Fairy Tail

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

Most of these long shounen Manga (Anime) have it rough.
I think that a lot of stories (Manga in particular) always have to go through 3 very important stages throughout its respective running periods.
these stages are:
1- Opening (Buildup)
2- Middle (Execution)
3- End (Ending)
Lets first briefly start breaking down each one of these and define them then lets see how mighty Fairy Tail did in each stage.
Opening:-
this stage includes the plot, story, charatcers, their relationship and the setting of the whole Manga including mysteries, backstories, a goal for every important character,
basically everything you need to have in your head as a mangaka ... before you start writing!
which means you dont have to really add or change anything else once you have passed this stage because this might lead to potential plot holes and unnecessary contradictions in the story.
when everything is set and ready to go you start advancing to the second stage!

Middle:- This is when things start clearing up. mysteries are revealed, plots executed, everything becomes prepared for that long awaited climax!

End: this is the most critical stage, one bad move and everything will fall apart so expectedly this is also where most writers fail miserably.
as machiavelli said:"A battle that you win cancels any other bad action of yours. In the same way, by losing one, all the good things worked by you before become vain." what does that have to do with anything? well it is quite relevant. also it's always cool to quote cool people like machiavelli.

Now that i'm done defining and breaking down each stage, lets openly talk about how fairy tail did in each one of these.

building up a story or a manga or whatever is not really that hard, you just need a bit of imagination and a bit knowledge because you will have to see where others started and kinda do the same, Fairy Tail did just that. a by the book setting, main character & story.
which is absolutely fine since you dont really have to be so different to be successful specially in the first stage! Building up everything was pretty successful in my opinion, we were provided with exiting arcs & great battles and amazing development in the first hundred chapters or so.

and Since Fairy Tail provided a lot of good build up and we were expecting to witness at least a decent execution of all of that tension and mystery, For me i wasn't disappointed.
Fairy tail didn't fail to impress me with the execution as it was able to add new mysteries right after revealing previous ones and was able to keep me hooked until the very end! until, but as it progressed, disappointment started to mainfest as each arc became weaker and weaker in terms of execution while providing enormous potential at the beginning which leads to a huge letdown as nothing met its expectation.

but the reason why Fairy tail got shut down by a lot of reviewers and fans wasn't because of that, remember that cool quote at the "End" Stage? yeah that.
Fairy tail failed miserably at that stage which resulted in everyone bashing it and giving it a low score, they can't be blamed even if it might be unfair to judge it all by how it ends, but that has been an ironclad rule in judging a tv show or a manga, you can't give something a good score if the ending was awful.

I only wrote this review to remind people of how good fairy tail used to be and that we shouldn't judge it by that ending and give some credit to the first two stages which fairy tail did amazing in. Thats all.

Now finally i'm going to rate all the aspects soundly and give my fair and final judgement on why fairy tail isn't as bad as people make it out to be and also why it is kinda still acceptably bad.

Story: 7

classic story, nothing much to be said here.
One negative thing i might say about the story is how most things are absolutely forgotten along the way, you might find this in other shounen cause its pretty common but that doesn't make it welcomed in my dictionary, natsuu has no idea where the fuck he is going as he doesn't really have any dream to achieve or any status he would want to be like that felxible hat guy or the other ninja retard as everything happening in the story leads to absolutely nothing, he just finds stuff to do along the way which is kinda ridiculous and weakens the essence of the story.

Art: 8

Art was suitable for the atmosphere of the manga, also an amazing talent at drawing erotic female characters so maybe this guy isn't so bad.

Character: 7

most characters are kinda pointless except for the main ones, I think this guy thinks as long as he dedicated an entire arc for a supporting character, they have no right to complain about not having any relevance to the story anymore but whatever.
also fairy tail is keen on following the rule of "if you are a bad guy don't switch sides as you will turn into an utterly useless sidekick for the hero and you wont have any value anymore" for some reason.

Enjoyment: 8

to be honest despite all the bullshit i really enjoyed it and i think anyone can as long as they disregard the few negative irregularities which includes poor conception of time travel, pointless characters, thought projections that have emotions and shit, enormous build up that makes your thing throbs with excitement but ends up disappointing you everytime, a warrior who is able to fight even after getting every nerve of their body destroyed because they love their friends (emotional) i wont say more To avoid anymore spoilers.
so if you are fine with these things i think you will quite enjoy the fairy tail ride as it's not all about logic! You will soon learn how friendship is way more important.

Overall: 7

all the jokes aside, Fairy Tail is quite decent for those who want to see exciting battles, Heartwarming moments, funny characters and most importantly: Fanservice.

*Review contains minor spoilers*

Fairy Tail is the titanic of manga, it starts out on a great voyage and ends up sinking. That’s how I would describe it.

Honestly the amount of potential this manga had when it started was enormous, but at somewhere along the lines it just became a drag to continue reading it. As you were waiting for each release the thing that went through your mind was “can’t this manga end soon?”.

The story of this manga is honestly good, it’s an interesting concept about mages travelling the world to complete quests for a reward and the more quests the guild members complete ... the more prestigious the guilds becomes, etc. but everything starts going south with the characters.

The source of the characters power are basically their nakama (companions), if they’re at the brink of defeat but suddenly one of their nakama shouts their name it gives them the ultimate boost to take down the enemy. Although this could be said about most shounen manga.

