Review of the Arc: Alvarez Arc of Fairy Tail

Fairy Tail is finished. At 545 chapters, it finally ended. Not that it was the easiest of roads.

Like any story, Fairy Tail had its series of missteps. High points and low points combined. However, this series holds a rather special place in my heart. I found Fairy Tail when I was at a very low point in my life; or rather, that was when I really got into it. I didn't consider it that great until around the time of the Tenrou Island Arc, and it was the Grand Magic Games that made me fall in love with the series. Without it, I wouldn't be who I am.

And that includes the Alvarez Arc. It's this arc, the final arc of the series, which I will be reviewing below.


If you listen to the billions of opinions on the internet, most would be screaming "trash", "crap", and "anyone who likes this should be ashamed of themselves". Personally, I think that's ridiculous, but again, I'm just one of many opinions. What I can say, though, is that I find most of these opinions come from an unrealistic expectation of the series, or just blind hatred that doesn't allow them to actually see how things work (I see so many people misconstruing information, it's sad). I also think it's a result of the series being read weekly, because read in a single chunk, it reads quite nicely.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are some major flaws with Alvarez. Major flaws. However, I don't think they're as series or arc breaking as they're made out to be. In fact, I personally find Alvarez to be the 5th best arc in the series (behind Tower of Heaven, Grand Magic Games, Tenrou Island and Tartaros). But I'll go into why I think this is the case further on.

Before I get into it, this review is going to be quite a bit different from my past ones. For one thing, there aren't going to be a whole lot of pictures. Just me and my text. For another, I'm not going to break it up into categories like Characters, Themes, etc. Instead, I'll be going through the arc itself chronologically, to the best of my memory (which should be fine as it's recent). And remember, I don't give a rating at the end, mostly because I think that colors perception and I suck at it anyway.

That said, let's begin.

1) The Infiltration of Alvarez

The arc itself starts off with an information dump, none of which is a problem. Really, it clears up a lot of little mysteries from earlier on in the series, so let's not waste time there and get into the nitty gritty of it.

Where we really start is Caracole Island, and the encounter with Brandish and Marin. Now, right from the off, Brandish is shown as a character who genuinely doesn't care to fight others. She's very much her own independent person, something that is vital for later in the arc. Marin, in fact, is the only one that cares to fight and is shown to control space, completely locking down people like Lucy, Erza and Mest. Again, a building block for later. Yes, Brandish is shown to have immense magic power to make Natsu and the others shiver (and Brandish is frightfully scary) but when it comes to it, in a series like Fairy Tail, this means little.

What doesn't mean little is what Brandish does by shrinking an island to be a small pinprick. She's scary, but she also lets them go, for all the good it does due to their continued infiltration. Either way, it's an establishment of Brandish's character right from the word go: a quirky, if insanely strong, woman who does her own thing irrespective of the empire she serves.

In any case, the infiltration continues, the story connects to Zeref as the big bad of the series (and if this doesn't tell you it's the end of the story...well, I don't know what to say). Then the group faces off against Ajeel, who's definitely strong, if more so on the ground than the air, and it takes a combined and collective effort to stymie him on his own turf. Collective effort. Keep this in mind.

Regardless of all that, the group is successful thanks to the strength of Laxus to escape. Following that is some more backstory revolving around Zeref and Mavis' romance, the circumstances of which are important for later, mostly thanks to Mavis' body's state and the reason for which she "died". That Curse of Contradictions is really quite the thing.

Now, before we move on to the actual battle portion of the arc, I just want to say that it's easy to lose track of everything over 100+ chapters, so these early details of the characters and the things that are done can be quite easy to forget by the time they become relevant, and Mashima rarely reminds you of these things. Whether that's a foible in and of itself is up to the reader in question, but I wanted to use that above summary to make clear those few things: Brandish and her personality, Marin's ability, and the fact it takes a collective effort to match one of the Spriggan 12.

2) The Defense of Magnolia

So, after some shippy moments that are irrelevant to the context of this review, the attack from the advance force of the Spriggans kicks off in a big way. In particular we have three Spriggans stepping foot in the zone: Brandish, Ajeel, and Wall Icht (however his name is spelled). Now, here comes the first misstep of the arc: Mavis' plan. Yes, she's a good tactician with flaws, as the GMGs showed, but the move to send the Dragon Slayers to airships...that was dumb. Really dumb. Even myself, who has the propensity to accept some stupid stuff, facepalmed. Now, in the end, it's fine, because they move to the ground while the battle with Ajeel is held in the air (note the important distinction from before). Natsu and co.'s battle is unimportant here, as they just deal with fodder, even if it shows Natsu's character development.

