#lightdark18

[lightdark18-blog]

Fairy Tail: Non In-Universe Questions

Was Anna?Was Zervis planned? Was Zeref always planned to be completely evil?So @ac-fairytail posted some Fairy Tail non in-universe questions (all credit goes to her) and I figured: “Maybe I could attempt to honestly answer these questions and reverse-engineer Mashima’s thought process!” Of course, no sane person would ever attempt this, but here I am, so...

WARNING: Spoilers for the entire Fairy Tail manga.

Did Mashima base Stardresses off of Bravely Default’s Conjurerclass? Or was it Dresspheres? Or both?

Never played Bravely Default or Final Fantasy X-2 (even though they’re on my list of games to play), but if I had to guess after a quick wiki search, it would be Dresspheres. Problem is that the Stardresses are far less interesting, balanced, or explained. Oh well; Mashima trying to replicate a franchise with the writing quality of Final Fantasy is like an ant poking a dinosaur with a stick.

Was he always planning the time travel plot? If so, why did Erik refer to second gen dragon slayers as a “new” generation? There haven’t been dragons for centuries.

Considering that the “dragons vanished seven years ago” plot-point was established at the beginning of the series and further cemented by Natsu meeting Gajeel, I’m guessing he was planning to include time travel once he decided to continue the series past Tower of Heaven. 

As for Erik, I’m guessing that he just declared himself as second-gen because a) he heard about Natsu and Gajeel as traditional dragon slayers from the Fairy Tail-Phantom Lord war (which caused ripples across Fiore) and assumed himself to be superior because dragon lacrima were invented after the age of dragons, and b) he never heard of Sting or Rogue.

If Irene was always planned to be Queen of the Dragons, why did he barely integrate Dragnof Kingdom into anything? And why didn’t Acno realize?

I think that once Mashima created Irene’s concept, he tried to integrate her into the stories of the Dragon King Festival, but failed to create anything even remotely interesting or new, so he just quickly scrapped together a kingdom and called it a day. Yes, it’s infuriating.

As for Acno, well...he’s Acno. He don’t give two flying fucks about anything.

Was Natsu always planned to be END? Why is there no foreshadowing for it prior to the Tartaros arc?

When Zeref mentioned that Natsu specifically couldn’t kill him back in Tenrou, he was alluding to an ability that Natsu would gain in the future to beat Zeref. However, when Mashima realized that nakama bullshit wasn’t a valid ability (yeah, he went back on that in Alvarez, whatever), he solidified this ability in the form of END around Tartaros. So yeah, I would refer to Zeref’s line in Tenrou as “shot-in-the-dark” foreshadowing.

Was Zeref always planned to be completely evil? If so, why was he established as sympathetic in his introductory arc? Was this bad writing on Mashima’s end?

See, this is what really intrigued me about Zeref in Tenrou. He was established as sympathetic, but he couldn’t remain passive because that would kill people. He was FORCED to be malicious and completely evil if he ever came into contact with people until he could find someone that could kill him because that is the nature of his curse. For him, it was better to intentionally than unintentionally kill if the person or life were to die anyway. It’s why I really fell in love with him as an antagonist.

However, what is bad writing on Mashima’s end is how completely Zeref flipped to Ruthless Big Bad in Alvarez. Him being “excited” about his battle with Natsu is inexcusably inconsistent writing, and him gaining Fairy Heart just to rewrite time for his own selfish reasons should’ve activated his Death Magic on the spot because of his optimism towards a life where he won’t kill. Plus, his loss due to nakama bullshit.

Was Zervis planned?

As much as I hate to admit it, probably. The light and dark love relationship is about as cliche as you can get, and Mashima is certainly not one to dodge cliches or subvert tropes in his writing.

Was Anna?

Hell no. However, I did think that Layla was planned. When Hades was ranting about primordial magic to Team Natsu during Tenrou, Lucy, in thought, said, “I think I’ve heard of this primordial magic somewhere. Mom?” Even though Zeref had no interest in primordial magic (as proven in him killing Hades in anger), Eclipse and the Heartfilias did. Hence, I assumed that Layla would play a huge role in the final arc of the series. Boy, was I naive and optimistic.

Was Clear Heart made so OP because Mashima knew he’d fucked up managing Requip?

No. Because fanservice. Duh. Although, I did think that Clear Heart was perfectly balanced in her fight against Azuma, with her magic power bring directly converted to her Crimson Sakura blade. Any other use just feels unnecessary.

