Dragon Slayer vs God Slayer
(Warning: This post might seem quite long to you. It’s a bad habit of mine, but I’ll try to cut down the length of future posts.)
The war between Fairy Tail and Grimoire Heart continues. During the previous episode, the two Guild Masters of Fairy Tail and Grimoire Heart faced off, which ended with Hades soundly defeating Makarov. Following Grimoire Heart’s first victory, the Seven Kin of Purgatory then launches their assault on Tenrou Island, seeking to locate the Black Mage Zeref and also destroy Fairy Tail once and for all.
After defeating several nameless mooks, Zancrow, one of the Seven Kin of Purgatory, approaches Natsu and initiates a battle with him. Despite Natsu’s high-resistance to Fire Magic and the ability to eat it, he realizes that neither of these traits work against Zancrow’s Flames. Natsu is at first confused about this, until Zancrow reveals that the reason is because Zancrow’s flames are stronger than a Dragon-Slayer’s: They are God-Slayer Flames.
The episode starts off with Hades looking out towards the sea. He comments that destroying Fairy Tail is just a mere step towards Grimoire Heart’s true goal: Awakening the Black Mage Zeref. Having already defeated the most powerful member of Fairy Tail, Hades decides to let the Seven Kin of Purgatory finish off whatever remains of them.
In the mean time, continuing on from the previous episode, the fight between Natsu and Zancrow begins. With both of them utilizing similar attacks, they seem evenly matched at first. However, Zancrow begins to slowly demonstrate his superiority in both magic and combat, and manages to overpower Natsu.
Zancrow demonstrates his sense of humour
After overpowering Natsu without too much effort, Zancrow begins to question if this was all the power that Dragon Slayers had. Natsu, being Natsu, replies that he has only begun to warm up. The two of them have a short conversation before resuming their fight, with Zancrow properly introducing himself as one of the Seven Kin of Purgatory, and Natsu introducing himself as a member of Fairy Tail. Zancrow then begins to mock Natsu and his Dragon Slayer Magic, claiming that Natsu’s past victories over Jellal and Zero were nothing to be impressed about. This infuriated Natsu, and the two resume their battle as a result.
The two continue their conversation as they fight evenly, with Natsu questioning if Zancrow learnt his Magic from an actual God. Zancrow replies that he had learnt it from Hades, who could possibly be considered a God. Natsu smirks at this, and proudly proclaims that he had learnt his Dragon Slayer Magic from an actual Dragon, unlike Zancrow who learnt it from a mere human. The two then unleash their flame magic on each other, and although the attacks were evenly matched for the first few moments, Zancrow’s magic proves to superior and overpowers Natsu’s.
Zancrow tells Wendy and the Exceeds that they are next, once he's finished with Natsu
Over the course of Natsu and Zancrow’s battle, Wendy and the three Exceeds have been talking among themselves about the fight that was going on. After being threatened by Zancrow for being annoying, and being told to get away by Natsu, the four of them do just that, with the exceeds carrying Wendy away.
Unfortunately, the four continued to monologue among themselves even in mid-air. Once Zancrow was finished overpowering Natsu, he turned his attention to them, and unleashed his God-Slayer Flames upon them, quickly downing Wendy and the three Exceeds. Zancrow then laughs at them for being so weak, which greatly infuriates Natsu once more. (Not that it takes a lot of effort to do that)
Natsu then decides to unleash his signature Dragon’s Roar spell, which seemingly decimates Zancrow at first. However, as the smoke clears out, what really happened became evident: Zancrow was devouring Natsu’s flames. As everyone in the vicinity goes into temporary shock, Zancrow comments that Natsu’s Flames were delicious and begins to repay the favour. Utilizing what appears to be the God-Slayer’s counterpart to the Dragon-Slayer’s Roar, Zancrow unleashes the Bellow of the Flame God, which promptly defeats and sends Natsu flying off a cliff.
The obligatory evil laughter, after winning
Following Zancrow’s victory over Natsu, the scene shifts to the battle against Caprico. Even with four people working together, Caprico easily evades all of their attacks, and has no trouble dealing with Lucy/Gray/Kana/Loke. All four of the Fairy Tail members are wondering why their attacks don’t ever reach him, while Caprico does the standard villain speech about how it was pointless to resist. Loke acts strangely and an internal monologue occurs where it is shown that Loke might know who Caprico truly is. However, before this detail is revealed, the scene shifts and the audience is left hanging on what Loke meant.
Appearing all beat-up, it is revealed that Natsu had survived the (immense) fall and was now wondering among the forests of Tenrou Island, commenting that it has been a very long time since he felt that a flame was ‘hot’. How he survived that fall, let alone get up and wander around, is beyond me. Since a similar fall like that also occured during the Oracion Seis Arc with Cobra, I’m going to assume Dragon Slayers can take a bigger beating than most people. Regardless, Natsu eventually smells a familiar scent, and after chasing it, he finds Makarov’s corpse body lying on the ground.
