Contains spoilers. Not that anything could sour this anime more than merely watching it, but hey.
The vast majority of the western anime community is made up of kids, teenagers, and college kids, and as the medium becomes more and more mainstream, that bell curve keeps centering around lower and lower ages. Many within this community of young people have grown up with anime and can reminisce about shows like Naruto, One Piece, or Bleach which have been influential for as long as they can remember, teenagers on the older side can still remember their own era’s shows like Pokemon or Dragon Ball, and now the
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newest generation of children growing up with anime have faces like My Hero Academia and Mob Psycho 100 to grow up with themselves. I don’t have any of that. I’m seasoned enough for even the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia to loose their effects, since a good ninety percent of anime I can remember watching with few late 90s exceptions the likes of Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop rerunning on TV have been viewed through my eyes as they are now. I can’t ride on nostalgia and fond memories I don’t have, but I can ride on lies.
Fairy Tail came and settled into my life of extreme clinical depression and violent self-harming, intently suicidal tendencies in a roller coaster of fashions. Watching something so vapid and kiddish began by simply making me feel even dumber and even lonelier by getting into a show aimed at an audience nearly half my age, but after getting along with my streak of nihilism at the time, it soon became my single favorite show ever made, seriously. Just hearing Natsu and Lucy autistically screaming about the power of friendship ad nauseam was enough to lift my spirits, no matter how hollow those feelings were. No matter how little sense it all made, I truly did come to love Fairy Tail and the cast of characters therein. I’d always rated it lowly as I do currently, but never would I deny how genuinely I adored it despite its countless flaws, lacks, and offenses. No matter how many victories they won without a shred of logic, no matter how many times villainous motivations would break and birth new allies apropos of nothing, and no matter how many times they’d tease a romance only to never make a single iota of progress for hundreds of episodes, I always left the viewing with life in my eyes, because at the end of the day, everyone was a friend and friendship was magic. In my real life, “friendship” stands only as a childish dream my insomnia never permitted me to relish in, but if I remembered the Fairy Tail necklace I was wearing hidden under my formal attire, I could keep going, if only for one more day.
During Fairy Tail’s first hiatus, A-1 Pictures had made it crystal clear they would be picking the series back up in 2014, and they did exactly that, but when the next break came in 2016, they gave no indication of it coming back, much to my dismay. I was horrified by the idea of losing this lovable guild of friends who I cared for more than my own family, so when the manga announced its plans to end, and the production committee behind it announced they would fund its final season set to adapt the rest of the manga, I was absolutely overjoyed. After all, I was finally getting to see my friends again. As the Fall 2018 season approached, and they started airing promotional videos, I was kind of taken aback. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I knew how technically bad Fairy Tail was. Be it the terrible animation, overuse of still frames and speed lines, endless off-model character artwork, a totally nonsensical script, infinite plot holes, egregious filler arcs, or the brain numbing pacing, I was always more than willing to say, “Yeah, but I still love it.” That being said, watching these promotional videos was the first time I noticed Fairy Tail was the only show I did this for. Anyone whose seen my profile knows how painstakingly critical I am, and the single bad show I refused to drop was Fairy Tail. Since I refuse to watch low quality anime, the time Fairy Tail was on break was enough time for me to completely forget what it was like to sit through a bad show. I know I’m coming off as sarcastic, but I’m being completely serious. I simply forgot what it was like to watch a poorly produced, poorly written, poorly paced, poorly directed, poorly acted, generically scored show without dropping it nigh instantly, and trying to get back into it was an unforgiving, brutal challenge. I knew I should’ve just left well enough alone and trying to watch the final season would do nothing but expose all my blissfully ignorant yet recently made fond memories…but I did it anyway. Whilst all those happy memories were, indeed, trampled into ruin exactly as I thought they would be, I’ve come to argue the degree to which they were was not entirely my own fault. After all, even after forgetting the feeling of watching a bad show, if Fairy Tail had returned exactly as it was when it left, then all I could really say was touché.
