March 18, 2010
Fairy Tail is a really blatant ripoff of Slayers. The author kind of rearranged things a bit, but it's in the gray area between homage and plagiarism. And closer to the latter if you ask my opinion.
It's a group of four adventurers. Two are girls (Lina/Amelia, Erza/Lucy). One of the girls is less experienced (Amelia/Lucy). There are two guys (Gourry/Zelgadis, Natsu/Gray). One of the guys has scaled skin (Zelgadis, Natsu eventually).
One uses a sword (Gourry, Erza). One is blonde (Gourry, Lucy). One is red-headed (Lina, Erza). One has black hair (Amelia, Gray). One has unusual hair which is an indication of unusual nature (Zelgadis, Natsu). The phrase "Dragon Slayer" applies to one (Lina, Natsu). One of them is clueless (Gourry, Natsu). One of the girls falls in with one of the guys at the beginning and they are the core of the story; the others come and go (Lina/Gourry, Lucy/Natsu).
I just restarted watching with ep 9, and they're on the road and starving -- which happened in The Slayers too.
Now there are differences, too. Slayers had nothing comparable to the Fairy Tail guild, for example. And the characterizations vary a bit, too. Gray tends to be a bit stoic and superior, and reminds a bit of Zelgadis. Lucy has something of the kind of enthusiasm that reminds of Amelia. But Slayers didn't have anyone with a personality like Erza. And there was no equivalent of Happy.
But there are other similiarities, and this is the biggest one: both series are a combination of single-ep fillers and multi-ep story lines, and they're only really worth watching during the longer stories. At least that's what I remember from The Slayers and that's the impression I'm getting as of the ninth episode of Fairy Tail.
UPDATE: Still, it has to be admitted that there is a lot of nice eye-candy in Fairy Tail.
I was surprised by Mirajane, the guild's kanban musume (poster girl). I thought she'd turn out to be catty towards Lucy because of Lucy's good looks, but she seems to be totally friendly and supportive.
The art seems to vary a lot, though. The artists don't seem to agree on how big Lucy's boobs should be.
Or Erza's, either. This particular outfit makes 'em look a lot bigger than her usual.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at
11:50 AM
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I actually felt the exact opposite about Slayers. Some of the filler episodes were -brilliantly- funny. But the pacing on the story-arc episodes was generally slow, slow, slow...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at March 18, 2010 03:13 PM (pWQz4)
Too many of the standalone eps in Slayers were about setting up a sight gag e.g. the place where men are not allowed, or catching a dragon in order to eat it. Or Lina and Amelia wearing mahou shoujo costumes.
See, thing is, I wasn't watching it because I wanted it to be funny. I wanted action and adventure, and when they were in the story arcs, they stopped trying to do humor and started doing story and character development. That was what I liked.
But different people like different things.
As to "dragon slayer", with Lina I was referring to the Dragon Slave spell, not to her herself. It was still interesting that the same phrase showed up in both series, albeit used in different ways to apply to different things.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 18, 2010 03:57 PM (+rSRq)
Firstly, while it isn't really apparent from what I think you've seen, the core of the story Fairy Tail is the organization Fairy Tail. Fairy Tail (FT) is a very powerful, very destructive organization of mercenary magic users, most of whom are fairly potent. They are also comrades and close to family, and the members have made the guild their home. These relationships are part of the story, thematically and otherwise. Lucy is a strong mage with a good heart, who starts out not really knowing anything about FT, and not having a place to call her own. This is why she is a good vehicle for us to learn about the guild with. Gray, Natsu, and Erza/Elisa just happen to work very well with her. The other FT Mages, depending on how far the Anime goes, will also be taking part in things.
Natsu's teacher, who was essentially a parent to him, disappeared when he was younger. He is looking for the teacher, but until he finds it, well, he has been adopted by the Guild, or rather, almost everyone in FT has adopted each other.
Fairy Tail Dragons Slayers seem to be a very odd and different thing, but the full story has yet to be revealed or confirmed. Massive spoilers, but unlikely to be too spoiling for the anime if it is already completed.
As far as the destruction goes, it is more of a case of things escalating and getting out of hand through over enthusiasm then the power of the magic itself.
Posted by: PatBuckman at March 18, 2010 04:52 PM (agn77)
Writers should have either cut down the filler eps to the occasional single episode to decompress between major dramatic events, or else worked harder to generate comedy from situations where the characters still act like themselves.
Posted by: metaphysician at March 18, 2010 07:17 PM (DQ9zJ)
Enclose all spoilers in spoiler tags:
[spoiler]your spoiler here[/spoiler]
Spoilers which are not properly tagged will be ruthlessly deleted on sight.
Also, I hate unsolicited suggestions and advice. (Even when you think you're being funny.)
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