Why did Erza never use Nakagami Armour again? Too OP?

Mashima’s reason: huge audience backlash from its magic-breaking abilities and pulled-out-of-its-ass reveal. Erza’s reason: she..doesn’t want to use it because of its magic draining properties???

Why introduce the bunny armour?

The bunny armor isn’t the armor Mashima introduced that made me mad. The Seduction Armor is. Seriously, isn’t the whole point of seducing a man to take off clothes? Does that even make it armor? At least the bunny armor is cute and cosplay-ish, which fits with Erza’s happier, more playful side we see of her outside of fights; the Seduction Armor is just flat-out nonsensical.

Why did Mashima specifically want 12 Spriggans? There was apparently a reason for this, but Mashima never revealed what it was.

Originally, he wanted six and Zeref to be the seventh member, since Mashima is obsessed with the number seven. However, I think that he wanted to get a few character concepts out before he copped out of the series, and he had too many to just have six. Thus, he probably got up to nine or ten, but then he remembered that Tartaros and Avatar had the same amount of members, so he just said “fuck it” and moved the number to twelve. This would explain why Invel and Bloodman were shoehorned in with no original magic whatsoever; Mashima just threw them in to get the number to twelve.

Were Lisanna and Loke sidelined because they were threats to NaLu, or because Mashima couldn’t be bothered writing them?

Both. The first goes without explaining. However, I have theories on why Mashima didn’t bother to write either of them.

Lisanna: Mashima’s absurd obsession with redemption arcs, nakama bullshit, and fake-out deaths prove to me that he follows by the “heroes can’t die” code of writing, something which I hope no mature, aspiring writer follows. Thus, he brought Lisanna back into the story to follow this code and thought, “Maybe I could do something with her later.” Turns out he couldn’t think of anything when he was developing each new arc. The closest we ever came to Lisanna getting in the spotlight (besides that god-awful scene from Tartaros) was when Azuma “killed” Mira. Originally, as much as I like Mira, I would’ve loved to Lisanna fill in Mira’s shoes and dedicate herself to become a stronger person because of the death of her sister. But no, Mashima didn’t have the balls to really kill Mira and the Nalu shippers were clawing at his door, so she ended up as a void of nothingness.

Loke: Once his arc was done, Mashima wanted to develop the rest of the Zodiac Spirits. Not that he really did, but he didn’t want to single out Loke too much, as much as I like Lolu. However, Loke being the key that Lucy sacrificed rather than Aquarius would have worked a lot better in the grand sense of the narrative, and would’ve really hammered in a new dimension to Lucy’s potential character arc in Alvarez. So much failed potential, Mashima. So much.

Why did Mashima skip to having Mira being fine using her Satan Souls all of a sudden in the Tenrou arc?

Because since the cause of Mira’s initial stress and reluctance has been completely retconned by the narrative, she’s perfectly able to go all out again, guys! I mean, it’s not like real-life victims of PTSD still suffer for years and years on end even with achieving social and financial success, getting married, and having children, right? RIGHT!?

Seriously, fuck Mashima.

If Key of the Starry Skies and Eclipse Celestial Spirits are canon, why weren’t they just written into the manga?

Because Mashima didn’t care enough about these arcs; A-1 just pitched the filler arcs to him and said, “this is what we’re gonna do, kay?” and he was like, “Oh, these are cool. Canon.” He couldn’t be bothered to write them because he was ready to launch into GMG and Tartaros, respectively. Also, while Eclipse Celestial Spirits works well into the show’s canon, Key of the Starry Skies doesn’t. GMG was effective in setting up the future of the series after the timeskip and NEEDED to happen right after it (doesn’t make the arc necessarily good, though). Plus, the Neo Oracion Seis feels unnecessary since they canonically are released from prison in Tartaros.

Why completely change what Wendy’s capable of in the last arc? Possession? Really?

Problem is, though, her arc was finished the moment Doranbolt saved her and Carla from Face. Her facing Sherria proved that she is willing to fight for her guild regardless of her moral issues with fighting, her going Dragon Force proved that she has gained the experience to become a tactical and efficient fighter, and her resolve to be with Carla and protect the people she loves by choosing to die when Face is about to self-destruct solidifies her developing outgoingness with the new people that she loves. As a character, her arc was concluded before Alvarez began. In my opinion, she wasn’t capable of anything more in Alvarez.

