Review of Fairy Tail

Fairy Tail is Mashima Hiro's second go at a shounen fantasy adventure, and you can tell he's a fan of the genre because of a seemingly strict unwillingness to stray from the established tropes of the genre. There's a charming level of simplicity to the storytelling in Fairy Tail, it doesn't try to break new ground or do anything even remotely approaching originality. The world building is vague, and when it bothers to get specific about how aspects of the world work it still manages to feel generic. One of my problems with Natsu as a protagonist is that he lacks a central motivation. Naruto wantsto become Hokage, Luffy wants to find the One Piece, but what does Natsu want? Yes there's technically an answer, but it's not his driving motivation in the story. Him looking for his dragon dad doesn't inform many of his actions, and for the most part the story just sort of wanders from arc to arc having the characters react to things rather than ever really be proactive.

There's also the problem that he wins every fight he's ever in. Even Goku has had to take an L so he could train and come back stronger. Natsu only ever wins, and if he ever gets stronger it's always mid-fight. It's like the story is telling you he will always be exactly as strong as he needs to for the sake of the plot, but in the same breath expects you to be surprised or impressed when he wins. It'd be fine if it called attention to it, made it apparent that he's just that OP and have characters react appropriately, but no they all just go on acting like there's a chance he could lose and fearing for his life.

For all it's faults, though, you can appreciate a show that's at least consistent. By not trying to be remarkable it doesn't have to live up to the lofty standards other shounen might try to aspire toward. It's a show that seems content with it's mediocrity and I think that's okay. So I'm going to give it the grade I give everything unremarkable: 7/10