And for the zero people still reading, I suppose this is where the “review” actually starts…
Fairy Tail: Final Series is unquestionably among the worst pieces of so-called entertainment I’ve ever committed the sin to consume, and I’m going to do my absolute best at selling you on this horrendous reality as fast as possible, because I want to be here doing this just about as much as the corporatized, probably zombified staff wanted to produce it. To start, I’ll acknowledge the elephant in the room: who in the fuck cares? No matter what argument I propose and no matter the eloquence or logic with which I do so, who the hell cares if a shitty series no one respected anyway went from bad to worse? FANS! All the dumbfuck fans, LIKE ME, no matter how stupid we are for already liking a bad show, have the right to be angry when that standard which we’ve grown entitled to gets even worse. And, holy SHIT, did it get worse or what?! The animation went from poor and lacking to outright non-existent. Entire minutes, literal complete minutes were spent just panning over everyone’s face any time the slightest movement was made, any time someone said anything even remotely emotional, and any time the screenwriter knew they couldn’t animate the action and had to instead show people flatly reacting to it. The sound design went from repetitive and boring to straight up inaccurate. Gunshots used the same sound effect as doors closing, and Natsu getting comically slapped by Lucy was the same sound effect used when someone literally slammed into the ground after falling out of the damn sky. It’s a complete and total joke no fan of the series could laugh at. The directing went from stock and amateur to inexcusably dishonest. As mentioned, whenever the budget would run out and they couldn’t animate an impact, they would awkwardly hard-cut to someone else’s still face reacting to it. This was the case with action scenes, obviously, but also in fucking DIALOGUE SCENES! IS IT REALLY THAT HARD TO ANIMATE THREE FUCKING FRACTIONS OF AN ALREADY STILL SURROUNDING FRAME FOR SOMEONE’S MOUTH TO OPEN AND CLOSE?!?!?! The pacing went from purposefully slow to drag out the series for as long as possible to breakneck rapid fire speed because now all they wanted to do was finish the damn thing since the cash cow apparently became infertile. Remember the big tease Gray was going to kill Frosh? Got retconned; forget about the Rouge from the future and all the plot lines tied to his actions. Remember how Zeref was a legendary black wizard known even outside of Fiore? Got retconned; apparently he’s so poorly known, he can be the king of an entire foreign nation, merely under a different name, without ANYONE outside the country being aware of this fact. Remember the big bad Emperors of Ishgar who were hyped up to be greater than all the Wizard Saints? Got retconned; they all go down at the same time at the hands of some random guy who's owned barely four minutes later. Remember all the symbolism suggesting Mavis to be the fundamental antithesis of Zeref? Got retconned; not only do they have the EXACT SAME CURSE AND POWERS, but they got them by literally falling in love. I could go on. No effort was expended explaining anything properly or concluding the series in a satisfying manner because all they wanted to do was finally put the last nail in the bloody coffin as soon as livingly possible. Even when the characters were given a few paltry scraps of time to develop, we were treated with bafflingly retarded lines like Precht holding Mavis’ dead, cold, limp, pale, lifeless fucking corpse, looking at it in its closed eyes and asking, “Mavis, are you dead?” Even when the characters were given equally paltry scraps of time to explain the plot and motivations, we were treated with equally retarded lines like Zeref looking at his counsel of nameless lackeys saying, “Humanity must be temporarily exterminated.” Like, seriously?!? The one and only aspect of the series which remained consistent with previous seasons was the music, but that’s only because they wholesale reused the soundtrack. I don’t know why I’m complaining, though, seeing as if they did put in the work to actually recompose anything properly, it probably would’ve been just as awful as the rest. If you wanted a silver lining, I guess I could say there’s a few opening animations which aren’t bad and the show never fully gives up by falling back on CG, but that’s really all I’ve got for you. I’m sorry. Believe me, I wish I had more to offer too.