It turns out that Makarov had survived his encounter with Hades, although he was in no condition to move at all. Makarov, for the first time, tells Natsu that Fairy Tail cannot win this war, and that they had to retreat. Natsu, being Natsu (again), insists that Fairy Tail can still win this, but Makarov attempts to explain that there are times when retreat is the only option.
Before the two could continue talking, however, Zancrow shows up and laughs at Makarov for losing to Hades. Makarov tells Natsu that he cannot defeat Zancrow, and that he should run away. Natsu himself seems to be in fear of Zancrow, but after thinking it through, Natsu comes to a different conclusion: He is indeed scared, but not because of Zancrow. He is afraid that someone other than himself would defeat Hades, and he loudly declares that he will be the one to defeat Hades.
Natsu is *literally* hot... Yeah, bad pun.
In the meantime, the scene shifts to Lisanna and Mirajane’s battle against Azuma. Much to Mirajane’s surprise, Lisanna demonstrates that she is far stronger than she used to be, and is able to transition between several Take-Overs smoothly and quickly. Despite Azuma using a Lost Magic and being one of the Seven Kin of Purgatory, Lisanna fights extremely well against him, only losing out by a slight bit.
Azuma himself is rather surprised that Lisanna was stronger than he expected, but he declared that he will show the difference between their powers. However, while he was busy monloguing about how much stronger he is, Mirajane strikes him. It didn’t actually do too much damage, but Azuma felt an immense level of magic from Mirajane, and decided that there was no need for him to hold back after all.
Zancrow wields a Flame Scythe because he can
Back at the main action, Zancrow walks over to Natsu with a dead-serious look on his face and says that the idea of Natsu defeating Hades isn’t even funny. Just as he says that, Natsu delivers two powerful strikes to Zancrow, sending him back a good distance. However, Zancrow isn’t fazed in the least, and summons up a scythe made of God-Slayer Flames, which he then uses to slice Natsu in half. Natsu takes advantage of the trees that were cut, and sends an extremely huge trunk flying downwards at Zancrow, which hits with great impact.
However, Zancrow then burst out from the top of the trunk, having used his flames to melt the interior of the tree. Zancrow delivers an extremely powerful blow to Natsu in the process, and utilizes the Last Supper of the Flame God, which is basically a fancily-named fire spell that engulfs Natsu in God-Slayer Flames. As Natsu becomes trapped within Zancrow’s Flames, he is unable to get out, nor is he unable to eat Zancrow’s flames. Just as all hope seems lost, Makarov used his Titan Magic to grab at Zancrow, attempting to stop Zancrow. Zancrow responded in kind by torching Makarov’s hand, telling him to let go or have his hand turned to ashes. Makarov refuses to do so anyway, saying that he won’t let Zancrow hurt his family anymore, and even tightens his grip.
Natsu, seeing what Makarov was trying to do for him, attempts one last try to break out of Zancrow’s spell… and seemingly fails. Just as it seemed like Natsu had kicked the bucket, the God-Slayer Flames began to dwindle… and it is revealed that Natsu was eating Zancrow’s Flames. Zancrow was completely taken by surprise, seeing as it was supposed to be impossible for Natsu to eat God-Slayer Flames. Makarov realized that Natsu emptied out his own magic temporarily, so that he could create a vessel that could eat Zancrow’s God-Slayer Flames. As for why that works, I’m not entirely too sure myself.
Natsu then combines his Dragon-Slayer Flames with Zancrow’s God-slayer Flames, while Makarov tosses Zancrow into the air so that Natsu can get a clean shot. Natsu declares that neither he nor anyone else was going to die, and that the members of Fairy Tail were all going home together. He then unleashes Dazzling Blaze of the Dragon God, possibly the most powerful attack he has ever used so far, and completely blasts Zancrow away. Instead of shouting in agony while getting struck by this attack, Zancrow laughs away while he gets blasted, and is presumably defeated.
Everyone knows loudly yelling makes your attacks stronger!
Comments:
It was a good episode, and the fight between Natsu and Zancrow was enjoyable to watch. I personally think that they should have splitted the fight into two episodes, with the first episode ending with Zancrow’s victory while Natsu comes back in the second episode to do what he did. The fight was well done and it’s kind of a shame that it was mainly focused on one episode. They could have expanded the two battles so that it’d fit two full episodes, although one can’t really ask for everything.
Back when the manga was at this stage, I had to say that I somehow expected more of Zancrow. His God-Slayer Magic seemed very interesting as it was the one magic that was blatantly stronger than Dragon-Slayer Magic. (Zancrow could eat Natsu’s Flames without any trouble at all, while Natsu had to do his little trick to eat Zancrow’s Flames) But then again, like Lachryma Dragon-Slayers, the Magic wasn’t obtained the genuine way, so it’s probably a weaker version. Zancrow also seemed to make a good arch-rival for Natsu, since he was similar in personality and used a ‘dark’ (Literally) version of Natsu’s Magic. But the fight in this episode was well-done and it wasn’t disappointing. The plot doesn’t always go the way one expects it to, but still, this was satisfiable nonetheless.
azureanime 