User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail 526: My Name Is..., Review/@comment-24039234-20170313110242

Okay. For some reason I don't hate this chapter as much as I should. The coreography of the love between Cana&Gildarts on one side and Zeref kicking the shit out of Larcade on the other gives a nice contrast. While the point was hammered by August last chapter, it still kinda sorta works.

I don't even mind the "plot twist". It's cheap, yeah, but hey, why not. I even kinda like how it gives a sense of depth to the time the story encompasses. Z & M look young, but we're talking about hundreds of years; plenty of time to one little, forgotten kid to grow up to become the King of Magic. So, yeah, again, it's not something I would've done, but I can see the concept working with proper execution.

And with this, we get to the not-so-nice part (to put it mildly...^^). Because holy flying spaghetti monster, the execution is horrendous. August turns out to be another copycat+dispeller combo and yet again you can defeat him by using something not really magical. Some of you've already called it before, and I couldn't have imagined it that this could come true, but here it is: it's fking Franmalth all over again. Yeah, because that was a good one we wanted to see again. >_<

Not to mention the absolutely horrendous infodump at the end of the chapter about August's past. Come on, we're supposed to feel for the guy, these things work only if you give it time, build up the character, let it sink in... from which list we had nothing.

So to summarize: the King of Magic demoted to yet another whiny kid with a parent sindrome, defeated by a "boulder" (not really a boulder butyouknowwhatImean) to the face. Great.

Oh, and my favourite part? Disregard the convenient random encounter where Zeref just happens to meet the kid August, but: how in the flying fuck was he supposed to love you as his child if you've never even told him that you're that? This is a whole another level of stupid. Heck, from what we know, it's completely possible that Zeref's acting this cruel towards Larcade, emphasizing the fact that he has "no son", because he knew what he did with Mavis, he knows he could've a child despite his curse, but he doesn't, and he is still sore about it.

Okay, I'm starting to rant here, but please bear with me. I'm this hung up about this stuff, because the entire concept with Z&M having a child is absolutely great. We have a cursed, immortal being, who kills everything he loves, so then resings himself to being alone. Then he meets this one girl, who by some accident neither of them planned for, receives immortality, falls in love with him, is able to be with him and give birth to a child because she is immortal, but she is put into a coma as a result. Then a few hundred years later her ghost wakes up and they decide to settle the score with their respective underlings (Alvarez vs FT).

And with this, I kinda argue with you, Misk: I think this storyline is fucking gold. With this, Mavis and Zeref are hands down, bar none the most interesting thing that FT has given us, not in this arc, but ever. With this, Mashima had the idea that could've been a memorable story, right along the level of Fullmetal Alchemist and such, had he focused on the psychology of the situation. This is material for a good, tasty tragedy here. But the problem is that the way August is portrayed, he is simply not worthy of being that child everything hinges upon. And the even worse, overall problem is that the entire story is getting way too long and diluted for whatever it is worth.

TL;DR

Concept: 11/10 - 100% percent A.O.K.

Execution: AbsoluteZero/10 - ...and even below that since it manages to fuck up something that could've been great.