Review of Fairy Tail

GENERAL - Fairy Tail is one of the shounen that never really made it into the "big 3" due to it being made much later then the other shounen. However this does nto hinder the series but helps it in several ways. In Fairy Tail we follow our main cast the guild of "Fairy Tail". We see there adventures and the different quests they choose to take as a guild. These quests are often done in set teams gorup within the guild and can range from simple quests to higher up quests for only some of the guilds best. The arcs are formatted in a nice way.We start out by getting arcs developing our main cast and some of there back stories. Back stories are one of Fairy Tails strong points they are always very interesting and help to tie things together. Often times Fairy Tail may come off as simple and not having much depth. However, the back stories change this. They not only help to tie things together but also shows a darker side to Fairy Tail that isn't seen as often.

Past this part of Fairy Tail we go on to the rest of the series. So the rest of the anime follows a patern in how the arcs are formatted. Most times you will have 1 major arc and then a secondary arc. Not in the sense of filler but not to do with our main villain exactly. While these arcs do have ties to our main villain they are not the main focus of it.

With its large 175 episode count there has to be filler in it somewhere.
In the case of Fairy Tail the filler isn't all that bad there is only 1 major filler arc in it. This filler arc isn't anything outstanding but I do feel its worth watching and not skipping over.

The rest of the filler is 1 off episodes. This is where filler is very enjoyable. Even though it has nothing to do with the main story these episodes act as comedy episodes of sorts. They may focus on a random quest they want to take to just being so random its hard to describe. Fairy Tail has doen comedy pretty well in its actual episodes so these filler episodes are very fun to watch.

As well with the high episode count it brings the question of how enjoyable is each arc? For the most part all the arcs are enjoyable each arc tends to get better and better.

CHARACTERS - So with a show this big the cast is huge. We have around 5 main leads to start and later get around 4 more main characters. (I will only cover the first 5 in depth.

Natsu acts as our main male lead. He was raised by a dragon and we are introduced to him when we find him looking for the dragon as he left him at some point. Natsu is in a lot of ways a typical shounen lead. This isn't a bad thing exactly, he sitll has a very interesting character. He does have character development however it will be slow at first.
Since he was raised by a dragon his magic is "Fire Dragon Slayer Magic".

Lucy acts as the female lead of the series. We first meet her when she goes to a shop to buy a new key as she is a "Celestial Spirits" key user. Her magic involves summoning these spirits to fight for her. Lucy's character is developed well. Over the series we see her beocming more willing to fight for the guild. At the start she doesn't want to have to be doing all of the fighting but progresses to becoming a strong lead and is one of the best developed characters in the series.

Gray in a sense is like a rival to Natsu in the sense that he uses "Ice Maker Magic". They aren't rival althoguh with there clashing power types we often times see them fighting. Gray has the majority of his development done early on within his backstory. We get to see why he is the way he is and has one of the most interesting back stories in the series. He gets more development later on in the series however it is a while before he gets a lot more development.

Erza acts as the strong female character in the series. Her backstory arc is often sighted as being one of the best arcs in the whole series. It gives as a look at a darker side of Fairy Tail and we get to see why Erza has beocme who she is and what her motives are. However, Erza becomes a bit less interesting as a character later on as she is often used for quick wins in battles and not often seen having trouble in any fight.

Happy is a cat. He can't reallly do much but fly and carry people around but his character is mainly set on comedy. We do get an arc that focuses on his past and was a very nice bit of development for him. Beyond this we don't get too much more development for a while. Some might find Happy annoying, and at times he is. However when the show is not in its serious moments he isn't that much of a problem.

There are many more characters that act as mains later on though. Characters such as Wendy, Juvia and Gajeel and very nice additions to our main cast line up.

There is also a large supporting cast some of the notable ones are Makerov who acts as the guilds Master and the Strauss siblings.

So on to our villains.

Our main villain is one of my favorite villains in all of anime. His progression is slow but the more and more you slowly see of him the more interesting him and his past becomes. In these cases it shows a new side to Fairy Tails writing when the villain is shown the writing changes in style a bit and is some of the most well written parts of Fairy Tail.

Since there are so many side villains its hard to rememebr them all clearly. There are plenty of interesting ones however the best of them are the leaders of these dark guilds.

SOUND - Fairy Tail has one of the most stand out OST's I have heard. Its up beat nature is reallly enjoyable and the music fits the series PERFECTLY
There are so many soundtracks in this aniem that you can remember and I can hardly think of one that was abd or didn't fit.

ART / ANIMATION - Fairy Tail has some great animation. The worl is bright and lively and the art styel grabs your attention. During the fight scenes the animation is also reallly well done. From the way things like the flames are aniatmed to the movements of the characters it all flows well.

OVERALL -So one thing that needs to be noted is this is not a complete series. It acts as the first run of the series and as such you will not receive a full story in this season alone. However this sets Fairy Tail in motions for some of the larger more major arcs that will coe up. It does it job of building the world and giving us our characters.

Ys it will have its moments of "Hw did that person beat them!?" But this did nto take away from the enjoyment from me. Fairy Tail is a fun series that can get very serious whe it wants to and is my favorite shounen series.

SCORE - 9.3
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT - 10