*skip the next paragraph if you don’t want a summary of the show
First off, the summary of the show, or at least on MAL, makes it sound like it follows the life of Lucy Heartfilia. This is not completely wrong, but I wouldn't say that it is the best way to describe how the show is portrayed. Instead it focuses much more on her friend Natsu who has a rare form of magic know as dragon slayer magic. They both are a part of one of the largest magic guilds known as Fairy Tail, which is how the show gets its name and where all the characters get quests that they complete to make a living off of. The show is divided into many arcs ranging anywhere from about 5-20 episodes each with about 2-3 episodes of filler in-between each arc. While the story does have the ongoing theme of Natsu trying to find his father, it is the quests that Natsu and his friends go on together that make up the vast majority of the story.
The weakest part of this show would have to be its story. As I mentioned earlier, there is the ongoing plot of Natsu and the other dragon slayers looking for their parents, but in reality that is overshadowed by each of the quests that the group goes on, and the looking for the parents things is just kind of there to keep in the back of your mind while they do other things. That being said each of arcs in the show still have a good story individually, that help build the backstories for all of the characters in the guild.
Next up is the art. While this shows animation is nothing unbelievably unique that will be stuck in your mind forever, it is still done very well and matches the overall mood of the show nicely. The animators also did a nice job at making the battle scenes look really nice.
The sound in this show is just fantastic, there is no other way to put it. No matter how many times I hear the music from Fairy Tail I will never get tired of it. Most of it consists of modern renditions of Irish folk instrumentals which have different tempos and melodies to match the mood. The voices for the actors, and sound effects were done well too.
Perhaps the best part of this show is the characters. There are probably about 1000 of them and every one of them is unique. Obviously they can’t give you a fully develop every single one of them, but they give you a great backstories for all the main characters and even the secondary characters throughout the story. While I did complain about the story a little bit earlier, this was the one thing they got right. Instead of force feeding a ton of information about every character you meet immediately, they let you learn about them for yourself through speech and actions and then after you have a feel for them they will usually discover something about that character from the past while trying so solve a different problem. This sounds a bit complicated on paper, but when it all comes together you end the story knowing everything you would ever want to know about everyone, and it was just seamlessly woven into the story. I really can’t say enough good things about how well they developed the characters.
Lastly was my overall enjoyment. When I first started watching this show I really wanted to hate it. To be honest the first arc is kind of bad, and initially I couldn't stand Happy (Natsu’s pet cat) at all. But as I moved on with the show I was able to get past that. The largest complaint I had of the show was in the beginning, whenever someone used magic it would basically stop everything so that you could see the cool animation as they announced their next spell. But thankfully they slowly stopped doing this until they reached the point where the spells and attacks were much more fluid and didn't seem to interrupt the show early in the series before it became a problem. Perhaps after reading all of those complaints I have the show you would wonder why I would still rate it so high. In reality all of the problems I have presented in this review were very small parts of the show (maybe 5 episodes out of the 175 or so) After giving the show a chance I fell in love with the characters and had a great time binge watching the entire thing with a couple of other friends. With that in mind, I would be able to understand why some people do not like this show. It is worth mentioning that while I personally was able to enjoy this show because I thought it had a good balance of tension and humor, if you are looking for some show that has a really deep message, or takes its self really serious, this show is not for you.
In conclusion Fairy Tail is a fantastic show. It has a couple problems that may take a little away from some parts, but in the end if you accept the show for what it is, you will not be disappointed. I would highly recommend this show to anyone who was looking for a good fantasy adventure, or anyone who simply enjoys the components that make up a good shonen.
