Anime Reviews: Fairy Tail Episode 35 - Voice of Darkness

The episode starts off with Natsu running around looking for Happy, while the latter is still stuck in Milliana's room.

After that Erza continues her story. The slaves continued their revolt, taking the guards by suprise. A good portion of the fights are still frames, not ideal, but not enough for me to be concerned about their budget, especially considering that the quality has continued to increase ever since I first noticed that improvement.


Meanwhile the two higher ups continue to torture Jellal, attempting to steal his life force to be used for the R-System. Jellal snaps, muttering to himself about how he hates everything about the world, and about the people that have enslaved him, after they have left him in the room to go try and get control of the riot. This hatred allows the spirit of Zeref to posses him, twisting his hatred and turning him evil.


The rebels have found a short reprieve and are bandaging their wounds and making plans to continue their coup against the cult, when they are attacked by the magic troops, who only continue to add to the freaky imagery this episode is throwing at us.


The magic troops start raining down explosive spells on the slaves, and it looks like all is lost as Erza attempts to rally her troops back into order. But they all run, leaving her facing the magic troops completely defenseless.


She is protected at the last minute by an old man she calls "Grandpa Rob." He turns out to not only have once been a wizard, but a wizard of Fairy Tail.


I'm not afraid to admit, but the music playing while he shields Erza from the blasts and the as we see a flashback within the flashback to where Rob explains magic to Erza, and finally dies, is enough to bring me to tears. I've been getting a lot more emotional lately, I have no idea why.

The entire thing ends with Rob's body cracking and exploding into fragments. I kid you not, he explodes. I guess what happens is that his body becomes brittle as he uses up what little is left of his magic, and the stress from forcing more out crystallizes it and causes it to shatter.

Her grief from loosing one of her friends causes Erza's latent magic ability to awaken, not quite sure how exactly it did, but it makes perfect dramatic sense, and she unleashes all the scattered weapons and pickaxes on their enemies.


Once again, I can't help but stress how well the music fits the scene. It's incredibly effective at evoking emotions, and it is much more than I'd expected from this series as far as music goes when I watched the first episode.


Also, once again, Erza reminds me of Braveheart, if William Wallace were the little red haired girl.

Face it Chuck, she's out of your league.

Erza makes her way to where Jellal is being held, but unfortunately she is too late, and he is no longer the boy that she knew. He kills the two that were torturing him, and tells Erza about his intentions of keeping everyone there to finish building the tower. Erza tells him that everyone just wants to leave, and that there's no reason for them to stay in that tower any longer. Jellal tells her that she can leave, but all the others are staying with him, and if she tries to come back to free any of them then he'd kill them.


And with that, the flashback ends and we can finally pick up on the actual story that we've become invested in. It's strange how crucial flashbacks are, but most of the time they are universally hated because they break the flow of the action, and interrupt the story that we really want to continue following. I wonder if there are better ways to do this?

Anyway, the episode ends with Sho having heard Erza's story, and claiming that she was just lying to make herself look good in front of her friends. Simon appears and confirms that Erza's story is the truth, that he never doubted her in the slightest. Simon and Sho join Erza's group, and go off to find Natsu before he and Wally can confront each other.

I know it's kind of strange, but at this point I think I'm liking the anime over the manga. This is especially strange because it's usually the other way around for me. Normally the anime makes changes from the manga that are to the detriment of the overall story, but in this case some of the changes that I'm noticing are actually improving on the manga. I still love the manga, but I still think that the way the anime tells the story, and adds a few details, and in Simon's case makes changes his character design give the story a different feel that I kind of like. Granted, I'm on the fence about Simon's character design change.

Under Simon's mask in the manga.

And in the anime.

Not entirely sure what to think of this change, my best guess is that the purpose is to give viewers one more reason to sympathize with him? The more positive qualities a character has, the more sympathetic they are. And while appearances are a fairly shallow way of doing this in graphic media, it's still an effective way of pulling it off. The Simon from the manga has plenty going on for him as far as being a sympathetic character. In the anime's case he has all that, and he's better looking than his manga counterpart to boot.

