Fairy Tail: Final Series

The FINAL SEASON...until the 100 Year Quest gets adapted...

No but seriously for a "final season", Fairy Tail really brought their all or more or less Hiro Mashima amalgamated all his loose plotlines (especially with the deal with Zeref and Acnologia) not only to a grand final war but to resolve the MANY MANY characters plot threads it gave us and the majority of it...succeeded.

LA had been and still was a huge fan of Fairy Tail, Fairy Tail brought LA into the shounen genre and though Fairy Tail did abuse the entire "nakama" arc finales as an asspull let alone it's "no one dies" attitude and ... to this end makes Natsu has immense plot armour and one-shots every main arc villain in the series, all these flaws bar one or two get given some context and actual reasoning to, the exception being the "nakama" BUT LA even has a defense for that (to a certain extent) and that is..well Fairy Tail was ALWAYS about nakama or family, heck Fairy Tail was always about camaraderie even in the worst of times and most of the characters centred on family one way or another, Lucy with her father, Cana and Gildarts, Natsu and Igneel, Gray and Ur and Wendy with the guild itself. Yes Fairy Tail had some problems be it it's filler arcs or the flaws LA mentioned above but man this final season remedied ALOT of the problems it had.

With this being the culmination to the final battles against Zeref and Acnologia, the character development and the lore intertwining things to make sense was all there. For character development the main players gets the most screentime, expanded both on the world building and lore of Fairy Tail to ties things together, everything from why the Year 777 was soo important, Lucy's mother, the Dragon Slayers themselves, Zeref and his conflict and war with Mavis and how Acnologia came to be. It's all covered here. If anything the main characters who get the most screentime and development became Natsu, Zeref, Mavis, Acnologia, Erza, Wendy, Gray and Lucy though LA thought that Lucy once again took the fanservicey status and her backstory was more towards her family line than her as a character came into play but nonetheless she was a central player...mainly helping Natsu in all this but still.

The battles were crazy to say the least, mainly because of Zeref's Elite commanders, being mages of ABSURD magical strength and having them pitted against not only Fairy Tail themselves but EVERY guild (including the main dark guilds who have turned over a new leaf giving THEM redemption as well as well as minor development as well). But most of the battles were interesting in how the character overcome it as...well Natsu was focused on Zeref, it gave the rest of the cast a chance to shine MAINLY Erza, Gray, Wendy and Gajeel. YES...sometimes they used nakama power but....ummmm...it's cool ok.

The animation done by A-1 Pictures, Bridge and Cloverworks...well the animation was toned and alot sharper, the fighting and battles scenes were much more fluid and intense and because of the tone, the character designs and quirky and exotic as they were were crisper and much sharper than before, since this was a collaboration between three studios, LA can see the animation was consistently great (aside from the rare derps) because of it and considering the animation was consistent for 51 episodes and still the final few episodes were greatly detailed and batshit cazy in terms of battles...well what else woul LA say but bravo A-1 Pictures, Bridge and Cloverworks!

The voice cast was utterly HUGE so LA will go by the simple standouts or MVP's...for LA they were Mamiko not as Mavis, Akira Ishida as Zeref, Tetsuya Kakihara as Natsu, Sayaka Ohara as Erza, Yuuichi Nakamura as Gray, aya Hirano as Lucy, Satomi Sato as Wendy, Rie Kugimiya as Happy, Kousuke Toriumi as Acnologia, Takako Honda as Eileen Belserion, Manami Numakura as Brandish, Saori Hayami as Kagura, Show Hayami as Ichiya (yes really) and Kana Hanazawa as Zera, seriously a damn great voice cast if LA could go on this section would be HUGE.

Fairy Tail: Final Series is nothing but a great send off to the series, as it just ties everything up from 10 years of Fairy Tail anime, sure in a bit of shaking ways especially considering the nakama power activating time to time but like LA said, it's kinda what Fairy Tail embodies time and again and Fairy Tail just wraps everything in a crescendo.

LA had and always will be a fan of Fairy Tail even when it was in it's lowest moments and in a time when Fairy Tail was looked down upon, LA always stick by it and wanted to get better and with this Final Season it did. Fairy Tail was LA's first shounen anime and be it the annoying filler arcs, Natsu's plot armour, Lucy's unneeded fanservice and of course the nakama eleventh hour superpower but even with all that this Final Season did it's job and ended the way it wanted too and by god, did it go out great.

Here's to Fairy Tail and a close to Zeref and Acnologia as the Big Bads of the series...

E.N.D

Fairy Tail, Fairy Tail. What can the world do without you? From its original run back in August 2006 to July 2017, the fantasy adventure has been dubbed as a popular franchise that became famous for its “friendship” theme. It’s become so well-known that the words “friends” has become synonymous with the franchise itself. Now, we finally have the conclusion of this long-running fantasy adventure.

