So how does his any of this relate to Fairy Tail. Well my first encounter of Fairy Tail was in 2009 at age 11 and this was the time where I slowly taking a break of watching anime because around that time I was more of a gamer than a anime fan however Fairy Tail was one of the few shows that I decided to watched around that time. When I was 11 years old I loved it because my 11 year old self that Fairy Tail was amazingly written filled with complex characters, and well animated fights. Obviously I would cringe at my 11 year old self today but the one thing that you should remember that we were all kids back then and we didn’t know what anime was good or bad as we just enjoyed anything that was shown to us on TV or in the net.
However as I grew older and started to watch anime more often again over the course of 2011- present I started to know what show was good or bad. I eventually re-watched Fairy Tail back in 2017 and I was shocked of how much I didn’t enjoyed it. In fact I really started to really dislike Fairy Tail as a whole thanks to its countless problems that I will mention throughout this review.
Now I have no problem with anyone who likes Fairly Tail because compare to the likes of The King’s Game, Big Order, Future Dairy and Eromanga Sensei where I questioned people for liking it thanks to its horrendous portrayal of disturbing content I can understand the appeal and charm of Fairy Tail. Half of my friends liked the series there’s nothing wrong with that. This review is just me explaining why I dislike this series as well all the flaws in it.
Now with all that said hello everyone this is Shawn aka KurataLordStage and I will be reviewing Fairy Tail 2009 and 2014 and with that further ado let's begin.
Story.
Fairy Tail is set in Earth-land Asu Rando. A fictional world populated by wizards that coalesce into guilds to apply their magical abilities for paid job requests. The story follows a young novice wizard girl named Lucy Heartfilia who runs away from her home to join Fairy Tail a guild famous for its member's overly destructive antics. She meets soon meets a dragon slayer named Natsu Dragneel who travels to the kingdom of Fiore. Natsu invites Lucy to the Fairy Tail guild and she meets up with other Fairy Tail members. Soon Lucy forms a team with Natsu, his cat-like companion, Happy as well two others who join the team later Gary and Erza.
Together they embark on numerous guild missions including subjugating criminals, illegal dark guilds, and ancient etherious demons created by the immortal dark wizard Zeref.
The story is awful. Seriously this one of the worst stories that have ever seen in my life and now am going to tell why the story of fairy Tail sucks starting with the story structure.
The story structure/ formula for Fairy Tail is honestly no different from watching a Saturday morning cartoon on TV in terms how it’s structured and written.
This is the story arc structure of Fairy Tail.
1. Present the problem to the cast.
2. They travel to set destination
3. Meets the villains and so they can get they ass kicked by them
4. Find the way to save the world from set villain
5. They go on quest
6. They split up so they can fight they appropriate matchups against the side villains for set arc
7. Have Natsu have power up so he can defeat the boss villain of the arc
8. Repeat Step 1 to 7 again until you GO insane!!!
Do you guys see a problem here? If this only happened in the first two arcs I this wouldn’t that much but the problem is that the same story arc structure over and over again through the course of 277 episodes of misery.
It doesn’t help the fact that these so-called arcs in this show get worst at times goes on to a point where even the fourth great ninja war arc was much better written than the likes of Grand Magic Games and Tartaros arcs where the show just becomes a fan fiction mess with constant ass pulls just to piss off the viewer. The writing in Fairy Tail is shit. Almost every single arc including the god awful fillers arc is plagued with plot contrivances that will drive anyone inducing shounen fans mad. It doesn’t help that the directing for almost every single arc is just abysmal beyond repair. Add this up with the shows shitty pacing, horrendous world building, a lack of stakes due to death fakeouts, doggy directing and the show doesn’t really progress than you got one hell of a shitty story in your hands.
This is one of the worst told stories I have ever seen in my life and it makes SAO look like it was done by William Shakespeare.
1/10
Characters.
The character in Fairy Tail aren't much better in fact in many cases they are actually worse than the story itself.
Let’s start the elephant in the room aka the worst character in Fairy Tail Natsu.
From start to finish I absolutely hated Natsu because not only he’s was such a cardboard cutout with no personality but he was just an overpowered Gary-Sue who preaches about friendships. It doesn’t help the fact is by episode 277 he is still the same character that we know from episode 1. Also unlike Gon from Hunter X Hunter he doesn’t even try to look for his long-lost father. He’s just spends his time one-shotting villains as well messing around in the guild. Natsu is the epitome of everything that could go wrong in a shounen protagonist and I hope that shounen writers will never attempt to recreate a character like that ever again.
