#tower of heaven

[mystycor]

Rewatching Fairy Tail with my sister and was reminded how much I love them

[ermbehindyou]

i guess i’m just becoming a juvia fan account now?? but i can live with that.

let’s please not forget how devoted juvia always has been and always will be to fairy tail. i mean, during battle of fairy tail arc, it took her literally less than a second to decide to sacrifice herself because she’d rather risk her life than harm another member of fairy tail, even if she didn’t know cana that well at the time.

also, the fact that at her core she truly loves the other members of fairy tail? i think people act like juvia genuinely dislikes lucy or hate on her for calling lucy a “love rival”, but i think of their relationship more like natsu and grays. at least in the sense of “they fight and there’s hostility- but actually they love each other.”

despite being cursed during tower of heaven arc (again, right after she’d joined the guild) she was able to partially break through that to reach out to lucy, where they performed the first unison raid in the series. amazing, that’s sisterhood.

finally, on her’s and grays relationship, i feel like people get wayy to mad about her “stalker” gag. calling juvia an abuser or a manipulator or saying gruvia is toxis is shockingly normalised, but if i said gray was a sex offender people would call me insane. rightfully so, by the way, because his stripping is a gag. it’s not meant to be taken seriously, and while other character yell and express discomfort that’s supposed to be the punchline, whether or not you find it funny.

when you boil it down, gray has always carried the blame that he killed ur, and has become convinced he is unlovable because of it, yet juvia has continuously shown gray unconditional love, and slowly made him feel like he is worthy of love.

anyway, stan juvia and have a nice day

[thesirenwithnovoice]

On Siren being a huge nerd today's episode, there's an example of how details can change or add to the overall meaning of an image that I find pretty interesting:

In the anime, it's a cute scene in which we can see a bit of how Erza sees Jellal and how he used to always encourage his friends. In the manga, it's also sweet, but there are some subtle differences:

The change in details allows us know a little more about the dynamics between the kids, specially the older two: Wally and Simon realize Erza's shy reaction when Jellal talks to her, and both have different reactions to it - Wally making a teasingly gesture and Simon being the only one looking unpleased (details that we know will be very relevant later in the story).

(Noting that I'm just comparing one frame isolatedly, what doesn't necessarily mean you can't get the same conclusion in the anime throught other scenes! My point here is just to highlight how simple expression changes can add meaning and different information to a single image, what I do not only find interesting as a reader, but also very useful as an artist as a way to enrich our drawings. If we only had this single scene to compare, maybe in the anime version Simon's jealousy wouldn't be so clear, nor Wally's awareness of Elza innocent crush.)

Now, one might think I'm criticizing Simon's character for loving how the manga reinforces it, but actually, it's an aspect that I appreciate a lot: in Fairy Tail, there's no dicotomy, or saint. Even the man that bravely sacrificed his life to save Erza, has always suffered from one sin: envy.

And poetically, I think in his death, Simon finally became the man he always wished to be; Erza said Jellal used to be admired for his leadership qualities, and he was always ready to sacrifice his well being for his friends without a hinge of hesitation - however, it had never been an easy role to play. We can't blame Simon, or anyone, for having not been like him; after all, being a hero comes at a high cost: for Jellal, his sanity, and for Simon, his own life.

[captainuranium543]

Between Erik, milianna and kinana what the fuck where they doing in that tower that kept turning children into animals

[kaleilaart]

Inktober Days 3 and 5: Vessel and Blade

Tower of heaven arc will always be one of my all time favorites ❤️💙

[the-dragon-hearted]

The Tower of Heaven Kids Dynamic RN

So in the fanfic, Erza, Jellal, Simon, and Erik are all in Fairy Tail post the Tower Heaven and I just realized this is literally their dynamic:

These kids are not alright, guys. They're coping best they can. I love writing them so much

[yamishika]

Submission for Jellal day (25.06.24):

Split

[nerdartandgames]

Luna Ascension (2025 vs. 2023 vs. 2018)

[void0mega]

Tower of Heaven

[10/12/22]

[lisannastraussisanangel]

More ToH Children Headcanons:

For @dirtmanwalking :)

Simon used to make the group meditate once they started using magic. Claiming they needed 'a sound mind and body' but it was mostly just to get them all to chill out

Contrary to popular belief, Erza is closest to Shô out of the whole group

Erik would bring his snake around and introduce her to all the kids

Wally has mandatory movie nights. Jellal nearly cried the first time he was invited

Simon has two graves. One where the tower of heaven was and one in a cemetery by Kagura

The Oracion Seis used to play a secret game of house. Kids weren’t allowed to have fun so it had to done quietly.

Millianna owns several cats and volunteers at a nearby shelter in her free time

Shô and Wally send postcards to Fairy Tail and Mermaid Heel every time they visit a new place

Kagura is an honorary member of the toh family. She's in the group chat (because of course they have a gc lol)

[moltensmusings]

Posting these to break up the oc posts. I'm thinking I might make Wally look more like a Marionette/ventriloquist dummy in his first appearance because my idea is that the tower crew disguise themselves as circus performers to kidnap people as sacrifices for the tower.

[wr0ngwarp]

crossover of da century

[bumblebeehug]

I’ll never be casual ever about Simon’s storyline. He deserved to live a life outside the tower of heaven more than anyone else. He was just a boy in love at the end of the day😭😭😭

[thesirenwithnovoice]

Thoughts about how different mediums of a same story may give you different views (and rambling about the Tower of Heaven)//TW: violence

Lately I've been wondering about how manga readers might have very different visions than anime watchers of a same story, because althought the plot remains the same, some little details can change our whole perception of a story.

