Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest

Episode 20

Aside from concerns about repetitive jokes with having alternate versions of the main cast, I was pretty eager to see where this new dimension-hopping arc was headed. Most of this week's episode is dedicated to learning a little more about Elentear and its connection to the Moon Dragon, Selene. It mostly raised questions than answers as some details feel more than a little contradictory. It's not exactly a great way to kick off this arc, and while I'm not quite ready to toss the whole thing out, it did leave me feeling a lot less enthusiastic about where the rest of this could be going.

As Mystogan continues bringing Natsu and the others up to speed on Elentear, he reveals that it has the opposite problem of Edolas in that it suffers from an excess of magic rather than a lack of it. This is collaborated by Touka, who reveals that she's from Elentear, and warns the others that the White Mage originated there as well. However, while Touka claims that Elentear is relatively peaceful—and isn't in any immediate danger of being destroyed like the White Mage is claiming—she doesn't quite have the full picture. That only happens when the gang finally manages to track down the White Mage and she decides to confess the whole story. We learn that her real name is Faris and that she comes from a family of shrine maidens whose job was to suppress Elentear's surplus magic and keep it from destroying the planet, but was eventually tracked down by Selene who wanted to use her power to eliminate the other Dragon Gods. When Selene threatened to destroy Elentear if she didn't cooperate, Faris came to Earthland and took over the White Mage's cult as the real one actually vanished years ago. Now that she's seen Natsu and the others are powerful enough to defeat a Dragon God like Aldoron, she begs them to defeat Selene and free Elentear from her control.

While most of this tracks well, and would otherwise serve as a decent set-up for the arc, the others realize that this explanation comes with one glaring contradiction: namely why Selene tricked her into resurrecting Aldoron if her goal was to get rid of him. Faris can't quite make sense of it either, but it didn't take too long to get some clarification as Selene shows up in person to threaten them and later sends them to Elentear herself. However, her explanation just ends up making her actual motives feel outright bizarre, as she claims to have done it to revel in the chaos of seeing Aldoron wreaking havoc throughout Earthland.

That's already a boring twist on its own, but the real problem is mostly not making a lot of sense. If she was so worried about facing off with the other Dragon Gods, then why would she bother reviving one of them and add to her list of potential threats? Even if she was mostly lying about that and doesn't really see them as a problem, it still calls into question why she bothered sending Faris to Earthland to seal them. Heck, for that matter, if she just wanted to revive Aldoron, why didn't she just do that herself, since Faris couldn't even break the sealing orbs on her own? I don't really like nitpicking plotholes this much, especially for a series as goofy as Fairy Tail, but there are so many contradictions here that it's hard to handwave them. Even if the real explanation is supposed to be that she's motivated by her desire for chaos or whatever, and is operating under that rather than her best interests, it still feels lame. Having her plans feel this jumbled makes it hard to paint a clear picture of her philosophy. It has killed most of my interest in Selene as a villain. If there's one saving grace, it's at least getting all this during the start of the arc rather than the end of it, so there's still the possibility of getting something that'll help rectify this later down the line. Exactly what would end up being is hard to guess right now. Maybe it'll turn out that Selene was wary of Faris's powers and sent her to Earthland in the hopes that one of the other Dragon Gods would kill her in her search for them. Sure, it wouldn't be a particularly great twist (and would still call into question why she's bothering to send her back to Elentear), but it would at least be a little more consistent than what we've got right now.

All that aside, I appreciate that while all this serves to make Faris more sympathetic, Natsu and the others haven't exactly forgotten about her past actions and are only hunting Selene out of professional obligation. Considering how similar past villains like Ultear and Minerva were absolved of more intentionally heinous crimes after throwing out a sad backstory (although considering that Faris is technically indirectly responsible for the deaths of the people living on the Wood Dragon's back she does arguably have a higher body count), it's nice that this wasn't used to instantly absolve Faris of any wrongdoing. Sure, I have no doubt she'll probably earn their trust by the time this arc is done because that's just the kind of series this is, but she'll at least have to work for it, and that gives me at least one thing to look forward to over the next few episodes. Hopefully, things will turn around as we get further into this arc, but right now, if this is how we're starting, then I can't say I'm feeling too confident about the rest of it.

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