Welcome to paradise!
Chapters: 75-102, Episodes: 33-41
Short Summary
Natsu, Happy, Lucy, Erza, Gray and Juvia go on vacation and are kidnapped by figures from Erza's past. This forces her friends to follow after her to the mysterious Tower of Heaven. Flashbacks to Erza's Dark and Troubled Past and Stuff Blowing Up ensues.Main Summary
- All for Nothing: In the end, Ultear reveals that Jellal's horrific quest to use the tower to summon Zeref was meaningless since she manipulated him the whole time and Zeref was not, in fact, dead.
- All Just a Dream: When Erza appears to make a Heroic Sacrifice, she hallucinates her own funeral. She immediately regrets her sacrifice upon seeing how permanently depressed everyone at Fairy Tail would be. Thank God she's still alive.
- Animal Motifs:
- Birds for the Trinity Ravens. Ikaruga means Japanese Grosbeak, Taka means Hawk and Fukuro Owl.
- Cats for Millianna.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Sho denies Erza's explanation of her backstory and says that Jellal told them all about how she betrayed them and tried to blow them up with a bomb. Gray points out the flaw in his story.Gray: "Jellal... told you?"
- Bait-and-Switch Boss: Erza's friends seem to be the Quirky Miniboss Squad, but save for a brief fight with Natsu against Wally and Millianna, they redeem themselves fairly quickly. Trinity Raven takes over the role after that.
Mashima got too attached to them to keep them as villains. - Big Bad: Jellal/Siegrain.
- Big "NO!": Erza yells "No!" when Simon takes Jellal's blast meant for her and dies in her arms.
- Bowdlerise:
- The casino scene in the anime when Wally attacks Natsu. In the manga, he pins Natsu to the ground and fires his gun into Natsu's mouth. The anime changes this to him using his powers to pin Natsu to one of the casino machines and firing an arm cannon into his mouth when he screams.
- The whips and chains from the manga are also replaced with magic that, while probably still as painful, looks a lot less despicable when used on small children.
- Jellal using his newly acquired magic to kill the Zeref cultists in a very bloody manner is changed to simply making them puff up and disappear.
- Averted however with other things that are actually made creepier by the anime, like the elite troops becoming floating zombies and the deaths of Rob and one of the slavers, who are turned to dust onscreen.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Juvia while under Vidaldus Taka's control. Jellal is revealed to have been as well via Ultear.
- Break the Haughty: Erza was seen as hardened, unfettered Lady of War up until this arc, where we see her Dark and Troubled Past catch up to her.
- But Now I Must Go: Millianna, Wally, and Sho depart for parts unknown after making peace with Erza.
- Carnival of Killers: Trinity Raven.
- Cat Girl: Millianna.
- Clothing Damage: The first thing Succubus!Juvia does? Ripping Lucy's blouse off, of course. Played more seriously with Erza, whose armors are destroyed one by one by Ikaruga.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: The Tower of Heaven's "disciplinary chamber", where the victim is restrained to be brutally flogged (hit with magic electricity in the anime). Erza, falsely accused of an escape attempt that was actually Sho's idea, is not only covered in whip marks by the time Jellal rescues her, but her right eye is destroyed. Jellal ends up taking her place as a torture victim for killing three cultists on the way to rescuing her.
- Combined Energy Attack: Lucy and Juvia with Unison Raid.
- Cool Mask: Natsu gets stuck in one while searching for Happy.
- Cutting Through Energy: Ikaruga, who can even cut through dimensions.
- The Dandy: Wally.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Erza really softens up in this arc. She even said that all armor did was block the pain and love from others.
- Designated Girl Fight: Invoked by Vidaldus Taka: he could have easily won by using his Rock of the Succubus on both Lucy and Juvia, but he really wanted to see a Cat Fight.
- Everyone Has Standards: In Erza's flashbacks, a young Gray refused to attack Erza from behind once in another fight of theirs when he realized she was crying.
- Expy Vidaldus seems a lot like Lord Raptor, since both are Ax-Crazy guitarists who lust after women, have pale zombie-like appearances, shout in a demonic voice, and make puns off of Hell.
- Eye Scream: Erza and Simon in a flashback.
- Friendly Tickle Torture: Natsu tickles Erza while she's unable to move.
- Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!: The slave revolt in Erza's flashback. They succeeded, and then Ultear had to muck up everything by brainwashing Jellal.
- Good All Along: Simon, who always suspected something was fishy about Jellal but kept quiet to keep his friends safe.
- Gory Discretion Shot:
- Erza loses her right eye from torture. When Jellal finds her, she's lying on the ground in such a manner that her hair conceals the eye, though you can see blood covering the right half of her face. The next scene shows her with an eyepatch.
- During the slave revolt, Simon takes a magic blast to the face, with the resulting smoke concealing the damage. He currently has a metal lower jaw and an eyepatch over his left eye.
- In the manga, the now tortured-into-evil actually newly Brainwashed and Crazy Jellal kills the cultists in such a gruesome manner that their blood splashes into panels where they themselves can't actually be seen. Erza was horrified, despite hating them as much as Jellal did.
- Heel–Face Turn:
- Though she'd been hanging around the background since the end of the Phantom Lord arc, this arc makes it official for Juvia.
- Erza theorizes that she survived merging with Etherion because Jellal came to his senses and merged with it himself and pushed her out, but she admits this is mainly wishful thinking.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Rob in Erza's flashback, Simon in the present day. Erza attempts this at the end of the arc but Natsu manages to save her.
- Idiot Ball: Sho actually thought that it was a good idea to keep Erza safely concealed within one of his magic cards while he would take care of Jellal.
- Karma Houdini: Ultear, Vidadlus, Ikaruga, and Fukuro are all seen escaping alive and well in the end (though the latter three are only shown in the anime, and the final arc indicates that at least Ikaruga is dead).
- Katanas Are Just Better: Ikaruga's katana can destroy and cut up all of Erza's armors, and she's defeated when Erza uses a katana herself.
- Kill Sat: Etherion. Subverted in that it doesn't destroy the tower, and is in fact what Jellal wants to complete it.
- Light Is Not Good: All of Jellal's spells, plus the previously encountered Abyss Break.
- Made a Slave: Erza's backstory as she, along with Jellal and her friends, were part of the many kidnappees that were forced to work on the tower.
- Manipulative Bastard: Jellal who, as his thought projection Siegrain, manages to convince the Magic Coucil to fire Etherion to complete the tower. However...
- Man Behind the Man: ...Ultear was manipulating Jellal since his days as a slave to unlock one of Zeref's seals. What's more is that she's working for another boss.
- Misplaced Retribution: The reason Erza has an artificial eye. She was falsely accused of a foiled escape attempt (it was actually Sho's idea), which led to the cultists destroying her right eye as punishment.
- Mood-Swinger: Sho. He can go from a Tragic Villain crying for his surrogate sister to an Ax-Crazy maniac within a single monologue.
- Mood Whiplash: After Erza is beaten by Jellal and unable to move, Natsu comes to her and tickles her while she can't fight back.
- Mook–Face Turn: Milliana, Sho, and Wally ditch Jellal after realizing that he never cared for them at all.
- Musical Assassin: Vidaldus Taka
- Pragmatic Villainy: Jellal in the backstory. He kept everyone on the island and still working on the tower, but unlike the cultists he treated them well and motivated them via indoctrinating them into believing in the cause.
- Senseless Sacrifice: Deconstructed. We see that if Erza succeeded at pulling a Heroic Sacrifice, then her friends would be emotionally devastated rather than react positively to her heroic gesture.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: It's revealed by Ultear at the end of the arc that Zeref was never dead to begin with, so all of the reasons and actions for creating the tower were for absolutely nothing.
- Ship Tease: Erza has a lot of this throughout the arc. The most prominent being with Jellal, Simon, Gray, and Natsu.
- Undying Loyalty: Natsu refuses to let Erza die.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Erza's friends. Fortunately, they all pull a Heel–Face Turn (sans Jellal).
- Warrior Poet: Ikaruga, with Haiku.
- Wham Episode: The current Magic Council is left in ruins after this arc thanks to Ultear and disbands shortly after.
- What Measure Is a Mook?: The tower has a small army of guards that the heroes plow through. Going off the backstory, these are almost certainly the rest of the former slaves that had been tricked by Jellal into continuing work on the tower. No one regards them as anything other than Faceless Mooks and no attempt is made to save them from the Etherion blast which, presumably, kills them all.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Zeref cultists who used child laborers.
