Fairy Tail (2014)

The Grand Magic Games reaches its climax following Natsu Dragneel and Gajeel Redfox's stunning victory over Sting Eucliffe and Rogue Cheney of the Sabertooth guild. This success pushes the Fairy Tail guild closer to being crowned the overall champions, but obtaining victory is not the only challenge they face. A mystery still surrounds a hooded stranger and the ominous Eclipse Gate, leaving more questions than answers.

More crazy adventures are on the horizon for Fairy Tail as their destructive antics and joyful rowdiness continue unabated. Their greatest trial is quickly approaching, but united as a family, the guild will always be ready to face any threat that comes their way.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Dragneel, Natsu Main

Kakihara, Tetsuya Japanese

Scarlet, Erza Main

Ohara, Sayaka Japanese

Heartfilia, Lucy Main

Hirano, Aya Japanese

Fullbuster, Gray Main

Nakamura, Yuuichi Japanese

Happy Main

Kugimiya, Rie Japanese

Marvell, Wendy Main

Satou, Satomi Japanese

Charlés Main

Horie, Yui Japanese

Lockser, Juvia Supporting

Nakahara, Mai Japanese

Fernandes, Jellal Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Redfox, Gajeel Supporting

Hatano, Wataru Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Herek, Samantha Assistant Producer

Ishihira, Shinji Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Hata, Shouji Sound Director

Reviews

Apr 25, 2016

SatsugaiDeAtsu

Recommended

I decided to write this review after reviewing other reviews over the same anime. 90% of the reviews were against this legendary anime. people said this anime was overrated but ask me that i believe that Fairy Tail (2014) in underrated. It should have been in the best. Any way lets get to the point.

This season comprise of 4 arcs although the last arc (10 episodes) are not that interesting because they go to way before past where fairy tail wasnt even borne yet still the other 3 arcs are full of action and entertainment. Its a total blast of shounen. Although i too believe ... that this season was not funny like the previous one but that was because this time they took a rather serious way to deal things as the troubles this time were greater than ever.
The dialogues the feelers and the chills of excitement are filled in this season and the one thing that has advanced is the fighting style. It is superb this time not to say that it was not superb the previous time but this time it was on a far whole level.
So i believe one should watch this anime regardless of the size because after watching it you will find your true self, you will start to believe in yourself and also a sense of goodwill will be born within you regarding your loved ones. this anime will boost your courage and fill you with enthusiasm.

the only problem this anime had like always with all other fairy tail animation is poor execution of the animation fluidity, its not smooth, this hamperssome of the fun but ...

One should really watch this anime with full interest and i am sure you will enjoy it so best of luck with it. I hope you liked my review even though it seemed a little unrealistic.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Sep 8, 2014

TheHomie

Mixed Feelings

EDITED: THIS REVIEW ENCOMPASSES THE WHOLE 102 EPISODES OF FAIRY TAIL (2014)
*NOTE: Due to the nature of this series some comparisons between the new series and the original run will arise but generally this review is spoiler free.

Fairy Tail (2014) was a highly anticipated sequel to the original run of Fairy Tail which lasted from 2009 to 2013. Now the original anime wasn't anything special or groundbreaking by any means however it was an anime that managed to avoid the majority of the pitfalls associated with long running anime like Naruto, Bleach etc. Sure it had the 'plot convenient' power ups and ... the 'power of friendship' cliches but it still managed ti garner a pretty huge and devout fan following. The main reasons were the fact that it had extremely consistent animation, brilliant soundtracks and very likable characters along with interesting arcs that didn't drag on and fights that were short and sweet. I confess that i was among that devout fan following and loved FT like it was the greatest anime ever (this was about 3 years ago mind you) so how is it that a fan like me is giving this sequel such a low score? Lets begin...

