. Nothing groundbreaking, but still nice.