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Fairy Tail Zero is honestly such an improvement on the main series, it's crazy to see how well Mashima Hiro can actually write. Although FT has a special place in my heart, it's mostly just annoying plotline after annoying plotline, with the actually good ones being overshadowed by the overbearing amount of ecchi. There's a lot of problems with FT's storytelling, but the vast majority of them are absent within FT Zero. The characters are fun, the art is beautiful, and the story is downright heartbreaking.

Mashima's storytelling really improves in these story stories where he doesn't have the time to load them with boring plot ... armour and titties. Hope to see more of this from him in the future. It really was a surprise to find this to be so good considering his two most recent works.

::Spoilers::

The plot really doesn't make much sense at all and it's way too fast-paced. The movie actually has a lot of interesting ideas, but it fails to actually do anything with them.

It's honestly a bummer, the movie has a lot of good scenes and it's overall just really enjoyable to watch; however, the good scenes don't get enough time to really shine. For example, there's a scene where Lucy is kidnapped by the main villain and is about to be tortured for his magic before being immediately saved by Natsu, who rushed over as fast as he possibly could because he blames himself for her ... capture. On paper, this actually sounds really interesting. Natsu was forced to hurt one of his closest friends due to mind control magic via the villain and it's because of this that she was captured. However, it fails to actually start or go anywhere. Lucy is saved within minutes of waking up in the dungeon and we get less than a minute total of Natsu looking for her and being upset with himself for the situation.

This could have been a really interesting character study on Natsu. He's someone who values his loved ones more than anything, and that is shown multiple times within the movie itself even before this scene. Just take a moment to imagine the pain Natsu must have felt. Even though he knew he was being mind-controlled, he's still the type of character that would beat himself up over not being strong enough to fight back against it. No matter how illogical it may be to think he could stand against the mind-control, he's still the type of character to think he could or should have.

And yet, this is never explored. We have maybe 2 scenes that are seconds long each showing Natsu being mad at himself, but they don't even last long enough to be anything noteworthy besides a "what could have been". We don't even get a touching moment after Lucy is saved where this is discussed, the most we get is Natsu wanting to fight and Lucy stopping him by saying they need to understand his magic before they can stand against him. Again, this could have led to something, anything. But it falls flat immediately. This is the last time the situation is mentioned. I will say that I haven't finished the movie yet, I still have 20 minutes to go. But a big character moment like this doesn't work if it's completely ignored and then gets suddenly brought up during the last 5 minutes. It needs proper set and build up.

The almost torture scene also never goes anywhere. Lucy was mind-controlled into being obedient to the villain, allowing him to tie her up, then standing still while he was about to do whatever he would have done, which was implied to be assault amongst the torture. The villain explains that he has these girls in the basement to cut up in order to harvest their blood for his dark magic, as it apparently needs a lot of blood despite us never being shown him needing blood or how that would work. He just goes straight to wanting to cut Lucy before Natsu storms in.

Now, call me a sadist all you want, but I wish Lucy had been captured longer. I don't think it would have taken away from the movie at all if we'd had a longer sequence showing Natsu searching for Lucy with the others, and finally finding her only after she's had some of her blood already harvested. I really think this would have been a good character moment for Natsu.

Honestly, one of my favorite scenes in the movie was soon after this. Lucy is on watch for the night and is staring at the small view of the sky she can see through the forest canopy. Natsu suddenly comes down from the canopy, sees her upset, and convinces her to climb up the tree to show her the starry sky, something she previously mentioned really wanting to see. It was a sweet moment between them and shows how observant and caring Natsu really is. I think it would have been great for Natsu and Lucy to have a talk about him attacking her and her capture here; however, it's just shown that Natsu spent the whole time... training? If you can call it that? To be able to destroy a material on the island stronger than diamond. Although I don't think this is a bad scene by any means, it really goes along with the previously mentioned to showcase just how much wasted potential was in this film. I understand that not every film can be a 3-hour Avengers movie, but that doesn't mean it can't still be good.

Overall, it is an enjoyable watch and I do recommend it to any Fairy Tail fans out there. It has fun scenes, funny moments, and a great soundtrack. I like a lot of the character interactions between the main cast, especially during the heist. But it just wasn't enjoyable enough to save it from constant wasted potential and a story that doesn't make any sense past the heist.

EDIT: just finished the last 20 minutes and wow it just got worse the longer it went. The best part of the end was Natsu asking "What do I look like" and Lucy replying "like you". Nice call back to the beginning and I like the implication of Natsu being scared of what he is. I didn't think he found out that he's E.N.D until the fight with Zeref, but maybe I'm remembering wrong or Natsu doesn't actually know entirely that he's E.N.D yet.