After a few hundred chapters in you also starts to notice that there’s suddenly a large amount of fanservice. Some hot springs scenes where they accidentally grab some boobs and spank some buttocks along with some naked (but not actually naked, their nipples and genitalia is hidden with hair, objects, and whatnot) scenes during a battle to the death. It almost felt like the author was pushed to implement this because they were losing readers.

I said “battle to the death” previously but there’s no actual deaths… Not during any battles anyway. One of the things that pissed me of was that this one (important) good guy used a spell that would kill himself but save his nakama so he wholeheartedly does it, and honestly if that would have been it that would have been good, but no, a few chapters later he miraculously comes back to life. The author basically wants a happy ever after ending.

All of this is basically the core ingredients for a shounen manga though, so no huge surprise. But while it does have its bad points I would say that it also has some good points, more specifically its humor. While the fighting scenes may be cringe from time-to-time, Fairy Tail has a great sense of humor which makes it stand out from other shounen manga.

Although the biggest reason you may want or may not want to read this manga is the ending. It leaves some plot holes but honestly it’s just purely unsatisfying to read 545 chapters of a manga and then you get such a plain happy ever after ending. But I will not lie, I do not regret reading this manga, it has some great moments and its brought me many laughs; not worth a re-read though.

Oh Fairy Tail, You could have been good, you had so, so much potential in you, but here you are, going out with barely a yelp.

Where did it go wrong Hiro? You had an immensly popular manga at your disposal to really give all your readers a satisfying manga to reread over and over again. You had the chance to make Fairy Tail something really, really great . But you wasted the opportunity. You have thrown it away by being stubborn to the end.

Of course, I'm not saying this out of no reason. There are a lot of good reasons as to why many readers, ... including me, were sooooo disappointed at how the manga turned out. However, there is one main reason that has been the biggest downfall to Fairy Tail, and that is the formula.

You see, Fairy Tail only ever has the same formula for every single one of its arcs. Meet Enemy, Fight, Get beaten up, .... activate Friendship power and win. That's it. That is the one and ONLY formula Hiro relies on to create each and every arcs. It's so ridiculous to the point that, in the later arcs, everyone could predict the outcome of the fight so easily. "Fairy Tail will win, Fairy Tail will not lose a single member because Natsu and co. will activate their bullshit asspull to overcome the enemy every single fight." This asspull was somehow most present in the damn FINAL ARC. Meet strong enemies, Fight but get pushed back a bit, then a random speech about family, friends, guild... then win. It's unbelievable how the "hyped" fights were all ended this way. This, this right here is what truly killed Fairy Tail.

There are other reasons as well. The characters were too linear and undeveloped throughout the entire story. Although some of them did seem to get development, particularly Gray, it got nullified towards the end of the story as they just became the same, dumb characters they once were. Almost all of them did have potential to become better to even great characters, but nearly all remained too same, and too much of an annoyance throughout the end.
The plot holes are also very much evident. I can't count the number of times a Fairy Tail guild member had an intense fight and just walked the injury off afterwards like nothing. Characters like Erza, Natsu, Gray... they should be out, they should have been unable to move so easily after the "intense" fights. But of course they are able to run around just minutes/chapters after.

Convenient plot devices like some bullshit returns and lame deux ex machinas did not help cover plot holes either. Oh, and did I mention that there are basically no deaths in the story? This should really have gone with the formula part I wrote, but the fact that almost every characters just come back alive or not die after "fatal" blows is infuriating. Hiro, you could have created some quite powerful moments through some deaths, all the while developing characters, but you chose to bring them back just a couple chapters later... sigh...

Another brief thing I want to bring up is the fanservice. Now, I don't mind a bit of fanservice at all, but Fairy Tail has fanservices all over the place, even in places they do not belong at all. Normal, everyday life will have some kind of fanservice and of course, the supposedly "toughest fight of their lives" will have some kind of fanservice. It really gets ridiculous and just makes light of any kind of situation, even though when the tone is supposed to be darker. *cough, Grand Magic Games, cough*

All right, so is there anything good? Anything?

First, there is the art which is very attractive to many people, including me. The character designs are pretty good, the background is nice and detailed, and overall, although a bit similar to One Piece, the art maintains a clean yet detailed complement to the series. Just unfortunate that the nice character designs didn't equal good characters in the end.

There was one particular arc that actually stood out in the midst of mediocre and bad arcs. And that was the 2nd to last (or 3rd to last if you count the Avatar arc) of the series. Without spoiling it too much, the Tartarus arc is without a doubt the best arc of the series. Contrary to just about every other arc, Tartarus actually has some emotion in it. Not only that, it brings some really surprising revelations the fans were asking for years, along with newer powerups for some characters. It still follows much of the same formula as the rest of the series, but there's no doubt that this was the arc I've enjoyed the most.

Chapterwise, The earlier chapters did give some entertainment and couple chapters midway through the story were pretty fun. Also, the last chapter turned out to be fairy good, at least better than the ending in bleach and Naruto.

That's it really. I was going to give this a higher score had the Final arc been as good as the Tartarus arc, but it was an epic failure, one of the worst in the series. I don't really recommend this series to anyone anymore, especially after the travesty that was the Final Arc. So please, if you want to save some time by not reading through something that will infuriate and disappoint you, please step away.
Actually, just go onto youtube and find the music scores for Fairy Tail. The music score is undeniably great, and most of them are worth listening to at least once. Which makes it even more shame as it was wasted on this.

Good job Hiro Mashima. Good job on throwing away a potentially great manga.