Review: Fairy Tail – Part 1

While critics may gush over the latest Ghibli masterpiece and fanboys and girls squeal over the newest magical girl show, it’s long been apparent that the engine that drives the anime industry can be found in the humble shounen action show. From the grandaddy of them all, Fist of the North Star, through the worldwide phenomenon that was Dragonball Z and onto modern favourites such as Naruto and One Piece, there’s always been a huge audience for tales of bravery, derring-do and most importantly, dudes punching each other. Fairy Tail, based on the popular manga by Hiro Mashima, is trying to break into a hugely popular, very crowded market that already has some of the biggest shows in anime in it. Does it have what it takes, or does it need to go away and train some more?

An expository voiceover before the credits sets the scene – we’re in the kingdom of Fiore, where magic is everywhere, a commodity to be bought and sold. The wizards of this world are divided into Guilds, and when we join our first main character Lucy, she’s on a mission to join the titular Fairy Tail, one of the most famous and illustrious of all the guilds.  It’s not long before she bumps into our other protagonist, Natsu, who’s in the town searching for a mysterious ‘Salamander’. Natsu is pretty much the archetypical shounen main character – he’s hotheaded, a bit of an idiot, has a comedy weakness (in this case severe travelsickness) and can be a bit of a jerk, but essentially has a heart of gold deep down.  He’s accompanied by a blue talking cat named Happy, who can grow wings and says ‘Aye!’ a lot. Before long, he’s teamed up with Lucy, demonstrated his awesome fire magic powers by inflicting an impressive beatdown on the villain of the week and invited Lucy to join his guild, which as it happens is Fairy Tail.

OK, so it’s not the stuff legends are made from necessarily, but Fairy Tail does make a strong first impression. Natsu and Lucy may be archetypes, but they’re archetypes done right, snappy dialogue and good voice acting making them instantly likeable. The art shines through too – it’s a bright, colourful and cheerful world, full of life and sights to see, and it’s helped by a good musical score, including some catchy Celtic influenced pipe & drum tracks that really stand out. Over the course of the episodes included on this release the show does a good job of building up the world around our lead characters, and keeps things fresh and interesting by throwing a bunch more of them at us. We’re rapidly introduced to Gray, an ice mage who’s got something of a rivalry going with Natsu and Erza, a super powerful female warrior who both Gray and Natsu are terrified of. There’s plenty more besides that, and though it can occasionally be a little overwhelming, the constant flow of new and interesting characters both keeps your attention and really makes it feel like the main cast are part of a larger ensemble, and the Fairy Tail really is a huge guild with members coming and going.

The 12 episodes provided here across cover a few major arcs with a scattering of filler episodes in between, and overall it’s a good mix of character development, broad comedy and action. By far the most interesting storyline is the last one, in which Gray is the focus and in which he encounters an old enemy from his past. It’s a real step forward for the show, as it moves beyond the somewhat superficial feel of its earlier exploits to dig deeper into drama and character development.  Frustratingly however, it’s also cut off midway through, just as the plot is getting juicy. While I understand why this had to be done to fit the standard episode per disc count, it’s immensely frustrating, and totally kills the momentum that had been very effectively built up to that point. The fact that the last episode introduces new opening and ending credits is a pretty good indicator that you probably weren’t meant to stop here.  Elsewhere, although I’ve praised the show’s art and style, I have to come down heavily on its animation, which is frustratingly sparse.  Supposedly epic action sequences look more like slideshows, and while reusing certain attack animations is par for the course for any serialised show, there are fights here which are almost entirely made up of mediocre stock footage, while the terrible CGI spell effects just look cheap.  It really kills the buzz that some of the episodes build up to, and surprisingly the action is undoubtedly the worst part of the show so far.

Aside from my previous gripe about the frustrating episode cutoff, this is a solid release from MangaUK. Picture quality and audio are good and crisp, with the option for a 5.1 english dub or a stereo japanese track with subtitles.  Funimation’s English dub is included and it’s a good ‘un – Todd Haberkorn is effortlessly  cocky as Natsu, Cherami Leigh brings energy and spunk to her role as Lucy and though Tia Ballard can’t quite compete with the helium voiced Rie Kugimiya as Happy she certainly gives a damn good go of it.  The dub cast also feature in two episode commentaries on episodes 1 and 9 and they’re a great inclusion, full of charisma and interesting insight into the dubbing process. Aside from that, the only extras we get are textless versions of the two openings and closing. Given it’s 2012 it’s also disappointing to see no option for a blu-ray release, or even the rather lovely blu-ray/DVD double pack that America got.

When I look back at this first set of Fairy Tail, the word that springs to mind is ‘potential’. As it stands, Fairy Tail is a decent, entertaining piece of fluff, nothing more, nothing less. But there’s also clearly the seeds here for something much more interesting if the story unfolds the right way. There are problems that need to be fixed, most notably the diabolical animation, and we’ll need to see some more depth out of a lot of the characters, but this is a pretty good way to kick off a new adventure. If Fairy Tail keeps it up, it could find itself playing with the big boys sooner rather than later. Aye!

Ratings
Story
Fun in a shallow sort of way, with hints of deeper things to come
Animation
Bold and colourful but terribly limited and cheap looking in action scenes
Audio
A great dub combines well with catchy songs and good incidental tunes
Extras
Sparse, but the dub cast commentaries are a delight
Overall
Somewhat generic, but has the charm and character to effortlessly entertain, with the promise of more to come