Anime: Fairy Tail

Lucy gets into fetal position crying.

"This sucks!"

Oh, stop it Lucy!

This anime is so predictable that it even seems to steal my lines in the subs!

The anime starts off really well... with little Lucy who is eager to join the Fairy Tail guild and gets easily tricked by an impostor. Starting with a big fight in the guild and meeting with her idol, Marijane, Lucy is able to get tattooed and become a mage celestial wizard, who has zodiac keys.

The cat won't shut his mouth and Natsu is annoying and situations concerning the characters do not make sense, I mean was Lucy trained to know all those defensive moves? Why can't the fights be more serious and suspenseful? Nobody in there is really memorable and Lucy was the most interesting out of the characters but she's also loud, saccharine and insecure!

The anime and even the characters get worse and it makes me want to skip to other episodes which are more serious and better. I mean, why would Lucy abuse her powers... ugh... FORGET THESE EPISODES!!!

The animation is stiff even with the flighty character, Lucy and struggles to work properly.

Too bad that this anime which DOESN'T EVEN KNOW WHO ITS AUDIENCE IS is freaking aiming at little children who are impressionable! Especially the 9 and under crowd!!!

Lucy's seiyuu is annoying sometimes.

I'll start off by telling you about how I decided to watch this anime. Many of my friends enjoyed it, and while I never actually intended on watching this, I was in that period of time when I recently finished an anime I really enjoyed and didn't want it to end but it did. So I went against every time I told myself I wasn't going to watch it and I did. Surprisingly, I actually liked it.

The graphics were overly bright, the mood was childish and the plot was shallow, but it was fairly easy to watch. The story had no base to it, no foundation or common goal, but the characters were mostly pleasant with a few that I genuinely became attached to (Erza, Gray, Ultear, Jellal, etc).

At first, this Shōnen anime seemed as if it were aimed at children, with almost no blood whatsoever during fights, a cheery, happy-go-lucky mood with bright colours, but then I came across the fanservice. Dear lord. That is clearly not meant for kids. The main character, Lucy is probably the largest piece of fanservice in the entire show. Sometimes I wonder if she was placed in the original manga purely as eye candy for the male audience.

This this is the classic style of Shōnen anime where the good guys fight the bad guys and the good guys win. None of the main characters have died thus far. Hell, even a long dead character came back as a ghost and a recently died character turned out to be alive. A deep cut equals to small scratches. There is rarely ever blood shown. And almost every single major fight is utterly predictable: the "good guy" is about to lose, but has flashbacks on his/her life, then gets back up and talk about protecting their friends, and their comrades this, friends that, etc etc. And of course, half the bad guys are good after being defeated. Classic Shōnen.

While Fairy Tail has a very loose plot, cheesy fights, and childish animations, there were some characters that completely made up for it. Take one of the main female characters, Erza Scarlet. She was abducted from her village by a black magic cult at a young age and subjected to cruelty and slavery, until one day she decided to stand up and fight, to save her dear friend Jellal. Lives were sacrificed, Erza was injured, but she ended up (somewhat) successfully rescuing Jellal, but he had succumbed to black magic. She fled the place soon after and ended up in Fairy Tail. Most of the characters in the anime had some sort of trauma in their past, Erza's child slavery, Gray's teacher sacrificing her life to save him, Elfman accidentally "killing" his sister when he lost control of his magic. Granted, Lucy was annoying and superficial, Natsu had a microscopic sized brain, Gray had stripping problems, but they were all pleasant and warming somehow. Maybe it's because the anime actually contained happy parts that were easy to watch and easy to enjoy.

The animations were well done, not too much of an old style, and not the blindingly bright, thick lined more modern animations. This was one of those animes that actually changed a character's outfit from time to time, added the scars they received from battle, and etc.

The sound was nice, there wasn't a voice I found very annoying, not even Lucy's and she's incredibly annoying. Her voice was fine though. I watched in subs, with the original Japanese voices, by the way. I enjoyed many of the opening themes, and except a few, they went well with the story.

