The first expansion for FFXIV drops in a month.

For those who never played, FFXIV: A Realm Reborn was the remake of FFXIV 1.0 which was a failure because of a bad game engine and bad game design.

Funny enough, 1.0 actually had a decent story, but most players agreed that it wasn't worth the pain of actually dealing with the game to get to the story.  Like, crab meat is delicious, but not if you're the one that has to crack open the shell on the legs with no tools.

Anyway, ARR (known as 2.0) continued the delicious meaty story of 1.0, this time with someone having cracked the crab leg open for you.  The whole arc of the story of 2.0, told across five major episodes, deals with you (the player character) joining up with the Scions of the Seventh Dawn to defeat the primals (classic FF summons) and deal a blow to the Garlean Empire, who is trying to take over the main continent of Eorzea.

Along the way, you befriend the grandchildren of the major protagonist of 1.0, Louisioux, who try separate paths to bring world peace.  Neither of them succeed.

By the end of the story of 2.55,

7 reasons the expansion is going to be epic

(Yes, there's a monthly fee for the game, but your money goes to good high quality content updates.  With 99% server uptime, it's money well spent as well.

Plus, the game has some of the most epic fashion out of any MMORPG. )

If there is a collapse, it will be brief.

There was a great video game collapse around 1983, due to games like E.T. which were terribly coded and not worth the plastic of the cartridge that housed them.   As a result, the US lost its edge in the home console video game market, and didn't come up with a real competitor to Japan again until the Xbox.  

As long as the manga industry in Japan continues to produce high quality series, then the anime industry will continue to animate them.   Same with light novels.  What seems to be becoming rarer is original anime and movies that aren't based on other things.  

Hints?  It's a canon fact that Freed is more fabulous than a basket full of rainbows.  (I still grin over his reaction to the boys of Blue Pegasus posing naked in solidarity with Jenny in one of the side chapters.)

Bixlow and Evergreen love Laxus, but Freed is in love with Laxus.  And Laxus is adorably oblivious to the fact.  Recently caught up on the anime and the animators are totally playing with that - Freed happily washing Laxus's back and giving him a back massage, and Laxus saying something along the lines of "you can massage every inch of me."  Maybe it was "scrub."  Either way, Laxus didn't mean anything sexual by it - but Freed sure enjoyed it as such all the same.

All that said, I ship Mira/Laxus.  

Well she could died there still. I don't know. That founding day picture and seeing the Gaiden now only makes me think "Ok...when is the time..."

They took a picture with her corpse, like Victorian times 

2) I don't know. As for Zeref and Mavis, we don't know the full extent of their relationship outside the fact they did meet each other and judging how they meet up once again in the current timeline, it seems like they ended in a bad note. I don't know if the Gaiden is a requirement to find out but we'll see.

Ah, their relationship is explained in Fairy Tail Zero.  Yes, it comes to a bad end, but not because of Zeref.  

What I'm finding funny is now this:

- Everyone in the manga who is a dark mage wants to bring Zeref back to life, but he never died.  He's immortal.  (Pretty much the last question left is why he was on Tenrou island asleep, but I suspect it's because he is the one who buried Mavis.)

- Every demon that Zeref created wants to summon END, but he's already been summoned somehow, and he's Natsu (or partially Natsu.)

We knew that Zeref knew Natsu from the S Rank exams arc, but we thought it was because of time travel that Zeref panicked and said. "no it's too soon, you can't kill me yet."  At some point, END was supposed to become strong enough to kill Zeref.

This ALSO explains why Natsu is over 80 years old and could get trapped by Fried's runes during the Laxus Insurrection arc.

I still have some questions that need to get answered for the rest of this to fall into place, but this was a huge chunk of it

- Why are there dragonslayers?  Why was Natsu entrusted to a ghost of a dragon, and by what magic?

- What is Lumen Histoire, and what is Zeref's connection to Fairy Tail aside being friends with the founders?

- Who summoned END originally - was it Mavis?

- Acknowlgia - how does he fit into all of this mess yet?

NaLu is now my One True Pairing ™ but I'm also really cheering for Shiroe/Akatsuki from Log Horizon.  The anime is over and the novels will take a few years to catch up, so it could be ages before that's resolved, hence it not being the OTP.  I just really like that he's the thoughtful tactician and she's his sword(katana) arm.  She even says, quite sincerely, that she's "his ninja."

I also like the other "traditional" pairings from Fairy Tail - Gruvia, Jerza, and Galevy.   Gruvia has been seeing the most overt action in the last couple of months of the manga, but NaLu is pretty much being written on every page as well *squee*  

That's how Fairy Tail is going to be for the next year:

Pairing Feels!

Agnst!

Curveball!

MOAR PAIRING FEELS

MOAR ANGST

BALLS CURVING LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW

Having the group break up was a fantastic plot device to get people in weird situations without having to explain everything step by step.

Hasn't stopped them from cancelling popular shows before.  We call those shows "FYGRTM - f*** you, go read the manga."  Sometimes it's because there's not enough material to keep going, other times it's because of a falling out between the manga artist and the anime studio (Kare Kano being the most famous example of that), but quite often it's because they don't think the show is making enough money.  

They'll finish out the season, wrap up the story somehow, and call it done.  If you are lucky, they'll resume the series in a few years when more material is out (Full Metal Panic!) and if you are very very lucky, they'll redo the series entirely (FMA Brotherhood.)  

But most of the time, they stop at the end of the season, mid-story, and just never resume, because they won't recoup the production cost via advertising or toy sales. 

In the case of Naruto, it's clearly still got enough of an audience to justify making more filler. 
 

