English Dub Review: Fairy Tail “Raging Fire of the Dragon”

 

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Despite being fatally injured last week, Natsu makes a miraculous recovery courtesy of Lucy. She’s rewritten the Book of E.N.D. and given him a new chance to defeat Zeref. It takes a toll on her, but Gray and Happy help her out. Over the ocean, Jellal and Acnologia fight, but Jellal is no match for an all-powerful arcane dragon. At the last second, Anna and Mr. Ichiya save the day by sacrificing themselves, pushing the great beast into the time rift with the Christina. Natsu defeats Zeref and goes to see his friends, leaving the battered bad guy to Mavis.

Our Take:

Well, it’s finally over! After what seems like ages, Natsu has bested Zeref and Acnologia has finally been put to rest in the time rift. (Although I have questions about the finality of that.) Raging Fire of the Dragon wraps up the big battle scenes with some solid action and a couple of surprises. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but I’m glad the show has now put these moments behind in order to move on to something more interesting.

Starting with Natsu’s struggle against Zeref, the episode gets off to a relatively slow start. We see a recap of Natsu’s resurrection and Lucy’s pain as the strange red markings carve across her body. It takes someone fluent in the demonic script to write in the book, and it takes a lot out of Lucy to do it. Luckily, Gray is able to use his freezing powers to cool her off, although it’s still a tough challenge. Once Natsu is safely back up, he commences fighting with Zeref. There are some nice action scenes as the battle goes on. Eventually, it climaxes when Natsu uses his special move ‘Fire Dragon King Destruction Fist’. Yup, it sounds powerful alright. He summons firepower from the entire guild to fuel him, saying he was only fighting for selfish reasons before. Zeref uses Dark Abyss Exploding Blade, but it isn’t enough to overcome Natsu’s immensely passionate power, and he falls.

While this is going on, the crew of the Christina have abandoned ship and are watching as Jellal tries to take on Acnologia. It isn’t much of a fight, and Jellal is quickly pacified. But the ship begins to rise out of the water, much to everyone’s surprise. Anna is at the helm, trying to destroy Acnologia and fulfill her 400-year long mission. I found this storyline a bit more interesting, just because there was more tension than there is watching Zeref and Natsu’s fight. You just know Natsu will come up on top, but I was less sure about what would happen to Jellal and Anna. The Christina is an ornery ship, and Anna quickly loses control. Mr. Ichiya has stayed behind too, though, and finishes the job for her. Together, they push Acnologia into the time rift, while also banishing themselves. It’s quite the sacrifice, and everyone watching is overcome with emotion. I wasn’t, though, because I was still remembering a few episodes back when the time rift did nothing to contain Acnologia. He just flew right through it, right? So why are they so sure he’s gone now? I couldn’t really get past that, but I’d love to be proved wrong.

The English dub for this episode was okay. Props to Natsu’s voice actor for doing a lot of screaming during that fight. “You make a promise that you’re gonna survive.” Seems like a weird thing to say to your attempted murderer, but okay Natsu. “When it seems like there’s nothing left, our bond gives us our power!” Natsu realizing that he needs to channel his bond of friendship is such a tired cliche. I get that this is just the type of show Fairy Tail is, but still. “That’s the world I’m trying to create!” Zeref seems to think his motives are a lot more innocent than they appear on the surface.

Raging Fire of the Dragon wraps up the fight between Natsu and Zeref in a safely predictable way. There were some stakes though when it came to Erza, Wendy, Anna, Jellal, and Ichiya’s fight with Acnologia. I still have questions about the success of pushing the dragon into the time rift, but hey, magical time traveling is a finicky business I guess?