Here's what confuses me about this though. Fairy Tail is aimed at a mostly male audience. As in, the audience that really doesn't care if the male characters are good looking as long as they are awesome. So perhaps the change was only for the female audience? Or, perhaps, it suggests something about people in general, that we are just that much more likely to value a person or character if they are physically good looking? Oddly enough, I'm pretty sure that with enough research I could prove that this holds true even for male readers. Normally we like to think of ourselves as above shallow opinions as far as the male characters are concerned, or maybe we don't want to draw attention to it out of fear for having our sexuality questioned. But I'm convinced that regular, heterosexual males prefer to watch anime, or read manga where the main character, or more, are at least passably handsome. It's a strange phenomenon, but there you have it. Humans just like looking at attractive humans more than ugly humans, and hence the change in Simon's appearance.

Anime Reviews: Fairy Tail Episode 34 - Jellal

The magic council are discussing the R-system, a series of towers built by an unnamed cult, which they had thought destroyed. In the course of their discussion it is revealed that Sieglein, a member of the council, is the twin brother of Jellal, the leader of the people that kidnapped Erza. This amuses me because in the manga they left the connection vague. While in this case they go ahead and give a reason why the two look exactly the same. Up until the real reason is revealed of course.

In the flashback Erza and her friends are trying to escape. The cultists tell them that if the person responsible comes forward they'll only punish that person and leave the others alone. They don't want to damage their workers too much after all. Jellal admits to having planned the escape, when in actuality it was Sho who planned it. But the cultists don't buy it, and take Erza instead.

The flashback ends and we return to Sho talking to Erza in the jail cell. Remember how I said she wouldn't be a maiden in distress for long? While Sho has his back turned to her, delivering a fairly weak monologue, Erza manages to unhook her rope from the wall, knock him out, remove the magic blocking rope, and re-equip her armor. So now she's free, and she is pissed.


Back with the council Sieg tries to convince them to use Etherion, the magical equivalent of the A-Bomb. They are understandably reluctant to do so, despite the threat that the R-System posts. According to the cultists, the R-System is known as the Revive System, a dark magic that uses human sacrifices as fuel to resurrect one person.

Natsu and the rest arrive at the bottom of the tower and look for a way in. Juvia scouts down underneath the water to look for a way in, and finds a secret passage they can use. The only problem is that it would take ten minutes of diving to reach it. Not a problem for Natsu or Gray, but a fairly big problem for :not-a-shonen-male-character" Lucy. Juvia provides them with bubbles of oxygen trapped in water to put on their heads, gaining Natsu's admiration.


Of course Natsu, being Natsu...


Also, Juvia has the best lines ever, and I couldn't help but make this:


They manage to break into the tower, but are immediately found by nameless guards, who are of course just as immediately beaten. But now Jellal already knows they are here, but invites them into the tower anyway. They go looking for Erza and Happy, with Natsu being less than discreet in his search methods, though that is in no way surprising. What is surprising is that they've found a large banquet set out for them, and are eating freely from it. They decide that since their presence in the tower is known, and they've been allowed to enter freely that it might be a challenge.

Erza finds them, and tells them to leave her, that she'll take care of the entire thing by herself. Natsu tells her there's no way they're leaving, not with Happy still captured by Erza's former friends. Natsu takes off looking for happy, and Erza, touched by their loyalty, decides to tell them about her past and her connection to the tower.


Erza tells them how she and several other slaves were being used to build the Tower of Heaven, and the flashback picks up again. Jellal manages to free Erza from the room where her life force was being drained, and they try to fight their way out, but are both captured again and Jellal is taken in Erza's place.

Erza finally snaps and fights back against the jailers once they try to take them back to work. The moment where she convinces the other slaves to fight back is pretty motivational, well written and well scored for the music. Overall it's a pretty powerful scene, if you can get over how tiny she looks trying to lead a rebellion.

Thus proving that Erza easily has the longest track record for Shonen female characters who can kick righteous amounts of ass. The episode ends with Erza explaining that at the same time that they were rising up against their slavers, the boy known as Jellal changed and became what she considered pure evil. And thus the last image of the episode is not only incredibly disturbing but also accompanied by that incredibly inappropriate upbeat ending theme.

Not Pictured: Appropriate music.

This episode was pretty good, not one of my favorites, but not terrible. While I hate flashbacks on principle, this one is shaping to be pretty good. Granted I already know the story, but the musical accompaniment for the dramatic scenes has to be mentioned, as it creates a very inspiring, dramatic mood.

But, I know this is a little late, but I plan on being caught up by today.

