English Dub Review: Fairy Tail “Law of Space”

Beach episode? Beach episode.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

With Erza Scarlet as their guild master, Fairy Tail is once again a guild, but still not whole without its former leader, Makarov. Levy goes to to the Magic Council to make contact with the magical leaders of the land, and communes with several of the Wizard Saints, who discuss the perilous situation they have with Alvarez. In particular, they note that God Serena, a powerful mage, has defected to Alvarez as a member of the Spriggan Twelve, a team of powerful wizards who serve as the royal guard to Spriggan, the emperor of Alvarez.

Meanwhile, the small team searching for Makarov is crossing the ocean on a ship to Alvarez. The team discusses their situation, and Mest insists that they stop at a nearby island to meet up with a contact who will tell them how to sneak into the Alvarez empire. Back at home at the same time, the “B” team led by Gajeel is searching for Laxus.

Natsu and the others land at Caracol Island, but find it occupied by Alvarez soldiers. That means to sneak in, the team will have to pretend to wizard from the Cait Shelter guild to sneak by the soldiers. Lucy and Erza use their obvious “Assets” to sway the guards to be kind enough to let them through, and soon the team is deep into the island. Things go well until they see an Alvarez soldier threaten a small child, and immediately step into action to take them on. They dispatch the soldiers with ease and retreat back into obscurity. While in town, they meet a kind man running a mango gelato shop, who dreams of moving to Ishgar until his stand mysteriously blows up.

Erza and the others turn around to see the source of the explosion, an Alvarez mage named Marin Hollow. Erza is about to give him what for until she realizes that she can’t use her Requipping magic. Marin explains that Erza’s magic won’t work because he controls “Space” magic, which prevents magic which takes things from space from working. Lucy tries to use her magic too but to no effect. Marin then uses his magic to teleport Lucy and Erza to his “Chillout” space, and then turns on Natsu and Gray, looking for a fight. He kicks Gray and Natsu around for a bit until they’re met by a new arrival, a powerful mage named Brandish.

Our Take:

This was a strange and awkward episode we had this week on Fairy Tail. It’s becoming increasingly clear because of showings like this that the show is probably going to be very hit or miss as far as its weekly offerings go. While I’ve enjoyed the larger story that it’s telling, its individual episodes don’t do a whole lot in terms of drama, tension or storytelling. There’s a lot of issues here, but the main one lies with the episode concept. It uses the island setting to give the episode a “beach episode” feel, but that doesn’t do much for the setting of this show and feels rather generic.

Not a whole lot happens here in terms of story content. A great deal of the episode is dedicated to long dialogue back-and-forths that don’t have much impact on the story, along with plenty of exposition and throwaway ass-kicking. Sadly, a lot of the plot this week feels like filler, time that could have been better spent with moving the B team’s plot forward. Instead, we have to sit and watch and Natsu and company demolish some Alvarez soldiers without much trouble, and make the kind of slapstick, juvenile jokes that have grown old in this series.

This episode gives us our first impression of Alvarez and its soldiers, which means here is where we see what Alvarez actually is in solidified terms. Sadly, this first impression turns out to be really disappointing. I was expecting an empire of darkness, someplace with a distinguishing visual style or magical system that would set opposed to Ishgar, but it couldn’t be further from that. Other than the kinda spooky armor of the Alvarez soldiers, Marin Hollow just seems to be another cocky mage like any other. Just another overpowered Fairy Tail villain with a weird personality that most likely won’t be around for too long. He’s a villain that’s too one-note to be interesting, and too wacky to be threatening. Not to mention the “Law of space” power is so vague that it could basically do anything. Spatial magic can be an interesting concept but its confusingly portrayed here, and the minimal animation doesn’t help explain much about it either.

Fairy Tail definitely has some storytelling problems that it has to work out. Its got a strong cast and a good setup for a story, but it needs to follow that up with some defining villains and plots that will keep the viewer invested from week to week. The re-entry into the series of is over, its time for the real plot to get rolling.