Reviews for Fairy Tail (5.66) 5p5i8

I'll start off by telling you about how I decided to watch this anime. Many of my friends enjoyed it, and while I never actually intended on watching this, I was in that period of time when I recently finished an anime I really enjoyed and didn't want it to end but it did. So I went against every time I told myself I wasn't going to watch it and I did. Surprisingly, I actually liked it.

The graphics were overly bright, the mood was childish and the plot was shallow, but it was fairly easy to watch. The story had no base to it, no foundation or common goal, but the characters were mostly pleasant with a few that I genuinely became attached to (Erza, Gray, Ultear, Jellal, etc).

At first, this Shōnen anime seemed as if it were aimed at children, with almost no blood whatsoever during fights, a cheery, happy-go-lucky mood with bright colours, but then I came across the fanservice. Dear lord. That is clearly not meant for kids. The main character, Lucy is probably the largest piece of fanservice in the entire show. Sometimes I wonder if she was placed in the original manga purely as eye candy for the male audience.

This this is the classic style of Shōnen anime where the good guys fight the bad guys and the good guys win. None of the main characters have died thus far. Hell, even a long dead character came back as a ghost and a recently died character turned out to be alive. A deep cut equals to small scratches. There is rarely ever blood shown. And almost every single major fight is utterly predictable: the "good guy" is about to lose, but has flashbacks on his/her life, then gets back up and talk about protecting their friends, and their comrades this, friends that, etc etc. And of course, half the bad guys are good after being defeated. Classic Shōnen.

While Fairy Tail has a very loose plot, cheesy fights, and childish animations, there were some characters that completely made up for it. Take one of the main female characters, Erza Scarlet. She was abducted from her village by a black magic cult at a young age and subjected to cruelty and slavery, until one day she decided to stand up and fight, to save her dear friend Jellal. Lives were sacrificed, Erza was injured, but she ended up (somewhat) successfully rescuing Jellal, but he had succumbed to black magic. She fled the place soon after and ended up in Fairy Tail. Most of the characters in the anime had some sort of trauma in their past, Erza's child slavery, Gray's teacher sacrificing her life to save him, Elfman accidentally "killing" his sister when he lost control of his magic. Granted, Lucy was annoying and superficial, Natsu had a microscopic sized brain, Gray had stripping problems, but they were all pleasant and warming somehow. Maybe it's because the anime actually contained happy parts that were easy to watch and easy to enjoy.

The animations were well done, not too much of an old style, and not the blindingly bright, thick lined more modern animations. This was one of those animes that actually changed a character's outfit from time to time, added the scars they received from battle, and etc.

The sound was nice, there wasn't a voice I found very annoying, not even Lucy's and she's incredibly annoying. Her voice was fine though. I watched in subs, with the original Japanese voices, by the way. I enjoyed many of the opening themes, and except a few, they went well with the story.

Overall, I quite enjoyed Fairy Tail, but it wasn't one of those dark, gory animes like Elfen Lied or Dean Wonderland, and not like those animes where the protagonist and antagonist are both the good guys, and the bad guys, where there's no right and wrong and you just have to pick a side (where the main characters normally die at the end, mind you) like Death Note or Code Geass. No, Fairy Tail was a simple Shōnen anime like Naruto or One Piece, a little (lot) unoriginal, but easy to watch and enjoyable. I recommend watching Fairy Tail when you're looking to your free time or watch the omake based episodes and have a laugh when you're bored. I wouldn't say it's a really good anime, but it's very enjoyable