Love Your Enemies
This post is about something I see everywhere in the Fairy Tail anime. It's a theme that although I am only 68 episodes in, already makes me want to see more. It's the theme of forgiveness. So far, most foes have become friends, even though their deeds would make most in today's world advocate for harsh punishment, some even never ending punishment. Although I don't know how their philosophy can sustain such forgiveness, It does resonate with my Christian sensibilities, and especially my universalistic understanding of salvation.
Fairy Tail doesn't show a bed of roses sort of forgiveness, but a brutal one. Even though they rarely show blood or death, the brutal fights and beatings are not for fun. Former friends battle, former foes reconcile. But at the end, when the antagonists exhaust their rage, their anger, when they can fight no more and are defeated, then something strange happens.
Instead of the usual imprisonment that is usually just abandonment in one dark hole, which usually makes the antagonists even more bent on evil, they are offered forgiveness. Although crimes like murder still require punishment, the heroes don't desire their deaths, but their lives, and the necessity of harsh law is something they all battle with.
In the universalist view of salvation, taking from the Easter event, evil exhausts itself, tries its possible best, and fails. It is to the same men who killed him that Jesus offers forgiveness to, but do not mistake his Mercy for "being nice". The way of the cross is a walk through death, to new life. We, like Natsu, like Jesus, love our enemies, we oppose their evil, yet yearn for their salvation, and we will do everything we can to show them the light.