In hindsight, there is a moment from episode twelve which really summed up my experience with Fairy Tail: Final Series in one nice little package. They were saying some dumb shit—I wasn’t really paying attention—and I realized as they were panning across the guild hall the characters just…weren’t drawn. You’ll have to see it to believe it, but they just weren’t drawn. I was looking at a guild hall of greyed out silhouettes. When I really looked closely, shocked, as I couldn’t believe what I was seeing either, I could pick out who was who, I guess. I could make out Gajeel’s Sonic The Hedgehog hairdo and Bickslow’s weird helmet thing. I could make out Elfman’s broad shoulders and Mirajane’s bangs in that quirky little ponytail of her's. But why did I have to? Was it so hard to draw the faces of the people I couldn’t wait to see again? Couldn’t you’ve just grabbed a frame from another scene and reused it as a still image? Hell, couldn’t you’ve just copy and pasted their god damn character models right off file into the scene, again, just as a still image? It’s not like the silhouettes were animated. How many seconds of care would you have to expend to add them this one time for this one unanimated scene? This bleak lack of any semblance of passion or investment will be my last memories of what once was the most beloved series in my small world.
Thank you for reading.
Alternative Titles
Synonyms: Fairy Tail Season 3, Fairy Tail (2018)
Japanese: FAIRY TAIL ファイナルシリーズ
More titlesInformation
Type:
TV
Episodes:
51
Status:
Finished Airing
Aired:
Oct 7, 2018 to Sep 29, 2019
Premiered:
Fall 2018
Broadcast:
Sundays at 07:00 (JST)
Licensors:
Funimation
Source:
Manga
Demographic:
Shounen
Duration:
23 min. per ep.
Rating:
PG-13 - Teens 13 or older
Statistics
Ranked:
#15422
2
based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.
Popularity:
#441
Members:
532,528
Favorites:
5,327
Available AtResourcesStreaming Platforms | Reviews
Filtered Results: 62 / 73
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Your Feelings Categories Sep 28, 2019
Contains spoilers. Not that anything could sour this anime more than merely watching it, but hey.
The vast majority of the western anime community is made up of kids, teenagers, and college kids, and as the medium becomes more and more mainstream, that bell curve keeps centering around lower and lower ages. Many within this community of young people have grown up with anime and can reminisce about shows like Naruto, One Piece, or Bleach which have been influential for as long as they can remember, teenagers on the older side can still remember their own era’s shows like Pokemon or Dragon Ball, and now the ... Dec 8, 2018
[Spoiler Warning]
Ahhhhh, Friendship and Magic has finally returned with its 3rd season. No, it's not My Little Pony I am talking about, but Fairy Tail. This time around our main characters, Rarity and Appleja... oh sorry, I mean Natsu and Gray are hanging out with their little club and every goddamn villain they fight against, joins their ranks because that's the way Fairy Tail's heart beats. It's friendship time! Story: Annoyed by very superficial, core level flaws that are practically self-explanatory? Too bad. How Fairy Tail works is completely different from the norms as it abandons every fuck it could ever give about avoiding such things. Instead, ... Sep 28, 2019
The FINAL SEASON...until the 100 Year Quest gets adapted...
No but seriously for a "final season", Fairy Tail really brought their all or more or less Hiro Mashima amalgamated all his loose plotlines (especially with the deal with Zeref and Acnologia) not only to a grand final war but to resolve the MANY MANY characters plot threads it gave us and the majority of it...succeeded. LA had been and still was a huge fan of Fairy Tail, Fairy Tail brought LA into the shounen genre and though Fairy Tail did abuse the entire "nakama" arc finales as an asspull let alone it's "no one dies" attitude and ... Mar 2, 2019
I guess the best way to review this anime would be to take you guys through my personal experience. I started watching the fairy tail anime back in 2013 when I was still 13 years old. I binge watched the first part, then I watched the second part as it came out and then now I started watching the finale. However, since I watched this anime the first time, I have become an active member of the anime community and I have watched lots and lots of different animes, and now, this anime just keeps becoming worse and worse in my opinion.
Story - 6/10 The story ... Sep 28, 2019
Fairy Tail, Fairy Tail. What can the world do without you? From its original run back in August 2006 to July 2017, the fantasy adventure has been dubbed as a popular franchise that became famous for its “friendship” theme. It’s become so well-known that the words “friends” has become synonymous with the franchise itself. Now, we finally have the conclusion of this long-running fantasy adventure.
