Quick Summary
In Fairy gone episode 5, “Black Moon and Lost Child’s Song,” Mariya Noel is greatly relieved that her old friend Veronica Thorne has come back to save her. But her relief turns to panic as their foe Jonathan Passpierre turns out to be dangerously capable. Can even the two of them together take him down? Meanwhile, Free Underbar finds that Patricia Pearl is as dangerous as her partner. With his fairy pinned down, he finds her speed hard to counter. Our heroes still hope to retrieve the Black Fairy Tome, but can they survive first?
Note: This post may include spoilers, so be cautious.
What’s in This Post
3 Favorite Moments
Moment 1
Veronica in the flashback just didn’t have the cruelty to go through with the assassination. It seems that she paid for that inaction. Capture from the Funimation stream.
At first, I thought Veronica’s attempt to assassinate Ray Dawn was wildly unrealistic (2:59). I mean, who stands in a crowd, cocks and aims a pistol, and just stands there? That gave the crowd a chance to react (which they did). It gave Ray Dawn’s guards a chance to target Veronica (which they did). And worst of all? It gave Ray Dawn himself a chance to unleash his fairy. The fairy’s attack aged her pistol so rapidly that it was useless (3:30). But then I realized something. The Veronica in the year 497 was not the practiced killer we’ve come to know. She’s not the Veronica who dives though stain glassed windows to protect her friend. She’s the young girl who lost everything at the hands or Ray Dawn, and she doesn’t yet know how to kill. The scene really worked for me — the second time I watched it!
Moment 2
Looks like one can only push Free so far before he pushes back… Capture from the Funimation stream.
This show knows how to stage exciting fights. In this episode, we get two, and since I really didn’t like Jonathan much, I’ll focus on the fight between Free and Patricia. She’s a bit crazy, as is her partner, but I found her brand of crazy to be much more realistic. More fun to watch, too. She was fast, capable, and fond of verbally attacking her opponent. At one point, she even said Free wasn’t any big deal (7:58). I mention that because I was thinking, “Hey, wasn’t he a trained solider? Shouldn’t he be doing a bit better here?” Apparently, the kick she delivered after her verbal attack knocked some sense into him; or maybe her taunt stung his professional pride. Because he steadied himself against a pillar and got very, very serious (9:12). He was able to shatter her blades and drive her backward. As he approached to continue the fight, he looked over at his fairy, which was pinned under Patricia’s fairy, and told it to (9:39) “Quit screwing around!” I’ve always liked the moment when the hero gathers themselves for the counter attack!
Moment 3
She was weakened from her wound and she was in pain, but she still managed to manifest her fairy. Capture from the Funimation stream.
Mariya had been helplessly watching Veronica fight to protect her. All the while, she was berating herself for being weak and saying, almost as if to convince herself, that she was no longer the old Mariya — i.e., the Mariya that Veronica had to rescue in the forest when they were younger. Never mind that Mariya was wounded. Never mind that she was relatively untrained. She didn’t want to be helpless. Saying, “I’m not the old me anymore” (10:30), she reached deeply into her energy reserves and released her fairy. It rained fire around Jonathan, who thought the fairy looked “stunning.” It isolated him enough that Veronica had time to get to Mariya and haul the two of them out of the burning building. It was nice to see Mariya step it up a bit!
Thoughts
Must all villains lick their lips? I could have happily lived my whole life without seeing Jonathan’s tongue.
Free had made his counter attack. He and his fairy had Patricia and her fairy on their heels. He even had his foot on her suitcase! So why, oh why, did he kick it back to her (11:43)? He told her to use it — was he trying to be chivalrous? After see how well she had fought? Dude…
And did I see that right — Patricia left the Black Fairy Tome behind? Was she trying to convince Free not to follow? I’m not sure I understand that…
Have to say I was pleased to see Veronica use her fairy to put Jonathan down.
Mariya had to dig deep to find the strength to manifest her fairy — and if I haven’t said it before, I’ll say it now: I think it looks awesome! Capture from the Funimation stream.
I think I’m a little more clear now on why Veronica doesn’t want Mariya to find her — Veronica’s trying to assassinate royalty, and she doesn’t want her friend mixed up in it. She still loves Mariya; it’s clear that the feeling’s mutual. So Veronica’s decisions make sense to me. With this episode, the story of Mariya and Veronica got even more clear than it was at the end of the previous episode. I like that direction! It was even nice to see how Veronica seemed to disappear into the flames, at least from Mariya’s perspective.
I’m a little less clear on what happened at the end of the episode. Don’t get me wrong: I was really happy to see Klara Kysenaria again. I get attached to characters… It was interesting to meet so many new Dorothea agents and operatives, too. There we some old soldiers there, and everyone (except Mariya) was drinking quite a lot. Yet, I really didn’t get what the show was trying to tell me.
I’m a big fan of showing versus telling. Unless I missed something, though, I don’t think I have enough information to interpret what this scene was about. Klara caught Mariya staring out the window at the moon. It was the same moon that we see Veronica looking at from her hideout. We found out after the credits that Veronica was humming the song that was playing during most of the flashback at the beginning of the episode, so it was a nice example of symmetry. But it brought me no closer to understanding the scene in the bar.
Klara’s focused, studious, rock-solid in a fight, and concerned about her companions. What’s not to like? Capture from the Funimation stream.
The captions were often pushed aside by the character’s identification, and that was a little distracting. But even watching the show a second (and third!) time, I still came away confused.
About all I could get out of it was that Dorothea was a little bigger than I’d thought it was; that they’re comfortable enough with each other for a lot of ribbing; that some of them can seriously hold their alcohol; that they all at least respect their boss Nein Aular (and a few like her quite a lot); and that Serge Tova was as gregarious as he seemed to be when we first met him back in episode 2.
