Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest

Episode 22

So I mentioned last time that I didn't know what purpose Aquarius's sudden appearance could serve beyond cutting Natsu and Lucy's fight short, and even after seeing how that ended, I still feel the same way. After starting with slapping Lucy around (which is silly but not exactly out of character for Aquarius), she uses her water to flood Lucy with memories of their time together and restore her to her senses. In a different context, I'd be willing to roll with something sappy, but since nothing about this scenario felt like it warranted this kind of resolution, it's another one of those cases where it feels like the series is melodramatic purely for the sake of it. The fact that we've seen the whole “memory-filled water” thing as the catalyst for Ultear's redemption does at least give this enough precedent to avoid feeling like it comes out of nowhere, but I wasn't exactly a fan of this trick back then either, so it just kinda makes me feel even more sore that we couldn't have just gotten a more straightforward fight instead. That said, I am a little surprised that Lucy and Aquarius's reunion seems like will last longer than expected, as Aquarius has decided to stick around for the remainder of the arc. Still, it feels strange to have this happen before Lucy re-acquires her key, so hopefully there'll be some actual payoff to this before the rest of the arc is through.

Though, as weird and dramatic as the end to Lucy's fight was, it's somehow the best outcome we get out of these yokai matches. Gray struggles to bring himself to fight against Wendy and the giant tiger versions of Happy and Carla until Natsu and the others swoop in and Aquarius manages to restore Wendy to normal by tricking her into using her status healing magic. However, this still leaves them with the issue of Erza, who has been turned into a giant sword-wielding spider lady and probably has the best design out of these mutated forms. Too bad we hardly get to see it, though, as Wendy immediately opts to use her status healing magic on Erza as well, and it reverts her back to normal without so much as a single punch being thrown. While I wasn't exactly expecting the battles against the yokai versions of the girls to be anything special, it would have been nice for them to be, ya know…fights. Gray not wanting to fight Wendy is at least in character for him, and Lucy's fights going nowhere is nothing new, but it feels especially mean to tease that yokai form of Erza without her actually getting to do anything with it, and it makes this whole scenario feel like it was a waste of time.

I'm not the only one letdown by this outcome though, as Selene is also unhappy with this chain of events and sends her servant Yoko to deal with them directly. Yoko decides to overwhelm them with an army of yokai, and when their numbers end up being too much for the gang, Aquarius suggests that Lucy take advantage of not needing to abide by her usual contracts on Elentear to summon all 12 of the Zodiac spirits. As cool as this moment sounds, though, it kinda falters in its execution as most of the action here is composed entirely of stills, which sucks up pretty much any excitement this could have generated. It'd help if Lucy at least got to close out the fight by defeating Yoko, but that duty ends up falling to Erza instead, and even putting aside any disappointment at Lucy getting her spotlight stolen, it doesn't make for a great resolution. When Yoko turns herself into a four-armed sword-wielding yokai, Erza reveals she just so happens to have an armor set that gives her extra arms for more swords, and while I'll at least give the fight some credit for having a few cool bits of animation, the whole thing feels just a bit too convenient to feel as cool as it's aiming to be. At the very least, it makes up for not seeing Spider Erza in action. Though if I had to choose between the two, I'd have rather gotten the spider fight.

While all this is going on, Faris and Touka meet up with the Shrine Maiden Elder who reveals that she's brought in some extra muscle to deal with the issue of Selene. That turns out to be Suzaku, one of the Dragon Eaters we were introduced to a few episodes ago, and when he's let in on the fact that the Fairy Tail guild is also in this world he makes it his mission to target both of them and Selene. Admittedly, this other element comes off as weirdly contrived as the Elder mentions that she more or less summoned a Dragon Slayer at random. I guess it works better as an explanation than him somehow hopping dimensions himself. Though it still feels a bit too much of a coincidence not to feel forced (not to mention that the Elder's criteria of trying to pick someone hot implies Laxus, Gajeel or Cobra are less attractive than this guy, and I'm pretty sure there'd be some strong contention there). Nitpicking aside, though, I appreciate his presence here, since Selene and her minions are honestly pretty boring on their own. He might provide some much-needed shake-up to make this arc more interesting. Luckily, it seems we won't have to wait for him to run into the Fairy Tail members as the episode ends with him bumping into Natsu. It's hard to guess exactly how that'll play out, but I'd like to think that things can only go up from here.

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Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.