Overall, I quite enjoyed Fairy Tail, but it wasn't one of those dark, gory animes like Elfen Lied or Deadman Wonderland, and not like those animes where the protagonist and antagonist are both the good guys, and the bad guys, where there's no right and wrong and you just have to pick a side (where the main characters normally die at the end, mind you) like Death Note or Code Geass. No, Fairy Tail was a simple Shōnen anime like Naruto or One Piece, a little (lot) unoriginal, but easy to watch and enjoyable. I recommend watching Fairy Tail when you're looking to pass your free time or watch the omake based episodes and have a laugh when you're bored. I wouldn't say it's a really good anime, but it's very enjoyable

It is not often that you get to review a perpetually ongoing :D
So, let's see how well this 175 episode mammoth holds up against reviewing standarts!

Video:

Like any other perpetually-ongoing series, Fairy Tail definitely has it's own unique visual style. The ability of the viewer to distinguish a particular series from any other with a single glance appears to be pretty much a requirement for a show to even be considered for a 50+ episode anime adaptation.

Fairy tail builds off a classic time-honored approach of fantasy adventure anime, featuring huge eyes, well-muscled male characters and heroines whose general cuteness levels are only matched by their devotion to their breat size paradigm (it's either DD+ or pettanko in fairyland :D). The important thing Fairy Tail does, though, is making sure to focus intently on the characters that appear on the screen.

Great variety of costumes, exellent facial animations and all other sorts of tricks go into making sure that every single character of the series is instantly recogniseable and perfectly understandable at intuitive level. The show's visual power derives from it's ability to convey to you both the nature of it's characters and whatever they are experiencing in the span of a single glance. In that single respect, Fairy Tail is miles ahead of possibly any other anime i've pretty much ever seen. If i were to judge visuals purely on character presentation, it'd be a straight 10.

Sadly, the nature of perpetually ongoing series is that you can't make every episode an art masterpiece and need to skimp on things. Fairy Tail definitely skimps on backgrounds, has only moderately awesome action scenes and a less than amazing animation. Which brings the visual side down to respectable 7/10.

Audio:

Fairy tail audio work is amazing, with only a couple really noticeable flaws.

Much like the visuals, the audio work of Fairy Tail centers heavily around characters.
The greatest amount of effort by far went into the voice acting, which really complements the intuitive understanding of nature of characters already provided by the show's visual side.

The second most powerful tool in Fairy Tail's audio arsenal are amazing theme songs. It seems the show has a theme song for pretty much every occasion. Full guild assault on the bad guy? Go guild theme song! Individual character overcoming trials? Go individual character theme song! Some wild magic going on? Go intense spellcasting theme song! What's more, these songs are not just songs, they actually work well in terms of both getting across the emotion of the character / group in question, as well as provide great context for the way this character / group is handling the conflict at hand.

It's not often you get a show which you can just listen to. Much less so among 50+ episode shows. Fairy Tail pulls it off convincingly.

There are, however, a couple of flaws.
First, the show really has nothing much going on sound-wise aside from music and acting. No amazing background sounds, no great SFX, nothing to really give the show's world a voice of it's own. The show's experience would significantly benefit if it just allowed itself to pause and hear the waves crashing / birds singing / cities bustling every so often.

Secondly, the music themes are fairly pop at heart, which would probably rub some of the more head-in-the-b... *COUGH* ... discerning anime viewers the wrong way. Since the show's entire audio work hinges on it's music, in the event of a singular viewer hating it, then for that single viewer the show's entire audio work may fall apart. Some might say it's a case of wrong target audience, but i think it's still worth deducting a point.

Which gives the show a well-deserved 8/10 in audio.

Story:

Fairy Tail's story is a straight up classic adventure that hits all the cliches along the way. There are no huge overarching story events, just stuff that characters want to do and other characters don't want them to do, with a lot of time spent on figuring out exactly how their individual conflicts pan out.

Within this adventure paradigm, Fairy Tail delivers reasonably well on all the mechanically necessary story elements. All the major plot arcs are properly foreshadowed, well-explored, reach their culminations and are complete in their own right. The show's world also easily allows for a great amount of various adventures, including timeskips and alternate dimension plays.

