Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Author: Hiro Mashima
Publisher: Shonen (Manga), TV Toyko (Anime)
Manga Runtime: August 2, 2006 – ongoing
Number of Volumes: 48
Number of Chapters: 426
Anime Runtime: October 12, 2009 – ongoing
Number of Episodes: 229
Number of canon Episodes: 177
This is a very critical and extensive review of Fairy Tail, both Anime & Manga, with the purpose of helping you decide whether or not to read/watch Fairy Tail. To maintain that purpose, this thread contains no major spoilers, and if so, then I announce it prior to the spoiler.
Synopsis
Setting
The world of Fairy Tail, called Earth-land, is populated by humans and numerous other races, including catlike creatures called Exceed, dragons, celestial spirits, and giant beasts. The majority of the series takes place in the Kingdom of Fiore, a fictional country in Earth-land populated by 17 million people, 10% of whom are able to perform magic. Individuals who practice magic as a profession are known as wizards, who coalesce to form guilds to hone their abilities and apply them to paid job requests, sanctioned by a higher wizards' council.
Spoiler: Evaluation:
The world of Fairy Tail fits the story. The overall design, the diversity, and the colourful, fable like locations create an atmosphere befitting for a world of magic. What the world lacks are mysterious places. The mysteries in Fairy Tail are created by the characters, not the locations.
Plot
Seventeen-year-old wizard Lucy Heartfilia runs away from home to join Fairy Tail, a rambunctious wizards' guild famous in the kingdom of Fiore for its members' overly destructive antics. She is invited into the guild by Natsu Dragneel, a dragon slayer wizard from Fairy Tail with the abilities of a dragon, who travels the land in search of his missing foster father, the dragon Igneel. Lucy forms a team with Natsu and his cat-like companion Happy, and are later joined by the ice wizard Gray Fullbuster and armored wizard Erza Scarlet. The five embark on various missions together, including the subjugation of illegal "dark" guilds and Etherious, demons created by the ancient dark wizard Zeref. They also gain numerous allies from other guilds and lands, such as Gajeel Redfox and Wendy Marvell, two dragon slayers whose dragon guardians vanished together with Igneel; Carla and Panther Lily, members of Happy's cat-like Exceed race from the parallel world of Edolas; Juvia Lockser, an ameonna who falls in love with Gray; and Laxus Dreyar, a renegade Fairy Tail wizard and grandson of the guild's master Makarov.
Besides fighting various enemies of the guild and the years-long search for the missing dragons, the main plot resolves around two antagonists: The dark wizard Zeref, the strongest, most evil Mage of all time, and the dragon Acnologia, fearsomely reputed as The Black Dragon in the Book of Apocalypse.
Spoiler: Evaluation:
Structure - The story of Fairy Tail mostly proceeds in clear-cut seperated arcs, similar to One Piece. This allows for the addition of new mysteries and explanations slowly arc by arc, which is something Fairy Tail does well. But it faces a problem of repitition concerning the villains, a problem we know e.g. from Dragon Ball ("New alien villain, new guy who wants to control the earth - same old, same old."). While Fairy Tail does have amazing villains (most importantly Zeref & Acnologia, more on them later), it cannot shake the feeling of repitition: "New group of evil wizards, with same motivation to serve Lord Zeref like everyone else, same idea of Dark Guild vs. Fairy Tail."
Content - The content of Fairy Tail's story varies from arc to arc. It has both bad & good moments, mostly depending on the taste of the viewer/reader. The diversity is something that has to be praised, while the digressiveness is something that has to be criticized. Mashima tries to give his story deep and profound plot twists, but ends up using methods of parallel universes & timetravelling, something I am no fan of, when he should've just focussed on the strong points of the story: Dragons, the development of the main characters, both in terms of strength and relation towards one another, Zeref and all the mysteries surrounding him, and once again: Dragons! I would describe Fairy Tail as a mix of a great main story with the addition of lots of not-so-great side stories.
