Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest

Episode 13

After spending the last few weeks shuffling through multiple fights, things are finally starting to slow down a little. For the most part, this episode really comes down to Erza's fight with Laxus and Natsu and Happy's encounter with Touka, with the latter throwing out a couple of revelations that are bound to be either extremely funny or a bit of a letdown depending on your point of view. While this makes for a much simpler affair than the last few episodes we've gotten, that's certainly not a bad thing, as the extra focus was the shot in the arm this arc needed to get me excited about where it's going again.

Let's start with Erza's fight with Laxus, since that one's pretty straightforward. I've complained before about how static the power scaling between the Fairy Tail guild members has managed to stay since the early parts of the series (especially since it's mostly at Lucy's expense), but the one net positive is that Erza and Laxus have been portrayed as being on more or less equal footing from the get-go, so there was really no telling how an actual fight between them would end. That all carries over into this, as there's plenty of back and forth between the two of them, and it gives us the heaviest concentration of cool that we've gotten out of any of the most recent fights. I would knock some points for Erza revealing a new ability in the form of learning Wendy's enchantment magic and enchanting her blades with Natsu's fire and Gray's ice, since it would have been a cheap way to clinch the win, but Laxus got to keep the whole weird blood lightning thing he got during the Alvarez arc, so that helps to balance things out. Plus we get all this action in the middle of the show blaring out a cool new insert song, and pumping out some surprisingly solid battle animation compared to the show's usual standards, so I can't say it wasn't going all out with the presentation. Surprisingly, the match ends in a draw which felt a little odd given how much everything was poised towards Erza taking this, but her overwhelming win rate tends to make some of her fights a bit too predictable, so this was a nice way of showing that she's still far from invincible without needing to subject her to any lame and/or horny forms of humiliation to do it, so it's a decent compromise. Unfortunately for the both of them, this was the perfect outcome for Kiria, as this leaves her free to both destroy another one of the Wood Dragon's orbs and have the both of them at her mercy, so I have no idea how they're gonna get out of this one.

As for things with Natsu, Happy and Touka, it all takes a pretty wacky turn when we learn the truth about Touka's identity: She's actually been an Exceed all along and has been in love with Happy rather than Natsu, as she got the two of them confused back when they first rescued her. She also turns out to be Happy's type, and he's decided to make it his goal to do whatever it takes to help separate her from the White Mage. I could see where this twist might come off as anticlimactic of a punchline with how much the show has been building up to a reunion between Natsu and Touka, but to Mashima's credit, we did clearly see Touka sprouting a tail a while back, and she did talk about her knight in shining armor riding in on a fire dragon, so you can't say that this joke hasn't been telegraphed this entire time, and I can't pretend that it isn't at least a little funny. Still, it does come off as a bit of lost potential as her crush being directed at Natsu might have provided enough of a push for things to progress a little more between Natsu and Lucy (which the show even jokes about earlier in the episode when Juvia and Cana tease Lucy about having some competition), and while I'm not the biggest Happy/Carla shipper, their dynamic is cute enough that it's hard to imagine that turning it into a love triangle would do much else but drag it down. I'm still pretty interested in seeing where the rest of the show goes with Touka, but I'm also hoping she doesn't just turn into Happy's Juvia, since it feels kind of unnecessary.

There's not too much time for Natsu and Happy to wrestle with the implications of this particular twist, though, as the White Mage eventually resumes control of Touka's body and attempts to possess Natsu. Before she can, Happy recalls that she mentioned not being able to touch the Wood Dragon's orbs with her own powers, and when he chucks one of them at her, the reaction her body has to it implies that she might not be as human as she claims to be. However, it might be a bit before we get an answer to that little mystery as it seems like the show is gonna dial things back a bit next week to adapt a side story. Normally I wouldn't be a fan of that kind of interruption, but after how much the last few episodes have kinda dragged, the show could use a little change of pace and this seems like as good a point as any to hit the pause button, so I'm up for a nice little distraction.

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