Right after the first episode it was obvious Fairy Tail was designed by a committee to be TNBT (The Next Big Thing) in shōnen anime. Taking up the mantle from Dragon Ball, Pokemon, Bleach, One Piece and especially Naruto, Fairy Tail is the same "fun for the whole family" type anime. It uses the same exact recipe, one main protagonist, many typecast side-characters, all part of the same group, and they go on adventures, defeat evil in spectacular eye-candy fights, for justice and camaraderie, etc. We all know how it goes.
But Fairy Tail brings a few twists into the mix. First of all, it tries a new format. Instead of incredibly long, drawn out arcs and fight scenes to draw out the run time, it operates with a machine gun for content. The story arcs are short but there are an incredible number of them. This eliminates boredom, but does get a little old after while, when it seems Natsu and gang saves the world from some new apocalypse five times a week. Same goes for fights, which are "short and sweet", never get boring or outstay their welcome. They do repeat things a lot, but at least we don't have to watch the protagonist "gather power" for twenty episodes for that one special attack, grinning through the exertion like he is about to soil himself. When Natsu says "you're gonna get it now!", he really means NOW, not four months later, which is kind of refreshing. It seems the creators really did their best to come up with new stories, enemies, arcs and fight sequences for every episode, without reusing much of them, which is very commendable, but I wonder how long they can keep this up...
One thing that helps this process is the incredibly lax laws of Fairy Tail's concept. This is an anime where literally everything goes, from easy going adventure, happy fun times, heated and serious battle, unimaginable evil, crying, death, pain and suffering, oh, and also dragons, flying cats, flamboyant wizards, fan-service boob parades and The Butt Jiggle Gang. There is practically no limit on the imagination here. This makes the series less boring than any shōnen adventure series I watched so far, but also a little inconsistent and sometimes hard to follow.
The other thing is the series tone. In short, it's all over the place. Fairy Tail is incredibly self-aware when it comes to humor. Sometimes it's smart and witty, but largely it's goofy, slapstick and low-brow as far as kids anime gets, uses lots of pop-culture references, tons of fan service and it breaks the fourth-wall so frequently it might as well not be there. This makes the series largely really fun, and makes for some great "laugh out loud" moments. The only problem is, the creators don't seem to know the biggest secret of humor is TIMING. They frequently ruin serious or emotional moments with jarring slapstick bits, bad puns or just pathetic scripting.
It's not just the humor, though, but the way the series never really takes itself seriously. Yes, it's not a bloody, gory, cursy seinen series, but sometimes Fairy Tail takes "family friendly" a little too far. All the characters are wearing "plot armor", even the antagonists, so no one dies in fights, or gets hurt worse than a few boo-boos. This makes for some very anti-climactic fights, when you know just how low the stakes are. When the enemy gets "defeated" it only means they get knocked out for a while, after which they usually come to and grumble about being defeated. That said, the biggest hurdle for me is when the enemy turns out to be a good guy in disguise, which happens with alarming frequency. Many times during big, epic fights, the antagonist gets something hidden revealed about their past or the situation at hand, and they instantly turn into good little puppies, stopping everything in it's tracks, which is the cause of some the most jarring anti-climactic endings I've ever seen. "Me trying to murder you all and take over the world, it was all just a misunderstanding, I'm not evil, I'm actually a good guy, honest!". Worse yet, many of them turn out to be flat out heroes. And the protagonists just go along with it EVERY TIME, without question. "Oh, no biggie, you didn't manage to murder EVERYONE or destroy EVERYTHING, so I guess we forgive you. Hey, now that you are not evil, how about joining us?". And that happens more times than I can count. This releases the carefully built tension with a wimpy fart-noise instead of a BANG and makes many of the story arcs really lackluster and unsatisfying in the end.
The characters serve their purpose. That's about the best thing I can tell about them. The protagonist, Natsu Dragneel, is a Naruto wannabe, with a lot less personality and a lot more annoyance. The typical absolutely clueless, but incredibly powerful adolescent manchild, who is incredibly high-strung, always rushes into battle without any amount of thinking, gets his ass kicked, then gets up heroically and defeats the enemy with one last spectacular attack with the power of friendship/love/family/courage/cookies/refrigerator/whatever. Rinse, repeat. BORING! Same goes for the rest of the pathetic cast, which are all typecast trope-factory rejects, fan service bimbos, prissy tsundere, cutesy moe and talking chibi animals. The cliché-meter is so off the charts, it's insane.
BUT!
And this is a big but, because with all that said, surprisingly enough, Fairy Tail is...FUN! A huge amount of fun, in fact. I can't really put my finger on it, because if I look at the individual parts, the story, the characters, the world, etc, it SHOULD be a huge trainwreck, a bad flop. Fairy Tail should have crashed and burned before if even started. And yet, somehow it works! The incredibly cheesy and pretentious story, the goofy, slapstick, fourth-wall-breaking humor, the huge amount of low-brow fan-service and the characters, kings and queens of Cliché Mountain, it all somehow comes together to form something really fun and entertaining. The fast paced, varied, no-nonsense story and action is very captivating, and the weird humor somehow does work, despite ruining many of the serious and emotional moments. As I said before, Fairy Tail is very self-aware and seems to wear it's faults and shortcomings like a badge of honor, with a knowing wink to the audience.
Most of all, what makes this series for me is THE MUSIC. It's simply incredible! And I'm not talking about the OP or the ending, but the backing tracks! I always liked metal music, but Fairy Tail's background music is simply awesome! The celtic-style flace-flaying heavy metal suits this series incredibly well and elevates what could've been a mediocre schlock to a really enjoyable experience, at least for me. Fairy Tail's OST now dominates my favorite anime music top list, and with good reason. Most anime series have one or at most a few good songs, but this time THE ENTIRE OST is pure awesome, which is very surprising for me. The thunderous, shredding metal makes every fight scene at least twice as epic! Huge thanks for the musicians who made these!
All in all, Fairy Tail is a weird mix of utter nonsense, that somehow comes together to form a very enjoyable experience and it's so immensely popular with good reason. On paper, it shouldn't be. It's pretentious, pedantic, goofy and a huge amount of dumb fun that never seems to end. If you are ever tired of high-brow, intense and meaningful seinen/josei series, give Fairy Tail a spin to clear your palate or just take it as something to watch on a boring afternoon.