Presentation - One strong suit of Fairy Tail are certainly the special moments it creates. Mashima is a fan of matchups with lots of meaning behind them, e.g. father vs. son, teacher vs. student, and revenge scenarios are the order of the day. While this certainly increases the overall predictability, it also increases the intensity, the drama, and if you are open for some very emotional, at times even cheesy moments, then you will enjoy these dramatic presentations Mashima uses. As comparison, I can refer to the early Naruto, the mission where Naruto, Shikamaru, Choji, Neji, and Kiba form a 5-man team to chase Sasuke. At that time in the story, we had little to no attachement to most of those Genin, especially Kiba and Choji, but their effort and sacrifice for the sake of friendship was very emotional and of great presentation. Fairy Tail does this throughout. (More on the "for the sake of friendship" aspect of Fairy Tail later.)
Characters
Characters
One big magic guild as set of main characters, many more magic guilds in the story, both allied & hostile => Fairy Tail has a big amount of characters.
The array of characters reaches from typical silent/serious, powerful, badass characters, to childish/insecure, funny, weak characters. There are lunatics, powerhouses, crybabies, idols, evil good guys, good evil guys, ... I can't think of any stereotype not existing in Fairy Tail.
Spoiler: Evaluation:
Content - The Fairy Tail characters are solid average. The diversity is both an advantage and a disadvantage: Advantageous is that many different characters allow different-minded fans to attach to at least one of the characters, à la "there is something for everyone", there are badass, serious characters, but also more soft, kind-hearted characters. Disadvantageous is that such a high amount of characters results in many of those being forgotten very easily once they don't appear anymore. A good comparison is One Piece: Every island introduces a load of new characters from which maybe 1 or 2 will be remembered after the arc is over. This is a problem every Anime/Manga with a big number of characters has. That problem aside, Mashima does a good job developing the main characters.
Screentime - Following that last thought about the main character development, the screentime is handled pretty well, despite the huge number of important characters. There are some characters who need more screentime, and some who get too much in certain arcs, but overall, this is not a point to criticize.
Supporting Characters - Many Anime/Manga suffer from bad supporting characters, especially female supporting characters (Inoue, Sakura, Hinata, Nami, Robin), as sad as it is, you barely find any female supporting characters that are enjoyable, strong, reliable, badass. Typical female supp. characters like Inoue or Hinata bring nothing but tears & burden to the story. Fairy Tail is different: Erza, Wendy and Lucy are great supporting characters. Erza covers the badass, reliable part, Lucy the humorous, weak part, and Wendy the crybaby, fragile part. But none of the 3 are in any way as annoying as the infamous Inoue, Hinata or Sakura. Mashima found a way to give lots of screentime to weak female characters like Lucy & Wendy, without making them a total burden, or without them breaking down crying every arc.
Design - The character design is very mixed: While most human characters look great, with an overall serious nature, the non-human characters often look weird, with a more childish nature. Again, One Piece works as perfect comparison, with many characters being designed in a non-serious, childish, fabulous kind of way.
Presentation - While the design is sometimes a little too non-serious, the presentation is not. Fairy Tail is at its best when it comes to the display of its characters. Comebacks, last second saves, power-ups, emotional speeches, showing-off new posers, introduction of new characters -> Fairy Tail does what many Anime/Manga often fail too do: It displays its own characters in an epic way. I will refer to this as the Epic-Effect. (I have made a little post about that a while ago, check it out here.) To make clear what I'm talking about, I will use an example from One Piece: After the timeskip, most fans wished for an epic display of the Straw Hats' new powers, but we were all soon disappointed by the little progress of Luffy & Co. Sentences like "I hope we soon get to see Luffy go all out." were posted after every chapter. Such a wait for epicness never exists in Fairy Tail. Mashima shows off what his characters can do (sometimes so much it becomes ilogical, but more on that later), there is never any disappointment in the power of the characters. When there's a timeskip, we sure will see epic results immediately:
This Epic-Effect is constantly around in Fairy Tail, one of/probably THE main reason why I enjoyed this Anime/Manga. The moments that give you goosebumps, because of what is going to happen, when you know sh*t is going down, and you can't wait to see it. Fairy Tail creates a lot of hype for itself, something I can show with another example:
When Goku turns Super Saiyan, we all loved that, probably all of us tried to do this too. A simple but effective way to display power and awesomeness. Ever since, this sort of display using "mode changes" has been copied, e.g. in Bleach (Ichigo Bankai), One Piece (Luffy Gear 2), or Naruto (Naruto Sage/Bijuu Mode).
