User blog:Ninja-Sensei/Episode 187: Change, review and commentary

Well hi there! I review things. I'm new to a review here, and I know people get pissy with Mega for his awesome reviews ( -____-) So here's a hopefully not shitty review for you to read and complain about! Also I've read the manga. I don't review based on it. So it is also spoiler free!

If this is unwelcome, I'm sorry D:

The Episode
The episode starts off with a little bit of what we saw last time. Gajeel is fighting Rogue, Future Lucy is explaining things to the Rescue Team. Cue opening.

We start the episode with Future Lucy explaining why she came from the future, which apparently is "to change a terrible future." "What happened in the future?" "Despair... in the future." The anime team really likes to repeat information in their episodes. This is just bad dialogue. Every character likes to describe people and events with pronouns or the same word. Anyways, we get a basic summary. 10,000 dragons. The city is burned down. The palace is destroyed. Many lives are lost. This is as broad as it can get. Cue title card, "Change". Yeah, hopefully this dialogue decides to change.

Hisui is sitting there, talking to the forgettable old guy. Guess what? "I won't believe it until I see it. Also 10,000 dragons." Finally Yukino asks why that could happen. Lucy calls her future self a pathetic bitch. Once again, we start to see Carla's vision. The writers have been trying to piece together Carla's vision with the story, but it isn't working.

Apparently every other character died but Lucy, and she activated eclipse in an apocalypse of 10,000 dragons, who just destroy buildings. They don't attack ones who survive because they don't eat humans or anything. So she went back to July 4th, 791. The plot inconsistency is annoying as hell. You can't keep repeating something over and over to save animation time and then change the plot. That's having your cake and eating it too. Arcadios begins to talk to himself, which brings suspicions about her. Oh yeah, she doesn't know how to stop mass destruction either.

Arcadios drags us to a flashback with Hisui, talking about Eclipse 2. So Arcadios reveals future Lucy is lying. She knows why she came back, and she didn't come back on the 4th. Thank you writers, you covered up your own loophole! This actually builds interest, 9 MINUTES IN THE EPISODE. The writers basically tell you "hey, you should be suspicious of Future Lucy because regular Lucy isn't like her." So yeah, thanks for basically calling us stupid.

So these scenes were pretty crap, the only notable part is Future Lucy is a liar. Also where the hell are the guards? In terms of animations, they weren't awful. This was only due to a lack of content :\ Future Lucy was looking good.

Now we move over to CS, who are discussing Future Lucy as well. Ultear looks shitty. This scene basically wraps up everything, which they could have done in an episode less. Oh yeah, now Future Lucy might not exist at all.

FINALLY, we move out of that mess. Rogue is at the mercy of Gajeel. As Gajeel taunts him, Rogue explains that he was a punk who idolized another punk, being Gajeel. Rogue comes to his self-realization as Sting has about how friendship is magic. Gajeel displays his natural punk attitude and puts Rogue in his place. Rogue has comrades. He has his cat. Rogue is basically the ignorant student learning so much, and Gajeel is teaching him how precious his friendship is. This was an incredible scene. The animation was done well. The suspense was great. The dialogue? PERFECT.

And BAM! Rogue has schizophrenia. A strange voice is telling him exactly what Minerva would tell him. Gajeel is your enemy. While Gajeel is assuming Rogue is insane, Rogue is being pushed into murder. His shadow turns out to be the voice, fitting since he is the Shadow Dragon Slayer. Insert "spirit offers posses-ee great power" cliche.

We then shift to Rescue Team again, running down a hall, which is the perfect route since it has no guards, according to Future Lucy. Guess what, guards everywhere. Loke is so shitty looking Lucy should never summon him, ever. Also by using magic they won't get caught. Not sure if this is Natsu logic or bad writing. Yukino and Arcadios suddenly disappear. How the hell does that happen? As the group is getting overwhelmed, we get back to Gajeel and Rogue.

The spirit says fuck you and forces himself into Rogue, making him badass. As Gajeel takes a hit, the crowd is in awe. As the fight begins, we get more obvious plot signs. Come on, we aren't stupid ( -_____-). They should have kept Frosch as the signal. Anyways, Gajeel is getting stomped. Rogue pulls the Natsu comparison, but this time it is actually effective. This fight actually looks decent.

Rescue Team is stomping the guards, nothing special. Then we have fish wizard thing, what the fuck...

Levy is worried for Gajeel, and Fro is on the case! As Rogue drops Gajeel, Gajeel wants to step up Natsu again, and eats some shadows! Gajeel tells the spirit to get the hell out of Raios, who was apparently his disciple? Gajeel flat out tells him, kid, you didn't idolize me. You FEARED me. Loved it.

Overall
Episode started off really weak. Like horrible. Shared a lot of what we have seen in the last two episodes, unneeded repetition with horrible descriptions to back it up. But once we moved into the Gajeel scenes, we got some really good stuff. They were entertaining and not dragged on.

Scores
Story: 5/10

Weak plot. The fight just wasn't enough to make up for the first half.

Fight: 9/10

Great fight! Could have used a bit less interruptions, but it didn't take much off the experience.

Animation: 7/10

Scenes weren't so full which meant better animation. The fight with the guards looked horrible, though.

Overall: 8/10