Fairy Tail revolves around a mage called Lucy Heartfilia and her guild Fairy Tail, embarking on adventures with themes revolving around friendship and family, to summarise it quickly.
Okay Fairy Tail by any means is not fantastic and quite similarly too many mainstream shonen mangas (naruto, bleach and one piece) had many flaws, ass pull, bad character development and anti-climatic boss battles with the most clichéd main character ever. Let me just say though, I enjoyed the anime immensely whilst watching it but looking back at it, it just got worse and worse.
Story 4/10
The setting was fantastic and a world I would have loved to live
...
in, other than the fact of using magic and fighting, the guild is the essence of how a family should be like. Friends, camaraderie and all the good things about life, the universe and concept was fantastic to say the least.
Although what ruined it was the poorly written or annoying characters and the unnecessary fanservice in it and eventually the lack of care given to the characters. To focus on the plot first is that it repetitive. How? An arc follows this pattern; Job-mini-boss squad- gets owned- then all of a sudden after some motivational speech on friends etc- Natsu beats up the ultimate big bad whilst the rest finish off the mini-squad. It was that simple. Although in its defence, it shares the spotlight around slightly better than other shonen mangas, some other characters also get some pretty big crowning moments of awesome.
The humour in the anime is also not fantastic, at first it might seem quite amusing but in hindsight now, the latter of the anime relies on fanservice waaaaaay too much for comedic sakes and thus made it slightly unbearable to watch.
Also the ass pull in the anime, with the hope spot after the main character suddenly powers up with some really unbelievable method and an inspirational speech about friends, BAM! Villain gone good guys win with no serious repercussions. For example, one does not simply eat some nuclear rock and then suddenly power-up to defeat a villain who was kicking your ass previously. The motivational speeches were truly quite inspirational towards the start but it was overused so much it became somewhat annoying. Couldn’t they find another way to win a battle? Although it is the main theme of the anime so I guess so slack could be given.
The anime also has a habit of censoring all the blood and making the anime overly fluffy and happy. I understand that it’s supposed to be happy and aimed at children but seriously you cannot go through a fight with a major fight and only come out with minor cuts and bruises, this enforces the unrealistic nature of the anime. Also how the anime just seems to refuse to kill off any characters, instead of giving them an epic death, the author just lets them sit in the background and rot away which I believe no character deserves.
Characters- 6/10
Then the characters in the anime, most of them are poorly developed or overly annoying. First of all being the main lead Lucy, one of the most commonly bashed characters but not to show my bias, I have to agree as well due to the fact that she is useless. Her sole purpose seems to be for fanservice and appealing to male fans, I mean come on; she can’t get through a single fight with her clothing intact. Also the situations she are put in to make her appear stronger and in retrospect to the other lead Erza, her primary purpose is for fanservice and shipping sakes. Perhaps if she was a minor character, I wouldn’t have disliked her that much but the due fact that the arcs revolve around her and she doesn’t do anything annoys me.
Then we have Natsu, your typical hero who has a food obsession, is impulsive and stupid, unbelievably powered and the guy who gives all the motivational speeches. Yeah, really annoying just by the simple fact that he isn’t an original character with virtually no character development throughout the series.
These are the main two character issues but I also have a major issue with the villains. A villain just can’t seem to stay dead or stay gone, they always come back, remember Erigor in one of the first arcs? He appears at least two times later and then you have the members of Oracion Seis who just had to return for a filler arc and don’t get me started on Jellal.
My opinion is that it has too many characters and these characters aren’t fleshed out to a good standard due to the focus on the four main characters, I mean what’s the point of bringing them back if they don’t change at all, other than becoming more powerful with no logical explanation?
But then I did love certain characters in the anime and thoroughly enjoyed to see them in action so I couldn’t rate it too badly.
Art- 7/10
Not the best art I’ve seen but it was decent and considering the detail gone into those magic circles, some of the fight scenes looked pretty awesome although I wouldn’t say it wasn’t an highlight. Also sometimes it was slightly inconsistent, one second a character looks good, the next they are warped that they go from decently looking to pretty horrendous and in the latest the arc, the animation has dropped in terms of standards by quite a lot but that could be due to the lack of funding.
Soundtrack- 9/10
Definitely an up for the anime. The soundtrack by Yasuharu Takanashi is plain awesome. With a variety of upbeat battle music to the slower emotional ones, it captures every scene perfectly and fits the anime. I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed the soundtrack and despite having a heckload of songs in each, it was worth my time converting all the songs onto my ipod.
Enjoyment- 7/10
Yeah, I know I rated the anime pretty low but I did finish every episode within the period of a month and enjoyed it immensely. Maybe as this quote says “Whether fairies have tails or not, or whether they even exist, nobody knows for sure. So it's like an eternal mystery, an eternal adventure.” An eternal adventure that doesn’t end, there was always more jobs, always tough situations and it just doesn’t end with a happy ending for most things. In a contrast to reality I think this was the reason why I enjoyed it, an eternal adventure, an escape.
Final Score- 7/10
For a long-running manga, it has its highlights and its detractors but based on everything I did get some form of enjoyment out of it despite the poor story line so I couldn’t rate it too badly. It was decent for a shonen and not appallingly bad like some others.
Yeah, I know I said quite a few negatives things about the anime but I judged it like any other anime and like any mainstream animes, it has the same flaws so I tried my best to ignore those tropes. 'Tried being the operative word'
All (0)FriendsNo friend yet.
RSS Feeds |
Jun 25, 2013
Fairy Tail
(Anime)
add
Fairy Tail revolves around a mage called Lucy Heartfilia and her guild Fairy Tail, embarking on adventures with themes revolving around friendship and family, to summarise it quickly.
Okay Fairy Tail by any means is not fantastic and quite similarly too many mainstream shonen mangas (naruto, bleach and one piece) had many flaws, ass pull, bad character development and anti-climatic boss battles with the most clichéd main character ever. Let me just say though, I enjoyed the anime immensely whilst watching it but looking back at it, it just got worse and worse. Story 4/10 The setting was fantastic and a world I would have loved to live ... |