There is, however, one key thing that Fairy Tail does right and that makes its story interesting (and thus worthy of more than the average mark).
While there is no huge overarching story event, there is still an overarching story theme. This is a story about friendship and individuality. How one cannot abide the other, while simultaneously not being able to exist without it.
Every single story arc, nay, every single event in the story, serves to reinforce the basic understanding that in order to succeed in Fairy Tail's world (that is, be a great mage), you need to be able to both identify yourself as separate from your companions, while still maintaing that special link that gives your existence purpose.

Strict adherence to a simple, well-defined aesthetic is what - in my mind - puts Fairy Tail's story way above that of Bleach and Naruto (which lost their way fairly early on) and even One Piece (which is yet to collect itself post-timeskip).

With that all being said, there are still a couple of disadvantages. First (much like the music part), power of friendship is a matter of taste. If it doesn't click with you, the story won't work.
Second, and more serious, is the fact that friendship against individuality is an eternal conflict that can't really be resolved. So any show that tackles it is doomed to a degree of incompleteness. The fact that this particular anime season was cut short mid-arc in order to give manga a bit more of a headstart also doesn't help matters.

All of this brings the show score down to 7/10.

Character

Character work in Fairy Tail is drop dead amazing. Which shouldn't come as much of a surprise, seeing as video, audio and story elements of this show are all about serving its characters.

First thing off, there is the sheer size of the cast. There are half a dozen protagonists to begin with, and every protagonist comes with his own set of backstories, antagonists, occasional love interests and other stuff that allows him to be a story focus when it's needed.
Then there are antagonists, which are really varied, have all sorts of motivations and all pose a credible threat to the characters.
And then there are antagonist minions, which - despite being characters that only last maybe an episode or two - are still given personalities and a sort of a backstory that ties them to the main antagonist.

Now, normally a show with that big of a cast devolves into a show about indistinguishable cardboard mediocrities, with every new character and every new backstory being just more of the same as before. That's the trap most other perpetually-ongoings fell into.

Not so with Fairy Tail, and that's for two reasons.

First, the sheer character focus provided by visuals, sounds and story. With characters being that intuitively understandable, that easy to tell apart and that important to the ongoing events, you will eat their backstories whole and ask for more.

Second, is the character development.
You see, in every given ark of Fairy Tail, it is the character's backstory which acts as the trigger for immediate conflict, and it is character coming to terms with his backstory (after some judiciously tasty application of heart-fueled magic from all parties involved) that signifies the conclusion of the ark.

Fairy Tail's story IS character development, with one or two characters being the focus of a specific arcs and everyone else pitching in to help their development along. By the time the dust is settled, every single character will either have learned and implemented some new understanding about what it means to be a friend, or will have his/her face crushed (and learn that way).

This combination of incredibly easy to understand characters and story arcs which are building them would make a perfect character score. If not for one flaw, deriving from flaws of audio presentation and the story.

Specifically, if heroic pop and people crushing other people's faces for their friends is not your thing, then the characters won't work for you. You won't get them, you won't love them. And while it may be a target audience thing, it's still a point deduction, leaving the show at 9/10 for characters.

Value:

Easy recommendation for people who never saw anime before. Especially for the more adventurous types.
Somewhat worthwhile in terms of studying the way to use the medium. While the overall story pattern is somewhat done to death, Fairy Tail still does some great things with music and costumes, as well as serves as a great reminder on how good and varied characters can push a story forward.
Also more rewatchable than your average Blearuto, assuming the whole heroic friendship aesthetic is your kind of thing.
Comfortable giving 8/10 for value.

Enjoyment:
Well, guess what, it turns out the whole heroic friendship aesthetic is MY kind of thing :twisted:
For me, this show DELIVERED. I literally cried tears of joy in every single arc, sometimes in every single episode.

There is no better show for letting your inner child to come out and play with the fairies :D. A solid 10.

PROPER MINDSET
Ah, gotta love the masses and their love for mediocrity. Fairy Tail (FT) is from the pilot chapter/episode an average shonen series and yet it is loved by many for being just that. I guess rehashing notions from Naruto or One Piece can make a success out of anything. Because just like those shonens, FT has superpowers, adventure and a big cast of colourful and eccentric characters that occasionally get focused upon and fleshed out. Nothing we haven’t seen before but, hey, if it worked before why wouldn’t it work again?

