Fairy Tail - 336

In Order to Live Today to the Fullest
(by smashing a gate...)

I think this chapter was pretty damn awesome, and we get to see how strong Natsu is...or how weak Lucy is. However, I got terrified at the start of this chapter. As you all know (or those who bothered to read my introduction), I prefer the Fairy Tail manga to the anime for multiple reasons. I won't go through them all in the current review as it will probably lengthen it by one-hundred thousand pages or so, but one of these reasons is due to the ridiculous "magical circles" in the anime. The reason I got terrified was that we got a sneak peak at something that looked suspiciously like one of these abominable circles...

No wonder the dragon is trying to kill her...

Before everyone starts raging at me, saying "DAT';s NOTT  A MAJIKAL SHIRKEL!!!", I know that it is actually a shield that is part of Wendy's dragon slayer powers...

Anyway, let's actually get into the chapter. Basically, the chapter is dedicated to the puny humans finally figuring out a way to kill the dragons and Rogue. With all honesty...the explanation for how they will go by doing this but I'll try my best to explain it. So, I'm supposing that destroying the gate (the one that requires the eclipse keys.) makes anything that has come back to the past get reversed, and the future is erased. This essentially means that, by destroying the gate, the humans will effectively be able to change the future. However, and I LOVED the explanation for this part, the gate is pretty damn sturdy. The reason I loved the explanation was because Hiro Mashima decided to make up a random alloy that sounded like "magic" and "-ium" at the same time. I assume he came up with the name in 10 seconds...

Why didn't he say that...before they started using their magic on it?

Yup. MAGINIUM. I mean, seriously? He could have come up with a MUCH better name than that... However, I understand why he would make up an alloy/metal/element/compound or whatever, because he obviously wanted to emphasise Natsu's true power and no real alloy/metal/element/compound is strong enough to emphasise this. Anyway, I'm sure Hiro Mashima wanted to let the reader see the mages all working together to destroy this gate and fail to make it seem super strong. Thus, using a real life material to do this would make the characters seem extremely weak. So, he created his own, which is completely understandable. I actually found their failure pretty hilarious, especially relating to what happened later.

Yup. All that smoke and not a single scratch.
You may ask how I find that hilarious, but you'll find out in the near future. 

The scene then switches to the battle between Natsu and Rogue. I found this battle pretty outrageous, since they somehow managed to have a normal conversation while fighting each other to the death. Some would say this is unrealistic, but in a world of hot naked girls with magical powers...ANYTHING can happen! Anyway, we find out that the reason for Rogue going insane is due to the death of Frosch one year ahead of time. It's at this point, where Natsu's words coincidentally link up to the destruction of the gate, and he says that Rogue is able to change Frosch's fate and the future is not something that people lack the ability to alter. Evidently, Rogue does not agree with this and begins to argue his case. Finally, Natsu gets the last word of their argument (especially since Rogue is too busy getting head-butted in the stomach) and says "We don't need to know what's coming tomorrow...so we can live today to the fullest!" which I think is a rather lovely, and truthful, quote. 

This sends a message to hard headed people everywhere!

And that's the end of that. Rogue seems like he's been defeated already, but what happens next makes this definite. As I said before, if the gate is destroyed, Rogue and dragons will have been defeated. Coincidentally (there seems to be a lot of coincidences in this chapter) Natsu, Rogue and the dragon just so happen to fly towards a building, and that building just so happens to be the one that contains the gate.

And this is what I meant by Natsu's sheer power:

BOOM!

And that's that. Surely the arc will end now that the gate has been destroyed and Rogue has been defeated. To be honest, I mainly didn't like this arc due to the confusing time continuum stuff, and I'd be pretty happy to see it end. Hopefully Hiro Mashima will end this arc here and start off a complete new one (probably reinstating Fairy Tail's previous legacy).

But, until next time, peace out.