Fairy Tail #47-69
Originally released in 2007
Written by Hiro Mashima
Art by Hiro Mashima
The arc starts with the main cast (Natsu, Lucy, Gray, Erza, and Happy) returning from a mission only to find that the Fairy Tail guild hall had been attacked and impaled with several large iron pillars. It's the work of a rival guild, Phantom Lord, but the guild master Makarov shrugs it off - the attack happened in the middle of the night, when the guild hall was empty, so nobody was hurt. (besides, fighting between guilds is illegal, given the amount of damage that mages could do)
Still, to be cautious, the Fairy Tail mages stay in groups, which results in the other members of the main cast breaking into Lucy's apartment. (it's a running gag in the series; another guild mate, Mirajane, gives keys to Lucy's friends) Despite these precautions, it doesn't prove to be enough - Levy (a friend of Lucy's) and two of their guildmates are attacked and their unconscious bodies are put on display for all to see.
This proves to be the last straw for Makarov, and the Fairy Tail guild as a whole, as they launch an attack on the Phantom Lord guild in retaliation while Lucy keeps watch over the injured Levy. The one responsible for the attack is Gajeel, an Iron Dragon Slayer who looks like if Raditz from Dragon Ball was a metalhead - he develops a lot over the course of the series, to the point where he looks back on his role in all of this as the worst thing he's ever done by the end of it.
This was all part of the plan of Phantom Lord's master, Jose, who was hoping that Fairy Tail would become angry enough to attack Phantom Lord directly. Tricking Makarov, he has one of his guild's elite members (Aria, a member of the Element Four) drain the old man's magic, leaving him unable to fight back or defend his guild.
Meanwhile, two other members of the Element Four, Sol and Juvia, kidnap Lucy, who's their real target. Sol is inexplicably French, while Juvia is perpetually gloomy, which likely isn't helped by the fact that she causes rain everywhere she goes.
While she's been keeping it a secret from Fairy Tail, Lucy is the daughter of one of the country's wealthiest industrialists, and he's hired Phantom Lord to bring her back home. Lucy's father is a real piece of work - he's an emotionally distant workaholic who views Lucy as being little more than property to help advance his standing in society.
Phantom Lord intends to take advantage of this, as despite being a legal mage guild, they're openly scummy - even when they've got Lucy, Jose intends to drag out the process of bringing Lucy back as much as he can to get as much of the Heartfilia fortune as he's able to. Upon hearing that Lucy's been kidnapped, Natsu barges off with Happy to free her without telling anyone where he's going.
Lucy manages to break free and Natsu gets her back to the Fairy Tail guild, but she still feels guilty - many of Fairy Tail mages are injured and Makarov is fighting for her life, and it's all because she ran away from home. Natsu doesn't see the problem - as far as he's concerned, her home is the guild.
Fairy Tail has several powerful members, called S-class mages, who could make up for Makarov's absence - Erza's one of them, but the others aren't available for one reason or another. Mirajane (the white haired woman in the picture above) is an S-class mage who was known as "the Demon", but after the death of her sister, she's been unwilling or unable to fight. Gildarts, the most powerful one, is away on a mission, while Mystogan is a bit of a mystery and tends to avoid the guild unless he has to. Laxus is Makarov's grandson, but this led to him becoming self-centered and thinking that he deserves to be the new master.
Phantom Lord proves to be relentless, barely giving Fairy Tail a moment to rest before launching their next attack. As it turns out, the Phantom Lord guild hall is mobile, with giant mechanical legs along with a massive cannon that they have aimed at the Fairy Tail guild hall. Changing to her strongest defensive armour, Erza throws herself in the path of the energy blast, saving the guild hall but taking her out of commission. This leaves the guild with fifteen minutes to defeat the Element Four, whose magic is powering the cannon, before it recharges.
If there's one thing that Fairy Tail does that puts it above other shonen series, it's how it handles the women. A lot of times, the women tend to be smarter or more down-to-earth compared to the men, but either they aren't fighters or they avoid fighting unless they have to (as seen with Nami from One Piece and Bulma from Dragon Ball). Other times, they're portrayed as being powerful but they're inevitably overshadowed by the male main character and other men. (Bleach has this problem, and I have a feeling that Attack On Titan might run into this with Eren's Titan abilities severely outclassing Mikasa's talent) Other times, they're relegated to healers (as seen in Naruto), a glorified cheering section (most of the women in Yu Yu Hakusho), or there are barely any women present in the series at all. (Hunter x Hunter and Toriko seem guilty here)
In contrast, Fairy Tail does a great job with keeping the women well-developed active parts of the cast. Even seven hundred-plus chapters into the series, Erza still remains stronger than the rest of the main cast 99% of the time (Natsu tends to get temporary power-ups handed to him so he can beat the main villain of an arc, but they aren't power-ups that he can use on his own), while Lucy has grown a lot and becomes more of a direct fighter rather than relying entirely on her spirits. Both of them are fleshed out characters with strengths and flaws, comedic moments and plenty of drama, and the same goes for other prominent women in the series.
Once some Fairy Tail mages get inside of Phantom Lord's base, a series of fights kick off to defeat the Element Four and stop a second attempt at destroying the Fairy Tail guild. Natsu faces off against a mage who controls fire, Totomaru, which becomes something of a problem when fire is basically all that Natsu has beyond brute strength. (Natsu is made to punch himself in the face several times before he figures out a way around it) Meanwhile, Elfman fights Sol, who's done his research on Fairy Tail and knows why Elfman only fights by transforming one arm.
While on a mission, Elfman fully transformed into a monster and went berserk, killing his sister. The incident caused Elfman to refuse to fully transform, while also making it so Mirajane stopped fighting entirely and completely changing her personality. (She was once a delinquent who constantly fought with Erza; now she's upbeat and a little ditzy) When Mirajane's life is threatened, it causes Elfman to throw caution to the wind and fully transform once more, making short work of Sol.
