User blog:Retro7/Chap Review: Chapter 256 Seven Empty Years

Chapter Review: The Seven Empty Years

Plot Breakdown: Fairy Tail celebrates, we get a visit from Lamia Scale. Missing members return to their lives but find out that a lot has changed since they were gone. Lucy goes to visit her daddy only to find hes died. Oh my =(.

My Thoughts: Okay this was much better then the rush fest that was the last chapter. I liked the fact some of the past characters came back into play like Totomaru and Lamia Scale (Gotta say I hardly recognized Sherry there, she was so squinty eyed last time. She seems like a completely new character. Love Jura new look and was laughing as Yuka's and Toby's). Plus that Marakov let Marco keep the guild leader position and Alzack and Bisca have a daughter (looking forward to seeing her). Nice bit of comedy with the Reedus drawings (XD Poor Wendy) and the little love diagram of Juvia's. Say the least this was a great ice breaker for the serious bits.

Though really why would Lucy need to pay back rent? That only applies if you've been gone for a few months. This is seven years that usually grounds for a termination of lease. Then again I'm applying real world logic to a manga so meh. Anyway the main topics being whats happened to Jellel, Ultear, Merdy and Zeref. Which from the reactions, doesn't sound good at all. I liked that we don't hear this right off the bat which is also surprising considering Mashima has practically been handing all of his secrets in one go lately. But this is good as it least keeps us us wondering. But before we find out about what they're doing, we focus on Lucy first and truthfully I kinda saw that parental death thing coming a mile awhile. But I'm not annoyed with it, rather I'm glad it makes for good drama and I can only imagine what Lucy is thinking right now. So the question now is where does she go from there. I'm also curious if we'll know more about how she tied in with the "7" mystery considering her mother died seven years ago and now her father too.

Overall, good chapter. Better paced and gives us some questions to mull over. Nice recovery Mashima, lets see if you can keep it up.

Grade:B