More important are the battles with Brandish (if one can call it that) and Ajeel. These two battles are ridiculously intertwined thanks to the presence of Marin, that guy who can stop someone like Erza cold. Which is what happens as she's unable to do jack against Ajeel. Likewise, we get a further representation of Brandish's quirky personality.

Then there's the sandstorm, which ends up taking Brandish out of commission. Now, this, in particular I both like and loathe. I loathe that an actual full on battle with Brandish never happened because she was just too powerful. That was a misstep, personally. However, I like it because it showed something clear: the Spriggans don't play as a team. They've got an army, they're an alliance...but they're really bad at teamwork, because Ajeel should know Brandish has allergies like that, but doesn't care. In the end, it shows later since they never team up while their opponents do.

In any case, it gives Lucy the chance to use her intelligence to take Marin out of commission, allowing Erza her chance. Now, people will pull out the usual "She's Erza!" card for this battle, but, if I'm honest...this was the best Erza fight since Tenrou (and yes, I did like the Azuma battle). While the Kagura and Kyoka battles were bullshit, this made sense. Why? For one thing, she used multiple armors beyond her Clear Heart one. That, and she had assistance from Bisca firing a damn Jupiter Cannon. Yeah, that victory wasn't just hers, and that made it a good one.

Now, what of Wall? Well, for one thing, his weakness soldiers were obviously meant to lock down the other characters with a pretty simple strategy to defeat: swap them up. Nothing very...mindblowing. But it works, I guess. (Yeah, I'm not going to say it was super intelligent of a move). As for the fight at the cathedral, I quite liked Ichiya here. I find a lot of people dismiss it because it's Ichiya, but I love the guy. And he has been shown to be ridiculously powerful when not goofing off. Overall, the Wall section of the Defense is undoubtedly the weakest section that served only to give the Thunder Legion a role and Laxus a motivation.

In conclusion for the Defense section: further exhibition of character traits like Brandish's non-care for fighting, combined with showing that the Spriggans have crap teamwork. Some strong parts, some weak parts, but ultimately a solid showing for the first part of battles for the arc, even if not mindblowing.

3) The Revelations and the Various Fronts

This part is one of the longer parts, so I'll try my best to cover it in as best detail as I can.

The guild splits into multiple groups for this phase as all the guilds finally join in to the fight, and now we have a lot of different things going on at once.

The first to tackle is Natsu's battle with Zeref and Lucy's confrontation with Brandish. I find nothing to comment upon about Zeref other than it setting the mental conflict for Natsu up. Once he learns he's END and Zeref's brother is when he starts having physical problems. After all, int he Fairy Tail world, the physical, mental and magical are all combined. There's nothing really brilliant or horrible here. The revelations are sound, make sense, and explain a lot about the backstory. Even Lucy's does the same, but there is the issue of Aquarius: I'll admit, I'm ambivalent on Aquarius. On the one hand, no, Lucy doesn't lose her development; on the other...meh, I kinda wish she hadn't returned.

Now, it makes sense! Don't get me wrong! Obvious the Celestial Spirit King had fought Mard Geer before, indicating another key had been broken, and yet they were all there in present time. That made sense. It really wasn't an asspull, just a showing of how Mashima doesn't remind you of things when they become relevant. I guess I personally just didn't feel any emotion towards the reunion. It was effective enough in "turning" Brandish, though, which really brought her further along the path her character was already set on. Then we end with Natsu's "tumor". More on that much later.

Instead, let's talk the East quickly, where Acnologia arrives. The whole scene reeked of power scaling. God Serena is stronger than the 4 Gods of Ishgal. Acnologia blitzes him in human form. Yeah, it establishes the guy as a threat. Maybe too much of a threat, to the point that later in the arc, Mashima gets creative in order to make a plausible way to defeat him (well, not too creative, but creative enough). It's a hype moment, but in the grand scheme of things, makes you wish it was a little more balanced when we reach the end. However, I'll cover the creativity at the end.

Now, the south. Laxus is suffering from the Anti-Magic Barrier particles from a year ago, makes sense. He fights Wall but does nothing because "electricity", also makes sense. Pulling out a spell passed down from his great-grandfather, that kinda makes sense too, given we'd just come off a timeskip. Using Freed's magic against the one guy that knows how to nullify it to cure himself, really smart. The "red lightning" causing an explosion? I wish it was explained better. Yes, it's Mercury Fulminate, which if you look it up, is about the force of an explosion. This isn't well explained in the manga itself, no matter how much it makes sense. That's my only foible with Laxus vs. Wall: lack of explanation for something that actually could be explained and isn't an asspull. Otherwise, great fight, actually.

