Review of Fairy Tail

*No spoilers* Summary Fairy Tail is a popular anime adaptation of its manga, and it is the epitome of a generic, average quality, starter shounen. The anime combines a variety of elements from other anime of similar fantasy genres, but it does nothing new, meaningful, or particularly entertaining. This story may appeal to you if you enjoy fantasy, action, and are new to anime; however, I would not recommend this to anyone looking for well-written characters, a meaningful storyline, or tackling any evocative themes. Story: 4/10 Fairy Tail is comprised of 19% filler episodes. These are poorly written and often detract from the continuity of the story to thepoint where they make the plot nonsensical. This review will exclude the filler in the rating and focus on the content that is original. The plot of Fairy Tail is straightforward and predictable, with plenty of room for exploration that was set aside and forgotten about. The world-building is interesting, but the power system is both generic and pointless. Systems with magic have the potential to grow, especially when the abilities are related to the characters. However, decisions and abilities in this anime are built more so upon characters shouting, powering up, and randomly finessing their opponents by shouting louder. The plot twists are unnecessary, dull, and generally ridiculous. In fact, most of the plot twists have to do with characters’ identities, including bringing back people from the dead with obscure and unnecessary means. Not only does this completely remove the stakes for the characters, but it only makes the story more absurd. There are some interesting settings but using them to bring characters back is genuinely senseless and terrible writing. The story is supposed to follow Lucy, a character who does not grow except in breast size, and it instead follows the more stereotypical protagonist: Natsu, the dragon slayer. His character is just an amalgamation of other anime protagonists, but in a less meaningful way (see the characters section). One of the biggest flaws of the story is the general lack of direction with the characters, as they don’t face meaningful challenges and power themselves up by thinking about being stronger (even more so than the anime adaptation of Ichigo in Bleach). The plot relies on weird drawings (look them up), strange “funny” gags, poorly adapted character tropes, and lots of breasts being drawn progressively larger in each episode, rather than intelligible and eloquent writing. Consequently, the overall story is barely even average quality.

Characters: 4/10
There are a variety of flaws with the characters. Many start intriguingly because they have unique magical abilities. However, as the story progresses, they are extremely static. Occasionally, their character doesn’t develop, but their identity changes completely; in other situations, the characters are merely emotionless tools for the already meaningless plot. Part of the issue is that their abilities are insufficient in describing their character growth, and this relates back to the poor writing. The characters don’t learn from their mistakes or grow in a meaningful way: They think about getting stronger, they shout louder, and then they solve their problems with the plot solving everything for them or a new magical ability arising for no reason. Most of the time, they talk to their enemies and convert them to their side in the most ridiculous ways. There are literally characters who try to kill each other and then, within a few episodes, they’re in the same guild and in a romantic relationship. Such writing is genuinely appalling for any viewer who has basic maturity. Most of the female characters are written to be ditsy and cute, overly sexualized, or just useless. As aforementioned, Lucy, the main character, is simply present for her appearance, but in creepy ways. There is more time spent with characters talking about her underwear than there is depth to her character, and the writing is so poor that the animators just spent their time making her boobs bigger, probably thinking, “We’ll really show how she has grown this way. It’s genius!” Aside from this, there are characters written as plot points, and yet they fail miserably at that. One of the clearest mistakes in characters is the background for Natsu and his childhood friend. Imagine, in real life, that you had a childhood friend who died and impacted you and your motives. This is tragic and devastating in real life. Then, you find out that they didn’t actually die but were transferred to another dimension. What’s your response? According to this show, you should not be emotionally impacted about her wellbeing, make absolutely no effort to connect with her, and you should instead charge up your powers for fighting, pretending like nothing happened. The entire story revolves around this kind of logic, with horrific character writing. There are so many tropes in the story, but none of them are executed well. The characters are not memorable for uniqueness or profound traits; rather, they are meme-worthy.

Art: 6/10
The art is slightly above average, although some fighting scenes have drops in frame rate.

Sound: 8/10
Mr. Takanashi is a well-known composer, and his music is by far the highlight of the show. You are probably better off just listening to the music than watching the show.

Enjoyment: 4/10
Fairy Tail is an amalgamation of other anime stories and characters. The world could have been interesting, but the whole story was meaningless. The writing was horrible, the plot and character interactions were cringe-worthy and sometimes creepy, and the mediocrity in storytelling was truly unmotivating. I can’t recommend this story, except to people who want to see what generic fantasy anime is like. Almost all of the enjoyment came from the music.

Total score: 5.2/10