Because it’s WORSE!

It is hard to talk about anything in this show without feeling like I am just stating the obvious or just describing a different shonen. For to be honest, there is approximately zero innovation in this work and it just walks upon the path others paved before it. It can work alright but it will never stand out on its own; it will forever be just a rehash of already established formulas that have been attributed to others at least a decade earlier. Not only that, but the show rehashes them in a watered down way to the point it becomes a Saturday morning cartoon.

THE STAFF
- Animated by a collaboration of studios A-1 Pictures and Satelight. The first usually have very good production values and the later have low. What they have in common is how most of what they have made over the years is mediocre and forgettable.
- Directed by some nobody who never made something significant in his whole career.
- Based on the manga by Mashima Hiro, whose only previous major work was Rave Master. In case you didn’t watch that show, I advise you not to do so; for it’s a completely generic, aimless, boring, and incomplete series. Plus you can easily see that Fairy Tail is basically its improved remake, reusing the same character archetypes and feeling. In all, the mangaka is not much of talent for anything past creating mediocrities.

PRODUCTION VALUES
- Art and animation are rather crude for the time the show was made. The most obvious fault is how they use repeated footage during summons and attacks, an element that is in fact absent from fighting shonen and better affiliated with mahou shojo or mecha. It is a very striking weakness that alone makes it seem lazy compared to others shonens.
- The initial episodes had really jerky motions and many complained how the characters didn’t look or behave at all like in the manga. For an adaptation that is NOT trying to be a spin off but a direct adaptation, the first impressions they offered was the middle finger. They improved it later on a bit but the damage was already done.
- The setting lacks characterization. It doesn’t seem to stand out from the lot like others do, which again makes it hard to be remembered in the long run. Unlike other famous shonens like Naruto or One Piece, there is no theme in the FT world and it passes by as a generic fantasy realm.
- The character figures are again nothing memorable; most are basically counterparts of people from other shonens, so again it has a problem being remembered for anything. As for the more eccentric-looking ones, they are somewhat original for their looks but they are all minor characters that are defined by a quirk and are defeated and removed from the show in just a few episodes. And of course we have most of the girls running around half naked and acting like they are in permanent heat. So this is a cast you will be staring at for the bizarre or sexy way they look and not because they have any special charisma in their personality.
- A minor thing that irritated me a lot. They placed Plue as cameo, a creature from Rave Master. Now what did that manage to accomplish other than annoying the average fan? Is that their way of telling us even clearer that they are rehashing other works INCLUDING their own? That is really tasteless. I hear he was placed there to please the fans of Rave Master but I don’t believe that. Who still likes that boredrome?
- The music part leaves me with very little to write about. The OST is fitting for such a series but I don’t find any memorable songs in it. Voice acting is ok too with what is going on in the story. No amazing performance though.

SCRIPT

The story is completely generic stuff and easily the weakest part of the show. It plays out like some MMO game, where you join a guild and take seemingly irrelevant to one another missions, while at the same time leaving a few openings for character colorization and world-building. It all plays out quite childishly and there isn’t even an objective for anyone in this show; they just take missions and hope to find something that interests them in the process. For example, we know Natsu is looking for a dragon but did he actually look for him? No, he is just fooling around in his guild and takes part in whatever mission comes along.

The scenario ends up driving the characters and not the other way around; and even that happens in a bad way since the heroes are not actively doing anything. They just fool around until a villain or a mission appear out of nowhere (no foreshadowing at all) and just decide to take part in the whole thing for money or to save some girl. That makes the protagonist and his gang completely boring since they have no goals in life to go for without some world threat standing in the way. Heck, they would probably be sleeping all day long if they had no obstacles.

Now it is true that many events lead to character immersion and reveal more aspects of the world, but all that don’t add anything significant to the show. It’s like drawing more hearts around a short love letter; the contenct is the same but just looks cuter. The plot is always predictable, since it repeats in the exact same way all the time with no interesting plot twists or memorable events. Some character’s past is revealed, some old enemies of him appear, some sinister plan of mass destruction takes place, and then the heroes storm in and win with the power of friendship. Thank you very much; I have seen it all before and in a more mature form. They also add nothing to the show besides more cardboard characters with no significance or moe sancy areas you will never see again.