Dimaria is the next Spriggan who, like before, doesn't work with the rest of her fellow comrades. Meanwhile, Wendy, Chelia and Carla step up to the plate. I won't lie, this is one of my favorite fights of the arc. Part of it is because it's a Wendy fight, and I love Wendy fights, but really it's because it just made sense to me. Again, why did it make sense? Enchantments, two healers, a God Slayer against a god and Third Origin. "What?! Third Origin was a total asspull!" I disagree. If anything, Ultear was the asspull, but even that made sense given her very heavy association with time. But the reason I don't think Third Origin was an asspull is because...Second Origin. Honestly, the moment you introduce something like that, one has to assume there is a Third Origin. That's just...logical. So, Chelia using all of her present and future God Slaying magic against a god makes complete and total sense for a victory. If you don't see that...well, I'm not sure what to say.

Now, for the weakest part of the South. Erza vs. the Historias. Now, in some way, I like it. It set up the eventual reveal of Irene as her mother and really kind of gave this explanation for why Erza cuts through things like butter. And it's not like she fought Neinhart; just pale imitations of former foes (a fact confirmed later in the arc). Honestly, the only reason I feel this is the weakest is because it's "Erza is amazing" all over again, and she already gets a lot in this arc. The only thing that makes this something I truly enjoy is all the other Historias. Gray and Lyon facing Ur (the roadblock in their pasts), Juvia and Meredy teaming up (along with revealing a logical purpose for Sensory Link magic), Wendy vs. Ezel again, and even Kagura overcoming her own want for revenge. Plus it was Jellal acting awesome and showing that Neinhart pretty much has crap defense. If you took Erza out, this would be amazingly great. As it stands, it's just good.

So, with that out of the way, let's move back to the guild hall and Jacob (as well as the later tussle with August). I'm torn on the Jacob fight. For one thing, it was the obligatory "Natsu, Lucy and Happy against a bad guy" fight that seems to come once an arc. That's all fine. The fanservice...meh. Wish it wasn't there, but fanservice has become par for the course in Fairy Tail. The actual fight was pretty great, though. Solid amount of hits, some real intelligence from Lucy, and an attack we've seen before. The difficulty was in hitting Jacob, not generating enough force to defeat him.

Following this we have the moment with August, which shows him relatively reasonable if fanatically devoted to Zeref. Until Mest screws up. I both love and hate this moment. Love it because it was an "oh shit" moment, and hate it because "damn it, Mest". But that's about as far as this goes at this particular moment. It does show August's propensity to give into the feeling that is love, however.

Finally, we get to the North, with the crucified Saber Tooth members. Sting has a moment of crisis, Yukino slaps some sense into him. It's fine for the most part. Nothing too big, but it does set up Sting's big triumph later. What we do have are two major things: the reveal of Irene, and Gajeel vs. Bloodman. For Irene, not much about her at this moment, though we know she can enchant things up the wazoo. She can also somewhat match Acnologia, but only for so long, because he's the reason she does what she does at the end of this portion.

Gajeel vs. Bloodman, though. Let's talk this. The fight itself is great. Gajeel and Levy working together against a guy with all the powers of Tartaros, using wits and Gajeel's preestablished resistance to anti-magic particles. Combined with an emotional confession to Levy that he loves her, it was really a brilliant battle...until the end. There's no secret that there are a lot of fake deaths in this arc. This was the first, and it wasn't the worst. Just...poorly explained. This is one of my two biggest gripes with the arc, but for Gajeel, I was okay with it. Because Universe One happened.

So, before moving on to that portion of the arc, let's summarize some stuff here: I feel that this middle portion of the arc had its ups and downs, though mostly ups. It had four very strong fights, even if one of the finishers needed to be explained better and the other had a little too much fanservice. It showcased a lot of character development for those like Laxus, Wendy, Kagura and Gajeel, while setting up the mental conflict that Natsu begins going through. I enjoyed it, except for some of the Erza moment (part cool, part "again?") and the ending with Gajeel, sort of.

4) Universe One

So, Irene casts this spell and it...sends people places...and it makes the land smaller. It dramatically changes the arc by needing a reunion of the cast and changing the landscape itself. Unfortunately, it also seems to bring Gajeel back because he was being "transported to the Underworld" when this sent him elsewhere. It's...sketchy, but I can dig it.

