User blog:Derax-Pagani/Fairy Tail Chapter 487: Review

S'up everyone. Misk's currently being buried alive by university assignments, Jakuho's disappeared off the face of the earth and N's busting his ass with updating pages or slacking off because it's a long weekend. And as people seem to be itching to comment on the chapter, someone's gotta pull their finger out and make a review.

Negotiations
So the chapter starts off with Brandy starting negotiations with August, and it's going - as Mest and every reader expected - brilliantly. Lucy and Natsu seem nonchalant about August's level of power compared to Brandy when you compare their reaction to Mest's. The poor bugger's quietly crapping himself still. At least someone in FT still has some notion of fear.

T'Up North
Back up north and we see the Strauss siblings sorting out fodder, should we rejoice at Lisanna being useful, or despair at Mirajane being reduced to not much but a cleaner? Your call guys. Sabertooth are reduced to dealing with fodder too, unsurprisingly after what happened last time. Yukino's fucked off somewhere too it seems.

Meat and Butter
Now for the main event; Gajeel & Levy vs. Bradman and straight off the bat we get why the chapter's titled as it is, Bradman unleashing his third, and presumably final, seal explaining how the three work. First one renders humans incapable of fighting back against him by pulling a less counter-productive version of Tempester's schtick. Second one opens up the city of the dead in a less kinky manner than what Keyes pulled off that one time. This third seal seems to just turn Bradman from an awesomely designed character into a black cross between Atlas Flame and the Eclipse CSK, and gives him a third eye, design wise that is.

Gajeel and Levy then comment on how Bradman doesn't seem to possess much magic power in comparison with the other 11. And we find out why. Because he's a bit like the Curse version of the Pokemon move Metronome. It turns out this guy has all of the Nine Demon Gate's curses plus Mard Geer's Thorn Curse just to top it all off. And somehow this bloke has Silver's Devil Slayer Magic... Uuuuuuuh wut? Well, whatever. Not going to question it at this point.

It seems Levy learnt how to clear floods from her time in the Magic Council, rendering the entirety of Torufuzar vs. Gajeel kinda redundant when you think about it... Oh well, got a GaLe moment out of it, so perhaps not. Then we see what I've been lead to believe is a jacked up version of Necromancy. And then Levy drops the bomb on us all: She's pregnant That Mask of hers was as useful as a handbrake on a canoe.

That Oh Shit Moment
Not gonna lie, I flicked through the Korean scanlation of this chapter this morning, and when I saw Levy's eyes begin to glaze over; I genuinely feared for her life. Let's be realistic though, Mashima's not going to do that. But, this is what, I for one, have been hoping for in this arc; some actual fear that a well loved character is going to die off or be put very close to it. Criticise me as you will for having such high hopes for Mashima or this arc, fight me hoes :3

21 Canon Salute
After realising that Levy's down for the count at this point, Gajeel pulls his socks up and goes to kick Bradman's arse proper because as his inner monologue reveals; he's got a crush on Levy ( *3*) GaLe shippers rejoice (/*^*)/ Then things get... weird. In order for Gajeel to hit Bradman, he's eaten Bradman's MBPs to gain the same properties as the Spriggan 12's curse? Right, someone's going to have to explain that to me. And the miniscule amount of iron in the particles is enough to let Gajeel go Dragon Force (FINALLY!!). I found this weird during Torafuzar's fight, having Carbon in a toxic water. Only instance I know of carbon being toxic or poisonous is in Carbon Monoxide or in exhaust particulates. To my knowledge, iron, nor iron compounds are poisonous, but whatever. Over analytic Dex is over analytic.

Cliffhanger
To finish off, Gajeel pulls an Acnologia on Bradman, quite literally tearing him a new one whilst in this Black Iron Dragon Force. Seriously, someone explain that to me. And then huzzah for the fall of another Sprigga- Oh, what's this? A hell of a cliff hanger? A really dangerous sounding title for Chapter 488? Well shit. Didn't see that coming. Who else is thinking Gajeel and Levy are going to end up in a Memento Mori next week? Just me? Eh oh well.

Conclusion
Overall, I enjoyed this chapter. It gave me the thrills that older chapters gave me that actually kept me hooked wanting to know what was going to happen. A brief return to some decent form perhaps from Mashima? Or am I just delusional? Let's wait and see.

Anyway, that's it from me for this ladies and gents. Post your comments, have a discussion and hope you enjoyed. If not, fuck you too :D

P.S.
Totally off topic, but in a couple of weeks I'm hopefully going to have a survey for you regarding public perceptions on Scanlators, as I'm currently doing a dissertation on the subject. So I'd really appreciate it if you all can do that when it's out, the more data I have, the better. So thank you in advance everyone!