But Naruto and One Piece fail in comparison to Dragon Ball, because a normal stance with no visible aura (Sage Mode) or a leg-focussed stance emitting lots of steam (Gear 2), is nothing compared to the awesomeness of visiual power like Goku's Super Saiyan aura. Natsu / Fairy Tail copied this simple but effective disaplay of badassery for the protagonist:
It it this kind of display that makes Fairy Tail fun to watch, because as simple Anime fan, you want to hype the characters, you want to see epicness, and Fairy Tail delivers constantly. (More on the Luffy - Natsu comparison later.)
Animation / Art Style / Music
Animation - The Fairy Tail animation is the standard animation of modern Anime, modern Shonen Anime I should say. It does not compare to the Attack on Titan animation (what does?), but it's solid and accurate animation. An example, both for music and animation, is the video above.
Art Style - The Manga art style is easy to read and enjoy, definitely a level better than the Bleach or Attack on Titan art style, which are difficult to read/ where most characters look alike.
Music - The music in the Anime is top-notch, be it openings (see above), endings, or themes (see below) from sad to happy or battle themes. I often skip openings and endings, but not with Fairy Tail.
Special Topics: Fights & Friendship
The fights in Fairy Tail often split the fandom, for a simple reason: Power-Ups. Some get annoyed by the instability of the power levels, the at times random/convenient power-ups, which often involve friendship, while others enjoy the epic battles with lots of drama & emotion. I will now address both sides:
Power-Ups & The Power of Friendship
Fairy Tail is all about friendship. Every fight involves a little speech about the meaning of friendship, about the character being willing to risk his life for his comrades. Now most Anime have this as one of their major topics (Naruto and One Piece e.g. too), but Fairy Tail rides the feel-friendship-train non-stop, and that can get very annoying. Characters who should not be able to move a finger, suddenly get back up for the second time, more powerful than before, and finish a stronger opponent because they just have to, for their friends. The average Anime fan has no problem with this, as most Anime use this method every now and then, Fairy Tail however does it in every big showdown, and thus quickly angers even the most patient among the viewers/readers. If you focus solely on the sometimes cheesy emotional side of the fights & power-ups, you might get more anger out of Fairy Tail than actual joy. Luckily, there is still the other side of the fights: The epic display!
Magnitude & Display
As I said earlier in this review, Fairy Tail uses the Epic-Effect constantly, and the fights are magnificent. Fairy Tail's fights are big in magnitude: Cities and landscapes get destroyed, there are explosions, mighty powers clash, it's just "big"! It's like Whitebeard destroying the Marineford building or Luffy destroying the Arc Noah, but this happens in every arc. The different powers make the fights very enjoyable, and the whole magnitude of the battles is what I enjoyed the most. Here's a pretty cool video to show the amazing fights:
(This video contains spoilers.)
The fights of many protagonists start to get boring after a while: Ichigo only uses sword slashes or Getsuga Tensho (his (old) Bankai had no special ability that could have added some diversity), Naruto early on relied heavily on Taijutsu and Kagebunshins, Luffy only punches, Zoro only slashes, Sanji only kicks... But Fairy Tail has all sorts of epic powers right form the start (fire, ice, lightning, metal, wind, swordsmanship, transformation). Imagine One Piece where we get to see fights like Aokiji vs. Akainu all the time, that is what Fairy Tail gives us.