The final season initially had mixed reception so seeing this been translated into anime form would also generate some degree of trepidation. I approached this final season with some optimism as a voice told me it would be a proper sendoff ... of the show but far from a masterpiece. From the first few episodes, It reintroduced the main characters we are so familiar with – Natsu, Happy, Lucy, Erza, Gray. The Fairy Tail guild itself is no longer the same as we remember. But surely enough, the final season begins to slowly reintroduce the other familiar cast ranging from Wendy, Gajeel, Laxus, Levy, and among many others. Perhaps most noticeable is the reintroduction of Zeref, a powerful dark wizard who has been an integral part of Fairy Tail’s expansive plot. Now, he’s a character with a purpose and takes on the role of an emperor with his own personal empire. The final season covers the Alvarez Empire arc that concludes the series.

Looking back now, Zeref has been a complex character since his introduction. Now that he is in command of an empire, Zeref developed a more strategic and cunning mind who seeks to achieve his ambitions. The previous season also covered a side series (Fairy Tail Zero) that chronicled his relationship between Zeref and Mavis. The importance of their relationship carries an emotional degree that fully reaches its apex at the final stages of the season. To me, it’s a type of long-term development that actually works effective in terms of story writing. But from the start, we also have to realize the conflict Natsu and his friends to has to deal with now. From the Alvarez Empire, the Sparggan 12 serves as an elite unit of powerful wizards under Zeref. They consist of some of the most powerful adversaries Fairy Tail has ever encountered. From the arrogant sand mage Ajeel to god-like entities such as God Serena and August, there’s no doubt we’ll see the guild struggling to overcome these obstacles. Others such as Brandish and Irene has their own complex relationships with certain characters. I’m not going to spoil but it’s let’s just say that they are important to the overall tone of the season. Unfortunately, a decent portion of Sparrgan 12 are easily forgettable such as Jacob, Neihart, Bloodman, and Wall Eehto. I honestly forgot some of these characters and had to look them up again. Others such as Larcade and Invel has somewhat important roles in the show but honestly are overshadowed by powerful mainstays like Zeref. Collectively, they are a unique group of individuals that brings a thrilling sensation to the final arc. Individually, some just lacks presence on their own and suffers from stardom.

Fairy Tail’s own members has their many spotlights although most of it is carried by the usual suspects. Of course, Natsu and Lucy play significant roles in determining the outcome of the arc. This is especially shown through Natsu’s complex relationship with Zeref. In one particular episode, we also get an important revelation about their origins. In the meantime, the final season also hopes to elicit character emotions beyond just the usual friendship gimmicks. Don’t expect much romance outside of Zeref and Mavis though. At this point, it’s pretty much established that Fairy Tail values its character connections more important than anything. As a guild, Fairy Tail has always been known for developing connections between its cast and forging bonds that lasts seemingly forever. From a storytelling perspective, it’s hardly unique as friendship themes have always been a part of many action adventures. It’s just that Fairy Tail amplifies its friendship context more than the usual. To me, it’s oversaturated and seemingly forced down our throats. Sure, it’s an important context of the show but when you’ve watched over 200 episodes of this, it gets pretty damn redundant, no?

With 51 episodes, Fairy Tail final season does hit the sweet spot for concluding this anime. It doesn’t rely much on fillers to do the storytelling in this case and is actually quite faithful to the manga. The previous seasons had numerous filler episodes that can be a chore to get through. Some of those fillers were genuinely enjoyable while others had an entire arc of shallow writing. The final season gets straight to the point and commits most of its time on bringing out what the fans wants to actually see. The first half builds on the main plot while the second half executes what it establishes and ultimately brings together its conclusion. I’m not going to lie though. The final season is pretty much aimed at fans who really wants to see how this anime franchise wraps up. Chance are, some people just wants to finish the show and be done with the franchise for good. Others really wants to see the best of what Fairy Tail can offer. Personally, that part was long and done from the first seasons. The final season at best is a definitive end of the main story saga and as its worst is lazy writing that continues to use recycled ideas.

However, I will give a credit where it’s due and that’s for Hiro Mashima’s work consistency. Being able to finish the manga from the start to finish with his weekly schedule is almost inhuman. When writing the script and storyboarding, I’d imagine he planned out well ahead of time. The mangaka is a madman when it comes to his speed of working. Why do I mention this? It’s because Fairy Tail’s art style has a cartoony look but can be deceptively complex at times to watch. Both the anime and manga also consist a lot of character emotions during important moments. Fairy Tail has been known for a lot of crying times and this final season is no pushover with those scenes. Emotions are drawn out by the main themes of the show and connects the characters together. A-1 Pictures return with their staff with a similar look to the previous seasons. And of course, any longtime fan will know Fairy Tail has fan service. It has lot of fan service, sometimes which can be dramatically distracting. There’s even jokes about the fan service itself with characters like Lucy being a main culprit. Gray taking his clothes off is also a running gag that melts Juvia’s little heart.

