Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest

Episode 6

To say that this week's Fairy Tail dropped a huge bombshell would be an understatement, but first, it's time to talk about something completely different! For some reason, the episode opens up on a short story involving Lucy trying to meet her editor's deadlines (something I've thankfully never had to worry about because mine is perfectly reasonable and I'm not just saying that because she's probably reading this) while she struggles to figure out how to finish her fantasy novel. Since it involves fighting giant anteaters, Natsu and Happy offer to take her on a quest that conveniently involves doing just that—and Lucy's so busy taking down notes, that she fails to realize she's a few seconds away from becoming their next meal. It's cute for what it is—and I guess they wanted to toss in an omake chapter or something that they skipped over—but it is a little weird they put this at the beginning of the episode. Still, considering how the episode actually ends, I guess it would have made for some serious tonal whiplash, so I suppose that was the lesser of two evils.

Anyway, let's move on to the actual episode, which is certainly a lot. As Natsu and the gang start their battle against Mercphobia, Natsu prepares to kill him. But since Mercphobia is a water dragon, Natsu's flames aren't powerful enough to do much of anything to him. Just when things are at their most dire, the fight gets interrupted by a mysterious fire dragon named Ignia who has a strong interest in seeing Natsu's full potential. He quickly reveals himself to be the Fire God Dragon, which isn't too surprising. But what is a shock is that he also claims to be the flesh and blood son of Igneel—despite Natsu, being the one who was raised by him, never hearing anything about Igneel having another kid. We learn that this is because male dragons don't typically raise their young or form families, so Ignia has never actually met his dad, and doesn't have any particularly strong feelings about him one way or the other. The real reason he's interested in Natsu though, is that Ignia and the other Dragon Gods were the only dragons to escape Acnologia's wrath 400 years ago and had spent all that time training to surpass him—only for Natsu to swoop in and finish the job. Ignia is none too pleased about that (especially since he feels like Natsu cheated a little by winning with the power of friendship), so he's made it his business to have a one-on-one duel with Natsu once he gets stronger and offers to let Natsu consume his flames in exchange for not burning down the town himself or killing all of Natsu's friends instead.

It's certainly a lot to take in, but I'm here for it as it addresses some of my previous gripes with this sequel. While I'm still not super big on having multiple dragons around on Acnologia's level, learning that they basically spent all their time grinding while Natsu and the other Dragon Slayers were out doing all the actual fighting makes it a little easier to swallow. Funnily, it also makes them come off as a little less imposing since, for as good a show of power as Ignia gives here, he mainly comes off like he's bitter about not getting the chance to show off—and that's a level of hater energy I can get behind. Speaking of the man of the hour, I also do like what his presence could potentially bring to the story. For as much as I've talked up Zeref and Acnologia on the power scale, I do feel like their biggest weakness as antagonists was that neither felt like they had much of a direct connection to Natsu (especially since Zeref didn't come until more than halfway through the original story). It felt like he only ever ended up fighting them out of plot necessity more than anything else. Ignia being both Igneel's son and someone with a twisted interest in Natsu's growth makes him much more of an immediate threat to him than either of them was. His being someone who values solitary strength as opposed to Natsu who finds strength in working with his friends, already makes for some strong parallels between the two. Heck, we even get to see some of that in action with the rest of the Mercphobia fight as, while Natsu does decide to use Ignia's flames for himself, he also acknowledges that he's not strong enough to beat Mercphobia on his own and chooses to rely on the others for help. It comes in handy too because Ignia's power ends up being too much for Natsu to control. And when he nearly ends up going on a rampage himself, Lucy manages to cool him down before the situation gets any worse.

In one fell swoop, I've gone from being kind of indifferent toward this sequel to genuinely excited about where it could end up going later down the line. This was easily the strongest the show has been since the season started and we even got some pretty good battle animation out of the whole deal for the fight with Mercphobia—so it was a strong showing on all fronts. I'll admit that a lot of my excitement here is mostly around what Ignia could bring to the story, and given that Mashima can be consistently inconsistent as a writer, it's hard to know whether or not that excitement will end up being misplaced. But hey, it's nice to have something potentially cool to latch onto. I can already see how Ignia could make for a great nemesis to Natsu as the rest of this story goes on, so I'm gonna opt to stay optimistic for the moment. And if it can deliver on at least a fraction of that potential, then I think I'll be able to really get on board with this sequel.

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