Fairy Tail: 100-nen Quest

It's Fairy Tale. It's never had the highest production values. But it's been my favorite shonen. I've seen all the previous seasons. I thought I could take any crap the producers could throw at me. Sadly, that is not the case. I just can't stand this any more, and I'm dropping the series mid-season.

The art work? Nothing exceptional here. About what you can expect from the franchise. What is really like a knife to the heart though, is the poor animation. While the franchise overall has hardly been stellar, this season has been one horrid episode after another. The drivel continued to pile ... up and pile up. Ep 6 was the final straw to break the camel's back. This is the big fight episode? It's no better than Saturday Morning Kid Vid. Yugio looks better.

The characters have only changed by becoming more cringe worthy. What they've done to Erza should be considered criminal. She's become a hanger for the writer's darker fetishes. Natsu's become a comic caractiture, and not in a good way. Lucy's even more 2 dimensional than ever, and is little more than background work. All the other myriad of characters that made Fairy Tale so watchable in the past don't even deserve mentioning.

At first it seemed the plot might go somewhere interesting. There was a seed that could have been expanded upon. But the lazy writers quickly fell back into worn out trophes, formulas and cliches, that were ancient when the franchise first ended many years ago. There's nothing new to even be a little engaging. The same old-same old, puked out to sucker the otakus out of another yen. It's beyond pathetic.

The VAs are about what you might expect from the cast. But the director isn't using them to very great effect, and with the animation issues, I'll be kind and say the direction has been pitiful all season.

It so pains me to see a once proud franchise beaten to it's knees like this, I hope the producers are proud of themselves. If I was grading, this is a total failure 40/100, an E- on the edge of an F. I hope it is 100 years before I ever see another series this bad.

Bullet point takeaways:
--> The franchise is facing the Dragon Ball problem. The fights so far, in gaming terms, have been an attribute check followed by a stat check.

--> In classic low level writing fashion, the plot is staged by lack of information. There's only a couple of characters who know whats up. Everyone else is walking in a dark room.

--> Animation isn't lazy. Thats the most that can be said about it. Art is lackluster.

--> MCs haven't matured. In fact, they've degraded to the point it feels like this anime is a parody of itself.

--> What remains is the (borrowed) legendary world ... building. And it is falling apart too. The new characters introduce powers that are plain stupid.

Thoughts: If anything is to be complained about, it should be the source and this studios willingness to put any resources into this capitalistic attempt of a continuation. If you take away the brand of Mashima, this story is a failure. OG fanatics will still gobble this adaptation, basking in the bright afterglow of FT's former glory days. It could've been great, but it missed the mark by a lot.

I don't expect that this anime will get better. Everyone has reached their personal goals and this has now turned into an aimless journey fueled by the "mystery" or "the lack of info" of the the 100YQ. And the mystery was resolved in ep1. What remains its neither mystery nor story. Just plot armor and mediocrity.

Happy Watching.

Fairy Tail is back again with another season, and after several years of hiatus I can confidently say this is the best Fairy Tail has looked in a long time.

Story: The story revolves around our main group consisting of Natsu, Lucy, Grey, and Erza embarking on the Legendary 100 year quest, a feat no mage has ever been able to complete before. While the plot itself is fairly basic it does allow for an expanding of Fairy Tail's universe, taking place on entirely different and unknown continent than the one the guild hails from. There is also an mystery subplot involving Gajeel, who is ... tasked with uncovering the secrets held by Fairy Tail's mysterious newest member Touka. Overall the story is something that is a tried and true tested formula in Shonen and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. 7/10

Characters: The characters that we all have come to know, love, and yes even hate are back and with them its safe to say not much has changed. In some respects this is a good thing but in others it does show a clear lack of character development which I think is greatly needed. If you liked the cast of Fairy Tail then you will still like them as they are now, but if you didn't and were hoping for some changes I'm sorry to burst your bubble but you STILL wont like them even now. There are also new faces we meet as well but for spoiler reasons I wont discuss it here. 6/10

Animation and Visuals: One of the biggest issues with Fairy Tail was its continuing drop in animation and art quality as time went on and the seasons built up. I personally felt that the 2009 version of Fairy Tail was the best looking and animated out of all the seasons, and its safe to say by the end of the main story its artwork was extremely disappointing and honestly just plain old hard to look at. While the current art style and visuals have been largely kept the same from its 2014 predecessor, the animation has been noticeably improved, especially compared to the Alvarez Empire arc. However despite its improvement the animation itself is still nothing remarkable. It is not lazy nor are they still frames which is a blessing, but it is obviously very plain when compared to other Shonen anime being produced in today's age. 7.5-8/10

Music and Soundtrack: The one thing Fairy Tail has always gotten right is its fantastic soundtrack, and the soundtrack and music are still just as great as they've always been. Not much more to add here 8.5/10

Overall Score: 7-7.5 While Fairy Tail fails to innovate in its story or dazzle us with its visuals as other Shonen have done in recent years this season thus far has been largely a step up from the quality we've gotten in the past. While it is nothing fantastic it in my opinion does revive the magic of what Fairy Tail was and does it more justice than anything we've gotten from the franchise in the last 6+ years. If you enjoyed Fairy Tail then you should definitely come back and give this show a look.