TV Reviews: Futurama S06E03

The fun thing about this episode was that it picked up the pace on the humor from the last two episodes. It also continues working with Futurama's strength, namely likable characters. When Fry posts the embarrassing video of Leela with his eye-phone (which in itself isn't just a throwaway parody of the iPhone, the phone itself is actually installed in the eye) he does so, but is fully aware that what he's done is wrong and feels remorse for it. And yet, he still posted the video. This to me makes the character all that much more human. He's still a looser, and pretty selfish, but in a very human way. As opposed to the almost sociopathic Peter Griffin whose antics only make me hate the character more and more. I don't know why Family Guy thinks that's comedy, but having a raging jackass as your protagonist really, really does not work. It's novel for a little while, but after several seasons you can't help but wonder why people still put up with him.

Futurama, while a little tamer with its jokes, actually creates characters that are sympathetic in several ways, and make the show that much more entertaining. Sure they're all pretty much idiots in one way or another, sure Bender is a selfish jagoff, but when compared to the entire cast of Family Guy he's a very humane character. Despite being a robot.

I know I'm not saying much about what happened in this episode, but I just felt like I had to mention what makes this show worth following. Once again, it's the characters. While selfish, and ridiculously dense at times, the cast of Futurama comes complete with understandable emotions and motivations that don't always center around themselves. This is a little short I know, but I figure that besides this I really didn't have much to say about this episode, other than that it was incredibly entertaining and I had a great time watching it. This new season of Futurama is turning out to be worth the time I spend watching it.

Movie Reviews: The Twilight Saga - Eclipse

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Why do I keep doing this to myself? Mostly to have something to complain about here. And for that Eclipse delivered. In barrel loads.

First off...you know what? I'm not going to do it. Making fun of Twilight is too easy. It's a wretched, over the top story about a love sick Mary-Sue, told in a fashion that would make purple prose embarrassed. We all know it's basically porn in disguise. (Why do I get the feeling that word is going to net me a ton of page views? Happened with my webcomic all those years ago -_-). The movies actually manage to improve on the original books, which really isn't saying much as excrement that has had a few gritty pieces picked out to make it smoother is still excrement. And yes, I do like using big words. It makes me feel smart. Like a high school student writing an essay.

Instead, I'm going to review what this movie did right. Keep in mind, it's still a Twilight movie, and as such is terrible by default. But I think a different spin to this review is called for.


First off, the acting has actually improved. It isn't going to win any awards, though I think Robert Pattison deserves at least a consolation prize for not showing up to the set drunk. Stoned out of his mind however is another mater, so I'll be taking that prize if you please. Surprisingly enough, Kristen Stewart's acting has actually improved. She's still horrible, but she's not Twilight and New Moon horrible.

The script cut out a ton of material from the books, Edward only disables her car once in the movie, as opposed to all the lengths he goes to in the book to keep Bella away from Jacob. This alone makes the character much, much more likable. I still don't like him because I remember what his actual character is, but for the sake of the movie his controlling personality is toned down a lot, which I think does the movie credit.

The action scenes are...okay. I mean compared to what we got in the last two movies (aka/ none) this movie is freaking Diehard. I would have preferred a lot more action, but this is Twilight, I knew what I was getting into when I walked into that theater.

Compared to the first two movies the music has improved a lot. Which isn't surprising, as it was composed by Howard Shore. Please allow me a moment to mourn.

How did they get Howard Shore!? Has he not been getting enough work since opting out of scoring King Kong? Was he really this desperate? Either way, the music is actually quite good, what little bit of it they allowed into the movie. Most of the time it was the typical emo fare, but the few times that Shore's score actually showed its face the movie started to resemble something epic, musically at least. Of course this would be invariably ruined, though there was one scene in particular that I thought fit the music fairly well. Of course Howard Shore is a pretty good composer, even if I only really know his work from the Lord of the Rings. It's still one of my favorite sets of soundtracks, and I can tell he has talent. If I didn't know it before this, then his work for this movie convinced me. If he's able to take something like Eclipse and give it a respectable soundtrack, then I'm convinced the man is a genius.

Just as a final note, I was glad that the character Leah got at least a little bit of screen time. With how often she gets shafted in the books she's easily the most sympathetic character to me. I guess you can say that I relate to her after reading the books?

As you all know pictures say a thousand words, and I think that there is one image that effectively describes the rest of this movie.