Gray encounters Juvia of the Element Four, though his fight is a little more complicated. As soon as Juvia sees Gray, she falls head-over-heels in love with him, and Gray's unconscious stripping habit doesn't help matters. She's tempted to give up and convince Jose to back off if Fairy Tail just hands Lucy over, but Gray says he won't give up one of his guildmates even if it costs him his life. Juvia has a tendency of twisting words, especially when Gray is involved, so she immediately assumes the worst outcome for herself.
Juvia's water magic makes her intangible, as she can transform her body into a mass of water to avoid physical attacks. Once Phantom Lord disbands, she joins Fairy Tail as soon as possible to be close to her beloved Gray, though once she's a protagonist, the enemies consistently find a way around that ability somehow.
Still, even when she's an antagonist, Juvia is definitely the most interesting of the Element Four. She becomes a little one-note at times when she's a protagonist (since most of her personality, actions, etc. revolve around Gray), but she's an entertaining character.
Natsu encounters Aria, the last and most powerful of the Element Four, only to find himself completely outmatched by the air magic user. Erza arrives, not letting a little thing like "being blasted by a giant laser about twenty minutes ago" slow her down, and upon finding out that Aria was responsible for Makarov being in his current state, she beats him with one attack, ending the Element Four's threat. As this was happening, Gajeel tracked down Lucy with his Dragon Slayer nose, meaning that Phantom Lord just has one goal left to complete.
While Jose decides to face Erza, Gray, and Elfman personally, Natsu tracks down Gajeel, who's been amusing himself by throwing knives at Lucy for target practice. (Luckily, none of them hit her) Natsu and Gajeel both use Dragon Slayer magic, but Gajeel's Iron Dragon Slayer magic gives him a defensive boost along with an offensive one, and there's plenty of metal around for him to eat and recharge with, whereas Natsu doesn't have a source of fire.
In terms of action choreography, the fight between Natsu and Gajeel is the highlight of the arc - each blow is drawn in a way that makes you feel the impact, and it's a back-and-forth where both fighters are evenly matched. (Whereas a lot of fights in this series tend to be the villain beating up the hero for a chapter or two only for the hero to suddenly make a comeback and win, which often makes the villains feel weaker than advertised and/or like glass cannons)
Lucy is ultimately the one who turns the tide - she doesn't have any spirits who can produce fire, but her newest spirit, Sagittarius, can use his arrows to start a fire by shooting at machines in the Phantom Lord guild. Fairy Tail tends to be mocked for its overuse of the Power of Friendship trope, to the point where it feels repetitive or cheesy, but I like how it puts its money where its mouth is by making it so Natsu needs the help of his friends to win the final battle of an arc, beating opponents that he couldn't hope to win against with his own strength.
Jose is the only noteworthy member of Phantom Lord left standing, but Fairy Tail is on its last legs - Natsu can't move, Gray and Elfman are beaten, and while Erza could have fought on par with Jose if she wasn't injured (and this is coming from Jose, who's incredibly arrogant), she's barely holding her own.
Fortunately, Mystogan helped out after all, gathering Makarov's magic that had been scattered by Aria and taking out the guilds that were associated with Phantom Lord to remove their back-up. Now Makarov is face to face with Jose, and after everything that's happened to the Fairy Tail guild, a guild that Makarov sees as his children, he is furious.
Showing why he's the master, Makarov casts a spell called Fairy Law that not only defeats Jose but the various shades that he summoned and any members of Phantom Lord who are left standing. (It's a powerful wide-range spell that targets anyone who the caster sees as an enemy) It serves to explain why he's rarely directly involved in arcs, though it has its downsides that keep him from abusing it.
In the aftermath, Natsu, Gray, Erza, and Happy go to check up on Lucy, only to find that she's not home. In earlier arcs, Lucy was writing letters to her mother, but the others discover them in a cupboard, never sent, and they also find a note from Lucy that she's going home.
Lucy's father doesn't have an emotional reunion with his daughter when she returns, jumping straight to business and trying to force Lucy into marriage with a perverted weirdo so he can get land that he needs. Ironically, for all of his talk about being part of the Heartfilia family puts them above everyone else, Lucy's father isn't part of the family by blood - he took his wife's last name.
However, Lucy didn't come back to meekly accept her father's wishes - she came back to tell him off, making it clear that she's going to make her own path in life and if he tries anything like that again, then he'll be an enemy of her and the entire Fairy Tail guild. As for Lucy's mother, she passed away in the year 777, the same year that the dragons who raised Natsu and Gajeel disappeared; the mystery surrounding that year will be a recurring thread throughout the series.
Chapter 69 serves as an epilogue for the arc, building up Laxus as a potential threat as he wants to become the master of the guild and reshape it in his own image, one where only the strongest can be members. Makarov is tempted to retire, given his age, but Laxus is a problem child, Mystogan doesn't communicate, Gildarts is described as "out of the question" (it's made clear later that, if he was the Guild Master, he'd give up the title almost immediately), and Erza has her own problems. (Mirajane isn't brought up, possibly due to her being inactive)
This arc does a good job at giving the audience characters that they can root for. Seeing Lucy telling off her dad or the heroes overcoming Phantom Lord when the odds are stacked against them is satisfying to watch. The storytelling tends to focus on the fights, leading to most of the villains not having much in the way of characterization, but the action itself is pretty good and the heroes are characterized well enough that even the downtime between arcs is a lot of fun. Even this early on, the Fairy Tail guild is a likeable and fun bunch of characters, which goes a long way towards explaining why I've stuck with the series for roughly seventeen years now.
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