The story directly connects season 1 to season 2, and continues from the current grand magic games, where Natsu and fairy tail come up against other guilds for the crown of the best in Fiore. Problems arise, and fairy tail are in a race against time for more reasons than one.
Don't worry folks, it may have changed its image, but this shounen story sticks at what it does best, bad writing disguised as "epic, brilliant, wowza!". Fairy tails usual pacing is very rushed due to it's build up to arcs and fights described in simple terms with little or no thought of tactics or strategy. Furthermore, the atmosphere exudes a lack of seriousness, due to comedy being introduced at the wrong time. This eventually leads to emotional events and fights to not be taken seriously enough, because care and attention to detail is skipped for a quick thrill. It's also a "the strongest fighter wins" storyline and is concluded with short fights that have a rinsed and repeated story line, where random power ups occur and no real explanation is given as to how fairy tail truly win. This is where the dues ex machina comes in, as Fairy tail will be in a hopeless position to winning a fight in seconds. Unfortunately, this formula still exists. This eventually leads to Fairy tail frustratingly becoming more and more predictable in its fights and story line as time goes on.
Regardless of this, there's something about fairy which can easily let's you give into the childish, cheesy jokes once in a while. You can find yourself almost getting swept up in its hype sometimes, as it is shounen after all. Then again, bad writing eventually acts as the nail in the coffin for fairy tail.
The second major revamp clearly seen by Fairy tail 2 is the animation. Everyone's loving characters from Natsu to Laxus have all had a good wipe down, and are looking pretty neat. The designs are much more sharper, and this has had a direct impact on the fan service too, with every bussom being as big as before. Unfortunately further evidence of frame rate drops make another shameful comeback, which is surprising and ridiculous coming from a very recent anime.
With characters however, we still have the same, rememberable cast, with Natsu, Lucy, Erza and Gray still battling it out for the guild. The characters are very much the shounen stereotypes, Natsu the tough guy, Lucy the damsel who constantly tries to prove her worth all the time, Erza the overpowered typhoon ect. But only a few drops of character development reach some of these characters like Gray and Erza. This equates to each character never really changing after certain events. In the end, it's almost as if they have a limited set of phrases or ways to act because they are never changing. This is especially seen in Natsu, who hasn't changed from episode 1. To sum then up, the characters of fairy tail wholly offer very few rememberable moments, but will be rememberable for being a stereotypical cast.
The last overhaul comes from the music department, as a new series lead to a new soundtrack. The opening song unfortunately gave away spoilers, plus it wasn't very memorable. The OST however is top notch, it really does bring fights an extra essence of battle to them. The ending unfortunately catered to those whose life long dream it is to ship characters, not my thing.
To conclude, Fairy Tail left me wanting to wash my mouth out. There are many flaws from the old season carried on into this season and nothing has been done to address them. In fact, it turns to glorify them instead. I would only recommend for those new to shounen anime, other than that, it's not worth your time.