Soft Core Porn.

Because you hadn't noticed yourself already.

Well, I know I'm a little behind on the Fairy Tail reviews. I have the remaining two almost entirely written. I'll get them up soon. Keep in mind, that chronologically they'll appear before this, just because I have drafts saved and don't want to change them. Not that anyone is really reading this right now, so by the time somebody does read it, it'll all be in order anyway.

For the record, my mostly positive review aside, this movie was in fact pretty wretched, but I just felt that went without saying.

Anime Reviews: Fairy Tail Episode 33 - Tower of Heaven

At the end of the last episode Loke gave Lucy tickets to a beach side resort for her and her team. Episode thirty three picks up right after that point, with the group already at the resort. This is the start of the Tower of Paradise arc, though in this case the episode is name Tower of Heaven, but it's the same darn thing.

After some swimsuit fun in the first few minutes, the scene shifts to an undisclosed location, where several strangely dressed people are overseeing a construction site of some sort. A construction site manned by slave labor.


Turns out it was all a dream, because, guess who:


Erza's dream is of her past, so yup, we've had Gray, we've had Lucy, and we've had Loke. Now it's Erza's turn. Strangely enough, besides the fact that we know he was raised by a dragon, we know the least about Natsu's past. Even in the manga.


During this part of the episode we not only learn that something bad happened in her past. But we also learn an interesting fact about Erza's personality, that she doesn't just wear the armor for practicality, but that there's a psychological component to it too.


This is an element that will come up later in this arc, and serves a bit as a character theme for Erza over the course the arc. Really it makes her all the more interesting as a character, she's established as the strong woman, and by the end of this arc that image will be torn down, and rebuilt. Of course I'm getting ahead of myself.

Lucy comes into Erza's room and invites her down to the casino, where Gray and Natsu are already playing. In a case of anime changes making the original line not make sense, the first I noticed being from Bleach where Matsumoto getting half her torso ripped off (not as graphic as it sounds) getting replaced with the area just being covered in burn marks in the anime, Lucy's line that Erza's dress is a little flashy doesn't make sense, when in the anime Lucy also happens to be wearing an evening gown.


At the casino Juvia approaches Gray, graduating from being a stalker. But not a psychotic or creepy stalker mind you.


Though given how many stalking scenes the animators added, I'm starting to think they're the creepy ones.

Again!

Erza and her group are attacked by strangers, that are revealed as old friends of Erza. And again in a case of the anime making changes that don't make sense, Wally is moved from sitting at a slot machine, to randomly sitting on a stool in the middle of nowhere.


I also hope I'm not the only person who gets a chuckle out of this:


Erza's former companions take out her current team, and kidnap her. Oddly enough, while for a short moment Erza falls into the "Damsel in Distress" that so many anime women fall into, she's fairly unique in that she doesn't stay in that role for very long. She'll be helpless maybe for another episode.

The episode ends with Natsu and the rest going after Erza, while she is being taken by boat to the Tower of Heaven, where the mysterious Jelal waits for her.

I really enjoyed this episode, mostly because it was the start of another major arc, and one that I don't remember as well from the manga. Granted, the reason I don't remember it as well is because I skipped over it during one or more of my rereads. Which kind of tells you what I thought of it originally, but I'm hoping for a few surprises at least.

The interesting thing about this arc is that the first time I read it it felt like the climax of the series. And in a way it is, because after this arc several changes happen, new members, a new guild hall, and some other changes that give the series a slightly different feel from what it had before. As such I've come to see this arc as the climax of the old, and while it's really only the beginning for larger storylines to come, I have a sneaking suspicion that the animation studio might use that final feel to this arc as a place to stop the series. I certainly hope not, I've been enjoying this and would like to see it go on for a while, but if they were going to stop, after this arc would be one of the better places to stop. This'd put the series at possibly forty episodes. A decent run, but I hope my prediction isn't true. I don't know how well the series has been doing in Japan, but if they go past this arc I hope they continue to follow the manga until it ends itself, as after this arc there will be far too much introduced for any other ending to feel satisfying.

Movie Reviews: The Last Airbender

Ye-gads this movie was awful! I want my ten dollars back! Granted, that would net me a five dollar profit, since I only paid five dollars to see this movie. I think the theater was disguising the discount as a student discount, when in reality it was an apology for how terrible this movie was going to be.

