Fairy Tail Ep. 160

[Kraco]

Plus, he can apparently emulate old Mystrogan's powers without much trouble.

I wouldn't say without much trouble since he didn't achieve anything at all with the emulated powers. I doubt Mystogan would have been so helpless with his own techniques. So, we might as well think, for the sake of the story, that Jellal dropped the act precisely because he realised such emulations will get him nowhere. Hmph, damn Ultear. Jura would have needed to give his best without her intervention.

[DarthEnderX]

Honestly, at this point if I was in the audience I'd swear that Fairty Tail was taking a dive all the time.

Both of their fights now have them in the middle of conjuring an attack that looks like it could blow up the whole arena and then they just suddenly stopped.

If they weren't the underdogs already, I'd think there was some kind of gambling related scam going on.

So, we might as well think, for the sake of the story, that Jellal dropped the act precisely because he realised such emulations will get him nowhere.

I think it's more a matter of his opponent than anything else.

Jellal seemed perfectly competent using Mystrogan's powers, but to defeat Jura, he'd have to go all out, which requires his own powers.

[Kraco]

Jellal seemed perfectly competent using Mystrogan's powers, but to defeat Jura, he'd have to go all out, which requires his own powers.

I was actually thinking it looked that way at first, but when I rewatched a part of the ep before my previous post, the episode itself has Jellal commenting under his breath that he can't beat someone like Jura using borrowed magic. Such a comment opens a door wide to the interpretation that it's exactly because it's borrowed that he can't employ it properly to beat high level opponents. Of course another interpretation is that no magic but his own is good enough for the task, but after everything Jellal has gone through, including getting beaten, I doubt he's prone to underestimating other wizards' techniques too hastily.

[DarthEnderX]

Such a comment opens a door wide to the interpretation that it's exactly because it's borrowed that he can't employ it properly to beat high level opponents.

I just took it to mean that he didn't have the same lifetime of practice with Mystrogan's magic that he had with his own magic, so obviously he wasn't going to be as good with it.


I mean, I never really understood WHY other wizards seemed so specialized in the first place. Magic in FT is portrayed as a learned skill, not a Bloodline-type ability, so there's really nothing preventing a wizard from just learning whatever spell they want.