So it seems like we didn’t get a new short this week, but with how stuffed this episode already is, I’m not complaining. This one’s pretty action heavy as most of it is dedicated to the climax of the fight between Natsu and Aldoron, and while it’s not exactly a show-stopper, it does manage to make for a pretty solid spectacle. More importantly, though, this episode also marks the end of this story arc, and with how much it’s been overstaying its welcome, I’m pretty excited to see what lies beyond the horizon now that we’re finally moving onto something else.

Compared to everything else we’ve gotten with this arc, the fight between Natsu and Aldoron is pretty straightforward, as it largely consists of Natsu trying to burn away at his plants with his flames. Unfortunately for him, though, the heat from his flames isn’t intense enough to do any actual damage, and Natsu ends up needing a little outside assistance. That assistance ends up coming from Brandish, who ended up getting caught in the crossfire of last week’s antics and offers to help the others by turning Gajeel into a giant so he can fight Aldoron’s main body directly, Watching Gajeel go full Ultraman and wrestling with Aldoron like they’re in a kaiju fight is honestly the best part of this whole affair, and I’d probably be more willing to take back some of my complaints about how long this arc has been if this ended up being the payoff. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be and this sequence only ends up lasting a couple of minutes, but it was still pretty fun so I guess I’ll take what I can get there.

This opening leaves Aldoron a bit more vulnerable and Natsu eventually finds the best heat output for burning him, but sadly the rest of the fight isn’t all that exciting. It looks pretty good, and makes for one of the better animated fights that we’ve gotten out of this sequel so far, but Aldoron himself simply isn’t a very interesting villain. His whole deal comes down to a belief that humans are nothing more than a form of sustenance for him, and that he never had any intention of coexisting with the humans that lived on his back, since only thought of them as livestock. I do kinda like the angle of him justifying his actions as not being different from how humans consume animals and plants, but the whole speech mostly just feels like a way of cementing him as evil enough that Natsu doesn’t have to think twice about roasting him to death, and it’s a bit of an underwhelming climax after how long of a buildup we had. I guess if nothing else it’s nice to see that the Dragon Gods do differ in motivations, and not every encounter with them will end the same way, but all this just left me hoping that the remaining three have a bit more going on than he did.

Fortunately, this battle doesn’t quite take up the entire episode, and the rest is a bit of a breather. The whole guild comes together to party after being brought back and we get some pretty good gags involving Gajeel bragging about how he’ll be able to tell his kid about his epic kaiju fight, and everyone still trying to figure out how they even got there in the first place. We also see Gray and Juvia starting to behave more like an actual couple, while Jellal seems to have gotten over his guilt complex enough to actually embrace Erza, so it’s nice to see that there was some actual romantic progress to all this even though I’m still not too invested in either couple. Meanwhile the most we really get out of Happy teasing Carla about Touka is her being largely indifferent about having a “rival,” and while that could still possibly go somewhere, part of me still wishes Mashima had stuck with Touka having a thing for Natsu, since it could have at least been an excuse to get some progress on things with him and Lucy.

Besides all the partying, we also get some set-up for future events as the Moon Dragon has taken notice of Aldoron’s defeat and has become more interested in dealing with Natsu and the others herself. The Dragon Eaters also decide to send out one of their strongest members to help deal with Fairy Tail while they hunt the Moon Dragon, and since Kiria still seems fixated on Laxus, I do wonder if he’s going to end getting roped into tagging along for the rest of the quest somehow. Lastly, there’s the more immediate issue of the White Mage, as she’s still unconscious and they haven’t quite decided what to do when she wakes up, so if she’s gonna stick around, I hope we’re finally gonna start learning more about her. As is always the case with this series, it’s hard to know how well it’s gonna be to execute on all of this, but there’s still plenty of time to make it all pay off, so hopefully it’ll be able to pull that off as we head into the next story arc.

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Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest is currently streaming on
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