rip fairy tail... not! [spoilers]

The spoiler alert is a bit redundant, because Hiro Mashima did a pretty good job of spoiling the series all by himself. I've been pretty vocal about my dismay at Titkubs' handling of the last few chapters of Bleach, but I also understood that he'd been under pressure from his publisher to wrap the series up. Zero Mashima, even had he been under similar pressure with Fairy Tail, must have decided that an impending deadline was not enough to occasion the scale of ruination that he envisioned for his series. Those who remember Makarov (indeed, it is impossible that anyone wouldn't) will remember that he was a kindly grandfather figure at the start of the series, brightening every panel he appeared in with his sage and gentle advice and leadership. His death - the first one, at least - was attended by outpourings of grief from the other characters as well the fan base. But then Mashima decided that it would be cute to bring Makarov back to life, so that the Fairy Tail wizards could go back to being happy and mindlessly high again. It was all right the first time they did that. Hooray for Makarov, and all that. But it became a bit tiresome the second time around. At least the story justified both these times, however unconvincingly, Marakov's resurrection and the necessity thereof. He was like a cancer that never really went into remission, but one nevertheless that returned at the most opportune times to save his guild from a sticky situation. Then, when he died for the third time as the final arc was already heading into its denouement, the reader was painfully aware of how unnecessary his death was.

"Master, don't use Fairy Law! You may not survive it!" "There's no other way." "The First already has a plan, and it seems to be working." "Be that as it may, I gotta use this magic and kill myself for appearance's sake, because I gotta avenge my children, don't I? My children, none of whom died because plot armor. That sounds nuts, because it is, but I'm as nutty as they come, so I gotta do this." "All right, Master, suit yourself." And so Makarov used Fairy Law and killed himself. His death did little to improve Fairy Tail's situation, but the guild members were appropriately overcome with grief. The reader would have been pardoned at this point for believing that Makarov was dead for good, because there could be no reason for him to return nor any justification, plot or otherwise, for bringing him back.

But then, when Natsu delivered the death blow to Zeref after fifty chapters of mildly interesting fisticuffs and all of Fairy Tail got together to rejoice in their hard-won victory, Marakov came back to life, even as his weeping grandson and other guild members carried his lifeless corpse through the streets. I've never been more pissed at a manga before. The fuck is this? Fucking go back to being dead, you old turd! Zero Mashima's ability to shit all over a good character to the point where even glimpsing him in a panel is apt to drive you up the wall is unparalleled.

Acnologia was the only saving grace of the last stretch of the final arc. Zeref died earlier, because he would have rather kissed the First than faced off against Acnologia, as everyone wanted, and so the fan base was deprived of an epic, logical, and healthy resolution to the unprecedented tension of having two equally epic, equally scary final villains throughout the series. These twin pillars of evil were easily one of my favorite things about Fairy Tail. I've written elsewhere about how I loved Zeref as a villain, and Acnologia was no less awe-inspiring. Yet the person creative enough to have come up with them just had to have opossum shit for brains. The frustration is unlike anything I've felt with a work of fiction. So with Acnologia the last remaining source of evil in the world, I put all my support behind him. I wanted Acnologia to use his near-infinite power to wipe the dumb smug grin off Natsu's face and bury Fairy Tail and the other guilds under miles of rubble. But obviously he had to die, and all it took was one punch from Natsu, with all the magicians on the planet lending him their magic. (RIP, Acnologia.) And when I saw Marakov cheering with everyone else, his presence and latest resurrection struck me as being so useless to the plot that I would have been less pissed to see fucking Ron Weasley among the crowd. Oh, and plot twist: Everyone else you believed to be dead, even minor characters whose relevance to the plot had expired even before their ephemeral lives had ended, were revealed to be alive still. Zero Mashima's thought process, if any, leaves the reader reeling.

I couldn't bring myself to read the last few pages of the last chapter and ended up flipping through them so fast that I didn't so much as glimpse the artwork on them. That, in my view, was the kind of shit farewell the series deserved for it's shit ending. I paused briefly on a panel with Jellal, because he had always been one of my favorite characters and reflected wistfully on how unjust Zero Mashima the Dancing Clown has been to him as well. There was so much depth, so much pathos to his character up until the Oración Seis arc. His love for Erza and whatnot. And even for a time when he returned as a member of Crime Sorcière. But except for brief episodes in which he revealed the extent of his hair-raising magic, reminding everyone why he was such an awesome character, every other word he said was basically about how he didn't deserve to live because of his past sins. His character sort of plateaued after that, and you can thank Zero Mashima's inability to stop shitting on his best characters for that.

How frustrating that it had to come to this. Fairy Tail was a great series at the start, with a great premise, great characters, and a great sense of fun, even if the storytelling was always shitty. But it was Zero Mashima, its capricious creator, and the moldy hay he had for brains that ultimately did it in. I bade farewell to what Fairy Tail used to be long ago, so I see no need to mourn its end again now.