As if that wasn’t enough, just like with all perpetual on-going shonen the anime reached the manga at som point and the creators had to turn to slower pacing, fillers, and eventually to cancel the show prematurely in the middle of an arc. Not that it would be any different if they did what the Big Three do to bust our balls with 10 fillers followed by 2 canon episodes of snail fast plot but the show is left incomplete. Not that there was much of a plot to care for...

If there is something good to say here is how all the arcs are relatively short and with a fast pace to the most part. Unlike most shonen, FT does not try to stretch each arc too much. Of course technically most battles are dead time, since they offer nothing to the plot, plus are predictable and repetitive. So to the most part you are still watching a show which repeats itself faster than the average of its kind and is mostly canon filler.

CAST
The cast is eventually the meat of the show, since the plot is mostly about somebody’s past creating problems in the present. This way you feel like everything is revolving around them and that they are not irrelevant to the main problem of each arc. Some of them count as cool and fleshed out to bother paying attention to but don’t try to find unoriginal characters because you will be disappointed. They are all following a rather typical demeanour but at least they do it right to the most part. There is variety in personalities and powers and most have a rather basic but sufficient backdrop to work with.

Of course they are still shallow as heck; their personality can fit in two lines including their signature move. So the mangaka had to resolve to keeping all the girls half-naked and in constant heat in order to keep the viewers/readers from realizing that. For a show that aims at children, I must say there is too much fan service in it that is there specifically to distract you from thinking how stupid it is.

Needless to say, don’t expect any drastic character development to take place since most of whatever the characters learn in one arc, is immediately forgotten in the next. They keep trying to make you believe they are gradually getting stronger but you can never see that on-screen. In fact you never have a clear picture of who is stronger and by how much, much less where he excels enough to be able to defeat opponents who are in overall more experienced. So how do all the battles resolve if there is no balance then? Oh come on; you can probably figure it out immediately; it always comes down to the power of friendship. To hell with strategy, planning ahead, learning from your past mistakes, or even paying attention to your injuries. Just storm in and win against all odds with the almighty POWER OF FRIENDSHIP! I MUST PROTECT MY FRIENDS! FRIENDSHIP MAGICALLY HEALS MY GRAVE WOUNDS! FRIENDSHIP BRINGS EVEN THE DEAD BACK TO LIFE! Yes, get ready to eat up a lot of this baby food, for the whole plot runs purely on this sort of fuel. Needless to say, it is stupid, overdone, and eventually tasteless.

LEGACY
The series is aimed at younger teens; even younger than the target audience for Naruto or Bleach. There is a lot of silliness (more than the usual) and violence is really basic and mostly bloodless. And of course nobody ever gets killed, or in the rare case he does, he doesn’t stay dead for long. It is by no means a serious show and nothing in it feels important after awhile. Just to give you an example, it has a mascot in the form of a cheery blue flying cat named… Happy. Imagine a scene where some demon prepares to blow up a village full of people and the camera suddenly zooms to Happy’s permanently happy face. Yeah, the excitement vaporates right there. It is very hard to be interested in whatever the heck is going on when everything looks so easy going and silly. In fact the boldest thing in this show ends up being the fan service around the girls and even that is completely basic compared to your average modern ecchi comedy.

So is it a good show? No, but it’s a good time killer if your expectations are low and you are not older than 15 with prior experience to other famous shonen. I doubt it will leave any mark in anime history or be remembered as anything more than a rehash of other works. It does it right but at the same time it lacks the unique feeling every show that aims to be loved needs. It is indeed nothing but a fairy tale; shallow and for little kids who still tolerate the power of friendship is the most awesome thing ever. But it can be enjoyable just for that.

Oh, and I might as well add how FT became one of the Big Three shonen, after the Bleach anime was discontinued. That may seem like it’s supposed to be awesome enough to deserve such an honor but in reality it is only because modern shonen are crap. It gets some value for that but it’s otherwise only the best looking trash of the garbage bin. And the funniest part? Now that it is discontinued as well, there is nothing to replace it. Yeah, hard times...