With how fast this series tends to move, I figured it would have already breezed through most of the fights it spent last week setting up, but it seems like all that might end up going on for a while longer. Before we get into that, we’ve got a couple of shorts to talk about as we somehow got two crammed in. The first involves Juvia telling Erza that she should probably practice kissing in case the day ever comes when she does that with Jellal. In typical Erza fashion, she pretends to be above the idea but decides to try it just in time for Jellal to see her smooching up against a window and wondering what’s wrong with her. The other is about how Levy is worried about all the extra work Gajeel is taking on since he’s coming back with more injuries. While he teases her in his usual way, he makes it clear that he’s doing all this to get ready to take care of their kid and make sure they can live as a family. Both shorts are pretty charming, but much like the last time we got one, it does feel a little weird to have these at the start rather than the end of the episode. To my surprise, the general ideas from these shorts actually end up playing into a couple of the major fights this week, and the results are equal parts heartwarming and hilarious.

Since most of this week’s events can be summed up in terms of fights, I might as well start with Gray and Lucy, since they’ve probably got the least to do out of the bunch. As far as Gray’s fight goes, he handles Laxus’s crew with ease, as they’re hardly a match for him at this point. Even when Freed tries to use his enchantments to stop Gray from using Ice Make magic, Gray switches over to his Devil Slayer magic instead and trounces them even harder. It’s not a very exciting fight (and is probably the worst-looking one out of what we get this week), but I didn’t have any real expectations for this one, so I don’t have any complaints about it. The same can’t be said for Lucy’s fight, as she whips out the power of her new Star Dress and manages to take out Lisanna…but only Lisanna, as Elfman and Mirajane survive her big attack just fine. At this point, I should be happy that Lucy is still hanging in there and wasn’t taken out the second this failed to work, but the contrast between her fight and Gray’s really does drive home how poor her treatment is in that department. Since the fight isn’t over yet, I suppose there’s still some hope that she’ll find some way to defeat Elfman and Mirajane on her own, but right now, I’m bracing for the worst.

Getting into the major fights, first, we have the continuation of Natsu’s fight with Gajeel, which turns out to be a battle of endurance as Gajeel refuses to go down. Eventually, Levy steps in to protect him, and while Natsu is more than happy to fight her too, he stops short when he remembers she’s having a baby, which distracts him long enough for her to use her magic to whip up a carriage and drag Natsu barfing away from the battlefield. Somehow this is still counted as a win for Natsu which is nonsense both because he failed to actually free either of the two from their brainwashing, and also because anyone with eyes can tell that Levy was the real winner here. Semantics aside though, it was sweet seeing Gajeel and Levy trying so hard to defend each other, and thinking about their future with their kid, which is certainly a big step up from their bickering at the start of this season. I’m hoping we get to see more of this instead. I also really liked how well this theme tied into the short earlier in the episode, and it was nice getting to see them have a little extra purpose beyond being funny.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being funny though, as the level of romantic ineptitude we see from Erza during her short comes back swinging when she finds herself in a fight with Jellal. Since Erza’s attempt to fight Jellal back during the Tower of Heaven got interrupted by Natsu, it’s easy to imagine a version of this rematch that was played dead seriously, but that’s not the one we got. Instead, it’s played entirely for laughs as the White Mage’s brainwashing seems to have freed Jellal of all his inhibitions and he starts stripping down and talking about how much he wants to throw himself at her. Erza gets pretty flustered by this but recalls that for all of his prior edginess, Jellal has little experience with women, so she attempts to “seduce” him with some of her more revealing suits of armor. Normally, these are the kind of fanservice gags that don’t land for me since they tend to either feel weird or out of place, but this one works since it shows that even a character as self-serious as Jellal isn’t immune to being at least a little silly. It also helps that Erza’s display here really only serves to highlight how bad the both of them are at romance, and seeing the two of them being this awkward about it has probably done more to make me hope things work out for them than any of their more dramatic moments up to now.

While these fights do take up the bulk of what we get this week, things do advance a little elsewhere as the Dragon Eaters from Diablos show up, looking to seal away the Wood Dragon so they can feast on him. Kiria, of course, decides to go after Erza, while Natsu and Wendy get attacked by a couple of new Dragon Eaters in the form of a creepy spider guy, and a literal ghost. The latter of these two matchups seems like it’ll be the more interesting one, since for as much as this series has played around with magic and fantasy, we haven’t really had any notable instances involving ghosts. I’m curious to see how they’d work in this universe. Hopefully, these fights won’t go on for too much longer, but I was at least pretty entertained by what we got here, so if we’re gonna be cycling through these for a while, I’m hoping that it at least won’t kill the rest of the show’s momentum.

Rating:

Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.