Fairy Tail Volume 33 Review
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(Note: The LE edition of Fairy Tail Volume 33 is sold out.)
***SPOILERS***
Kagura (Mermaid Heel) defeats Celestial Mage Yukino (Saber Tooth), causing Saber Tooth's master to humiliate Yukino in front of the guild before throwing her out. Yukino pays Lucy a visit, offering up her two Golden Keys (Pisces and Libra), but Lucy refuses since Yukino does care about her spirits. Millianna surprises Erza with a visit, revealing she's in Mermaid Heel and that she and Kagura want Jellal, whom Erza had earlier met with, dead. Natsu goes to apologize to Yukino for thinking ill of her, whereupon he learns of the disgraceful way she was kicked out of Saber Tooth. As such, he decides to challenge Saber Tooth's Master Ziemma.
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In terms of content, Fairy Tail Volume 33 provides some interesting stuff, but also some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen Mashima-sensei do.
Mashima-sensei suddenly retconning things so that all Dragon Slayers are cursed with motion sickness is pretty typical for him. In this case, the amusement of having Natsu, Gajeel, and Sting being sick and failing the running race on the moving “chariot” platforms trumped everything. Mashima-sensei does acknowledge the retcon by having Gajeel question why he's suddenly motion sick when he'd never experienced this before, and by having Laxus's teammates say something to him about this. So, I'll let it ride. ^_~
Since Bacchus had been shown to have that drunken fighter style which meant that folks could never lay a hand on him, Elfman's tactic to adopt a form that would cause Bacchus to damage himself is good thinking, but dodgy writing at the same time. At some point, one would think that Bacchus would realize that taking more damage than he was dealing is a losing proposition and would settle for a draw. But, he basically beats himself to death, allowing Elfman to get rare praise from Erza (a nice moment to be sure) and admiration from Evergreen. Plus, Elfman's bet with Bacchus protected his sisters and caused Quatro Cerberus to be referred to as Quatro Puppy, which is humorous.
Mirajane's battle with Jenny caused my eyes to roll since it was basically pure fanservice. That said, Mashima-sensei does know his audience would not be happy with any tournament contest where Mirajane didn't go into her Satan Soul form to defeat an enemy. Plus, her bet with Jenny did lead to the funniest stuff Mashima-sensei has ever done. More on that in a bit.
Kagura's battle with Yukino comes off fairy cliched since Kagura doesn't unsheathe her sword to defeat Yukino. Still, there's something about a badarse babe with a sword who's so badarsed, she doesn't need to unsheathe her sword to get a win.
I liked how Lucy turned down the offer to take possession of Yukino's Golden Celestial Keys. I still think that eventually, Lucy will end up with all twelve Golden Keys, possibly at the end of this arc, but we'll see.
This thirteenth key that Yukino has wasn't part of the deal, which I find interesting. Why would Yukino be willing to part with two of her keys but not the thirteenth. Actually, why would she want to part with any of her keys unless she's in on this Eclipse scheme. But how could she be since Captain Arcadios apparently didn't know there'd be two Celestial Mages in the tournament? Regardless, it just didn't make a lot of sense to me for Yukino to offer two keys. She should have offered them all if she were going to stop being a mage completely.
Natsu going after Master Ziemma is a fairly cliched moment. I can almost see where this is going, and that was without the aid of the spoiler preview of the next volume at the end of 33.
Finally, where Mashima-sensei scores a massive win on the humor front is in the "silent" omake chapter where Wakaba and Macao buy Sorcerer 3D in order to see Jenny naked in 3D. However, both are horrified when they discover the issue also has Eve, Ren, Hibiki, and Ichiya (front and center) naked. Macao's woes are added to when his son Romeo comes in to see the naked, 3D Ichiya there. A similar event awaits Wakaba, when his wife and daughter catch him looking at the same image.
I have to say, this omake chapter makes me laugh even now. The looks of horror on Macao's and Wakaba's faces after they went from seeing Jenny to seeing Ichiya and his crew is so priceless. While the joke of having others walk in on the guys as Ichiya is out there for all to see is cliched, it just adds to the humor of the initial horror.
As an aside, I'm not sure what to make of Freed's reaction to Eve, Hibiki, and Ren's nudity. ^_^;
On the Kodansha side of things, I'm not very happy. The hybrid adaptation really made my head hurt this time. They might have snuck it over on me had they not used Western honorifics, but the moment I saw Yukino saying "Miss Lucy", it was red alert time. I had thought that a simple -san honorific was replaced with Miss, but imagine my surprise when I discovered that Yukino was addressing Lucy as "Lucy-sama". Further investigation revealed that Yukino addresses EVERYONE with the -sama honorific.
Seriously, that completely changes Yukino up for me. When she's just being casual with everyone, it is one thing. When she's being so reverent to everyone, then that is another person completely. Clearly, Mashima-sensei had Yukino use the -sama honorific as a literary device, but hey, we ALL know that a fantasy title must NEVER have filthy, disgusting Japanese honorifics in them. Sometimes, I'm surprised that Kodansha doesn't just translate names (You know, 'cause Japanese names in a fantasy title? Unforgivable!), except I believe Yukino's name is written in katakana, not kanji (so there's no definition per se).
Still, once my eyes have been assaulted thusly, then the other things that I usually give a pass on start irritating me as well, such as Lissana not addressing Elfman or Mirajane properly (Elf-niichan, for example, rather than "Elf"). Then there was Juvia's fantasy sequence where this adaptation had her saying, "How could Gray do that to me?!" Except Juvia would NEVER, EVER, EVER say "Gray" without the "-sama" honorific, even in a fantasy sequence. Turns out, she apparently never used his name, but hey, up yours reader! "We'll add his name the way it is SUPPOSED to be used because we aren't slant-eyed gimboid gits in America!"
Of course, once the dung starts rolling downhill, it gets larger and larger. After learning that in Yukino's and Kagura's fight, the two basically just said the equivalent of "pleased to meet you" (vs. "Fight well," "And you."), I decided that I better quit looking or I'd just stop buying the manga completely.
Yes, I know this is a dead horse issue and yes, I know that for most, they won't give a rat's keester, but we all have our weaknesses and pet peeves, and the removal of Japanese honorifics and rewritting of text because, "Well, I think the characters should say 'this' rather than what they say 'cause what I came up with is cooler" is one of mine.
I will say that I do appreciate the Japanese attack names being retained as well as the Japanese name of Kagura's sword. I just wish the editorial decision to make the adaptation hybrid hadn't been made.
Otherwise, the usual extras are here, including a couple of pages of translator notes.
Manga-wise, I like this volume. Kodansha-wise, I don't like what's being done.
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