Aside from Lucy getting jobbed and the fights dragging on a little too much, I otherwise haven’t had too many issues with this arc up till now, and that’s a little more consistency than I’ve generally come expect from this series. We were probably overdue to get hit with some weirdness in one form or another. Even knowing that, I can’t say I was prepared for just how much weirdness we were going to get hit with at once, and how much of it was in service of gags. Individually most of these wouldn’t be too annoying, but together, they make for one of the show’s wonkiest outings in a while.

First, it’s time to check back in on Erza and Jellal’s romantic escapades, which have slowly gone from funny to a little uncomfortable, as Jellal decides to bind Erza with his magic before doing the deed. Erza pleads for him to untie her since being bound like this only reminds her of her days as a slave and that’s not how she wants their first time to go. Thankfully he agrees because even while possessed, he could never bring himself to anything that would hurt her, and I guess it’s nice to know that even he understands the importance of consent. Of course, it wouldn’t be in the show’s nature to take all of this too seriously, so before things can go any further, Erza distracts him long enough to tie him up, and goes on her way back to fight Laxus. Definitely not the most elegant way to end this bit, but it was already starting to wear out it’s welcome, and Jellal assuming that Erza was tying him up as some kind of foreplay was probably as good a punchline as any for this, so on the whole I’m not too bothered by how this wrapped up.

I can’t quite say the same for Natsu’s fight with Wraith, which pulls what might possibly be one of the most contrived stunts I’ve ever seen from this franchise (and that’s saying a lot). As Wraith starts pounding on Natsu through Makarov’s body, he realizes that he’s synchronized with Makarov a little too well, and wonders if the two of them might actually be related, since his possession works better on blood relatives. Weird as it would be to imply Makarov might have had a secret love child or something at this stage, I think I would have preferred that to the actual truth. That being that Wraith was actually a former Fairy Tail member all along who died an untimely death in Makarov’s arms, and now that he’s regained those memories, he can’t bring himself to fight Natsu anymore, and decides to peacefully go onto the afterlife.

This is far from the first time we’ve seen the show give a villain a random connection to the Fairy Tail guild, but this is definitely the worst instance of it that the show’s ever pulled. Not only does it basically come out of nowhere, but the show doesn’t even linger on this revelation long enough to wring any real emotion out of it, since even in Wraith’s flashback, he’s only alive long enough to die in front of Makarov. It’s melodrama for melodrama’s sake, and even knowing the level of importance Mashima likes to place on “bonds that are stronger than blood” and all that, there’s a time and a place to toss in that message, and this ain’t it. I suppose the one upside is that this whole sequence didn’t eat up too much of this episode’s runtime, but the fact that it was over and done with so quickly just kind of makes the twist even worse, and it’s easily some of the weakest writing the show has had in a while.

While less aggravating in comparison, I also wasn’t too big on the punchline we got with Gray, Juvia and Lucy running into Cana, as they all discover that she was never possessed and has simply been too drunk to tell what was happening to the rest of the guild. It’s certainly funny, but it doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny when you consider that it’s been at least a few days at this point, and even she has only so much alcohol. Normally I’d be willing to roll with that since it falls under the show’s usual brand of comedy, but what makes this twist lame is that we get it immediately after Lucy realizes that she could probably capture all the possessed guild members by using Cana’s cards since the two of them use a similar form of magic. Even if it (probably) wasn’t intentional, it just ends up feeling like another way of further preventing Lucy from making any real contributions to the team here, and between this and how her fight got cut short, it’s hard not to feel like Mashima needs to give the poor girl a break.

Aside from that, we still have Wendy in the middle of fighting the spider guy, but that doesn’t really seem to be going one way or the other, so it’s hard to know how one will wrap up. We also get a swift conclusion to Kiria facing off against Laxus as he ends up utterly curbstomping her, but not before giving his usual speech about how he’s physically strong, but emotionally weak on the inside and how being in the guild has helped him work on that. Somehow in Kiria’s brain that all sounds like a turn on, and she ends up falling for him. It’s a little weird, given how she only had eyes for Erza up till now, but considering how that resulted in one of Erza’s worst moments in a while, I’m down for turning Kiria into Laxus’s weird admirer instead since that at least seems like it could be funny if it goes anywhere.

Speaking of weird admirers, things end with Natsu and Happy running into Touka who begs Natsu to help her, but we’re gonna have to wait a week to see how that pans out. All in all, this was probably the show’s weakest outing in a while, and even being used to some of Mashima’s abrupt left swerves, I wasn’t expecting to experience quite this many of them. On the bright side, none of them were bad enough to completely suck the momentum out of this arc, but I’m hoping that this was all just a bit of a rough patch, and things will go a little more smoothly next week.

Rating:





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