The anime is over. This is the final season and I doubt we’ll see another Fairy Tail anime for a long time. If Hiro Hashima’s other works like Eden’s Zero or Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest ever gets adaptations, I’d imagine it to be much shorter than what we’ve seen here. The final season indeed concludes the long running Fairy Tail main saga that started between a fiery salamander and a blonde mage. And if you want to give it a chance, the ball is in your court.

Contains spoilers. Not that anything could sour this anime more than merely watching it, but hey.

The vast majority of the western anime community is made up of kids, teenagers, and college kids, and as the medium becomes more and more mainstream, that bell curve keeps centering around lower and lower ages. Many within this community of young people have grown up with anime and can reminisce about shows like Naruto, One Piece, or Bleach which have been influential for as long as they can remember, teenagers on the older side can still remember their own era’s shows like Pokemon or Dragon Ball, and now the ... newest generation of children growing up with anime have faces like My Hero Academia and Mob Psycho 100 to grow up with themselves. I don’t have any of that. I’m seasoned enough for even the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia to loose their effects, since a good ninety percent of anime I can remember watching with few late 90s exceptions the likes of Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop rerunning on TV have been viewed through my eyes as they are now. I can’t ride on nostalgia and fond memories I don’t have, but I can ride on lies.

Fairy Tail came and settled into my life of extreme clinical depression and violent self-harming, intently suicidal tendencies in a roller coaster of fashions. Watching something so vapid and kiddish began by simply making me feel even dumber and even lonelier by getting into a show aimed at an audience nearly half my age, but after getting along with my streak of nihilism at the time, it soon became my single favorite show ever made, seriously. Just hearing Natsu and Lucy autistically screaming about the power of friendship ad nauseam was enough to lift my spirits, no matter how hollow those feelings were. No matter how little sense it all made, I truly did come to love Fairy Tail and the cast of characters therein. I’d always rated it lowly as I do currently, but never would I deny how genuinely I adored it despite its countless flaws, lacks, and offenses. No matter how many victories they won without a shred of logic, no matter how many times villainous motivations would break and birth new allies apropos of nothing, and no matter how many times they’d tease a romance only to never make a single iota of progress for hundreds of episodes, I always left the viewing with life in my eyes, because at the end of the day, everyone was a friend and friendship was magic. In my real life, “friendship” stands only as a childish dream my insomnia never permitted me to relish in, but if I remembered the Fairy Tail necklace I was wearing hidden under my formal attire, I could keep going, if only for one more day.

During Fairy Tail’s first hiatus, A-1 Pictures had made it crystal clear they would be picking the series back up in 2014, and they did exactly that, but when the next break came in 2016, they gave no indication of it coming back, much to my dismay. I was horrified by the idea of losing this lovable guild of friends who I cared for more than my own family, so when the manga announced its plans to end, and the production committee behind it announced they would fund its final season set to adapt the rest of the manga, I was absolutely overjoyed. After all, I was finally getting to see my friends again. As the Fall 2018 season approached, and they started airing promotional videos, I was kind of taken aback. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I knew how technically bad Fairy Tail was. Be it the terrible animation, overuse of still frames and speed lines, endless off-model character artwork, a totally nonsensical script, infinite plot holes, egregious filler arcs, or the brain numbing pacing, I was always more than willing to say, “Yeah, but I still love it.” That being said, watching these promotional videos was the first time I noticed Fairy Tail was the only show I did this for. Anyone whose seen my profile knows how painstakingly critical I am, and the single bad show I refused to drop was Fairy Tail. Since I refuse to watch low quality anime, the time Fairy Tail was on break was enough time for me to completely forget what it was like to sit through a bad show. I know I’m coming off as sarcastic, but I’m being completely serious. I simply forgot what it was like to watch a poorly produced, poorly written, poorly paced, poorly directed, poorly acted, generically scored show without dropping it nigh instantly, and trying to get back into it was an unforgiving, brutal challenge. I knew I should’ve just left well enough alone and trying to watch the final season would do nothing but expose all my blissfully ignorant yet recently made fond memories…but I did it anyway. Whilst all those happy memories were, indeed, trampled into ruin exactly as I thought they would be, I’ve come to argue the degree to which they were was not entirely my own fault. After all, even after forgetting the feeling of watching a bad show, if Fairy Tail had returned exactly as it was when it left, then all I could really say was touché.

