5 Point Discussions – Fairy Tail (2018) 10: “Emperor Spriggan”

The guild comes into contact with one of the first of Emperor Spriggan’s guardians?  And who IS the Emperor anyway? Remember, if you like this article and 5 Point Discussions, please share it on Facebook or Twitter! It really helps. And if you’ve got any comments or questions, please hit me up @SageShinigami.

1. We closed last week on the A Squad getting it’s butt kicked after running into a guy who could literally control the localized space around him, rejecting other people’s magic at whim, so of course this week we open with the B squad lounging at the Pegasus Village hot springs. The B stands for bathhouse, apparently. Anyhow, after a bit of discussion we learn they’ve actually gone to visit Blue Pegasus, the Guild for Gorgeous People. It seems out of place initially, but we learn Gajeel brought them there because Laxus and his Lightning Squad apparently joined their guild after Fairy Tail closed down. Laxus spends most of his time training, which is good for the guild because they’re going to need his power, but a bit of a shame because seeing Laxus in a suit having to play host is good for at least half an episode of laughs.

2. You know you’re outclassed when you have to be saved from a fight. After Fairy Tail gives us the requisite dose of fanservice for an episode, we switch back to Natsu and Gray versus Marin. When we left they were wondering how they could win, just as Marin’s boss Brandish showed up. Much like Erza, Brandish appears to be far more interested in trying out Caracol Island’s star mango gelato than actually doing the work given her by Alvarez. Annoyed that her subordinate wrecked the place, she immediately tells him to give back Erza and Lucy. When Marin briefly objects, she responds with a display of her ability–causing the island to raise out of the ground into the air.
Marin complies, but with Natsu still pretty ticked about what happened to his teammate Mest, he says they’ll need more compensation than that. So for those of us who hadn’t gotten that Brandish is Queen of Disinterest, she “obliterates” Marin. I say obliterate because despite Fairy Tail’s shock anyone would ever turn against their own comrade (even though they’ve seen it time and again), it’s obvious she just shrunk the dude down. Or at least it becomes obvious once they continue to object and she responds by shrinking the island she just grew to something just large enough for a bird to perch on. Still, we’ve met two mages so far from the Alvarez Empire and they all display absurd levels of power. This isn’t looking well for the group.

3. Mest puts in a ton of work this episode. After Erza and the others help all the people of Caracol Island get to some boats, Mest finally wakes up enough to teleport the team. When we see them next, they’re underwater with Sorano–Celestial Mage formerly of the Oracion Seis dark guild, now with the Crime Sorciere organization trying to make up for all her mistakes. As a part of that, she undertook Mest’s assignment from Ishgar’s new Magical Council to help locate Makarov. There’s a bit of uncomfortable banter here, where she reminds everyone she killed Karen, the former master of Aries and Loke. It’s a bit of a throwback reminder that even I had to wiki since I didn’t watch all 279 episodes of Fairy Tail before this picked back up, but after doing my Googles…this whole bit of dialogue was so weird. Karen was a horrible person who died as a consequence of her own actions, because she was constantly torturing her Celestial Mage summons. It feels more like Sorano is still just uncomfortable about being good to people she treated horribly.
At any rate, she still agrees to take them all to Makarov’s location, as despite being caught she did learn where he was.

4. This is a plot twist that never really gets old, because it’s so rare to see it coming: the idea of being multiple, dissonant things to different groups of people. In the continent of Ishgar, Zeref is this monstrous dark mage only worshipped by insane people. On Alakitasia, he’s the reason all the guilds united into one faction–he was single-handedly powerful enough to force all seven hundred guilds to submit to his might. It took a couple hundred years to get the job done, but they’ve become so powerful they could easily crush Ishgar.
We spent a lot of time worried about Makarov, but this episode shows us he’s been in the care of the Alvarez Empire for a year now, awaiting the arrival of the emperor. Unfortunately, well…he just played into Zeref’s hands.

5. Once again: Mest puts in a ton of work this episode. Zeref’s plan for Natsu is to get him to end his life once and for all, so seeing Makarov he decides to kill him in the hopes it’ll tick Natsu off enough to make him want to kill Zeref. Before he gets a chance to find out though, Mest pops in and teleports Makarov away and back to the rest of the group. Man, talk about close calls–as this series ends things are getting real.
Fairy Tail is available on Crunchyroll and Funimation.