As for the possession, it’s infuriating because of the pedophilia implications, not ruining Wendy as a character. I see possession as a tool for character growth only if the possessed person is able to grow in strength and become a stronger person to overcome the weakness that allowed them to become possessed. Take Aoi Zaizen from Yu-Gi-Oh VRAINS. I really hope that her upcoming character arc will be based around the possession that corrupted her in her very first on-screen duel and how she can overcome the weakness that the Knights of Hanoi exposed from her. Wendy’s possession...did not have that potential. Once Irene left her body, Wendy went right back to her fighting as usual and didn’t seem bothered by the possession. Why? Because her arc was finished and the show was nearing its end anyway. You can be mad about that, and I won’t blame you, but any further growth from Wendy would feel redundant in my opinion.

Was he planning on doing an arc about gods?

Yep. I have a theory that Avatar was supposed to be his “god” arc, but I’ll talk more about that later.

Was it really Ankhseram that cursed Zeref?

I...guess? Mashima never introduced him as a character, but I guess he can still exist. Makes Mashima a bad writer, but it doesn’t make Ankhseram invalid.

Why bring Rogue’s shadow back as a minor plot point in Avatar? He had no intention of addressing it in Alvarez.

Okay, in Mashima’s hardly-deserved defense, Alvarez would not have been the best time to discuss Rogue’s shadow; to me, Avatar was a good point to address it because it was our first full arc with Devil Slayer Gray. To me, it makes sense that Rogue’s shadow would possess him after the dragons emerge through the Eclipse Gate and Gray would become easily corrupted by Devil Slayer Magic without his friends for support (since they’re dead in the alternate timeline, though that raises the question of does Tartaros still exist there). There was really no better time to address it.

Did he give up after Tartaros?

Well, the anime gave up after GMG, that’s for sure. For Mashima, I’d say it was in the middle of writing Avatar. I think that he was planning on fleshing out Avatar as a cult, since their existence was the whole reason that Hades formed Grimoire Heart and “awakened” Zeref’s malicious heart. In addition, since they had enough influence to convince countless wizards that Zeref could be revived with keys and/or Towers of Heaven, they would have the influence to interact with gods and God Slayers. As a writer, Mashima could’ve killed two birds with one stone and be ready to tackle Zeref’s big final arc. What probably actually happened was him waking up after a drunken tirade and realizing that his series was being more and more ridiculed for its poor writing decisions, his fanbase was becoming one of the most toxic in all of anime, and he was just running out of ideas. He questioned every life choice he ever made, decided to trash the remainder of Fairy Tail just to start over with a new work, burned through the rest of Avatar, and threw Alvarez together haphazardly just to prevent himself thinking about potential endgames any longer.

Thank you again to @ac-fairytail for these questions. The channel’s all about Fairy Tail critique, analysis, and salt; go there if you’re interested in that stuff. It really pains me to see Fairy Tail crashing and burning towards the end, but for what it was worth, I enjoyed it. It’ll be harder for me to go back and enjoy it because of my investment in much better shonen manga, such as HxH, JoJo, and YYH, but it holds a lot of memories for teenage me, and I’ll certainly treasure them. 

Also thanks to Mashima for teaching me what NOT to do as a screenwriter. Helps a lot.

[ac-liveblogs]

You know what would have been really dark but kinda cool? Fairy Heart Zeref walks to the Timelapse, feeling happy that he will have a new life where he won't kill people. This activates Ankhseram Black Magic, which is uncontrollably amplified by Fairy Heart's massive power, stopping Zeref and creating a death cloud that kills everyone on Fiore. When Anna dies, the Timelapse disappears (probably), leaving Zeref the only person to stand against Acno, since he wouldn't be affected by the magic.

That actually would be one hell of a dark future. I honestly have no idea how Acno would respond to anyone stealing his thunder, but him turning on Fairy Heart!Zeref would have been one hell of a fight.

Or maybe Zeref would give up, now that his last plan has fallen through? Not only had his plan for an alternate better timeline failed, but he’d managed to kill a shitton of people in this one, too. 

[fairytail-whathesays]

lightdark18 replied to your post

“If I had a dollar for every time Erza Scarlet literally engineered her...”

Alright then, explain this please.