And for the zero people still reading, I suppose this is where the “review” actually starts…

Fairy Tail: Final Series is unquestionably among the worst pieces of so-called entertainment I’ve ever committed the sin to consume, and I’m going to do my absolute best at selling you on this horrendous reality as fast as possible, because I want to be here doing this just about as much as the corporatized, probably zombified staff wanted to produce it. To start, I’ll acknowledge the elephant in the room: who in the fuck cares? No matter what argument I propose and no matter the eloquence or logic with which I do so, who the hell cares if a shitty series no one respected anyway went from bad to worse? FANS! All the dumbfuck fans, LIKE ME, no matter how stupid we are for already liking a bad show, have the right to be angry when that standard which we’ve grown entitled to gets even worse. And, holy SHIT, did it get worse or what?! The animation went from poor and lacking to outright non-existent. Entire minutes, literal complete minutes were spent just panning over everyone’s face any time the slightest movement was made, any time someone said anything even remotely emotional, and any time the screenwriter knew they couldn’t animate the action and had to instead show people flatly reacting to it. The sound design went from repetitive and boring to straight up inaccurate. Gunshots used the same sound effect as doors closing, and Natsu getting comically slapped by Lucy was the same sound effect used when someone literally slammed into the ground after falling out of the damn sky. It’s a complete and total joke no fan of the series could laugh at. The directing went from stock and amateur to inexcusably dishonest. As mentioned, whenever the budget would run out and they couldn’t animate an impact, they would awkwardly hard-cut to someone else’s still face reacting to it. This was the case with action scenes, obviously, but also in fucking DIALOGUE SCENES! IS IT REALLY THAT HARD TO ANIMATE THREE FUCKING FRACTIONS OF AN ALREADY STILL SURROUNDING FRAME FOR SOMEONE’S MOUTH TO OPEN AND CLOSE?!?!?! The pacing went from purposefully slow to drag out the series for as long as possible to breakneck rapid fire speed because now all they wanted to do was finish the damn thing since the cash cow apparently became infertile. Remember the big tease Gray was going to kill Frosh? Got retconned; forget about the Rouge from the future and all the plot lines tied to his actions. Remember how Zeref was a legendary black wizard known even outside of Fiore? Got retconned; apparently he’s so poorly known, he can be the king of an entire foreign nation, merely under a different name, without ANYONE outside the country being aware of this fact. Remember the big bad Emperors of Ishgar who were hyped up to be greater than all the Wizard Saints? Got retconned; they all go down at the same time at the hands of some random guy who's owned barely four minutes later. Remember all the symbolism suggesting Mavis to be the fundamental antithesis of Zeref? Got retconned; not only do they have the EXACT SAME CURSE AND POWERS, but they got them by literally falling in love. I could go on. No effort was expended explaining anything properly or concluding the series in a satisfying manner because all they wanted to do was finally put the last nail in the bloody coffin as soon as livingly possible. Even when the characters were given a few paltry scraps of time to develop, we were treated with bafflingly retarded lines like Precht holding Mavis’ dead, cold, limp, pale, lifeless fucking corpse, looking at it in its closed eyes and asking, “Mavis, are you dead?” Even when the characters were given equally paltry scraps of time to explain the plot and motivations, we were treated with equally retarded lines like Zeref looking at his counsel of nameless lackeys saying, “Humanity must be temporarily exterminated.” Like, seriously?!? The one and only aspect of the series which remained consistent with previous seasons was the music, but that’s only because they wholesale reused the soundtrack. I don’t know why I’m complaining, though, seeing as if they did put in the work to actually recompose anything properly, it probably would’ve been just as awful as the rest. If you wanted a silver lining, I guess I could say there’s a few opening animations which aren’t bad and the show never fully gives up by falling back on CG, but that’s really all I’ve got for you. I’m sorry. Believe me, I wish I had more to offer too.

In hindsight, there is a moment from episode twelve which really summed up my experience with Fairy Tail: Final Series in one nice little package. They were saying some dumb shit—I wasn’t really paying attention—and I realized as they were panning across the guild hall the characters just…weren’t drawn. You’ll have to see it to believe it, but they just weren’t drawn. I was looking at a guild hall of greyed out silhouettes. When I really looked closely, shocked, as I couldn’t believe what I was seeing either, I could pick out who was who, I guess. I could make out Gajeel’s Sonic The Hedgehog hairdo and Bickslow’s weird helmet thing. I could make out Elfman’s broad shoulders and Mirajane’s bangs in that quirky little ponytail of her's. But why did I have to? Was it so hard to draw the faces of the people I couldn’t wait to see again? Couldn’t you’ve just grabbed a frame from another scene and reused it as a still image? Hell, couldn’t you’ve just copy and pasted their god damn character models right off file into the scene, again, just as a still image? It’s not like the silhouettes were animated. How many seconds of care would you have to expend to add them this one time for this one unanimated scene? This bleak lack of any semblance of passion or investment will be my last memories of what once was the most beloved series in my small world.

Thank you for reading.