But what follows is a heck of a lot of character moments. We see Mavis and Zeref's relationship, which displays that Curse of Contradiction, yet how Zeref does love her (another hint for later). Which, by the way, Mavis is in her own body once again, since she was...you know...immortal...and because of Precht preserving her body. In either case, it's important for later.

Next we have Irene, who gets quite the bit of focus in this part of the arc. Her establishing chapters here are actually really important for numerous reasons that explain a lot of her character actions and interactions later. The first of these is her obsession with beauty. She turns Hisui into a mouse, wondering if the king will still love her. She wants to destroy Mira's beautiful looks. While it's not obvious at first, there is a reason she hates beauty, and there is a reason she hates the fact the king still loves Hisui and treats her swords like beloved children. It's actually a rather subtle setup of her character that's easy to miss.

And finally, before we get into the Spriggan 12 once more, we have a moment between Romeo and Wendy. No, I'm not taking a stupid shipping bent to this. Romeo is the mere catalyst for this scene to showcase truly how far Wendy has come. For the girl who cried at the drop of a hat to being the one to encourage another member. It's really a wonderful character moment.

But more importantly, the Spriggan 12 are back, even if a quarter are Historias. At the very least it confirms that the Historias are weaker than their original counterparts. Wish that was revealed earlier instead of only being revealed after the "look how badass Erza is" moment. That's a minor quibble. Instead, their gathering sets up good ol' Gildarts, and the relationship between August and Larcade Dragneel (complete with distinct dirty looks). A damn fine red herring if ever there was one. Seriously. Larcade's power might be squicky and a little stupid, but the setup of these characters was actually really well done. Although, I kind of wish the Spriggan rematches were shown.

All of this begins to culminate (finally!) with the battle against Invel. I really liked Invel. He was no-nonsense, with a cool power and personality. I just didn't like how under-utilized he was, though part of me hopes he became the new emperor of Alvarez. Instead he was used for...sigh...another fake death. I mean, sure, just like before it was explained, which is what mitigates its severity: Natsu and Gray are really dumb and don't know how to read pulses. The Ice Lock was fine since Gray did die, but the emotion became cheapened. So, overall, while Invel did have a very large impact on the plot, he was also kind of a disappointment in terms of his overall character. It's a balance that I feel needed to be struck better.

What we really got out of this part was some amazing Lucy development. Her fight against Brandish, no matter the farce, was one of the best of the arc, and her determination to protect Natsu rather than the other way around really sold this part. Then came Makarov's death. His words were beautiful and it felt like this was a death that was going to finally stick! All of this became interwoven with the fight between Natsu and Gray.

I've seen the fight criticized for numerous reasons, and I can see why people would. But at the same time, I genuinely think it was Mashima making fun of those moments in series where former friends fight for no reason (*coughNarutoSasukecough*). Gray and Natsu, other than poisoning Devil Slaying magic and the power of END, had no reason to fight. It was a tragedy that was literally pointless, something which Gray almost outright acknowledges later. That Erza, who would always stop their fights in the past, was the one to do so now and show how pointless the fight was further enforces it. That's the reason I like this part. It was emotional, yet hollow, and that was the intent, I feel.

On the heels of all this tragedy comes the battle with Larcade, who's revealed to be Zeref's son...supposedly. Honestly, this was fight was, bar none, the best in the arc. I'd even argue it's one of the best in the series. Sure, Larcade's power is...weird...and squicky, but this singular fight showed how difficult the Spriggans were. It required a combination of five characters, including someone that was a complete counter to Larcade (Sting) getting a feasible power up (White-Shadow Dragon Mode) to finally defeat him. It was literally all these characters working together to take him down, and I loved it. Though at the time there was the question: if August said only his mother could stop Zeref's son, how could Sting defeat Larcade? Especially when said mother was hinted to be Mavis? But that was something that would be solved later, adding to that great and subtle red herring above.

Instead, we're treated to Erza and Wendy vs. Irene. Now, I want to say this: Irene's actions make perfect sense, considering she's literally insane. That part is really not that big of an issue. She loathes the beautiful because she lost her beauty when she became a dragon. She really does love her child, and thus can't bring herself to kill her, otherwise she wouldn't have been so angry when the king didn't disavow Hisui the same way she disavowed Erza. Likewise, her suicide makes sense: what does she have left to live for? She'll never be human again, she can't kill her child and she's just a failure all around. It makes sense.