I'll be fair, it was fun to watch, kind of the same way watching a train wreck is fun. What? Am I the only one?

There were script problems (oh boy were there script problems), there were acting problems, pronunciation problems (why is Aang so hard to say? Did none of these people see the original show? If no, then why did you let them work on this thing!?), Katara problems (ye-gads she sucked!!). You name it, this movie had problems with it. It was Murphy's Law the Motion Picture.

When the movie started with Katara failing her water bending and dumping water on Sokka, was I the only one who half expected him to rip her throat out with his fangs? Was I the only one who wished this had actually happened once the movie was half way through?

All the scope, the potential that I saw in the trailers, it wasn't in the movie. It was so much wasted potential. I could literally see their budget shrinking as the movie progressed. It looked like it was supposed to be a big budget movie, but instead turned into an expensive Nickelodeon direct to TV movie that somehow sneaked into the movie theater.


I guess I can't write this review without addressing the casting issues. Yes, most of the main cast was white. Oddly enough the background characters were Asian, so it was quite clear that this wasn't "white people in asian society." The background characters were Asian, meaning the people living in the Last Airbender world did not just dress Asian, but were Asian. This makes white people being cast in the lead all the more stark than I thought it was going to be. Though I did detect something of a theme in the races cast for the different nations. The Earth kingdom was Asian. The water tribe were a mix of Whites and Asians, depending on whether they had a speaking role or not. The air nomads were kind of strange as they seemed to range between White, Asian and Black. I could tell that they put a bit of effort into trying to make Aang look Asian, proving that Hollywood is as sensitive as ever.


The Firenation were all consistently Indian, which was a nice touch at least. But if you want to get reeeeaaally picky, then anthropologically speaking Indians are not Asian. They are Caucasoid, meaning that, again, anthropologically speaking, they are more closely related to White people than Asians. Proximity of India to Asia notwithstanding.

On that note, for the entire movie I could have sworn that M. Night Shyamalan cast himself as General Zhao. A quick visit to imdb.com once I got home proved that was not true. Could have fooled me. Aasif Mandvhi is so bad an actor that I mistook him for a director. Probably could have done a better job with this movie.

Continuing the thread of bad acting. Cliff Curtis was a terrible Firelord Ozai. His character was indistinguishable from Zhao, and had none of the threatening presence of the Ozai from the cartoons.

Oh yeah, and Katara sucked, most of the mispronunciation is her fault, and Sokka didn't do anything. He didn't even fill the comic relief role. Sigh. Even his brief romance with Yue was painfully written. Geez, go back to making constipated doe eyed looks at Alice.

The worst part is that my fear that adapting a twenty episode series into a two hour long movie was right. The pacing was terrible, and even when they cut out most of the events from the series there was still too much background that had to be explained. And that's exactly what happened. It got explained. In dialogue. No showing, telling. And it got told in the most painful, awkward, unnatural way possible. I was cringing, wondering why nobody took M. Night away from the keyboard and let a real screen writer finish the script.

And if that wasn't bad enough: Firebending. Needs. Fire. As. A. Source. This means that if there is no fire the firebenders are useless. I cannot convey my rage in any eloquent form. To properly show exactly how angry I am I would have to type in all caps. But, I'm sure you feel the exact same rage I do as you read my words. In the end Iroh turns out to be capable of creating fire out of nothing, proving that no matter how much the director may try to screw everyone else over, Iroh is just too much of a badass to be contained. That part might have been cool, but I was too busy being enraged by the fact that something so simple, yet major, was changed.

In fact, Iroh was the only cool part of this movie. Dev Patel is a good actor, and he pulls off Zuko pretty well, but Shaun Toub steals the show as Iroh. He may not look much like Iroh, and his portrayal may not have been spot on. But he was the only good thing in this movie and I will not hear any criticism of him!

For that matter, why was Iroh the only one they could afford a wig for? Every other firenation character looked like they just drove around Los Angeles and picked up every Indian actor they could find, put them in costume and called it good. Seeing every firenation head, that was not covered with a helmet, sporting a perfectly gelled hairdo made it quite obvious that these were not the characters I had grown to love. These were just a bunch of schmucks dressing up for Halloween.

But all this is nothing compared to the biggest letdown of the entire movie. It is only comparable to the giant squid monster being cut out of the end of Watchmen. I am of course speaking of...

