Review of Fairy Tail

Despite what I am going to say about this anime, Fairy Tail has been one of my favourites for years now, and that is mostly because of the addictive cheerful, light-hearted vibe of the anime, and my love for Lucy. That alone was enough for me to rewatch it 3 times. However, as much as I enjoyed it, there were so many things that bothered me, that I believe one could take into consideration before watching it. Fairy Tail is rated much higher on the anime list on my profile, as it is one of my favourites, however here, I am trying to be as objectiveas possible.

I do not know who their target audience was, as the "power of friendship" aspect of it made it look as if it was targeted at 11-year-olds, but then the fan service (the numerous ways they found to get Lucy naked, that one time Erza got tortured by one of the Tartaros, the random bikini contests) made it look as if it was targeted at 40-year-old incels.

The story itself was fine at first, but because there was absolutely no character development, aside from their powers (except for Juvia and Gray), it grew to be very predictable. And their battles followed the usual "Lucy, Gray, Erza and Wendy get paired up with the sidekicks while Natsu fights the boss villain and overpowers them with the power of friendship or because a friend got hurt" pattern.

This could be coming from my love for Lucy's character, but I feel like Lucy had so much potential, as she could literally summon 10 strong celestial spirits, and later learned to handle their powers herself, when she got Star Dress, which was pretty similar to Erza's Spatial Magic (except Erza uses swords, of course), however, Lucy's character was never really explored that way. Mashima focused on Lucy's familial matters rather than herself. They even had the whole Starry Night filler arc centred on Lucy, where she didn't even fight AT ALL, but rather had other Fairy Tail members fight for her. She was also regarded as weak by fellow guildmates, such as Gajeel, but also fans. Oh and I really don't get what was the point of Lucy's powerful Urano Metria, when she used it like 4 times throughout the whole anime, out of which once failed.

Also, bouncing off of what I said earlier, I know this is something somewhat specific to most shounen anime, but I really hated the whole "damsel-in-distress" concept they had going for most female characters, except for Erza and sometimes Mirajane.

Natsu's character was way too obnoxious and I really don't get how he grew so strong when none of the characters had really trained, except for that one-year time skip in between the Tartaros arc and the Final Series. I get that he is the protagonist but I don't get how he always beat opponents that were way stronger than he was, by overpowering them with the power of nakama, while his nakama cheered him on from sidelines. There was never any strategic thinking involved, and the only ones who actually thought were Lucy and Levy.

Lisanna was a pointless character, and I read somewhere that Mashima only brought her back because an editor or something advised him to. It seemed as if the whole Edolas arc was created just to bring Lisanna back, but then she barely appeared throughout the rest of the anime.

On the positive side, they had a nice variety of characters, that were very diverse In terms of personality, power, looks etc, however, they never really explored any of the characters well except Natsu, Lucy and Gray.

I also give the sound a 10/10 as the openings were really memorable for me, and I even ended up rewatching the whole thing after watching some of my favourite openings years after completing the anime.

I might edit this review later if I remember anything that stood out to me! <3