Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest

Episode 17

While last week's showing for the D-listers of Fairy Tail was a welcome surprise, I'm still not feeling enthusiastic about this arc getting extended with another string of fights, and what we ended up getting this time hasn't really done much to help there. Before getting into all that, though, as always we've got another short to open things up with, and this one's about Brandish goofing off while continuing her search for the Aquarius key. Despite all her claims that she's taking her search seriously, she gets pretty distracted while enjoying some local roller coasters and eating a parfait. So much so, that she fails to notice all the destruction caused by Natsu and the others fighting, even when the dining area she was sitting at has been all but reduced to rubble. It's nice that this one at least ends up directly tying into what's happening in the show proper, but it's far from the best punchline we've gotten out of these, and this one didn't quite land for me.

Speaking of things that didn't quite land for me, batten down the hatches because it's time to once again engage in the messiness that is romance in Fairy Tail. First up we've got Gray and Juvia tag teaming for a fight against one of the God Seeds which manages to be simultaneously as cute and cursed as whatever it is you were imagining when you heard the words “Gray and Juvia tag-team.” Juvia tries attacking it with her water magic but forgets that trees can absorb water and only ends up getting absorbed herself (which to her, apparently qualifies as NTR) and strung up with vines to use as a shield against Gray. By this point, I was pretty much ready to write off this fight since it felt like an unnecessary bit of fanservice, and even with my mixed feelings about Juvia as a character, it was a little annoying to see her get used as a prop like this. However, there is at least one moment of payoff here, as when Gray refuses to attack Juvia, he's forced to be a little more honest in how he feels about her, and says that she's “become his strength,” which is about the closest he's come to an actual love confession.

It's a sweet enough bit that I'd almost be willing to overlook some of what preceded it. Which is why it kinda sucks that this moment gets undercut by…Juvia getting so horny overhearing this from Gray that her water form gets too boiling hot for the God Seed to contain, and this gives Gray the idea to use her water for his ice attacks while she's “ooh”-ing and “ahh”-ing, the entire time. It's certainly not the worst joke we've gotten regarding Juvia's obsession with Gray, but it reminds me how hard it is to take their relationship seriously. That's a shame, too, because I really do want to like them as a couple. There's even some cute banter between the two of them after the fight where Juvia tries asking Gray for a kiss but he tries to play it off because he's too embarrassed, and it just makes me wish the dynamic were a bit more like that as opposed to every other line from Juvia's mouth being about how much she wants to throw herself at him when both their relationship and her character would benefit from her toning all that down a bit. As is, things between them still feel way too unbalanced and I'm not feeling hopeful that changing anytime soon.

Sadly, that's not the only complaint I have this week about characters getting tangled in the red string of fate, but it's for the opposite reason, as we've also got some stuff with Erza and Jellal. When Jellal gets into a fight with another one of the God Seeds, it reveals it has the power to stop a person's thoughts to keep them from attacking and uses this to mess with Jellal's mind to the point where he imagines he's being attacked by Erza (yeah, I'm not quite sure how this works either). From this we learn that for as much as Jellal has tried to atone for his past sins, he's still a bit too hung up on all the stuff he's done to her in the past to feel like he can allow himself to be around her. While it's certainly not unreasonable for him to still feel this way, it is a little frustrating given that he's already more or less finished his redemption arc, and the last few episodes have made it extremely clear just how badly he and Erza want each other. It doesn't help that when Laxus presses Erza about her relationship with Jellal and calls him her boyfriend, she's still way too embarrassed to even admit she's into him, and given that we're already deep into sequel territory, it's hard not to wish these two would get over themselves and smooch already.

Fortunately, all the weird time shenanigans the God Seed is causing seem to be enough to trigger Ultear's weird time ghost to make an appearance and she tells Jellal that he needs to stop fixating on his guilt and instead focus on living for her sake and repaying all of the things she's done for him. This also somehow gives Jellal the idea to separate his feelings of guilt from his body into his projection of Siegrain from all the way back in the Tower of Heaven and use that opportunity to get an attack in and win the fight. The biggest credit I can usually give Fairy Tail when it comes to fights is that while they are pretty simple in execution, that also usually pretty easy to follow, so I can't say I care for how convoluted this particular victory feels. Still, with Jellal having presumably gotten over his hangups, there's hope that things between him and Erza can finally start going somewhere, and while I'm not very optimistic about the prospect, I'd like to believe that Mashima's exhausted as much “will they, won't they” as he can from this.

So...yeah, I can't say I feel like I've gotten much out of this second round of fights but I'm at least glad we seem to have blitzed through them pretty quickly, so all that's left is for Natsu to face off with Aldoron. I'm not quite sure what to expect from this one, though I did like Natsu's line just before the credits when Aldoron tried to suggest that he and Ignia are brothers only for Natsu to say that the only brother he has is Zeref. As awkward as that whole revelation was when Zeref first revealed that information, it's nice to see that Natsu's managed to sort out some of his feelings there, and while I don't imagine he's forgotten any of Zeref's past actions, it makes that scene between the two of them from a few episodes ago a little sweeter. Still, getting this exchange only makes me more interested in where things will end up going between Natsu and Ignia, so I can only hope that it won't be too much longer before we get to see the two of them cross paths again.

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