English Dub Review: Fairy Tail “Morning Star”

The battle for Ishgar escalates to bathtub warfare.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The war between Fairy Tail and the Alvarez Empire rages on, as battles continue both on the ground and in the sky. Up in the air, Erza faces Ajeel the sand mage, but finds herself unable to use her Requip magic, which she suspects is similar to the issue she faced when facing Brandish a few episodes back. Without her magic, she is completely outmatched by the powerful, if not arrogant, Ajeel.

Down below, Lucy finds the answer to this problem in the form of Cavendish of the Spriggan 12 naked in her bathtub. Cavendish, ignoring the stakes of the battle raging outside, offers Lucy to come inside the tub with her, since she believes that this battle is already decided and she would enjoy the good company. She reveals that she also has Marin, the spatial mage who can disable enemy spatial magic, stowed away. Lucy, seeing no other option, strips down to the lewd and gets in the tub with Cavendish. Once inside, she believes she can stab Cavendish in the back and knock out one of the major players on the Spriggan 12. However, Cavendish surprises her when she asks Lucy about her mother, who apparently she knows.

Cavendish and Lucy then head out to the street, where their fight truly begins. Cana arrives just in time to support Lucy, and the two are able to knock out Marin from the fight, rendering his spatial magic field inert. Up in the sky, this gives Erza a chance to turn the tables on Ajeel. She requips into a stronger armor, one with a water sword that lets her strike Ajeel despite his ability to transform into sand. Ajeel responds by swallowing the area in an enormous sandstorm that buffets Erza and sucks away her magical power. In a cunning move, however, Erza turns the table by donning her Morning Star armor, which shines brightly through the sandstorm. This gives the signal for Bisca down below to fire the Jupiter Cannon, which she does point blank at Ajeel. The powerful magical blast courses through the sky and strikes straight and true. Ajeel falls to the ground, defeated, and his sandstorm dissipates into the air.

Our Take:

Well, let no one say that Fairy Tail is afraid to be provocative. After the lukewarm start to this battle, I was surprised to see things take such an odd turn to continue the fight. I am, of course, talking about the impromptu lewd showdown between Brandish and Lucy in her own bathroom. This is not something totally unfamiliar with me, as “One Piece” has also gone down the road of having a lewd, bathroom-based battle, yet it is still just as strange as when I had firstborn witness to this kind of fight.

Admittedly, the Cavendish/Lucy confrontation isn’t as much of a fight as it just a cheeky way to get Lucy to take her clothes off. I’m not a prude when it comes to anime fanservice, but lewdity of this grade is pretty blatantly pointless. Not to mention, Lucy has always been a fanservice character to the end, being lewded on more than anyone else in the show by an insane margin. Your patience with this sort of thing is entirely up to you. Some people think fanservice is just fantastic, but for me, this just gets in the way. Fanservice is great, but it can’t exist just by itself if it’s going to add to the episode in any real capacity. A fight can do really well with fanservice as a style or a bonus on top of the fight, (Such as the Kalifa/Nami fight in One Piece) but it is not a replacement for good storytelling.

However, on the flip side, this episode offered a compelling, if not brief fight in the form of Erza vs. Ajeel. While I don’t think Fairy Tail is doing its due diligence to make the kind of complex, intricate fights that I come to a shounen for, but for what it’s trying to do, it’s going alright. The Ajeel Erza fight offered some good twists and turns to keep interested, but mostly won me over for its explosive finish. I love the idea of “Team fighting” with multiple characters working together in a shounen, and Erza using her Morning Star armor to act as a target for the Jupiter Cannon is exactly the clever kind of setup I expect from a top-notch shounen.

Overall, we’ve got a solid episode on our hands, but one that still suffers from certain drawbacks hampering it from greatness. I hope Fairy Tail can continue to escalate this conflict, and make it into an arc that’s truly memorable.