This reminded me of the first time I read Fairy Tail and how terrified I was at how cruel and dark the Tower of Heaven's arc is.

Jellal's face (that by that time, were only an 11-years-old kid) drippling blood while being tortured shocked me so much as a kid and I still find it one of the most disturbing scenes in the manga, lol.

In the anime, the content itself is the same. We know the kids are slaves that go throught different kinds of abuse, however, I find the manga way gloomier and more graphic. And althought part of it might be just a personal opinion, it's not entirely without basis: Mashima uses different techniques in his art to represent facts whitin the story than the animators, and it leads to a topic I really love: semiotics - how we interpret images, and how detais can be used to convey a certain felling throught art.

Colors and composition helps A LOT creating an atmosphere and causing a feeling on the reader. Proportionally speaking, a manga doesn't have colors, but it has it's own alternatives - the Tower of Heaven arc, in comparison to the rest of the manga, uses a lot more black and hatching.

One can argue some scenes are still "visually darker" in the anime, since it has the advantage of being able to play with shadows and colors in a broader aspect; however, since Fairy Tail is not an anime that changes it's saturation or colour pallete, the loud colors in most scenes end up not helping building the same dreadful atmosphere.

(It doesn't mean you can't make a scary story using bright and colorful tones, tho. A great example is the movie Midsommar. But it's not an easy task!)

Erza's childhood memories in the manga also carry a "dirtier" feeling; the kids are always covered by bruises, and the background is rougher. Also, the anime chooses to represent slavery in a more fanciful way: the kids wear stylized handcuffs and are assaulted with magic attacks, what inevitably softens the scenes by distancing them from real life slavery.

In a story, an act of violence will always be more shocking if your brain is able to automatically make a connection with real life. Seeing blood conveys a feeling of disconfort easier than a character being hit by a wave of magic, even if the author tells you "this is painful"; that's why some people say they started to find difficult to watch horror movies involving kids after becoming parents, because after experenciating something in real life, they connect with fiction harder.

The above scene causes me very different feelings in each media. In the manga, the despair in Jellal's face when seeing they removed Erza's eye is much clearer, and his skinny body, his eyes filling up with tears (he doesn't cry in the anime) shows not only a feeling of worry, but of utter dread and helplessness. All that helps endorsing the fact that, doesn't matter how brave he is, they are still just fragile kids, unable to protect themselves from the cruelty of the world around them.

I want to make it clear, though, that this is not in any way meant to be a critique to the animation team, or an affirmation that one type of media is better than another. We all have our personal preferences, but each media has it's target audience and objective. Fairy Tail's animators certainly do know how to convey the same feelings on the public, they just choose not to, for a variety of reasons. Probably because the anime is aimed for a broader and younger audience, many scenes have been softened or censored somehow. Also, animation consumes more labour than a manga page, so unless you have a lot of time and investment, the art tend to be simpler.

So do you think it affects the plot, Siren?

In my opinion, yes, even if just in a subtle way. In the manga, I think this raw brutality helps Jellal's character to gain a more interesting complexity. To me, he feels less like a hero and more like what he actually is: just a really kind and brave kid trying his best to protect his friends.

Another major change they made in the anime was removing the ambiguity (something that happened more than once in Fairy Tail's adaptation, such as in the famous kiss scene), leaving clear since the beginning that Jellal was a victim of a mind controlling spell; while in the manga, until Urtear's confirmation at the end of the arc, we do not know for sure if he have been brainwashed or just convinced to adore Zeref.

And as much as I can see why some fans might hate it because it leaves room for people to see Jellal as a bad man, I (as someone who is not afraid of loving evil characters, heh), find it interesting and somehow enriching to the plot, because it gives the whole arc a reflection: is extreme suffering, specially at such an young age, capable of changing someone so much?

We are left questioning what did "Zeref" say, or do, that made him change so much. And having so many real life examples where despair has made people easy victims of manipulation throught faith or falling into extremist ideologies, after we seeing Jellal's pain and fragility in a tangible way, it's not that hard at all to understand how he went insane and managed to drag all the other slaves along with him.

Also, I think it makes it easier to understand Erza's empathy towards him. Jellal and Erza are characters connected not only by the affection they nourish for one another, but also for sharing the same pain. She is the only person that fully understands the horrors he lived in the tower, since they were the only kids that have been in the torture chamber. And althought she never tries to justify Jellal's actions, Erza does not only show him compreension, but she feels guilty for not being able to retribute his protection and prevented him from losing his mind.

That doesn't mean, tho, that there weren't many other clues he was not acting on free will: be it his grotesque change of personality, his hysterical laughter out of nowhere or his motivations that doesn't hold (because they were never his to begin with). To me, all that at first glance makes him closer to Batman's Joker, someone that grew insane after so much suffering, than a villain that's genuinely just plain selfish and thirsty for power. And that only makes me find him a creepier villain, since personally, I find sadism and insanity way scarier than ghosts.

So this is just a looong collection of thoughts about how small choices can change a lot the "feeling" we get from a scene or a character. I hope someone can find it interesting too. There are many other examples of adaptations where it happened, and if you remember one you'd like to share, I would love to hear!

Last but not less important, all the love for Mashima's art, the Tower of Heaven arc (that is a personal favorite) and Jellal, a character I deeply love and one that holds for sure the strongest spirit in the manga for being able to become such a kind and mature man despite everything he has been thought. ♡

[dionysosmadness]

Did anyone else forget about the trinity raven 💀💀💀

[mozart-tt]

ms paintober (2023 edition) day 29: tower (of heaven)