User blog comment:IamJakuhoRaikoben/Chapter 437: Magnolia, Review./@comment-4829046-20150525104852

Interesting thing happened since I was reading the chapter at school for once. I was reading it alongside a good friend of mine. He was sighing at the cliche, same as me, and then when Lisanna showed up he was all 'NatsuXLisanna is the only canon because NatsuXLucy makes no sense!' And then when the closing moment came he was raging on how he hated Lucy for being so unnecessarily emo and annoying. I informed him that he was basing his hate on the shipping factor though :P

Basically though, he is the only guy I know IRL who actively critiques FT without going full-blown hate unlike everyone else who is at one extreme or another. Seriously, I was chatting with a school-bud on Fb and I was told to change my avi cause it was lame-ass fairy tail when I could say worse things about series that he follows(not to mention he was the very one who got me into FT =_=) So yeah, I was very amused by the chapter-viewing today.

Anyways, I understand where Lucy is coming from, but you gotta admit, it's tiring how she is literally the only one out of the loop despite there being others who joined AFTER her. So yeah, I couldn't really give her a valid defense and in all honestly I had too many issues with the reintroduction. It felt like Naruto finale all over again where the growth was incomplete.

It was a traditional chapter though. Ignoring specifics, you got everything you generally expected really. I wouldn't say it was bad, but I feel that it forgets that the reintroduction is for the 'readers' and that the readers don't really feel a long passage of time since the characters last appeared and the double-chapter releases really sped it along. This will go double or 'septuple' for readers of the volumes. It's not a proper flaw but it is what I've been feeling since the arc began. The thing was that there wasn't a big enough real-time break between arcs I feel. I could be wrong though since manga have been doing this all the time since they are supposed to be consistent weekly(or monthly) releases and all, but at least some extra stuff in-between Tartaros and Avatar may have helped as a way for readers to temporarily forget about the old FT cast. Now, you might say the Zeref reveal would have fit in this niche I refer to, but I think it was necessary to have it after the Avatar arc instead. It may have been an annoying sub-arc, but Mashima let it serve its purpose.

Regardless, this chapter is basically the same as the one at the end of the GMG arc. I have to applaud Mashima for pulling off a double-whammy in less than 100 chapters. So now there is (hopefully) gonna be a rebuild and then the finale with Zeref and Acnologia and maybe Gods. Impressive. Still think some of the FT members 'must' die for this development to make sense but..... w/e.