Story: . The pacing of the story is horribly inconsistent and extremely slow paced. There are some episode that will try to fit in a lot of content in the space of just one episode and others where there will be nothing of consequence done over the course of many episodes, a problem that arises from dragging out episodes is the extremely corny dialogue that is quite often cringe worthy. Now a typical aspect of shounens is 'hyping up' every battle and every showdown for eg Shokugeki no Souma does this excellently. Fairy tail tries but fails miserably at this not because of its inability to hype up sequences but because of the inability to follow up on it which leads to extremely boring battles and plot conclusions. Also many of the most interesting characters including Erza, Zeref, Jellal etc suffer deeply from a lack of screen time. Plot holes run rampant in this anime and character motivations are seldom explored. An example i would like to mention here form the series is the FT zero arc which animated 13 chapters in the space of almost 10 episodes, this is by no means helpful to the pacing of the series and means that episodes drag on aimlessly because of the little content that they get to adapt.

Animation: As i mentioned before Fairy tail mainly drew me in because of its consistent animation however that is not the case any more. FT tries to experiment with a new animation style that resembles the manga but in colour it doesn't look quite as good. The biggest letdown in terms of animation is, unlike the first series, inconsistency. BG are well drawn but during battles many characters look nothing more than doodles (naruto anyone?). Another problem is the extremely bland colour template, for some reason the colours are towards the dark side and this does not fit the previous series' cheery looking vibrant colours.

Sound: This is hands down the best aspect of the anime. All of the OPs and EDs are very well done and continue the legacy of the original's brilliant soundtracks. Some tracks that have stuck with me are 'Masayume Chasing', 'Believe in myself' and 'Ashita wa Orase' all of which are eargasmic. The osts on the other hand are overused but still are acceptable.

Character: Due to the inconsistent and slow nature of the story the characters don't really have a chance to shine like they did in the original. Many interesting character's like laxus, erza, gajeel, jellal etc are thrown into the background and only appear rarely. Their development has remained stagnant over the course of these 102 episodes. Many important moments from the manga that are important in fleshing out the characters were animated without any of the emotional drama and this means that character emotions look forced and overdramatic. Natsu is much the same and Lucy is still quite useless as a MC. Zeref is sorely missed and only appears in about 4 episodes despite the fact that he is the main antagonist. The rest of the antagonists are not nearly as interesting and their motivations are petty to say the least.

Enjoyment: Probably the only reason that i have stuck with this anime for so long is the feeling of nostalgia i got every week i sat down and watched another episode, but nostalgia can only take you so long and at some point watching it became nothing more than a chore, devoid of enjoyment and the love that i once had for this anime.

I am honestly shocked at how such an amazing anime has been ruined, it is now nothing more than a shadow if its past glory and is a prime example of how greedy studios can turn an interesting show into a shitty cash grab.

Thank you for taking the time out to read this long review and any feedback is greatly appreciated since this is my first review.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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May 13, 2018

TakaCode

Not Recommended

Did you ever have that show that you loved as kid but as you grew older you start to dislike most of the shows that you grew up with? For me there were a couple of cases of this. One of the best examples was in Yugioh GX where I use to absolutely loved the show as a kid for its amazing duels, funny and likeable character and enjoyable arcs. Sadly as I got sadly older and I decided to re-watch the show when I was 15 years old I started to not like the show as much as I did thanks to its ... messy pacing, mediocre characters and subpar arcs that are mostly contrived. I don’t hate Yugioh GX or anything but rather not re-watch it again because I would end up hating it. This can also have the opposite effect for example I use to dislike Cardcaptor Sakura when I was a kid but as I grew older I started to loved them due to the fact that not only I was watching the uncut version of the show but the story, characters, visuals and music were amazing to a point where it became one of my favourite animes.
So how does his any of this relate to Fairy Tail. Well my first encounter of Fairy Tail was in 2009 at age 11 and this was the time where I slowly taking a break of watching anime because around that time I was more of a gamer than a anime fan however Fairy Tail was one of the few shows that I decided to watched around that time. When I was 11 years old I loved it because my 11 year old self that Fairy Tail was amazingly written filled with complex characters, and well animated fights. Obviously I would cringe at my 11 year old self today but the one thing that you should remember that we were all kids back then and we didn’t know what anime was good or bad as we just enjoyed anything that was shown to us on TV or in the net.
However as I grew older and started to watch anime more often again over the course of 2011- present I started to know what show was good or bad. I eventually re-watched Fairy Tail back in 2017 and I was shocked of how much I didn’t enjoyed it. In fact I really started to really dislike Fairy Tail as a whole thanks to its countless problems that I will mention throughout this review.
Now I have no problem with anyone who likes Fairly Tail because compare to the likes of The King’s Game, Big Order, Future Dairy and Eromanga Sensei where I questioned people for liking it thanks to its horrendous portrayal of disturbing content I can understand the appeal and charm of Fairy Tail. Half of my friends liked the series there’s nothing wrong with that. This review is just me explaining why I dislike this series as well all the flaws in it.
Now with all that said hello everyone this is Shawn aka KurataLordStage and I will be reviewing Fairy Tail 2009 and 2014 and with that further ado let's begin.

