Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest

Episode 24

Welp. It seems like I spoke too soon about this week's episode being the finale, and it turns out that we have one more coming to finish things out. It's a good thing, too, because this week's episode was already pretty stuffed as is, and I can't imagine how much worse that would have been if it had to rush out a finale. However, while this episode does manage to help set things up for closing out the season, the scenario we're ultimately left with does feel just a little anticlimactic.

First up, we have the continuation of Gray's rematch with the snow woman, which quickly runs into a bit of a stalemate since both can cancel out each other's ice powers. Eventually, the snow woman switches to attacking Gray mentally by tempting him with what he's always wanted: a happy life with Juvia and all of the family he's lost over the years, including his dad, Ur, and Ultear. With how easily Gray tends to get swept into wacky punchlines, it can sometimes be easy to forget how rough he's had it, and there's something both sweet and sad about him being tempted by this despite knowing right away it's an illusion. What ultimately breaks Gray free and allows him to win, though, is him deciding that he's dedicating himself to Juvia's happiness rather than his own, and I'm not quite sure how to feel about that. Partially because, as mentioned several times before, it still feels like Juvia is getting more out of their current relationship than Gray is, and as weird as that imbalance feels, it's even weirder to see it actively reinforced. At the same time, having him say outright that he no longer cares about himself does give me some hope that this imbalance might get addressed, and it would be nice if that actually paid off. Admittedly, this doesn't feel likely if only because this would also probably require some change on Juvia's part, and with how much the series has already insisted on restraining her to her primary joke, I can't imagine that'd change now. Still, the series has happily surprised me before, so if Mashima is gonna insist on these two being an actual thing, I'm hoping he'll give us something that makes it a little easier to root for them.

With everything else out the way and Natsu and Erza recovered, the only remaining issue is Selene herself. However, before the gang can get to her, she ends up being defeated by Suzaku, It's more than a little anticlimactic, and much like with the resolution to Gray's fight, I don't quite know how to feel about this. On the one hand, it's clear that the story is nowhere near done with Selene. Once she's defeated, she decides to exit stage left by hopping into another dimension while Suzaku chases after her. We also get a few new crumbs of information that help tie these two together, as the dragon whose powers Suzaku has been using was actually one of Selene's sons and she's none too pleased about having his powers in the hands of a human. On the other hand, since Selene was easily the weakest component of this arc, I'm not exactly excited about the prospect of her sticking around for the foreseeable future and would have been pretty content if the last we saw of her was Natsu and the gang defeating her to wrap up this arc. I'm at least glad that the stuff about her son has finally given her something to work with as a character besides being crazy, and it would be cool if that ends up going somewhere later, but for the moment, I'm not really happy about this outcome.

Of course, this change in developments leaves our heroes without a bad guy to punch, but we get a substitute when Wendy realizes that the giant hands spread throughout Elentear are similar to the Face weapon from back in the Tartaros arc. That turns out to be no mere coincidence as the Shrine Elder reveals that Elentear's excess magic problem actually comes from a giant monster called Alta-Face, and while it hasn't been conscious in centuries, Selene's presence woke it up, and Alta-Face is now putting the world on the brink of collapse. I guess this works well enough as a way to help close out this next week. Although it does cheapen the conflict to have this whole excess magic problem be tied to a giant monster rather than being a purely natural phenomenon, and while I guess it helps keep the arc from being a total waste, I wish it could have closed out with something more interesting. Hopefully, we'll at least get a big enough spectacle next week to make up for this problem, because I'd much rather see this season end with a bang than a whimper.

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