Instead, what's criticized the most is the fight. I can understand. Personally, I really enjoyed the fight. Wendy has always been a prodigy and she took full command in this fight, enchanting herself onto Irene and making use of her immense magic power to control the battle until they switched back. Even enchanting Erza's sword with Dragon Slaying magic made it not Erza, but Wendy who was the second person to ever lay a powerful blow on a dragon. But...there was the meteor bit...yeah...Now, I prescribe to the theory that it was her armor that did it over her, and that the non official translations made it sound worse than it was. Nevertheless, it is an eye rolling moment, especially if you're already sick of Erza by this point. So, overall, while the fight itself is actually a good one with well-thought out execution, the meteor puts a rather sizable dent into the story. If you can't get over that, then there's no saving this fight for you, likely. If you can see even the remotest logic, then it's a very good fight.

With Irene's defeat, Universe One is dispelled.

Now that we've wrapped up the two largest sections of the arc, let's take a moment to quickly review. If it hasn't been obvious, every Spriggan has been taken down by at least two people, or with spells learned from another person. It shows how strong both sides are and shows the camaraderie that the Spriggans don't have, taking on every opponent individually. The fights themselves are actually rather good and competent except for a few questionable things that come down to a lot of personal taste than anything else. However, the fake deaths begin to become cheap at this point, which is something to note as the final stages of the arc approaches.

5) The Final Battles with Alvarez

Finally, the battle enters its final stage. Before then, we have Natsu wrestling with his very soul. Two seeds growing inside him: demon and dragon. It's no surprise this started when his true nature was revealed to him during the previous fight against Zeref. So, it's also no surprise that it puts an end to the END plotline by Natsu choosing that he's human. Do I wish we could have seen full END in action? Sure. Would have been much better. But in and of itself, it's in line with the logic of the series. A little more on that later.

First, we have that final battle with August, up against the strongest member of Fairy Tail, himself: Gildarts. It was really the only matchup that made sense, even with Cana thrown into the mix. Likewise, August's magic made sense here. Before, he'd been shown able to counter everyone's magic almost immediately with their own. Same thing here...except for Cana's cards. Turns out he copies magic, and can't copy holder magic. Makes perfect sense, and is used against him. Then comes the twist: August is Zeref's son, as well as Mavis'. All those little things before make sense now. And just like Irene, he...kinda commits suicide? I'll admit, this moment was confusing, especially his reasons for why. It seemed like he realized he'd kill his own mother and therefore couldn't bring himself to do it, but it wasn't all that clear. A dent on an otherwise solid final battle. Here's hoping the anime kind of clears that up.

With the Spriggans all defeated, Acnologia makes his return, along with Lucy's ancestor Anna (I didn't care so much for Anna, and feel she should have been introduced earlier, but otherwise, I have no problem). This leads to a harrowing chase that puts that Dragon Slayer motion sickness to good use and makes Ichiya the true hero of this arc. We're also introduced to the Time Lapse (or Ravines of Time or...whatever), part of Zeref's plan and Anna's plan and...yeah, this should have been introduced earlier too. Really, the execution for this end part isn't bad, per se, but definitely should have been foreshadowed earlier in the arc, especially when it was part of Zeref's grand plan.

Speaking of Zeref, Gray tries to take him out with Iced Shell...again. Kind of annoying. Then Natsu vs. Infinite Magic Zeref thanks to Mavis. This was, quite honestly, the worst part of the arc. It could have broken it for me, if I'm honest, after I enjoyed much of the arc before. It was only saved by what followed it, but the final battle with Zeref was sad. It barely got any focus and Natsu managed to win pretty easily. Hopefully the anime expands on this or goes with my headcanon that Mavis battled within Zeref, allowing Natsu the win when he expelled her from within him. Maybe it even would have been better if Natsu had used the power of END, instead of abruptly ending that plot point. If it does, praise be! If not, I'm afraid Natsu vs. Zeref was an utter disappointment. Maybe he was saving the big stuff for Acnologia, but Zeref didn't deserve going out like this.

We did get an emotional scene out of it, though! Zeref and Mavis' final scene was beautiful and emotional. Of course, Makarov came back...I'm a little split on this. On the one hand, it's perfectly poetic: two immortals die and thus one who died lives again, all while returning the life she had taken from his mother. On the other hand...I feel it was a narrative mistake. I understand it went with the "happy ending" that Mashima wanted, and I applaud him for going towards that happy ending, but I don't think Makarov should have come back. At least there was a consequence of him unable to use his legs, I guess.

