English Dub Review: Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest “Scarlet Showdown”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Erza fights a possessed Laxus to a stalemate, allowing Kiria to destroy the third orb, leaving two left. At another orb site, Natsu and Happy find out Touka’s true identity: a cat who apparently thought Happy was Natsu.

OUR TAKE

Three orbs are gone, two left to go, and the tension is continuing to rise. Of the parts of early Fairy Tail that I actually remember, I recall Laxus being a major powerhouse who only became more strong as the series went on, in another case of the great shonen tradition of an early enemy becoming a much stronger ally later on. But because everyone’s getting possessed, his power is now actually a threat to the heroes involved, in this case Erza, who only manages to get him down by copying Natsu and Gray’s abilities, and even THAT isn’t enough to take him down without completely exhausting Erza, giving the interloping Kiria the chance to bring Aldoron closer to being controlled by destroying the third orb. There’s still Lucy, Gray, Juvia, and Natsu ready to fight, but Erza was a major gun that is now off the playing field. It’s clear the next few fights are where it’s really going to count. And somehow it’s going to involve Natsu because just like every other Shonen protagonist you can think of off the top of your head, Natsu has to be the one who faces the big boss at the end of every arc.

And as mentioned in the Overview, the other main detail to talk about is the reveal that Touka is actually a cat like Happy and apparently her crush on “Natsu” was really a crush on Happy. As it turns out, Natsu and Happy saved her from bandits some time ago and Happy apparently said HE was Natsu, so now this cat has been looking for someone with the wrong name in mind. As for why she has a human form at all? Well, the White Mage is making her look that way for some odd reason. I guess it wouldn’t be very intimidating if this mysterious villain was talking in the form of a cute cat girl. Anyway, there’s apparently two more episodes of this arc to go, which makes sense considering there isn’t that much left to do here. But before we can get to those last two episodes, we apparently have to get through a recap episode, because even in this era of streaming where all episodes are available all the time, animators and writers still need a bit of a break every now and then. So whatever, let’s get it over with and then back to the story.