English Dub Review: Fairy Tail “Gray’s Trump Card”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

After the fall of Irene last week, the Universe One spell dissipated and everything was restored to normal. When Natsu and his gang return to regular Magnolia, they find a lot of fighting happening against the group called the Twelve. But Gray is missing… and Natsu correctly predicts he’s nearby with Zeref.

Our Take:

Boy, Fairy Tail wastes no time throwing us headlong into another long episode featuring a series of fights with countless characters who I barely have time to learn their names. I’m sure that if I’d watched all the previous 300+ episodes, I would have some inklings on who these people are, but from my perspective as a recent newcomer to the world of Fairy Tail, I was pretty lost.

From what I could gather, the members of the Twelve are the ones fighting on the opposite side of Fairy Tail, and Irene was on their side. When she was defeated, they lost their advantages and are now being beaten by members of the Fairy Tail guild. The show drops us in to see how several different fights are faring, including a demon named Mirajane facing off against a weird guy named Jacob whose vaguely British? It’s all very chaotic and meant to give the illusion that a lot of exciting things are happening. But really it just felt very tiring and bland. (The abundance of faceless gray blobs standing in for bystanders definitely doesn’t help matters in this case, making the scenes feel half-baked and generic.)

My favorite part of the episode was probably Gray and Zeref. Their meeting was ripe with tension and neither one of them are clearly overpowered or anything, so I’m not sure what will happen when they start legitimely fighting in the next episode. I have no idea what’s going on with Gildarts and August’s battle, but why does August have so many nicknames?

The dub this week has a lot of characters in it, and they all did fairly good jobs. I especially liked Jacob’s weird British accept, and the script did a good job of complimenting his English mannerisms. His reaction to Mirajane’s transformation was cute: “Bloody hell! Even more indecent!” Lisanna and Elfman are a neat pair to watch, although I could’ve done without another boring diatribe on the losses that come from war: “Everyone that you’ve defeated – they’ve all lost people they love dearly.” I mean, duh? I thought Zeref’s line about learning facts about everyone was funny – very relatable for sure: “I’ve done my best to learn all I can about every key player.” Gildarts joke about being a joke was nicely done: “How about a punchline?” 

Gray’s Trump Card isn’t much of a fresh start after Irene’s defeat. Instead, it’s a continuation of the members of Fairy Tail’s struggles against the Twelve and Zeref. Most of the individual scenes didn’t mean much to me, but I am enjoying Gray’s standoff with Zeref and how that will play out. I’ll be waiting until next week to find out what damage his Lost Iced Shell magic does.