The final portion of battling Alvarez was definitely a little underwhelming. While I liked Natsu's decision to stay human, and found the August battle satisfying in intelligence, that final battle with Zeref was really disappointing. Of course, there were about 9 chapters left, so what could...oh yeah...This was the real final battle.

6) The Final Battle with Acnologia

Acnologia was sucked inside the Time Lapse. People thought "Bullshit! This is the stupidest way for him to go out!". I sat there and thought, "Yeah, he's not done." Sure enough, he wasn't, roaring back with a vengeance and splitting into two to boot! This is where that creative thinking came in. Mashima split Acnologia into two, making his human, spirit form need to balance out his new power of the Time Lapse with the Dragon Slayers. With the Dragon Slayers free, he had to focus a lot of his own power on maintaining that space...a fact which people conveniently forget. Is it any wonder he's weaker, then?

On the outside, everyone else deals with the big bad dragon, trying to lure him to a port to make use of that good ol' motion sickness.

I won't lie: I loved this ending battle. It was everything Fairy Tail and more. Did I wish the Dragon Slayers got a few more hits in? Yes. Hopefully the anime does that. But as it stands everything was logical. Fairy Sphere was the one thing that stopped Acnologia before. Motion sickness happens to all Dragon Slayers. Acnologia is vulnerable to physical attacks. Sensory Link combines magic power. Wendy can enchant magic power. Acnologia lost an arm thanks to Igneel. Acnologia's body and spirit are tied. Acnologia tried to maintain that space. All of these were shown and stated earlier on and they all were made use of. All of those culminated in his defeat.

Did he have this big backstory? No. Did he need one? Personal preference. Personally, I say not. He was a force of nature and destruction who went off the deep end because of the dragons in the past. That was enough for me. But the fight worked, and I loved it from everything in the series coming back together to be used against him. That was what made it such a great final fight for the series.

7) The Ending

So we reach the ending. The final chapter. Personally (isn't it always?), I loved it. There were a few things I wish Mashima had tackled, such as Aquarius' key and some other little world-building things like Hoteye and Wally, Quatro Cerberus (seriously, they are the most forgotten characters in the series), a little more about the other guilds, etc. But I can kind of give it a pass because you only have so much time on a final chapter and he spent it where it counted: on Fairy Tail.

I love the nod to Kemu Zaleon from the 2nd arc of the series, though. Really nice callback. I liked the way the ships were handled: nothing ostentatious but fit them all just fine. Gajeel and Levy being the closest, highlighting just how much Gajeel has grown from his days in Phantom Lord; Gray finally giving an answer to Juvia and warming up to her; Jellal being pardoned while Erza waits for him (the two are rather chaste about that whole thing, so it makes sense). Hell, we even got Zeref and Mavis! Normally, I'd be kinda pissed at this. Normally. Except here...it works, It works because they're not Zeref and Mavis. They are different people, embarking on a new beginning, which is what this chapter was all about: a new beginning.

Then there was the Natsu and Lucy stuff. No, there was no big kiss or "I love you", but at the same time, I don't think there needed to be. Natsu isn't the kind of guy to do all that, even if Lucy is a total romantic (and it showed by her clear expectations), but what they have is profound, and, well, "they'll always be together".

But perhaps what I loved most about the ending, is that the adventure continued on a 100 year quest. Just Team Natsu, together on another adventure, with the founding words of the guild spoken. It resonated with me emotionally and really brought a beautiful cap off to the series I don't think I'll ever forget.

Conclusion
The Alvarez arc is not a beloved arc. I'm well aware of that. Hell, if my review above wasn't plain, I'm well aware of it's flaws. From the numerous fake deaths to the disappointing Natsu vs. Zeref and over-excessive Erza moments, there were a number of issues. However! In my opinion, it was still an arc that was ultimately well made. It wasn't perfect by any stretch of the word, but it showcased every character's development, had some very good fights (save for a few, or those with rather poor explanations) that I look forward to seeing animated, and really brought out the emotions for the finale...at least if you hadn't already given up on the series.

I know not everyone will agree with this review or my comments. That's okay. These are just my personal opinions, and maybe they'll make you see the Alvarez Arc in a different light, too! But at the very least, I can definitely say that it was an arc well worth reading and enjoying if you haven't forgotten what Fairy Tail was all about in the first place: friends, family and a never-ending adventure!

Thanks, Hiro Mashima, for taking us on this journey with you, and I look forward to your next series!

Dare to Be Silly,
Epicocity