Pete says:

Fairy Tail turned out to be Dog Days rather than Naruto. It stole from Naruto mercilessly (Dragon Breath LOL), but it was entirely different in tone: lots of pretty magic and hijinks. Sure, people die when they're killed there, but there's no oppressively brutal setting. In the same time, there's no over-arching plot either (again, much like Dog Days). People may find themselves, but that's about it. At least Naruto wants to become a Hokage. Lucy just floats with the flow. They also hit fillers by ep.20, good job.

I think of it as being Dragon Ball Z with a One Piece paint job on top and a lot more (and a lot better looking) pretty girls. I've never seen Naruto so I can't comment on that, but I do know that it (and Bleach) both stole from DBZ. Fairy Tail is a shounen fighting show where half the fighters are cute girls, that still manages to avoid becoming a panty-fighter show (e.g. Ikki Tousen).

It's true there's no overall long term plot that I can discern, with the minor exception of Lucy steadily acquiring more and more of the gold keys. My understanding is that in the most recent plot arc (which I am about to watch) she gets the last two, and finally has all twelve. In that sense it also is a small ripoff from Pokemon (Gotta get 'em all!), since that's what Lucy's magic power amounts to, but they don't really emphasize that and Lucy is the only summoner in Fairy Tail, so that particular form of magic doesn't dominate the show. Also, Lucy is only mid-level in terms of power; as a mage she's useful but not overwhelming. In the team she usually adventures with (Natsu, Gray, Erza, and Wendy) Lucy is the weakest and she knows it and everyone else does, too. And everyone is fine with that; it's the nature of her kind of magic. She's not useless, and her power has been the difference between victory and defeat on more than one occasion.

Anyway, when she completes the collection and gets all twelve gold keys, it really ought to mean something. No summoner has ever done that before. But I get the impression that nothing does happen. Maybe the mangaka has something in mind, but hasn't gotten to it yet.

Another potential overall long term plot is the entire question of why all the dragons disappeared at the same time, casting Natsu and Wendy and Gajeel (and others?) out on their own. But as of episode 120 nothing has been done about that, except to tell us that it wasn't just Natsu, and to show us that Igneel and Grandine are both still alive, and know each other. (In one episode Grandine visits Igneel and they talk. But they don't say much that helps us aside from making clear that Igneel doesn't like Grandine, and we never see them again.)

That's it.

If you like shounen fighting shows, if you like DBZ, you'll probably like Fairy Tail. If you don't, you probably won't, because there isn't anything else in it. Well, aside from a lot of fan service. Because leave us face it: Lucy is a babe, and she ain't the only one.

Even Levy, despite being kind of scrawny.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 10:37 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 The anime's problem is that it caught up to the Manga's current arc.  There is all over 30 chapters between where ep 175 ended and this week's manga chapter.  So, Fairy Tail is on hiatus for a while.  It'll probably come back as a show, but its ratings had dropped quite a lot (though, oddly, the Manga volumes are selling better).

As for Lucy's keys and the Dragons, both are integral to the current manga story arc, or at least we're getting a lot of background on the dragons/ that event.  I haven't followed it too closely, but the keys might be a matter of "a bit more important than she would have hoped", rather than being unimportant.

But there is still a 5th OVA coming this fall. :

Posted by: sqa at March 31, 2013 12:00 PM (dvTNf)

2

Atomic Fungus writes:

One other very interesting thing about the departure of the dragons: it seems to have coincided with the death of Lucy's mother.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 02, 2013 11:18 AM (+rSRq)

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