That's what got me interested in this show. (I'm so predictable.) Her name is Lucy, and she's a wizard -- and in fact, a pretty powerful one.

This is an interesting world. Usually magical worlds are medieval, but this one seems to be technologically about the same as Europe in 1840. There are railroads, for example, and steam ships, but no electricity. I don't think it's consciously steampunk; they're just trying to be a bit different from the usual sword/sorcery format.

Magic is very common. In the opening scene (from which that pan was taken) Lucy is visiting a magic shop in the town she's just arrived in, and the guy behind the counter tells her that it's not a very magical town. Only about ten percent of the people there can use magic. This, apparently, is extremely low and it explains why he's running the only magic shop in town, which mainly caters to travelers like her.

See those keys hanging from her belt? They're magical items. They can only be used by a "celestial wizard", which is what she is. She can use those to create gates to another world and to summon creatures from there with whom she has made contracts. What they give her is service when she calls. What she gives them isn't stated, at least so far. In the first episode she uses one of them, and the result was really quite spectacular. Which is why I say she isn't weak.

Though magic is common, really powerful wizards aren't quite so common, and there's work for them to do, which can often pay very well. Usually, to get jobs like that you have to be part of a guild. Lucy has her heart set on joining a particularly prestigious guild known as "Fairy Tale" -- hence the name of the series.

She falls in with a guy named Natsu. He is a member of Fairy Tale, and learns that she wants to join. She's obviously good enough to be worthy of consideration, so he invites her to join him in his travels. Besides which, she's easy on the eyes.

She knows it, too; that image up top there was her trying to sweet talk the guy at the magic store to cut the price on an item she wanted.

She's voiced by Hirano Aya, and I'm not sure the voice really quite works. I'm reserving judgment on that. Natsu's voice was Simon in Gurren Lagann, but it doesn't sound the same.

Natsu is an interesting one. He's a fire mage, but a special kind. He's been trained in a very ancient and virtually unknown kind of magic that gives him the ability to transform parts of his body into equivalent parts from a dragon. He's rowdy, but he isn't a blowhard. He is also terribly susceptible to motion sickness. Just thinking about being on a moving vehicle makes him ill, let alone really being on one.

The little blue cat is named Happy, and it's voiced by Kugimiya Rie. The voice works beautifully. (Looks like she's finally breaking out of the "tsundere" type-cast, and hooray for that.)

Eventually there's going to be another guy, with black hair, and another girl, who wears armor and wields a sword. Presumably I'll find out about that in future episodes.

That one on the left is named Mirajane and she too is part of the Fairy Tale guild. At one point Lucy looks at a magazine called "Weekly Sorceror" and she was the centerfold.

Based on the credits and the images from the OP and ED, she's important but not a regular character. In addition to being in the guild (and thus presumably being a very powerful mage) she's also obviously something of an idol, and I wonder if it'll turn out that she's jealous of Lucy's good looks and Lucy's top deck.

To answer the most obvious questions: No, it doesn't feel like One Piece. The art style and character designs suggest One Piece but that seems just to be a prevailing style now, the way there used to be a lot of shows around 1995 that looked like The Slayers. I looked at the production staff for the show and no one worked on One Piece.

There were parts of the first episode that I skipped through, mainly because the villain was a jerk, but once the action started it was pretty cool. And there's no doubt that Lucy is easy on the eyes. Yeah, I'll watch a bit more, just to see. (Also, I want to know who the other two are.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 12:03 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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