English Dub Review: Fairy Tail “Together, Always”

Bane particles, not even once.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Gajeel has seen Levy fall to the power of the bane particles before his very eyes while fighting against the demonic powers of Bloodman. At that moment, he feels the weight of his failure to protect her falling upon him, and reflects on his past of always being second best to the dragon slayers around him. He finds his resolve and begins to suck in all the bane particles around him, infusing them with his steel body. Doing this, he’s able to remove the bane particles from Levy’s body and enter a dark iron form. In this powerful new form, he defeats Bloodman in one swoop. However, this is a move of desperation, and will end, he knows, in his own demise. Levy can’t bear to see this and rushes in to save Gajeel, but Pantherlily holds her back since even being near Gajeel puts her life at risk. Levy bursts into tears as she’s forced to watch her friend die, reflecting on all the times they’ve shared together. Gajeel soon disintegrates into the air, and Levy falls to the ground in sadness.

Elsewhere, Natsu’s team continues their attempt at negotiations with August, the all-powerful mage in the Spriggan Twelve. Brandish is actually able to convince August to hear her out since the two of them are close, but at the last minute, she stabs August in the chest. Brandish looks at her hands in horror, as Mest reveals that he had implanted memory in Brandish to get her to stab August. August, still alive, goes into a rage, imbuing himself with magical power. He forces Brandish to pass out and is about to attack Lucy before Natsu pushes her out of the way.

Meanwhile, Irene faces Acnologia, who seeks to do battle with the incredibly powerful mage. But, before they can fight, Irene floods the ground with a strange red aura that encompasses the entire country. This mysterious magic is known only as Universe One and is said by Zeref to be a “Universe Reorganization” magic.

Our Take:

We’ve got an interesting episode on our hands this week on Fairy Tail, one that deals with a lot of the problems I’ve had with this latest arc pretty well. Instead of dividing its attention all over the country, this episode focuses mainly on Gajeel with a little more added to move the story forward into the battle with Irene. Because of this, this episode is both far more entertaining and evocative than many episodes prior and makes me think there’s still some hope for the series.

The emotional core of this episode is all in Gajeel and his sacrifice to keep Levy alive. What’s nice is that this is both a powerful scene and something that doesn’t come out of anywhere. We’ve had a few moments between Gajeel and Levy in the last few episodes to re-establish their relationship and endear the audience to them just in case they haven’t been keeping up with the many years of Fairy Tail lore and character development between them. Gajeel’s sacrifice is a tearjerker, one that pulled the first genuine emotional response from me in what feels like ages watching this show. My biggest complaint about this fight, though, is that it isn’t really much of a battle. Gajeel just ups his power level by taking in the bane particles and then wins. The show doesn’t like to actually have its characters get into real fights that have trials and tribulations to them. If it took a little more time, maybe using the whole episode for Gajeel’s battle with Bloodman, I might be able to get more out of this scene.

The moment where Brandish stabs August is quite the turn in the episode, one I absolutely didn’t see coming. I like the idea that the Ishgar forces are not all venerable, kind people, and that Mest throws a wrench into things by adding an element of ruthlessness to this fight. However, August’s motivation to fight in seeing Ishgar’s “True colors” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, because up until this point the Alvarez forces haven’t had any real reason to fight other than their loyalty to Zeref. There might be more to that, but this is the sort of thing that should have been built up to earlier or at least mentioned. Given the behavior of many of the Alvarez mages, I don’t the “Bad guys for a good reason” trope is going to work here.

The episode ends on a strong note, one that piques my curiosity to see what happens next. This new “Universe reorganization” might be just what this arc needs to shake things up. If it doesn’t, well, it’s not like we have anything to lose here.