In a world where magic is part of everybody's daily life, we follow the story of Lucy Heartfilia; an aspiring wizard who-after meeting Natsu Dragneel- becomes a member of the wizard guild known as Fairy Tail.
Seems pretty basic right? Well the story doesn't get much more complex than thet until later on, which gives the viewer time to get attached to the characters and for the story itself to put all of the pieces in place ready for the last 20 or so episodes.
The show is divided up into around 13 arcs, with the last episode of each arc having some form of impact on the Fairy Tail Guild that will be used as a plot point much later on.
The art is really well done, but repetitive, the most noticeable of which are Erza's transformation, Lucy's gate calling and Natsu's Fire Dragon Powers, but eventually you become used to them and they dont become painful to watch.
the battles are also amazing to watch, which comes as no suprise considering this genre of anime iare the masters at long, drawn out yet visually impressive battles, and last but not least, most of the character designs are also very creative and well drawn, with the female characters being adorable and the male characters looking like the typical strong hero.
When it comes to the sound, and most importantly , the sub and dub of the show, i really have no complaints; Todd Haberkorn (well known for playing Death the Kid in Soul Eater) does a brilliant job at nailing Natsu's fiesty but caring personality to a T and other heavy hitters such as Monica Rial playing the gorgeous Mirajane also do a fine job at nailing Mira's cutesy but serious personality, the japanese script was written to appeal to a slightly older audience than the american dub, with swearing and a much more aggressive tone added to Natsu and Erza, yet they seem to be missing or rewritten in the english dub to appeal to a much younger audience. I cant leave behind this part of the review without talking about Aya Hirano, who often worries me because when i hear her voice i think of so many other characters over the character she's trying to play, but for some reason i was able to look past that this time and can confidently say that she too does a really good job of turning Lucy into a damsel in distress character thats fully equipped with a fiery personality.
The character is where things start to get more complicated though, as, individually MOST of the characters have been given their own backstory and are well fleshed out, but when it comes to character relationships, things begin to slowly roll down hill.
The show makes it blatantly obvious that characters are romantically interested with others, yet throughout all 175 episodes, nothing is done about it until the very last few episodes of the entire series; and even then nothing is resolved, only hinted at.
Back onto the subject of the story arcs, some are incredibly fun to watch but some become incredibly tedious after a while, thats because every arc follows the same formula;
-MC gets beat up by villain
-Villain does something to MCs friends
-MC uses the power of friendship to overthrow the villain
-Villain get their ass whooped back to the stone age
This runs the risk of a person's enjoyment of the series to become very stale and thus people begin to drop the series, made worse by the fact that the best arcs are much later on (Edolas Arc starts on episode 76, Tenrou Island Arc starts on episode 96 and the grand Magic Games arc starts episode 150)
this is a real problem if a show takes 75 episodes to really get going, aend thus enjoyment of the show will vary from person to person, but dont worry, its not like the series BEFORE episode 76 isnt good, its just doesnt really progress the plot.
On the whole, i really enjoyed watching this show, despite a pretty shaky start and a couple arcs that get kind of boring after a certain point, what you have here is 175 episodes of pure mindless fun and because it knows what it is, everything works brilliantly, my only problem comes with the cliffhanger ending, yes after 175 episodes the story STILL hasnt finished, luckily its re-airing in April, but it upset me that they didnt even finish the story arc.
