Fairy Tail

Alternative Titles

Japanese: FAIRY TAIL

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 63

Chapters: 549

Status: Finished

Published: Aug 2, 2006 to Jul 26, 2017

Genres: Action, Adventure, Award Winning, Fantasy

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: Shounen Magazine (Weekly)

Authors: Mashima, Hiro (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 7.56¹ (scored by 154,464 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #2411²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #22

Members: 263,755

Favorites: 20,917

Resources

Wikipedia

7.56

Ranked #2411Popularity #22Members 263,755

MangaShounen Magazine (Weekly)Mashima, Hiro (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /63

Chapters: /549

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Fairy Tail
Volume 1
$10.99

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Synopsis

In the mystical realm of Earth Land, magic exists at the core of everyday life for its inhabitants, from transportation to utilities and everything in between. However, even with all its benefits, magic can also be used for great evil; therefore, to prevent dark forces from upsetting the natural order of things, there exists a system of magical guilds in the Kingdom of Fiore. Under the command of their respective guild masters, these guilds are made up of witches and wizards who take on various job requests to earn fame and fortune. One particular guild stands high above the rest in both strength and spirit, and its name is Fairy Tail.

In his quest to find his dragon foster father—Igneel—Natsu Dragneel, a fiery and reckless mage, and his partner Happy run into a young celestial mage by the name of Lucy Heartfilia, who reveals that it's her dream to become a full-fledged wizard and join the Fairy Tail guild. After rescuing her from an abduction attempt, Natsu offers her a home in Fairy Tail. Now a member of the guild, Lucy teams up with Natsu and befriends fellow wizards Gray Fullbuster and Erza "Titania" Scarlet. Together, this motley crew set out on their many adventures, gaining many faithful allies and deadly foes along the way.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

In 2009, Fairy Tail won the 33rd Kodansha Manga Award in shounen manga category, the Japan Expo Awards for the same category, and the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation's Industry Award for best comedy manga.

It has received multiple adaptations; including a 175-episode TV series, a 102-episode sequel, and two animated films. It has also received several manga spin-offs by various authors, a side story novel series, and a magazine to its name, Monthly Fairy Tail, where some of the spin-offs were published.

The series was initially published in English by Del Rey Comics, who released the first 12 volumes from March 25, 2008 to September 28, 2010. Kodansha Comics USA picked up the license and released the rest of the series from May 10, 2011 to January 23, 2018. A large size 5-in-1 omnibus edition subtitled Master's Edition has been published since November 10, 2015. It has also been published in Spanish by Norma Editorial since October 30, 2008; in Italian by Star Comics since January 3, 2008; in Brazil by JBC since October 2010; in Polish by Studio JG since April 2016; and in Argentina by Editorial Ivrea since January 2017.

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Related Manga

More characters
Characters

Dragneel, Natsu

Main

Scarlet, Erza

Main

Fullbuster, Gray

Main

Heartfilia, Lucy

Main

Happy

Main

Marvell, Wendy

Main

Charlés

Main

Lockser, Juvia

Supporting

Fernandes, Jellal

Supporting

Redfox, Gajeel

Supporting

More reviewsReviews

Jul 25, 2017

Dream95

Not Recommended

Oh Fairy Tail, You could have been good, you had so, so much potential in you, but here you are, going out with barely a yelp.

Where did it go wrong Hiro? You had an immensly popular manga at your disposal to really give all your readers a satisfying manga to reread over and over again. You had the chance to make Fairy Tail something really, really great . But you wasted the opportunity. You have thrown it away by being stubborn to the end.

Of course, I'm not saying this out of no reason. There are a lot of good reasons as to why many readers, ... including me, were sooooo disappointed at how the manga turned out. However, there is one main reason that has been the biggest downfall to Fairy Tail, and that is the formula.

You see, Fairy Tail only ever has the same formula for every single one of its arcs. Meet Enemy, Fight, Get beaten up, .... activate Friendship power and win. That's it. That is the one and ONLY formula Hiro relies on to create each and every arcs. It's so ridiculous to the point that, in the later arcs, everyone could predict the outcome of the fight so easily. "Fairy Tail will win, Fairy Tail will not lose a single member because Natsu and co. will activate their bullshit asspull to overcome the enemy every single fight." This asspull was somehow most present in the damn FINAL ARC. Meet strong enemies, Fight but get pushed back a bit, then a random speech about family, friends, guild... then win. It's unbelievable how the "hyped" fights were all ended this way. This, this right here is what truly killed Fairy Tail.

There are other reasons as well. The characters were too linear and undeveloped throughout the entire story. Although some of them did seem to get development, particularly Gray, it got nullified towards the end of the story as they just became the same, dumb characters they once were. Almost all of them did have potential to become better to even great characters, but nearly all remained too same, and too much of an annoyance throughout the end.
The plot holes are also very much evident. I can't count the number of times a Fairy Tail guild member had an intense fight and just walked the injury off afterwards like nothing. Characters like Erza, Natsu, Gray... they should be out, they should have been unable to move so easily after the "intense" fights. But of course they are able to run around just minutes/chapters after.

Convenient plot devices like some bullshit returns and lame deux ex machinas did not help cover plot holes either. Oh, and did I mention that there are basically no deaths in the story? This should really have gone with the formula part I wrote, but the fact that almost every characters just come back alive or not die after "fatal" blows is infuriating. Hiro, you could have created some quite powerful moments through some deaths, all the while developing characters, but you chose to bring them back just a couple chapters later... sigh...

