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Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

November 12, 2013 by Derek Bown Leave a Comment

Fairy Tail, Vol. 31

fairytail31Fairy Tail, Vol. 31 | By Hiro Mashima | Kodansha Comics

After Lucy learns of her father’s fate, she and her friends return to Fairy Tail, where they discover that their seven year absence has put a significant gap between their powers and those of every other mage in the world. To make things worse, Fairy Tail is now the lowest ranking guild in the country. So they decide to enter a tournament to show off their stuff and rise back to the top. But they only have (insert time) to make up for seven years missed time.

Ever since the timeskip, I’ve been wondering why exactly Mashima felt the need to move his story seven years into the future. Fortunately this volume provides somewhat of an answer. What it allows Mashima to do is weaken his characters down from their excessively powerful levels and give them more of a challenge. I won’t say I like the development, but it does have a reason behind it beyond Mashima deciding to change things up on a whim.

This volume we’re introduced to two new Dragon Slayers, Sting and Rogue. For the most part they’re generic bad guys without being fully evil, but there’s something about their cats, Lecter and Froesch, that I just can’t stand. They just manage to have little to no character and yet the bits of character they do have is pure annoyance. And they haven’t even done much this volume!

Fairy Tail goes through phases, usually the beginning phase of an arc is pretty good and it’s not until later that the story starts to fall apart. So for what it’s worth, the story this volume is actually a lot of fun. ANd there are plenty of jokes that actually made me laugh, including a moment where Happy breaks the mood of a dramatic sequence in a way that actually works. It’s rare to see manga authors who know how to pull that kind of humor off so I have to give credit where it’s due.

Whatever you do, if you pick up this volume do not read it in a public place, because we not only get a beach scene, but a hot springs scene as well. If you don’t want people thinking you only read manga with lots of T&A then I recommend making this an “only in my room” reading.

While there are a couple concepts brought up that never see the light of day again I have to admit that I came away from this volume a lot more positive than I’ve been about past Fairy Tail volumes. For fans of the series this is definitely an enjoyable read, while new readers won’t find all that much besides a few jokes. If this was the first Fairy Tail volume you read and you laughed more than once, then I’d certainly recommend checking out earlier volumes.

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Filed Under: FEATURES & REVIEWS, MANGA REVIEWS, REVIEWS Tagged With: Fairy Tail, manga

About Derek Bown

Derek Bown is a creative writing and editing student at Brigham Young University. He started watching anime back when Pokemon was first popular, moved on to Ranma 1/2 and One Piece, and eventually found his way to manga. He runs his own anime and manga review blog at Burning Lizard Studios, which he started back in 2009. He is a massive fantasy fan, and loves comedy and action manga the most. His knowledge of anything other than shounen manga is woefully inadequate, but he knows his way around pretty much any action fighter series worth reading. He also happens to be a closet romantic, but will deny any knowledge of shipping fandom if asked. His favorite manga are One Piece, One Piece, and One Piece.

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