So eventually, you will either enjoy the fights for what they are, fights, or you will tend to get annoyed for what they are, inconsistent. It's what you make of them that will determine the degree of joy for you.
Comparison: One Piece vs. Fairy Tail
I often used One Piece as comparison or for examples in this review, now I'm gonna conclude that with a short general comparison.
Spoiler: What each does better:
What One Piece does better - The story, the mysteries, the use of power-ups. It's really that simple. Fairy Tail's story is very good and intriguing, especially after we learn more about Natsu, Zeref, Acnologia etc., but One Piece creates such intriguing parts every single arc. If you want to talk about what you watch/read in profound and quality discussions, watch One Piece.
What Fairy Tail does better - The display/presentation of its character, their powers and badassness, the fights. One Piece fights usually are boring, they are "small" and we barely see any powers based on nature in use (we saw Enel for 1 arc, Ace/Akainu/Kizaru & Co. for 1-2 fights only, the main characters posess no awesome special abilities that are fun to watch). Fairy Tail makes constant use of the Epic-Effect by giving the most awesome powers to the main characters, and we see plenty of it. When Natsu, Laxus and Co. battle Dragons, we see Skyrim in Anime form. (More on the Dragons later.) If you want to see epic fights, watch Fairy Tail.
Fairy Tail is, in some ways, a copy of One Piece. That doesn't mean it's bad, it just works differently. Many video games are copies from previous games, yet you might still enjoy most of them, because you like the genre in generel. Same goes for the fantasy genre. One Piece puts a lot of focus on the characters and the story, while Fairy Tail puts more focus on the emotions and fights.
Spoiler: Protagonist Comparison: Luffy vs. Natsu
Luffy and Natsu are very similar: Both are not the smartest (tho Natsu is definitely smarter than Luffy), both are destined to do great things (Dragon Slayer & D. Character), both are as kind-hearted as one can get, both do evertyhing for the sake of their nakamas, both are hilarious, both are stubborn and don't listen to anyone, both fight the same way (not in terms of powers, but in terms of fight first, then ask).
There is not much difference between the two. If you like one, you'll most probably like the other as well.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
Presentation of characters & powers, costant Epic-Effect
Emotional
Great support characters
Humor - Fairy Tail is at least as funny as the early One Piece.
Bright, colorful world & atmosphere - If you like that.
Intriguing villain: Zeref - He is both extremely evil, yet at the same time humble and caring. There is lots of mystery surrounding him, turning him into a great antagonist.
Fan Service
Music
The Manga often has more pages per chapter than the other Shonen Manga (Naruto, One Piece, Bleach). 25+, even 30+ pages are not a rarity.
Fairy Tail Zero - A great addition!
Dragons - Did I mention dragons yet? I don't think I did. Fairy Tail is the Anime version of Skyrim. We get to see the main characters battle dragons, we get to see dragons battling dragons, and one of the 2 main antagonists is in fact a dragon. The first time we get to see Acnologia, it will just render you speachless. The magnitude of its power, the hopelessness it creates,... see for yourself:
Spoiler: *Major Spoiler Ahead* Acnologia's Introduction
Cons:
Power level instability & friendship power-ups
Too emotional
Too many unimportant characters
No one dies.
Too many characters get a comeback.
World lacks mysterious places.
Bright, colorful world & atmosphere / not dark enough at times - If you prefer that.
Repetition problem with same type of villains.
Fan Service
In the end, I definitely recommend this Anime & Manga, but only to those who can enjoy a bright, happy world while ignoring some power level inconsistencies and the constant talk about the power of friendship. I would recommend Fairy Tail especially to those who look for a very funny fantasy Anime with epic fights and great presentation. So everyone who enjoys One Piece, but got a little tired of the boring fights, will enjoy Fairy Tail a lot.
Thanks for reading, I will probably update and edit this review more in the future, I hope you enjoyed it.
Feel free to use this thread as discussion about Fairy Tail, about the points I raised as pros and cons, and state your opinion both about the review itself and about Fairy Tail.