WHERE WAS KOIZILLA!?!?! I'VE BEEN KEEPING CALM THIS ENTIRE TIME, NO MATTER HOW MUCH I JUST WANTED TO BURST OUT SCREAMING. I TRIED TO KEEP A CIVIL, ELOQUENT, ETHOS FILLED PERSONA, BUT THIS IS THE LAST

I apologize for that. Needless to say, I was quite disappointed when the most awesome part of the finale of season one was cut out. Sure it might be silly, a fish-headed giant made out of water, but compared to the rest of what went on in this movie it was freaking Oscar material.

Despite my overly negative review of this movie, it was still enjoyable to watch, even if the entire time I was cataloging all the errors and painful moments for this review. So as a blogger and a reviewer I enjoyed this movie immensely, even if I can't decipher the last note I made on my arm. So if you plan on writing about how bad this movie was, and enjoy writing negative reviews, by all means you will have a blast. But if you're expecting a movie faithful to the original, just go watch the cartoon. And if you don't know anything about the franchise but are going in expecting some kind of movie, just go watch the cartoon. Even if you hate cartoons it will still be more satisfying.

Anime Reviews: Fairy Tail Episode 32 - The Spirit King

The second half of the Loke arc starts off with a flashback to Karen, Loke's former owner, mistreating the Ram Spirit, Ares. Ares also happens to be female, so when Loke steps in to protect her from Karen's abuse I could literally feel the fanfiction being written. Also, am I the only one who notices a connection between the Biblical "Lion and the Lamb" and this potential pairing? I would say that there's even some innuendo with the Lion and the Lamb laying together, but the Bible never actually says that. Huh...

I wonder...

Huh. There is no "Lion and Lamb" community on Fanfiction.net. I would have thought that the internet would have taken advantage of the obvious symbolism there. Excuse me...

Somebody already used that name? For Rurouni Kenshin!? Oh come on!

Excuse me for just a little longer...

Jeez. How long does it take for these to load?

What? Oh, right.

Coming soon: A Loke/Ares fanfiction.net community. Because I got sidetracked, and ff.net takes forever to upload anything.

Anyway, Loke tells Karen that he wants her to release him and Ares from her service, if she doesn't he'll stay in the real world, and at her power level she can't summon another spirit while one of hers is already in the real world. She tries to threaten him, bargain with him, but never gives him what he wants, so he remains adamant. So she plans to just let him grow weaker and weaker until he runs out of strength and has to return to the spirit world. Unfortunately for her he's an exceptionally strong spirit and is able to last in the real world longer than any other spirit. Soon he even becomes used to the human world.


Unfortunately he receives the news that Karen took on a job while incapacitated, and ended up dying, unable to defend herself without her spirits. Loke, being a good person, is obviously distressed by this, as Karen's death was not what he wanted at all.


So, Loke explains that he doesn't mind paying the price for his sin. Lucy of course won't hear any of it, and decides to force open the gate to the spirit world so that Loke can survive.


Loke of course doesn't want her risking her life trying to save him, as having another friend die for his sake would make his death even worse. Lucy counters by essentially saying that she doesn't care what he says.


Eventually she uses up so much power that it attracts the attention of the king of the spirits.


Lucy argues with the king that Loke should be allowed back into the spirit world, that caring about friends is not a sin. Eventually her determination and the support of her spirits all convince the king to allow Loke back into the spirit world.


I have to admit, the first part of this episode dragged on for me, but once we reach the point where Lucy tries to force open the gate, and when she manages to summon all her stellar spirits, I got a little chocked up. In the end this entire two parter was great, a good message about the importance of friends and doing anything for those friends, with some great music to set the mood.

Overall I'd have to rate this storyline a 3.5 out of 5. I don't know if I'll bring back any kind of rating system for future reviews, but it just seemed appropriate.

Now, I'm just three episodes short of being caught up. Expect two more reviews tomorrow, possibly, and then one more on Sunday. With that I should be caught up to review each episode as it comes out on Mondays. I know Futurama comes out today, but I won't have time to review it until Saturday morning, so expect that one as well. I just need to make sure I can actually watch it somewhere.

