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.