Story.
Fairy Tail is set in Earth-land Asu Rando. A fictional world populated by wizards that coalesce into guilds to apply their magical abilities for paid job requests. The story follows a young novice wizard girl named Lucy Heartfilia who runs away from her home to join Fairy Tail a guild famous for its member's overly destructive antics. She meets soon meets a dragon slayer named Natsu Dragneel who travels to the kingdom of Fiore. Natsu invites Lucy to the Fairy Tail guild and she meets up with other Fairy Tail members. Soon Lucy forms a team with Natsu, his cat-like companion, Happy as well two others who join the team later Gary and Erza.
Together they embark on numerous guild missions including subjugating criminals, illegal dark guilds, and ancient etherious demons created by the immortal dark wizard Zeref.
The story is awful. Seriously this one of the worst stories that have ever seen in my life and now am going to tell why the story of fairy Tail sucks starting with the story structure.
The story structure/ formula for Fairy Tail is honestly no different from watching a Saturday morning cartoon on TV in terms how it’s structured and written.
This is the story arc structure of Fairy Tail.
1. Present the problem to the cast.
2. They travel to set destination
3. Meets the villains and so they can get they ass kicked by them
4. Find the way to save the world from set villain
5. They go on quest
6. They split up so they can fight they appropriate matchups against the side villains for set arc
7. Have Natsu have power up so he can defeat the boss villain of the arc
8. Repeat Step 1 to 7 again until you GO insane!!!
Do you guys see a problem here? If this only happened in the first two arcs I this wouldn’t that much but the problem is that the same story arc structure over and over again through the course of 277 episodes of misery.
It doesn’t help the fact that these so-called arcs in this show get worst at times goes on to a point where even the fourth great ninja war arc was much better written than the likes of Grand Magic Games and Tartaros arcs where the show just becomes a fan fiction mess with constant ass pulls just to piss off the viewer. The writing in Fairy Tail is shit. Almost every single arc including the god awful fillers arc is plagued with plot contrivances that will drive anyone inducing shounen fans mad. It doesn’t help that the directing for almost every single arc is just abysmal beyond repair. Add this up with the shows shitty pacing, horrendous world building, a lack of stakes due to death fakeouts, doggy directing and the show doesn’t really progress than you got one hell of a shitty story in your hands.
This is one of the worst told stories I have ever seen in my life and it makes SAO look like it was done by William Shakespeare.
1/10

Characters.
The character in Fairy Tail aren't much better in fact in many cases they are actually worse than the story itself.
Let’s start the elephant in the room aka the worst character in Fairy Tail Natsu.
From start to finish I absolutely hated Natsu because not only he’s was such a cardboard cutout with no personality but he was just an overpowered Gary-Sue who preaches about friendships. It doesn’t help the fact is by episode 277 he is still the same character that we know from episode 1. Also unlike Gon from Hunter X Hunter he doesn’t even try to look for his long-lost father. He’s just spends his time one-shotting villains as well messing around in the guild. Natsu is the epitome of everything that could go wrong in a shounen protagonist and I hope that shounen writers will never attempt to recreate a character like that ever again.

