Review of Fairy Tail
right...watching this in 2017 because that's how bad the dry spell for quality anime has gotten....and pleasantly surprised! my first encounter with fairy tail was way before the anime, when the manga was still in its initial publication phase, and i was...less than impressed, so i dropped it and never looked back. till now, i guess. fairy tail is considered one of the shounen 'greats', alongside the likes of naruto, bleach, khr etc and for the longest time i've felt it unworthy of such comparison. and i still do. but i can acknowledge that it's done its best and come really close. like all this long epic sagas,fairy tail starts slow. REALLY SLOW. yes these titles usually start with a few oneshot filler events before they get the ball rolling and start to introduce a bigger plot. which is linked to a bigger plot. which is linked to a bigger plot....shounen lovers will get my gist. fairy tail just took... a little while to get to their main plot. which is engaging enough that i'm heading over to the 2014 version after this, but the links between one event, the next and the bigger plot on a whole just aren't as masterfully done in fairy tail compared to naruto, hxh etc. feels fake and forced and flat enough to make you notice, but probably not bad enough to make you get bored.
what DOES make you get bored in fairy tail? honestly the fight scenes aren't that engaging. i fastforwarded a LOT. there are a lot of emotional scenes which i thoroughly enjoyed but objectively those scenes were cheesy as heck, only saved by the MASTERFUL soundtrack this anime's lucky to have (it is AMAZING, no lie). there are a lot of stupid filler episodes. there was an entire filler season, the starry key or whatever, which...i skipped entirely. the main characters are mostly as interesting as wet paper- a predictable shounen cast, with little to no depth. yes it's nice that we're having a female protag with quite a big role in a shounen manga for once. no lucy heartfilia is not the way to do it. her power is based on...possessing a material...item (no spoilers) so more and more of this item just keeps falling into her lap, increasing her power (not by much, she loses 75% of the time and waits for the male MC to save her) by no real effort of hers at all. the supporting cast of characters i'll admit have some potential- erza is the rare example of a non-cliched female character i actually really like, not to mention laxus, jellal, etc- all far more interesting than the mains.
tldr: i would actually encourage you to watch this if you were on the fence about it! surprise surprise, but i enjoyed myself a fair bit. be ready to skip a tonne of scenes though- i maybe watched an ep of 20 minutes in half that time, because you're gonna get bored quickly otherwise.