Some other examples:  http://www.dramafeve...he-manga-ended/

I looked at the movie showings, out of morbid curiosity, and if I had wanted to see it in theaters I would have had to drive 8 hours or so, either to Florida or New York.

There's an art house cinema in ATL that usually grabs anime movies.  We saw the Trigun movie when it came through a few years ago.  

For whatever reason, that theater skipped over The Last.  Maybe the owner was a NS fan or something. Or maybe they realized that the movie would probably not make the $1000 theater licensing cost.

They'll cancel the anime if toy sales and viewership drop to a certain low point.  Anime like Naruto exist for one reason: Advertisement.  Advertisement for Naruto products, and commercial space.  

If they're not getting the eyeballs on the cartoon to justify the time slot any more, they'll kill it.

It actually makes a lot of sense for Pantherlily.  He was in the military in Edolas.  I wouldn't be surprised if Gajeel getting involved that way as well was due to his influence.

But if I'm reading that right.... Gajeel is the one who took Makarov's place on the council?

Also, Gajeel is absolutely the best person to smack some sense into Gray.  Natsu has never been on the dark side; he doesn't understand.  Gajeel, on the other hand, was in the darkness for a long time, and was saved by Makarov's kindness and Levy's forgiveness.  If anyone can understand what Gray has been going through for the last year, it's Gajeel.

Gajeel will also probably strangle him for making Juvia cry, but that's another story. 

Seems like the only one without a great new ability is Happy :(

Chapter 420 is out.

reaction

I WAS NOT READY FOR CHARLE   

Pretty sure they're a couple after that last scene.  In manga and anime, guys don't mutter phrases like "you're warm" unless it implies something much larger.

In Trigun, the day before Wolfwood died, he muttered to Milly, "You smell nice."  Camera faded to black, but it's glaringly obvious that nookie followed.

In the case of Gray/Juvia, the tragedy had already happened, and the implication from Gray muttering "You're warm" to me is that she finally thawed out his heart.  

No, I think that Natsu is, in fact, End.  All the Dragoslayers are End.  Speculation: END was the set of demons that Zeref created that could one day actually kill him.  

Back in the Tenrou arc, the first time Zeref saw Natsu, he recognized him, and said, "You can't kill me yet, it's not time yet."

Earlier, during the Laxus insurrection arc, both Gajeel and Natsu got trapped by Fried's runes that would hold anyone over the age of 80.  For years, we've been wondering why.  If both of them are actually creations of Zeref from 400 years ago, it makes sense.

Acnologia has been lurking around for at least some those 400 years.  Guildarts mentioned he was on the 100 year mission to defeat him, and lost his arm and leg in the process. 

What pact did the dragons make to protect humans 400 years ago?  That's the first I've heard of it.  Whatever it is, it seemed to have created the Dragon slayers and to have thwarted the plans of Acnologia. 

Kishi had this notion that he was "bad" at romance.  So he waffled around the pairings, and finally SP said, "Look, we'll take care of that for you with a movie" and he felt like he was let off the hook, which is why no pairings are confirmed at all during the manga proper until 700.

The thing is, he wasn't bad at romance.  He wrote great characterizations and a wonderful take on the traditional painfulness of Japanese views of love.  

What he's bad at is waff and fluff.  But that's okay!  It's a shounen manga!  Nobody wanted, or expected, any kind of waff or fluff from any of the characters, outside of funny situations.  

So someone needs to smack Kishimoto upside the head and tell him to stop distrusting his own ability to wrote a more romantic love between characters.  Because if you ignore the last two chapters and The Last, he did a pretty damn good job.

It's a week late for the appropriate season, but there's a really silly OVA set called "My Santa" from the writer of Love Hina, in which the unfortunately named protagonist (Santa....) ends up with one of Santa Claud's tsundere granddaughters.  Silly, short, and very sweet.  

We just finished watching the series Ao Haru Ride (Blue Spring Ride) and the female there is not only a tsundere, so is the guy!  They both have their reasons for it, though.

I haven't watched Fairy Tail yet but the only thing I know about the pairings is that I ship Loki/Leo x Lucy. They look soooo cute together! <3

They're cute, but they don't get much support in later parts of the manga.  I think the current anime filler arc might give a bit more air time to them, the way it's going. 

My husband and I both loved the anime.  Him so much that he used the first episode as part of a media studies assignment for his educational psychology class.  (He deliberately picked something sure to take his students out of their comfort zones.)

I would love a second season, too.  I will have to check out the light novels.

One thing that we can do to help at this point is purchase Road to Ninja on DVD or Blu Ray, and help counter balance the earnings of The Last that way.   

You know, even JK Rowling let Hermione ends up with Ron because that's what she wrote, that's what she developed, although she planned Hermione for Harry. Writers. What do I know about your mind?

With Rowling, it's a bit different.  She had planned Hermione/Ron in the beginning, and stuck to that plan despite the way the characters grew together in the later books, as "wish fulfillment."  Hermione was her self insert character.  Ron was based off an old childhood friend of hers.  I think her editors wanted Harry/Hermione because it had a huge fandom, but she said no and stuck to her guns.  Unlike Kishi....  Her acknowledgment of it later was that she could, with some distance from the series, see why people like Harry/Hermione so much, but the way she wrote Ron and Hermione's interactions in the series it was pretty clear (to me, at least) how she envisioned the story ending. 

I had picked out Ron/Hermione as the endgame couple by the 2nd book.  It was solidified for me by the 4th book.  I was surprised it didn't go any further until the last book.  I was  VERY surprised by Harry/Ginny, which kind of came out of left field.  Now there's a pity ship if there ever was one....  But it served a very important purpose, by allowing Ron to truly become Harry's brother (in-law) and by giving Harry the huge comfortable family he'd always wanted.