Fairy Tail Vol. 4: Fairy Tail 4
- ISBN
- 9781612622798
- Publisher
- Kodansha
- English release
- Pages
- 208
Fairy Tail 4 brings Erza before the Magic Council while her guild argues over how to respond. The opening follows the preceding confrontation, so this is a continuation for readers of the first three singles. Omnibus 2 collects volumes 4 to 6; the first manga box also includes this standard book. Check those overlaps before adding another binding. The spoiler note reads the opening courtroom and guild-hall sequence as a problem of authority, without supplying the trial's later verdict.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
The opening moves the question of authority from defeating an opponent to restraining allies. Lucy wants to testify for Erza, while Makarov tries to keep the guild from making the situation worse. The apparent success of that restraint has already collapsed: Macao has taken Natsu's place, allowing the real Natsu to leave. Makarov's instruction to wait is followed by Natsu entering the courtroom. Our reading is that the cut between those locations exposes the limits of a command issued too late. It does not prove that waiting was foolish or that intervention will work. Lucy's objection makes restraint difficult to defend emotionally, but the pages available here do not settle the legal outcome. What they establish is a mismatch between the room Makarov can quiet and the action already taking place elsewhere.
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Lines from this volume
“Don't give me that weepy crap just because you lost!!!!! We're Fairy Tail wizards!!!!! We're the guild that doesn't know how to quit!!!!”
“All we can do is wait quietly for the outcome.”
Makarov gives this order after discovering that the creature confined in the guild hall is Macao impersonating Natsu. The precaution has already failed: Macao has let the real Natsu leave, repaying a favor, while the others worry about what he will do at Erza's trial. On the next page Natsu bursts into the courtroom. That sequence makes the line an awkward candidate for a lesson in patience. Makarov is not demonstrating that waiting will produce the right result; he is telling the people still within reach to stop making the situation harder to control. Lucy has just wanted to go and testify herself, and she has called the arrest false. Her objection gives the command a cost that a detached maxim would conceal. Our reading is that this is leadership after losing control of events: the master can quiet the room, but the chapter cuts away to the person his authority no longer contains.
Gray has just lost to Lyon, who trained beside him under Ur and is now trying to revive the demon her sacrifice sealed, and nine chapters later Natsu will have to stop him from killing himself. This speech comes first, shouted while Natsu carries Gray away. What makes it more than a pep talk is who is speaking: Natsu and Gray are rivals, and here one treats the other as a member of something rather than as a rival, which is why the speech keeps saying we. The doctrine it states, that the guild is defined by not quitting, will be repeated hundreds of chapters later in far grander settings, but this is the version that costs the least and means the most, because Natsu is not addressing a crowd. He is telling one man not to die of embarrassment. Mashima wrote the guild's whole ethic into a fight over a frozen demon on a cursed island, and the later versions of the speech never quite recover this scale.