Chapter 13 Fairy Tail’s 100-Year Mission

After many battles over the past few weeks, things are finally starting to slow down. For the most part, this episode really boils down to Erza’s battle with Laxus and Natsu, and Happy’s encounter with Tuca, the latter of which throws up some revelations that are either very interesting, Either a bit disappointing depending on your point of view. While this makes things a lot simpler than the past few episodes we’ve had, that’s certainly not a bad thing, as the extra focus this arc needs will keep me excited about where it’s going again.

Let’s start with Erza’s fight with Laxus, since that fight is pretty easy. I’ve complained before that the power scale among Fairy Tail guild members has remained static since the early days of the series (especially since it’s mostly at Lucy’s expense), but the only positive thing about it is that Erza and Laxus were always trying to keep their balance. It all carries over to this point, as there’s a lot of back and forth between the two of them, giving us the most focused coolness we’ve gotten from any fight lately. I’m going to reveal some new abilities for Erza to learn Wendy’s barrier magic and enchant her sword with Natsu’s fire and Gray’s ice because that’s going to be Cheap way to win, but Laxus had to hold on throughout the win and he got the weird blood lightning in the Alvarez arc, so that helps balance things out. Plus, we get all this action in the middle of the show, shout-out to a cool new addition insert songand pulls off some surprisingly solid combat animations compared to the show’s usual standards, so I can’t say it didn’t pull out all the stops in its presentation. Surprisingly, the match ended in a draw, which felt a little weird since everything was going in Erza’s direction, but her overwhelming win rate tends to make some of her fights a little too predictable, so this was a pretty Nice way to show that she’s far from invincible and doesn’t need to subject her to any lame and/or horny forms of humiliation to do so, so it’s a nice compromise. Unfortunately for both of them, this was the perfect outcome for Kilia as it left her free to destroy the other Wood Dragon’s orb and put them both at her mercy, so I Not sure how they’re going to get out of this.

As for the Natsu, Happy, and Tuka thing, it all gets really weird when we learn the truth about Tuka’s identity: she’s actually been a transcendent all along, and has always been in love with Happy instead of Natsu, because She got two confused when they first rescued her. It turns out that she’s Happy’s type too, and he decides to make it his goal to do whatever it takes to separate her from the White Mage. I can imagine this twist could have been an anticlimax since the show was already setting up a reunion between Natsu and Tuca, but to its credit we do get a clear glimpse of Tuca shortly A tail grew out of her front, and she did talk about her knight in shining armor riding a fire dragon, so you can’t say the joke wasn’t telegraphed, and I can’t pretend it was at least mildly funny. Still, this does kind of lose potential, as her crush on Natsu might have provided enough impetus for things to happen between Natsu and Lucy (the show even teased earlier in the episode that when Jewika Cana teases Lucy about having some competition), and while I’m not the biggest Happy/Kara shipper, their dynamic is cute enough that it’s hard to imagine turning it into a love triangle doing anything more, But it will drag it down. I’m still interested to see where the show goes with Touka next, but I also hope she doesn’t turn into Happy’s Juvia because it feels a little unnecessary.

Natsu and Happy don’t have much time to ponder the implications of this particular twist, though, as the White Mage eventually regains control of Tuka’s body and attempts to possess Natsu. Before this, Happy recalled mentioning that she was unable to touch Wood Dragon’s spheres with her own powers, and when he threw one of the spheres at her, her body’s reaction to it hinted that she might not be as human as she was. Claims to be. However, it might be a while before we get an answer to this little mystery, as it looks like the show will be tweaking it a bit next week to adapt a side story. Normally I wouldn’t be a fan of this kind of interruption, but after the last few episodes dragged a bit and the show could use a slight change of pace, it seemed like the perfect time to hit the pause button, so I was prepared for a little distraction thing.

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Fairy Tail: The 100 Year Quest Currently streaming on Crunchyroll.