Erza Scarlet has targeted no less than 200 Thunder Palace Lacrima with swords, immense lacrima filled with lightning magic which will release said magic onto any attacker that destroys one, only one of which was necessary to take Bisca out of the fight immediately after she got right back into it, and Juvia as well, someone not easily brushed off. Instead or requipping into her recently-revealed Lightning Empress Armor, which was capable of nulling an attack from Laxus and could protect her from a force capable of potentially killing her 200 times over, she instead settles comfortably into her everyday Heart Kreuz armor. It’s a wonder miracle author-guided work of God she didn’t die.

Erza Scarlet has managed to get the drop on Erza Knightwalker and knock her unconscious long enough to take her clothes and impersonate her, allowing her to get close enough to King Faust to take him hostage. When Erza Knightwalker comes bursting back in with murder in her eyes, Erza drops Faust and moves to intercept Knightwalker instead of drawing attention to the fact that she has a sword in one hand and Faust in the other. The rest of the arc’s disastrous events occur because of this failure.

Erza has just had her ass royally beaten by Azuma, who has just overwhelmed her and proven capable of destroying her armors with powerful attacks he can easily fire off without breaking a sweat. She decides that now is a good time to sacrifice all defense for offense, when she can’t even land a single hit on the man. Predictably, Azuma stops her in her tracks and blasts her with a shitload of magic, hurting her all the worse.

Erza decides to take on all 100 monsters in the Pandemonium event, exhausting herself so badly that she can’t even use her magic anymore (because she’s a glory-hound fuckwit). This has the end result of taking her out of any events on the fourth day and causing her extra trouble when she goes into the final day of the games (resulting in extra injury).

That one counts twice because her match with Kagura and Minerva, already disastrous thanks to facing two immensely strong opponents on less than a full recovery, has the effect of critically wounding her, whereupon she goes on to fight dragons and Motherglare’s hatchlings while half dead. She is repeatedly urged to get rest and get away from the fight, and refuses. She nearly dies and has to be saved by Jellal because of her own stubbornness (and idiocy).

Kyoka has entered her Etherious form and has just proved herself capable of shredding Erza’s high-powered armors and causing Erza immense, debilitating agony. Erza has yet to beat Kyoka, and if she doesn’t, FACE will activate, dooming them all. Of all the armors she dons, none of them is her Adamantine Armor, the one armor Kyoka probably COULDN’T destroy if she wanted and which would probably at least protect her from the blinding pain of Kyoka’s attacks. In addition, despite knowing that Kyoka and the FACE activation system are body-linked and destroying one destroys the other, at no point does Erza (or anyone else, for that matter) think of just destroying the activation system outright.

Irene Belserion is smacking Erza around like a ragdoll, so she decides to fight in clothing that has no defensive properties whatsoever. She then gets all of her limbs broken with one blow when she decides to fight Irene like this when Irene is now a dragon. She then goes on to charge a meteor and if she dies doing it, I’m just gonna sip my tea and smile. 

[ac-liveblogs]

@lightdark18 replied to your post

I believe that Acno only showed up because he heard Natsu’s Lightning Flame Dragon Roar that he used on Hades and thought that a dragon was around. I mean, everyone remarked how the roar was really loud, and maybe Acno has excellent hearing? It’s something.

That would’ve made sense, so obviously it couldn’t have been what happened. Zeref had already called Acnologia by name way before Team Natsu vs Hades, so Acno might’ve already been on the way. His next course of action was to go kill Hades for summoning Acno, so… shrug?

why is mashima like this?

[ac-liveblogs]

lightdark18 replied to your post “Anna's proposal is more stupid when you factor in that the Eclipse...”

Unless I missed something, I thought that Anna said the only reason there was so much Ethernano in the future time was solely because of the Timelapse.

I thought that was what she was saying too, but... that doesn’t really make any sense? I mean, I think the Timelapse appeared because Layla could open the gate because there was so much magic in this time. Lots of magic > Layla > Timelapse, so there’s no way the Timelapse could be the source of anything before it was created. Unless the implication here is that the Timelapse actually managed to spread into the past as well and created a little timeloop, in which case it might be possible.

But, all we were told is that the Timelapse is part of “time’s natural inclination to correct itself”, and as what appears to be a temporal black hole the Timelapse doesn’t appear to be anything of the kind. (It also says that ‘because we travelled 400 years into the future’ so maybe the amount of time that passed was also a factor in the Timelapse’s creation? Since Future!Rogue and Future!Lucy didn’t appear to create their own Timelapse when they time-travelled.)

