So I've been reasonably fond of fairy tail for a while now. it was among my first Anime and while it defenitely has the typical tropes and bad overexplained pacing shounen tend to have it was not without its merits. The initial pull was the characters who were loyal to one another . The music and animation have always been above average and I'd be lying if I said I didn't shed a few tears sometimes but it had been a while since the tartaros arc (by far the best of the series so far) and I was looking forward to this movie to reinvigorate my passion for this series I hold close. I had a friend who's birthday was the day of release so a bunch of us got together and I paid over 60 bucks for all our tickets. we got our popcorn and took our seats unaware that the next hour and a half would be the worst in our anime watching history!!!
Story: 1
The plot is so simplistic you'd think they could at least pull that through but nope!! Right out of their gate it starts with a flash forward that does not explain anything that its supposed to supplement. And I swear the director had a book of anime tropes he was attempting to check off because there were several times my friends and I joked about a cliche being set up only for it to happen completely unironically!!! The final fight alone had so many issues and cliches that I can't cover them all. So many plot points were left unanswered!! What about the crystals? What's the aftermath of the fight? What happened to the secondary villan who just dissapeared? Did he die? Is the new female character going to be ok. She kinda just lost half her identity and got no closure? Those are but a few of the unanswered questions by the end of it
Animation/music: 2
It's funny really, fairy tail is known for its animation and sound but somehow it even fails at this!! The battle choreography is terrible, the main characters have new abilities with absolutely zero explanation or reasoning. The only points of budgeted animation was the beginning fight. But even those scenes were so focused on fanservice that the "camera angles" pandered more to the fanservice than the action. The final fight is literally like 3 hits back and forth before Natsu turns into his movie selling transformation....and.....ends the fight with a single attack..... talk about anti climactic!!! And to add insult to injury they pour the rest of the budget into this overly glorified pan shot that shows all the characters and zooms out before dropping the credits....as far as the music is concerned, I was severely dissapointed, they played a few familiar classic songs but they were either played quietly ot distorted into something terrible the best ost dragonforce was played for like 15 seconds to one of the fights before dropping off halfway through. Thouroughly disappointed!!!!
Characters: 1
What can I say!! besides the basic interactions from the chemistry of the group, there was nothing in the way of characterization or development. The villans in particular fell flat. The "main villan" was introduced as a badass that had betrayed several countries!!!!! Surely someone of this skill and prestige has more than the one battle he was introduced with right? Wrong! The closest he gets to fighting is getting upset and releasing a single attack from the staff that does nothing but destroy the room they are all in.... no motivations, the design of the actual villan was terrible!! also as mentioned previously the fight fell flat. The new girl introduced was flimsy at best and got almost no screentime!!
Enjoyment: 1
The main reason I'm writing this review is that I went to Mal to check it out and it's scoring a 7 point something when critically speaking it's not even a 5 at best. Everything this movie set put to do failed. I don't understand how people can leave scores of 9 or 10 simply because they are a passionate fan!! It's a huge dumpster fire that gives the Fandom a bad name.
Final score: $60 I want back/10