I honestly hated Lucy as a character. While not as much as Natsu she still got on my nerves quickly. She’s is mostly useless in combat, she whines a lot and she’s overall a damsel in distress where she’s almost has to be saved by other characters like Natsu, Gray and Erza. It doesn’t help the fact that she doesn’t get much stronger as the series goes on.
Gray is easily one of the most pointless rival type characters I have ever seen in anime. All he does is being bland on screen who likes to strip a lot as well having a rivalry with Natsu. Nothing more to say about Gray but he such an annoying pointless rival character.
Erza was a decent character at first as she was very strong at combat as well being a good role model of the Fairy Tail guild. I also like her personality and character interactions towards other characters. However after a certain point of the series everything about Erza takes a turn for the worst and by the time you get to X791 parts she devolves into a preachy, overpowered, unlikeable mary sue who ass-pulls a lot.
The rest of the characters in Fairy Tail minus Mirajane, Laxus and Gajeel who are decent are just moving bodies on screen who are very forgetful.
The same thing can be said for villains because all of them minus Jellal are just horrendously written villains that have no motivations and they are just forgetful fools in screen.
Overall other than, Mirajane, Jellal, Laxus and Gajeel the charterer in Fairy Tail were all horrendous. They were very bland, poorly written and downright annoying. This is easily no contest one of the worst character cast I have ever seen in any anime.
2/10
Visuals.
I honestly have almost nothing positive to say about the show visuals overall.
Let’s start with the art which is honestly below average at best.
The background scenery is just bland and feels lifeless.
The female characters designs are almost as bad as the character designs from a Hirai Hisashi show (Gundam Seed) where if you talk out the hair colour, clothing and eye colour you will start to see how very similar the female character in terms of character design. As for the male characters designs the main cast ones are okay but the more minor characters ones are horrendous beyond belief. Also did I forget that the show constantly goes off model resulting in art-failures it goes worse in the 2014 anime where stopped giving a damm about art consistently where there’s always a character going off model every 2 to 5 minutes.
Don’t get me started with the fan service cringe in this show because god this show is filled with unnecessary fan-service that insults the viewers intelligence.
As for the animation itself it’s honestly pretty bad because almost every single fight in the show is a freaking slide show filled with stiff movement and shitty fight choreography that will make anyone cringe. Throughout this 277 episode journey there was not a single fight that that I can was well animated due to the fact this show was so lazily animated to a point where shows from the late 80s and 90s had better animation than Fairy Tail.
Don’t get me started with the actual animation of Fairy Tail 2014 because the animation of that show is a dumpster fire of shit filled with fights the feel like PowerPoint Presentations.
Overall the visuals in Fairy Tail are a joke that features some of the worst animation and art I have ever seen in a shounen anime.
3/10
Soundtrack.
If there’s one good thing about Fairy Tail it would be the soundtrack. The soundtrack of Fairy Tail is mostly consists upbeat tracks that perfectly captures the tone and setting for Fairy Tail however it does have its powerful and emotional tracks.
However I cannot say the same thing about sound effects because as they are not only Fairly Tail stole sound effects from other anime but they made theses stolen sound effects cringe-worthy to listen. Everytime I hear that “WOW” sound effect from the show I just cringe endlessly due to how annoying it sounds.
All the opening and ending themes in are pretty catch in they own ways and they were all enjoyable to listen.
Now for sub vs dub.
Both sub are dub are decent overall as everyone did a solid job in the respective languages. I personally prefer the dub for this one thanks to great performance voice actors such as Colleen Clinkenbeard as Erza, Monica Rial as Mirajane, Patrick Seitz as Laxus
In short the music and voice acting in Fairy Tail is great and it was easily the best thing about this series.
8/10
Final Thoughts.
Fairy Tail is best example of how to not write, direct and animate a shounen. The story was awful that is filled with plot contrivances, poor pacing, repetitive story arcs and dreadful writing. The characters were mostly god awful that have barely any charterer development as they like to asspull a lot. The visuals especially the 2014 anime were horrendous that contained a lot of art failures, poor fight choreography, horrible fan-service and lazy character design. The only few things that keep Fairy Tail from being in the same tier as Eromanga Sensei, Victory Gundam, Black Bullet and Akame Ga Kill were the music, opening/ending themes and a few decent characters like Laxus, Mirajane, Gajeel and Jellal. Everything else was shit and made me wonder what exactly went wrong here. If this show was done by much more talented director and author then Fairly Tail would have been a great series but no instead this show was done by talentless hacks who don’t know how to tell a story.
There are honestly better anime shounen out there both old and new that are much better than Fairy Tail.
If you liked or enjoyed Fairy Tail than good for you but for me Fairy Tail will forever be the worst long running anime that I have ever seen.
Final Score 3.5/10