This is why I’m mostly waiting for the official translations, because I’m not sure if this is all the information we have or if we’re missing something. In any case, I’ll be interested to see how this gets justified and/or explained in later chapters, but my current theory is this:

The Timelapse appeared when the Gate was first activated, but that means it’s been around for 400 years with no-one hiding it. So maybe the Lapse has always been a small undetectable closed space generating Ethernano ever since Anna first opened the Gate 400 years ago, but only built up enough magic in Layla’s time for the Gate to open. And then when the Gate opened, the Timelapse reacted again, this time opening itself and creating the small detectable anomaly that Anna found? That’s the only way it makes sense to me.

[fairytail-whathesays]

Even the Keijo manga, a sport focused on fanservice, has its females drawn without lewdness in scenes with character interaction. Mashima will literally go out of his way to draw camera angles, clothing, and events that show fanservice FOR NO REASON.

In the 2014 animation, maybe I’ve failed to notice it before, but every once in a while a girl’s breasts will suddenly bounce when they’re just doing things that shouldn’t even generate any bounce. It jumps out at me, and it seems....very unnecessary. Just imagine if something in front of you just suddenly jumped up out of nowhere.

[ac-liveblogs]

After thinking about it, Kagura is more OP than Mashima made her out to be. All she needs to do is manipulate her Gravity Magic to lighten her own gravity and reach high heights, then strengthen her gravity to make her heavy and fall at a fast speed. She could either stomp on her opponent and knock them out, or kill them with a heavy descent swing from Archenemy (which we know is ridiculously powerful on its own). It'd be brutal, but a logical fighting method. Instead, we got...Larcade.

Most of the characters from the GMG could’ve been seriously strong, but Mashima just loves jobbing too much. Minerva’s OP as hell, but she got reduced to mook bait by the end of things. Bacchus was actually a really simple and effective opponent, too. Orga? Godslayer. Rufus’ Memory Make? Christ almighty.

Kagura’s simple yet brutal method is something I’d have loved to see more of. Gravity magic by design is actually really powerful - when Bluenote was introduced using it he was rightfully terrifying, but it got seriously nerfed after Tenrou with Kagura and Yukino. :’)

[ac-liveblogs]

I don't know if you've watched DBZ, but in most of the movies, the villain is so OP and there is so little time for power progression (because it's a movie) that the villains are defeated by everyone giving their energy to Goku, allowing him to power up to scrape together a victory. It's logical, but lazy and gives no shining character moments to lesser characters, YET MASHIMA DECIDES TO RIP IT OFF IN HIS MANGA, WHERE HE HAS NO TIME CONSTRAINTS WITH HIS POWER PROGRESSION??? *groans heavily*

I read it... the anime totally lost me though.

Mashima’s just... super lazy. I don’t know if he’s ripping off anyone, worshipping Natsu or just figures this is what “friendship” is really all about, but he chose to waste all his time on plot points that didn’t go anywhere instead of actually trying to make a quality product, so... what do you expect, really? :/

[ac-liveblogs]

Drafting a ranking of Fairy Tail villains from best to worst. It's really sad that Zeref and likely Acnologia (depending on the endgame) are middle to low on the list, since, you know, they're the big bads...

That should be an interesting list! But, god... I’ve seen a lot of anticlimactic endgame villains in my time, but Zeref and Acnologia seriously take the cake. 

[ac-liveblogs]

This may sound weird, but my favorite Fairy Tail ship is You x Yukino (even though I don't know what your face looks like haha). Besties for life ;)

We’d be a quality BrOTP tbqh! 

[ac-liveblogs]

Laxus vs. Azuma?

Laxus, though it’d be one hell of a fight. Laxus’ Lightning Body would allow him to get around any of Azuma’s tree controlling abilities with relative ease, and dodge a lot of damage in general. From there it becomes a contest of strength and... well, Laxus is Laxus.   

[ac-liveblogs]

Between Oracion, Grimoire, and Tartaros, which dark guild as a whole is your favorite and least favorite?

My favourite is probably Grimoire Heart... don’t get me wrong, I don’t love how the exams were interrupted, but Grimoire had a great spread of fights across the cast and most fights were pretty damn good. (Zancrow vs Natsu was mostly good; Azuma vs Erza... >.>) As villains, they were seriously cool.

Not that I don’t love the Seis, they were awesome too, but it’s Grimoire Heart battles that I rewatch more often.

Tartaros scores pretty low for me, largely because I just didn’t love that arc. None of the demons really stood out to me either, and the powers weren’t that interesting. 