I honestly hated Lucy as a character. While not as much as Natsu she still got on my nerves quickly. She’s is mostly useless in combat, she whines a lot and she’s overall a damsel in distress where she’s almost has to be saved by other characters like Natsu, Gray and Erza. It doesn’t help the fact that she doesn’t get much stronger as the series goes on.
Gray is easily one of the most pointless rival type characters I have ever seen in anime. All he does is being bland on screen who likes to strip a lot as well having a rivalry with Natsu. Nothing more to say about Gray but he such an annoying pointless rival character.
Erza was a decent character at first as she was very strong at combat as well being a good role model of the Fairy Tail guild. I also like her personality and character interactions towards other characters. However after a certain point of the series everything about Erza takes a turn for the worst and by the time you get to X791 parts she devolves into a preachy, overpowered, unlikeable mary sue who ass-pulls a lot.
The rest of the characters in Fairy Tail minus Mirajane, Laxus and Gajeel who are decent are just moving bodies on screen who are very forgetful.
The same thing can be said for villains because all of them minus Jellal are just horrendously written villains that have no motivations and they are just forgetful fools in screen.
Overall other than, Mirajane, Jellal, Laxus and Gajeel the charterer in Fairy Tail were all horrendous. They were very bland, poorly written and downright annoying. This is easily no contest one of the worst character cast I have ever seen in any anime.
2/10

Visuals.
I honestly have almost nothing positive to say about the show visuals overall.
Let’s start with the art which is honestly below average at best.
The background scenery is just bland and feels lifeless.
The female characters designs are almost as bad as the character designs from a Hirai Hisashi show (Gundam Seed) where if you talk out the hair colour, clothing and eye colour you will start to see how very similar the female character in terms of character design. As for the male characters designs the main cast ones are okay but the more minor characters ones are horrendous beyond belief. Also did I forget that the show constantly goes off model resulting in art-failures it goes worse in the 2014 anime where stopped giving a damm about art consistently where there’s always a character going off model every 2 to 5 minutes.
Don’t get me started with the fan service cringe in this show because god this show is filled with unnecessary fan-service that insults the viewers intelligence.
As for the animation itself it’s honestly pretty bad because almost every single fight in the show is a freaking slide show filled with stiff movement and shitty fight choreography that will make anyone cringe. Throughout this 277 episode journey there was not a single fight that that I can was well animated due to the fact this show was so lazily animated to a point where shows from the late 80s and 90s had better animation than Fairy Tail.
Don’t get me started with the actual animation of Fairy Tail 2014 because the animation of that show is a dumpster fire of shit filled with fights the feel like PowerPoint Presentations.
Overall the visuals in Fairy Tail are a joke that features some of the worst animation and art I have ever seen in a shounen anime.
3/10

Soundtrack.
If there’s one good thing about Fairy Tail it would be the soundtrack. The soundtrack of Fairy Tail is mostly consists upbeat tracks that perfectly captures the tone and setting for Fairy Tail however it does have its powerful and emotional tracks.
However I cannot say the same thing about sound effects because as they are not only Fairly Tail stole sound effects from other anime but they made theses stolen sound effects cringe-worthy to listen. Everytime I hear that “WOW” sound effect from the show I just cringe endlessly due to how annoying it sounds.
All the opening and ending themes in are pretty catch in they own ways and they were all enjoyable to listen.
Now for sub vs dub.
Both sub are dub are decent overall as everyone did a solid job in the respective languages. I personally prefer the dub for this one thanks to great performance voice actors such as Colleen Clinkenbeard as Erza, Monica Rial as Mirajane, Patrick Seitz as Laxus
In short the music and voice acting in Fairy Tail is great and it was easily the best thing about this series.
8/10

Final Thoughts.
Fairy Tail is best example of how to not write, direct and animate a shounen. The story was awful that is filled with plot contrivances, poor pacing, repetitive story arcs and dreadful writing. The characters were mostly god awful that have barely any charterer development as they like to asspull a lot. The visuals especially the 2014 anime were horrendous that contained a lot of art failures, poor fight choreography, horrible fan-service and lazy character design. The only few things that keep Fairy Tail from being in the same tier as Eromanga Sensei, Victory Gundam, Black Bullet and Akame Ga Kill were the music, opening/ending themes and a few decent characters like Laxus, Mirajane, Gajeel and Jellal. Everything else was shit and made me wonder what exactly went wrong here. If this show was done by much more talented director and author then Fairly Tail would have been a great series but no instead this show was done by talentless hacks who don’t know how to tell a story.
There are honestly better anime shounen out there both old and new that are much better than Fairy Tail.
If you liked or enjoyed Fairy Tail than good for you but for me Fairy Tail will forever be the worst long running anime that I have ever seen.

Final Score 3.5/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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