Another brief thing I want to bring up is the fanservice. Now, I don't mind a bit of fanservice at all, but Fairy Tail has fanservices all over the place, even in places they do not belong at all. Normal, everyday life will have some kind of fanservice and of course, the supposedly "toughest fight of their lives" will have some kind of fanservice. It really gets ridiculous and just makes light of any kind of situation, even though when the tone is supposed to be darker. *cough, Grand Magic Games, cough*

All right, so is there anything good? Anything?

First, there is the art which is very attractive to many people, including me. The character designs are pretty good, the background is nice and detailed, and overall, although a bit similar to One Piece, the art maintains a clean yet detailed complement to the series. Just unfortunate that the nice character designs didn't equal good characters in the end.

There was one particular arc that actually stood out in the midst of mediocre and bad arcs. And that was the 2nd to last (or 3rd to last if you count the Avatar arc) of the series. Without spoiling it too much, the Tartarus arc is without a doubt the best arc of the series. Contrary to just about every other arc, Tartarus actually has some emotion in it. Not only that, it brings some really surprising revelations the fans were asking for years, along with newer powerups for some characters. It still follows much of the same formula as the rest of the series, but there's no doubt that this was the arc I've enjoyed the most.

Chapterwise, The earlier chapters did give some entertainment and couple chapters midway through the story were pretty fun. Also, the last chapter turned out to be fairy good, at least better than the ending in bleach and Naruto.

That's it really. I was going to give this a higher score had the Final arc been as good as the Tartarus arc, but it was an epic failure, one of the worst in the series. I don't really recommend this series to anyone anymore, especially after the travesty that was the Final Arc. So please, if you want to save some time by not reading through something that will infuriate and disappoint you, please step away.
Actually, just go onto youtube and find the music scores for Fairy Tail. The music score is undeniably great, and most of them are worth listening to at least once. Which makes it even more shame as it was wasted on this.

Good job Hiro Mashima. Good job on throwing away a potentially great manga.

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Aug 1, 2017

harshtruth

Not Recommended

A wise man once said..."To deny Fairy Tail as absolute garbage, is to deny reality itself"

At the risk of this turning into a rant, I will be censoring myself a lot to give a genuine review. This review will contain very minor spoilers as names (except the main character slot) will be withheld because for god know what reason you still want to pick up this manga after everything I said, you won't be spoiled...you have been warned.

Well, well, well...what can I say that hasn't been said about FT? Actually nothing really. FT is what happens when you wrote 1/4 of your manga and then ...

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Jul 25, 2017

Jicetus

Mixed Feelings

*Review contains minor spoilers*

Fairy Tail is the titanic of manga, it starts out on a great voyage and ends up sinking. That’s how I would describe it.

Honestly the amount of potential this manga had when it started was enormous, but at somewhere along the lines it just became a drag to continue reading it. As you were waiting for each release the thing that went through your mind was “can’t this manga end soon?”.

The story of this manga is honestly good, it’s an interesting concept about mages travelling the world to complete quests for a reward and the more quests the guild members complete ... the more prestigious the guilds becomes, etc. but everything starts going south with the characters.

The source of the characters power are basically their nakama (companions), if they’re at the brink of defeat but suddenly one of their nakama shouts their name it gives them the ultimate boost to take down the enemy. Although this could be said about most shounen manga.

After a few hundred chapters in you also starts to notice that there’s suddenly a large amount of fanservice. Some hot springs scenes where they accidentally grab some boobs and spank some buttocks along with some naked (but not actually naked, their nipples and genitalia is hidden with hair, objects, and whatnot) scenes during a battle to the death. It almost felt like the author was pushed to implement this because they were losing readers.

I said “battle to the death” previously but there’s no actual deaths… Not during any battles anyway. One of the things that pissed me of was that this one (important) good guy used a spell that would kill himself but save his nakama so he wholeheartedly does it, and honestly if that would have been it that would have been good, but no, a few chapters later he miraculously comes back to life. The author basically wants a happy ever after ending.

All of this is basically the core ingredients for a shounen manga though, so no huge surprise. But while it does have its bad points I would say that it also has some good points, more specifically its humor. While the fighting scenes may be cringe from time-to-time, Fairy Tail has a great sense of humor which makes it stand out from other shounen manga.

Although the biggest reason you may want or may not want to read this manga is the ending. It leaves some plot holes but honestly it’s just purely unsatisfying to read 545 chapters of a manga and then you get such a plain happy ever after ending. But I will not lie, I do not regret reading this manga, it has some great moments and its brought me many laughs; not worth a re-read though.

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Poll: Fairy Tail Chapter 350 Discussion metsujin - Sep 6, 2013	35 replies	by mimithenoob »» May 1, 8:24 AM
Poll: Fairy Tail Chapter 6 Discussion VARIAchan - Mar 15, 2010	5 replies	by spsrk111 »» Feb 13, 7:02 AM
Poll: Fairy Tail Chapter 5 Discussion Kappaka - Jan 11, 2009	9 replies	by spsrk111 »» Feb 13, 6:57 AM
Poll: Fairy Tail Chapter 4 Discussion mvpmerome - Aug 18, 2008	14 replies	by spsrk111 »» Feb 13, 6:52 AM
Poll: Fairy Tail Chapter 3 Discussion Kappaka - Jan 11, 2009	10 replies	by spsrk111 »» Feb 13, 6:49 AM

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