[ac-liveblogs]

I'm just amazed by how dedicated you are to staying active on this blog and communicating with all of us, especially since it's for criticizing a once-loved series that's drowning in its own bullshit. I can't believe how often my notifications for this blog pop up and you STILL keep active. Keep up the great work and thank you for breathing a critical light as bright as Yukino into this series!

Honestly, I’ve lost a lot of hours on one of my jobs and that’s why I’m so available as of late ;) And also, I queue a lot of asks haha. 

But I really love this blog - even if the subject matter is totally negative I’ve received almost nothing but positivity from this fandom. I love all of you guys too, and thanks for sticking with me! 

[ac-liveblogs]

I never got the 18 Battle Gods of Yakuma. Minerva used one in GMG, then Mavis mentioned that there were eighteen of these things, and then I thought to myself, "Okay, Mashima's keeping these things vague because they're for the next arc." Then, we got one more in Avatar that was never really explained about what they are or why people can summon them with magic, and Mashima dropped the concept. So...what was the point of Mashima saying that there were EIGHTEEN when he only bothered to show TWO!?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the 18 Battle Gods were introduced alongside two new God Slayers; I think Mashima did intend to use them for a greater plot but never actually got around to doing it for whatever reason.

I actually thought for awhile (at least until Alvarez was confirmed as the last arc) that we were going to have an arc centred around Gods (Ankhseram specifically) with the 18 Battle Gods playing an important role somewhere in it, but I guess that’s a pipe dream.

As it is, I guess we just have confirmation that there’s a stronger form of summoning than Celestial Spirit magic that’s been completely ignored - like God Slaying is ignored next to Dragon Slaying.

Kind of a theme for gods in this series.

[ac-liveblogs]

I'd like to hear your thoughts, but personally, I feel that Mashima giving Acnologia a human form was pointless. It does give weight to Igneel's "slayers turning into dragons" warning, but all he does in human form is stomp on a few people and preach how he wants to destroy. I got that back in Tenrou; I assumed that he would be a D&D-like black dragon that would SUBTLY personify total evil and destruction. I would only give him the "killing dragons" backstory, then full dragon rest of the story.

While I didn’t mind the fact that Acno had a dragon slayer form, I do agree that it was ultimately pointless.

a) It’s disappointing that... they still haven’t... beaten any damn dragons... b) They aren’t even fighting his dragon form anywayc) I’m still not sure Acno should’ve been the Final Boss anyway.

I get “people turning into dragons” is a thing, it’s been implied for ages and honestly it’s good that we have an example of that, but given the way the manga’s shaped up I’m not sure Acno should’ve been it. I like the idea of the Last Dragon, and the fact that it turned out to be another dragon slayer just means we’re drowning in the damn things.

I mean... seriously, we have TEN DRAGON SLAYERS and NO ACTUAL DRAGONS

That is just ridiculous. That’s a ridiculous amount of dragon slayers. That’s a ridiculous amount of dragon slayers when there’s no dragons to be slain.

I actually thought Team Natsu was going to end up taking an 100 year quest to kill Acnologia or something, and he’d be dealt with that way. I absolutely didn’t expect such an underused character to be the final hurdle - by all accounts that should’ve been Zeref.  

[ac-liveblogs]

I'd like your thoughts on this, if that's ok. At Tenrou, before Acnologia appeared, why didn't Zeref just ask Precht where Fairy Heart was, grab Eileen and/or August to extract it, and go after the Ravines of Time to do his thing? He knew that Acnologia would kill everyone on Tenrou and eventually go after him, and he could've walked into the Fairy Tail guild hall uncontested, so why did he wait? He already gained his malicious intent to screw the world over from Grimoire Heart's actions. Help?

Metawise, that plot didn’t exist yet, so it would’ve been impossible. But asking why Zeref didn’t get Fairy Heart then is also like asking why no one from Alvarez went after it during the seven year timeskip.

I’m not sure how long the Timelapse has been Zeref’s plan. It’s been around since the dragon slayers came through the gate, but I’m not sure if Zeref even knew about it until recently. If he had known, he really should’ve gone after it a lot sooner. 

And as for Fairy Heart, there’s no excuse. At all. I mean, he could’ve grabbed it at literally any point and I doubt FT would’ve been able to stop him. He could’ve gotten it when FT was distracted by Tartaros or during the one year timeskip as well - he didn’t even need to attempt an invasion for the latter, he could’ve just... gone by himself. 

Mashima just... really didn’t consider any of those things. At all.