Will Wendy warn the Exceeds before it's too late? Has Erza Knightwalker defeated Erza Scarlet? Will the dreaded Dragon Chain Cannon actually fire? Will Gajeel finally get his own cat?! ...How come Natsu never burns his clothes? Find out the answers to all (okay, most) of these questions in this weeks episode!
Oh man, the episode opened with Erza vs. Erza, and for a second I thought we were finally getting the rest of the fight we really care about. But it only lasted half a minute and then the intro music kicked in. Damn it, stop teasing me!
I feel so bad for Wendy and Carla this week, after flying up to Extalia to warn the Exceeds of the attack from the Royal Army, how do they respond? Laughter. Laughter, followed by an onslaught of stone-throwing. If it was me trying to warn them I'd have half a mind to give up and leave. Nady (the cat with the weird arm-thrusting problem) is the only one who looks worried, very worried... and he should be. I have a feeling he knows all too well that their apparently all-powerful Queen is a great big fake.
Back on Lacrima Island Pantherlily tells Gajeel he joined the human Royal Army because he had forsaken his homeland. Gajeel likes his style, seeing him as an outcast much like himself. He's taken such a liking to him in fact that he wants to keep him! Gajeel has been after a cat of his own ever since he realised he's the only Dragon Slayer without one, Natsu has Happy and Wendy has Carla, and I can't help but think these two are a perfect match. I mean, just look how much they love to punch each other! Everyone knows that's just a sign of affection in the Fairy Tail Guild.
Natsu's such a gentleman, leaving Lucy wedged under a giant Octopus. Still, I guess that gave us the requisite boob-jiggling fan service for the episode. She might be better off stuck there anyway, since Erza Knightwalker appeared before Natsu and Gray. Were my suspicions from last week confirmed? Is this really Scarlet is disguise? ...Yep! Erza uses the disguise, pretending to have captured Natsu and Gray, so they can get to the Dragon Chain Cannon and fire it directly at the lacrima and save everyone. Knightwalker shows up once more though, ruining the plan, and King Faust uses the Dragon Chain Cannon to send the lacrima on it's collision course with Extalia!
Here's the part that annoys me though, presumably, after Scarlet first defeated Knightwalker, she took her clothes for the disguise. That's obvious right? But when Knightwalker reappears she's still wearing her outfit. So I checked with the manga, and as I thought, this was another needless act of censorship. So we're just supposed to believe Erza can copy other people's clothes now? Or happened to have the exact same outfit by chance? This was handled pretty poorly, they could have either covered Knightwalker up more than in the manga, or put her in her outfit from later on (shown in the intro). Which is another problem with this, why does she even need to bother changing her outfit at all now? I know in the grand scheme of things this isn't really a big deal, but it jumped right out at me.
Lucy shows up at the last minute with Coco on her Legion, and everyone jumps on to fly off and stop the lacrima. Knightwalker cuts her hair, presumably so Scarlet can no longer impersonate her, and commands the "Legion Squad" to pursue Natsu and co. Looks like we'll be seeing lots of these big bad Legions next week.
Episode Rating: 4/5
A little more Scarlet vs. Knightwalker and a little less plot hole-inducing censorship and this episode might have managed my first 5 out of 5. It was certainly exciting though, and it looks like this arc may be wrapping up before long. Besides more Erza fights, I think I'm most excited about Pantherlily becoming Gajeel's partner, provided that doesn't turn out as just wishful thinking on Gajeel's part. What do you think? Would they make a good duo?
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--Article by Dan (moderator Newten, twitter: @Daniel_Newton)--
