Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest

Episode 9

After last week's dip into romantic sub-plots, this one's all about the action as Natsu and the others face off against the rest of their guildmates. While we don't get much story progress, that's mostly compensated by fight match-ups, and giving us an opportunity for a few rematches. On the flip side, this heavy focus on action means that there isn't much else to talk about.

Natsu, Lucy, and Erza are ambushed by the rest of the guild. They're rescued by Wendy and Gray before Juvia explains the whole situation. The biggest piece of information they get is how the White Mage can take control of, and regulate the magic of others. She had originally planned to use those powers to sick Merchphobia on the other Dragon Gods, but since Natsu and the others defeated him, she shifted plans to taking control of the rest of the Fairy Tail guild and having them defeat the Dragon Gods instead. Now that the White Mage is using the other guild members to start stripping the Wood Dragon God of its magic, Natsu and the gang are left with no choice but to try taking out some of the guild members individually to free them from her control.

As far as the current matchups go, we see Gray getting pitted against Laxus's squad, Natsu facing Gajeel (after taking out Makao, Wakaba, and Romeo off-screen which I'll admit is pretty hilarious), and Lucy getting the short end of the straw by having to fight all three Strauss siblings. While Gray fighting Bixlow is a nice little callback to the Battle of Fairy Tail from way back, it's probably the least interesting of these on paper, so I'm a lot more curious to see how the other two go. It's also been a while since Natsu and Gajeel threw down. While they don't have the same level of hardcore rivalry as Goku and Vegeta or Naruto and Sasuke, it is pretty fun getting to watch them go all out, and throw all of their power-ups at each other (even if it highlights how inconsistently they're used at this stage).

I am pretty worried about how Lucy's fight will go, mainly because she, and even her spirits, have already spent a fair chunk of it pointing out how little of a chance they stand against Mirajane specifically. To be fair, power scaling is mostly meaningless, as the reality is that any character can win against any other character in their series so long as the author feels like it and it's especially worthless in this series as nearly every major character has had at least one victory against someone they were otherwise clearly outmatched against. Everyone that is…except for Lucy whose fights are either used entirely for comedy, have her pitted against much stronger opponents that she needs someone else to bail her from, or have some form of outside interference blindside her right as she's about to get a win. In nearly any other battle shonen series this would be disappointing but not too unusual treatment for a member of its female cast. Since Fairy Tail is otherwise good about equal opportunity fisticuffs, Lucy's poor track record stands out as particularly egregious. It feels especially lame to see her need to whip out her newest upgrade against Lisanna (who's hardly been shown to do much fighting herself) of all characters rather than Mirajane herself. Still, with the others being caught up in their own fights or otherwise possessed, it's hard to imagine how she'd get out of this besides actually winning, so I'm hoping that this will be the time when Mashima finally decides to throw our girl a bone. She deserves it.

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