The Story
When Pantherlily and Charle confront Mest, he teleports away, towards Wendy. But he is revealed not to be the enemy, as he protects her against an attack by the real Grimoire Heart agent. Mest actually an agent of the magic council, undercover in search of evidence to use against Fairy Tail. Pantherlily fights against the enemy, Azuma, but he and the other three are overpowered.
Makarov faces off against the Grimoire Heart ship, and practically destroys it before Ultear’s magic repairs it. Caprico transports the Grimoire Heart wizards onto the island, where the Fairy Tail wizards are surrounded by Grimoire Heart enemies.
Makarov attempts to use Fairy Law against Grimoire Heart, but backs down when Master Hades reveals his own variation of the spell. Makarov recognizes Hades as the second Fairy Tail master, Purehito.
The Review
I’ll try not to complain about this too much, but Fairy Tail is really hard to summarize. The scenes keep changing between the different characters, and while that gives me a lot to write about, it also means that unless I pay attention the plot summary is going to be far too detailed. Not only that, but even right after finishing an episode I find myself struggling to remember all the details. Fortunately I’ve decided to keep the plot summaries vague, so I don’t have to bother remembering every tiny little detail.
The upside of this is that at least it gives me a lot more to talk about, which is more than I can say about certain series. Like I’ve said, Toei Animation are pretty awful at actually having something happen in their episodes.
While I tend not to review series I don’t enjoy—you may have noticed how some series got a few reviews and then you never saw anything about them from me again (I’m trying to get better at that)—rarely do I find myself in the position where I will review an episode and then immediately want to move on to the next one. With series like Toriko, currently the only other anime I’m reviewing, I find myself more or less impassive at the end of an episode. That’s not to say I don’t like the series, it’s just not one that is currently giving me a big reason to want the next episode.
With Fairy Tail on the other hand I find myself wanting to just move on to the next episode. I stopped watching mostly because I kept pushing each episode off because I had to write reviews for each new episode, one thing led to another and here we are. But with the last few episodes I’ve watched I’m slowly remembering why I like this series so much. And that makes me even more anxious for news about what the future of the anime is. But that is for another time. At the moment what’s important is how much I love this show.
Mostly because the anime is a much stronger adaptation than most anime adapted from manga I’ve seen. Toei is implicit in rough adaptations, but they aren’t the only ones. Naruto, Bleach, among others, are series by different studios that all commit some pretty major sins in the adaptation department. Either it’s poorly written filler, excessive filler, poorly placed filler, poorly paced episodes, and so on. Fairy Tail on the other hand has to this date had limited filler, and while some scenes could probably use better pacing, at least the episodes are able to split between multiple plot threads in order to pad out the episodes.
And somehow despite working to keep the anime from overtaking the manga, they manage to get multiple main events in this episode. We not only get a fight, but we get a reveal about Hades that was actually quite shocking. And as the arc progresses we’ll get the answer as to why he defected. While we get the promise of multiple fights, this episode also gives us a few plot threads that will need addressing as the story continues.
Overall, this episode was a set up for the main bulk of the arc, but at the same time it managed to give us a necessary, if short lived, fight. This arc is shaping up to be a lot of fun, and I regret not getting to it sooner. Look forward to future reviews as we continue what for most of you will be a retrospective.
The Grade
Buy The DVDs!
Fairy Tail: Part 1 (Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
Fairy Tail: Part 2 (Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
Fairy Tail: Part 3 (Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
Fairy Tail: Part 4 (Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