Also: Finally

Anime Reviews: Fairy Tail Episode 31 - The Star That Cannot Return to the Heavens

This episode and the following are the two that I wasn't really interested in. Like I mentioned before, Loke isn't one of my favorite characters, simply because he's the flirty archetype. I know I'm being unfair here, but I really don't like that character type.

While watching this episode, remembering what I know about his future involvement in the manga being quite sparse, I actually enjoyed it, and episode thirty two a lot more than I thought I would. Loke really is a fun character, and I'd enjoy him a lot more if he wasn't the ladies man type. Granted a lot of my previous ire was shipping related, but since I'm past that at this point, I'm able to enjoy him a bit more. Unfortunately while giving up shipping for other series may be relatively easy, a few of the series that I've enjoyed for a while are harder to change my mind for. Granted usually I'm pretty good at picking pairings that the author is actually trying to develop, so I don't generally have to worry about that. But I tend to have to stop worrying about shipping so much because I get annoyed when the author starts ship teasing for other ships that he has developed almost as much as the main one.

Anyway, my obsession with romance in shonen aside...(what can I say? I enjoy romance, but hate romance focused series, simply because all the conflict is focused around the romance, and for me that doesn't make for good conflict. I just want a simple romance where the conflict is centered around other things. Shonen manga is a pretty decent source for that, even if most of the time the romance isn't focused on at all. Oh well, you can't win them all). This episode really wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. In fact the animation was top notch, and the voice work was quite excellent.

The episode begins with Lucy and her team taking out an unnamed dark guild, or bandits, or something. Like I said, they're unnamed, I'm not even sure what they were. After finishing they run into Loke, who is also on a job, and who for some reason is still afraid of Lucy. The animators also added a few more scenes with Juvia in just to emphasize the fact that she's been stalking Gray. Fortunately this time they didn't go overboard with it.


See? That's not too bad.


Well...


Actually, this was them showing restraint.


You know what? I give up.

While stopping over at a hot springs the group gets into a pillow fight, and obviously outmatched by her team mates Lucy decides to go for a walk instead of risking her life against her overpowered team.


While out for a walk she runs into two tourists, who even I can tell talk with incredibly strange accents. I'm not sure what exactly they're meant to be, I'm pretty sure they're not Osakan accents, because I've heard characters that apparently speak with an Osakan accent, and I can't tell the difference between that and regular Japanese. In this case the exaggeration is incredibly obvious, kind of like it was with Toby's accent.

The two turn out to be mage kidnappers, and Lucy is about to be taken by them when Loke gallantly shows up and saves her.

Out of gratitude Lucy invites him to get something to eat.


There's some bizarre flirting yet not flirting and "You should forget about me" which is oddly reminiscent of someone else.

You know, I was wondering why I didn't like Loke.

Loke tries to pull the "I'm dying," trick, effectively pissing Lucy off when he reveals that it was just a line he uses on women. Little did she know it was actually foreshadowing!

I was going to make a foreshadowing related joke, but if you'll excuse me, I need to wash this bad taste out of my mouth.

When they get back to what's left of the guild, Lucy is in an understandably bad mood.


Something is obviously up when several of Loke's girlfriends show up, all claiming that he broke up with them.

Still wondering why I don't like him?

Loke approaches Lucy one more time, a behavior at odds with his previous attitude of avoiding her at all cost. Clearly something is up, and Lucy decides to investigate what it is later that evening. After summoning Crux, the Southern Cross, Lucy learns that Loke had a connection with a stellar spirit mage in the past, named Karen.

Gray shows up at Lucy's apartment, telling her that Loke's disappeared, and everyone has gone looking for him. Lucy finds him at Karen's grave, and reveals that she has figured out who he is, Leo the Lion, a stellar spirit. She asks him why he's still in the human world after his owner died, and that normally spirits shouldn't be able to survive in the human world. He tells her that he's survived for three years, and that he's at his end. Lucy doesn't understand why he won't return to the spirit world, and he reveals that the reason he can't return is because he was banished for being a treacherous spirit. For causing his owner's death.

This episode, while one big headache for my inner shipper...

My inner shipper.

...was actually quite high quality and overall enjoyable to watch. The anime keeps improving in quality, which is great to see, and the music used for this episode sets a very melancholy and touching tone. Because in the end the point of this episode isn't about romance, as some, myself included at times, might wish or fear. It's about friendship, and doing anything for a friend, even when that friend has already given up. This theme continues into the next episode, when this mini arc is concluded.