The following contains spoilers for Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest, episode 8, “Aldoron, the Forest Dragon God,” now streaming on Crunchyroll.

Key findings

• Team Natsu embarks on a new mission to seal the forest dragon god Aldoron.
• Gray gets some encouraging words about romance from Juvina, Juvia’s non-magical doppelganger.
• The White Magician embroils Fairy Tail in a civil war and turns its guild members against each other.

The brisk pace Fairy Tail: 100 Years of Adventure The anime is already moving on to the next big battle as Team Natsu attempts to seal the Five Dragon Gods, with Aldoron, the Wood Dragon God, being the next target. This means Team Natsu is happily railroading deeper into the continent of Guiltina, and this time there are some memorable world-building to be done along the way. The coastal town of Ermina wasn’t particularly interesting, even with Mercphobia there, but the town of Drasil and the Wood Dragon Aldoron are a whole different story.

Last episode, the battle for Ermina ended on good terms, and now a new, more personal battle is about to begin. That’s because the White Wizard is finally ready to strike for real, cornering Team Natsu in a church with his own possessed guildmates. That’s a daunting challenge in itself, and that’s not even counting the task of somehow locking away the world’s largest dragon. Fighting Mercphobia was hard enough, while battling the White Wizard and Aldoron looks downright impossible – but Natsu and his friends have overcome hopeless odds before.

Fairy Nail confuses Team Natsu with his doppelgangers

This is the second off-brand Fairy Tail guild Natsu has seen

Episode 7 of Fairy Tail: 100 Years of Adventure ended on a strange note when Team Natsu arrived in a town called Tekka, where they met an Erza Scarlet lookalike who called herself Elkis. She looked “civilian” as she showed everyone the front doors of a building called Fairy Nail, a bizarre take on the name of the Fairy Tail guild. This cliffhanger continues with the first scene of episode 8, which is definitely the least important part of the episode. As Elkis explains, Fairy Nail is a guild that gathers talent from the entertainment industry, mostly actors, singers, stage performers, and the like.

This is clearly a wizard-less guild that’s less about missions and battles and more about keeping Guiltina’s pop culture alive, and Team Natsu is liberally shown around to get to know the members. In a way, this is like the pseudo-isekai adventure to Edolas where Natsu and his friends encountered alternate world versions of themselves like the punky Lucy Ashley and the over-dressed Gray, but this is very different. It’s not explained exactly how the members of Fairy Nail resemble the members of Fairy Tail and have similar names, so Natsu and his friends – and the viewers too – have to take it all at face value.

The Fairy Nail members even act like the originals, with the new Gajeel being a rock star, no-name members Natsu and Lucy being a couple despite their conflicts, and Juvina being quite attached to someone named Gren. Overall, the Fairy Nail guild contributes very little to the anime’s narrative and is more clumsy as a part of the world-building than fun or substantial. In fact, the whole thing is almost a total distraction, save for one soulful development: Juvina’s chat with Gray Fullbuster.

Juvina reminds Gray to fight for the people he cares about most

Fairy Tail has a silly but big heart

The members of the Fairy Nail group don’t have much to say to Team Natsu, with the exception of Juvina. She takes an interest in Gray, the counterpart of her crush Gren, and converses with him about matters of the heart. Juvina is similar enough to Juvia Lockser to understand where the latter is coming from, while also being independent enough to offer a fresh perspective as an outsider on what Gray needs in his personal life. Juvina has a largely one-sided passion for Gren, and that alone makes her happy and inspires her to move forward in life. Juvina’s words may not be as profound as those in classic romance anime such as Fruit basket And Toradora!but it’s still enough to get through to Gray, who tends to suppress his feelings rather than face them.

Not only does this inspire Gray to take Juvia’s massive infatuation with him more seriously, but it also serves as a counterargument to other contemporary shonen anime that avoid this topic. There is no single correct answer to how much romance should be in shonen action series, but the fact remains that love is something that every fan can relate to and appreciate, and there is a huge demand for it in all anime series. It can also add emotional nuance to the characters and give them something personal to fight for. While the results are often mixed, the Fairy tale The anime series makes a serious effort in this regard, which is commendable and helps normalize such things for shonen action anime. Time will tell how far Gray will go to live up to Juvina’s words, but at least he’s listening.

Team Natsu realizes the true scope of the Aldoron mission

Aldoron is more of a piece of land itself

Episode 8 may be somewhat entertaining with the Fairy Nail Guild and Gray’s love talk with Juvina, but the real plot of the episode really gets going when Team Natsu takes a train deeper into Guiltina and arrives in the town of Drasil, where they expect to find the wooden dragon Aldoron. Not only does the plot get going again, but the world-building is taken to the next level, more so than anything in the coastal town of Ermina, where Mercphobia was. While Fairy tale still can’t keep up with the excellent worldbuilding A piece‘s Grand Line Islands, this section of the Fairy tale The adventure becomes even more exciting with the bizarre sight of a truly gigantic dragon, on whose body rest five cities.

Natsu and Lucy were already told that Aldoron is a giant dragon, but they still weren’t ready for the sight of this wooden creature that is orders of magnitude larger than any dragon they’ve ever seen in their lives. Aldoron is less of a local creature lurking in a lair, but more a part of the terrain itself, existing on such a scale that it’s like trying to fight the entire ocean itself. This pushes the concept of dragons into Fairy tales world in a whole new direction that is not only memorable and entertaining, but also presents an overwhelming challenge for Team Natsu. Defeating Mercphobia without Ignia’s power was already a huge challenge, and Natsu needed a major power boost from Ignia to get the job done.

This is a whole new challenge, and worse, the five cities found on Aldoron’s body are home to countless people. There’s no telling what will happen if Team Natsu somehow defeats and seals Aldoron, but anime fans can imagine the consequences will be dire – and destructive. Add to that the fact that the people who live here love Aldoron as the foundation of their cities, and since they’re wizards at heart, Natsu and his friends would feel terrible killing these people’s beloved guardian dragon. For the sake of the mission, Natsu should and probably will attack Lucy Aldoron anyway, but they’ll face resistance, and not just from Aldoron himself.

The White Magician sets a trap for Team Natsu

This is a new Fairy Tail Civil War

In some episodes of this new anime, the 100-year quest on Guiltina and the mystery surrounding Touka have been treated as two separate storylines, but towards the end of episode 8, these two narratives converge – with intriguing results. The first step involves a mysterious old man in a white and gold robe escorting Natsu, Lucy, and Erza to a local church, and then the three wizards are in for a real shock. The old man is part of the White Magician’s cult, and far from alone. Another robed figure appears and reveals herself to be Mirajane Strauss, one of the many wizards involved in the White Magician’s attack at Fairy Tail’s guild hall in previous episodes. She attacks Erza with her bare fists while the old man denounces Team Natsu’s overwhelming magic power and their intent to harm Aldoron.

Then, as the end credits of episode 8 roll, a large group of robed figures appear, all of them guildmates from Fairy Tail. This is what the White Wizard had planned for the members of the guild, turning them against their strongest allies in order to achieve the White Wizard’s stated goal of neutralizing powerful wizards. Episode 8 ends on this cliffhanger, setting the members of Fairy Tail up for a second civil war, loosely reminiscent of the friend-against-friend tournament organized by Laxus Dreyar in his original film. Fairy tale Anime. The power of friendship has been subverted once again, and it’s anyone’s guess how Team Natsu will deal with the mass attacks from his white-clad friends in the next episode – but they’ll have to do their best.