Oh, and I enjoyed see Klara again. But I already said that, didn’t I?
Other than that, the scene left me scratching my head — it took up almost half the episode!
Do you have any insight into the party scene? What were your favorite moments? Let me know in the comments!
Other Posts about This Series
Other Anime Sites
- Reddit Discussion of Fairy gone Episode 5
- The Otaku Author: Fairy Gone (Episode 5) – Black Moon and Lost Child’s Song
- Anime Recommendations: Is Fairy Gone Really Worth it? Episode 5 Review
This Site (Crow’s World of Anime!)
- Review of Fairy gone Episode 1: Ash Covered Girl
- Review of Fairy gone Episode 2: Wolf Collar and Swan Feathers
- Review of Fairy gone Episode 3: Greedy Fox and Lying Crow
- Review of Fairy gone Episode 4: Impatient Housekeeper and Selfish Artist
- Review of Fairy gone Episode 6: Fellow Traveler
- Review of Fairy gone Episode 7: Stubborn Blacksmith and Biased Rabbit
- Review of Fairy gone Episode 8: Pipe Blowing in Stage Wing
- Review of Fairy gone Episode 9: Rolling Stones and Seven Knights
- Review of Fairy gone Episode 10: Cursed Child
- Review of Fairy gone Episode 11: Uninvited Music Corps
- Review of Fairy gone Episode 12: Powerless Soldier
I don’t get the point of this whole arc! Thy had the Black Fairy Tome, they stupidly took it to a restaurant where it was stolen, they tracked down the thieves, and got it back. There wasn’t any real development in anyway. We already knew that Veronica didn’t want Marlya to try to find her.
And I agree that bar scene was dull and without any point other than to casually introduce a bunch more characters that I’ll probably not care much about in an episode or two. I feel like that so far they’ve failed to make us really care about anything.
Also, I get so annoyed at characters that are strong enough to win but take it easy for no reason whatsoever. I get that they might be feeling out their opponent, but it just feels like a lazy way of developing tension.
“There wasn’t any real development in anyway. We already knew that Veronica didn’t want Marlya to try to find her.”
I won’t know for sure until it’s all done, but based on these first 5 episodes, I would have restructured a lot of these scenes into the first couple of episodes to make the point about Veronica. The duplications just feels, well, duplicate.
“I get that they might be feeling out their opponent, but it just feels like a lazy way of developing tension.”
I get what you’re saying! It didn’t bother me in this case, because Free had reason to believe she was a seasoned operative, so he had to go a little easy. I think even then, he misjudged her, which is why she was able to smack him around for so long! Thinking back, it might also explained why he was so angry toward the end of the fight.
But I haven’t seen anything explanation for him giving her the suitcase or for her giving back the Black Fairy Tome!
I want to like this show, I’ve committed to reviewing it so I really hope it improves, but am finding the flashback montages to be really ineffective and do little to develop the character or make us care about them. On top of that we still don’t have a central story. There doesn’t feel like there’s any danger.
“On top of that we still don’t have a central story. There doesn’t feel like there’s any danger.”
There’s sporadic danger, but absent a larger plot context, it’s less dramatic.
What gives me hope is that there’s real textured complexity here; some of it’s just out of sight or lost in the shuffle. This post over on the Reddit thread summarizes who’s in what group:
https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/bkzqd6/fairy_gone_episode_5_discussion/emkr9d8?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x
There’s a LOT of potential here! And I like some of the characters. Remember Mariya’s first time meeting Free? There was a wonderful tentative awkwardness there. Serge and Klara make an interesting pair in the field. Despite my feelings about her name, Sweety makes a good villain; Patricia wasn’t bad, either.
Keeping my fingers crossed… It’s not over yet!
I have no particular insight about the party scene. It was my favourite part of the episode, for the character dynamics, but I don’t remember any details, and I don’t remember anything confusing me. (If I don’t have enough information to interpret something, I auto-store it as a memory, so it’s possible that I was fine with not understanding something and content to wait, but I can’t remember any such instance.)
This wasn’t exactly my favourite episode. I don’t know why Free pushed the suitcase back, either (wounded pride?). I often think not doing well in the opening parts of a fight is actually quite credible. If you’ve got experience and are versatile, you’re going to hold back early so not to tip your hand and to observe your opponent, so that you can then formulate a strategy (thought the same thing about Garou in OPM, which is why Saitama is an unfortunate opponent for him). However, if he’s upset about the teasing enough to return a weapon, when something’s at stake? Yeah, not sure anymore.
I’m also not entirely sure why Veronica was there in the first place? Shouldn’t she want the black tome, too?
And the names are incredibly silly. I can’t get used to “Dorothea”, which is just the German form of “Dorothy”. I can’t get used to “Nein”. At least it sounds differently, but that’s basically a character called “No” when I read it in the subs… It’s not that prominent, but I thought I’d get used to the names more quickly.
Unremarkable episode for me.
“It was my favourite part of the episode, for the character dynamics, ”
I think that if I wasn’t trying to hard to figure out how it was moving the plot forward, I might have enjoyed it — the characters were fun to watch in action. But I kept looking for plot thread to weave together!
“Shouldn’t she want the black tome, too?”
Yes — I think! We should know enough about her character by now to not have that as an open question.
Good points about his tactics in the fight, too. I really enjoyed that whole sequence, right up until when he gave her the suitcase.
The names… At least the main characters like Mariya and Klara aren’t distracting. Free’s close, but Sweety Bitter Sweet is still nagging at the back of my mind…