The final season initially had mixed reception so seeing this been translated into anime form would also generate some degree of trepidation. I approached this final season with some optimism as a voice told me it would be a proper sendoff ... Mar 31, 2019
From all the reviews I've seen, it seems that many people regard Fairy Tail as a great show, but I can't comprehend why. There are so many problems with this show, and I cannot understand how people do not see them. I'm not really reviewing this specific season, but the anime as a whole. Fairy Tail actually had some potential, but Hiro Mashima and A-1 threw all of it into the trash.
The writing is the first thing I want to address about this show. It is fucking stale. Out of the 300 episodes I have seen I swear that each arc except two contains ... Apr 29, 2019
A WORD OF WARNING!!!! I hereby bestow upon this anime the name of "GIF's, The Animation!"
I'm so annoyed with this that this is literally the first review I've ever done. Maybe the first of many, I don't know. The animation for this season is AWFUL! I'm writing this review to rant as well as point this out because I don't see anyone else talking about how lazy, ugly, & absolutely pathetic the quality of the animation for this show has become. This is literally like watching a colored picture book with shaking backgrounds. Hell I'm nicknaming this "GIF's The Animation." Every fight scene consists of still cutouts ... Apr 14, 2019
These are dark times for my anime fan self. Somehow I keep being disappointed in every recent anime. Sadly, Fairy Tail (2018) is a disappointment as well.
Long story short: while the audio is still top notch, the visuals are the worst of the whole series and the story is far from good. STORY I like Fairy Tail, I'm not ashamed to say it. Despite what people claim, it has great plots and great ideas (although it's often mixed with a lot of stupidity). This Final Series adapts the last 3 arcs of the manga: Avatar, Caracolle Island and the Final Arc. While I do enjoy Avatar and the first ... Oct 30, 2020
I don't write reviews, nor do I plan to start.
However I'm just here to say that this is by far one of the worst and laziest seasons of a show that I've ever seen. Anyone who legitimately thinks this show is good should automatically be assumed to have terrible taste (which would be the correct assumption); You should never listen to another anime opinion from them again. Even for **Fairy Tail** (which hasn't even been good since around episode 60), this is bad. The "animation" (if it can even be considered that) is literally just still shot after still shot along with incredibly rough art. ... Apr 28, 2019
Ah, the story of friendship. Through the power of friendship, you can accomplish anything!
That's what Fairy Tail is, the power of friendship and it's been the main theme through and through. Story: Honestly, I like seeing how they use the power of friendship and camaraderie to figure out how to beat almost anything. The power of nakama is the best thing to watch. However, if you have been watching from the beginning, it's nice to see why some characters are important to the storyline. Art: I mean, who doesn't like abs that are overdrawn and exaggerated on every male character? The more abs drawn on ... Sep 14, 2019
Short version Review wihout spoiler
Fairy tail have taught us many things: Erza as stronger and anyonning version of sakura all Fake Death Long Version without spoiler Yay now, Hiro Mashima has finally given up figuring out a creative storyline with creative characters Hiro Mashima also has his good sides, he can draw well, but he repeats the same and over and over again and again, and the ecchi share is getting bigger. Well, most of his readers want to see and read that as well. But imagine a Hiro Mashima that could write an interesting story + good characters. And before anyone says anything my name is ... Jun 3, 2019
This review was made to provide as little spoilers as possible, therefore I won't be providing specific examples for my accusations. As you watch the show these flaws will appear.
They're back... but wait, are they going to be back forever? Some of you might be asking what this means... I'm talking about the obvious plot armor placed on anyone with the Fairy Tail insignia. This is a horrible decision made by the writing team of the source material. Sure, they can protect the beloved characters of the show to avoid community outrage. However, this move only diminishes the impact of a characters supposed death. ... Jul 18, 2019
Honestly the story has become very lame and stupid in these past 40 episodes.
Story: 3/10 We were all expecting new epic enemies, new powers and so much more. But what do we get? Every SINGLE idea they made get thrown out and becomes wasted. It is not Fairy Tail that has gotten stronger, it is the Spriggan 12 that is so embarrassingly weak, that isn't any real climax for 40 episodes. Art: 6/10 Animation seems to be worse but I don't have much too complain besides the small change in art style again. Character: 4/10 I liked that different guilds gets to have their own moment and not have ... Feb 8, 2019
*THE FINALE IS HERE*
yep...its the ending of this beautiful series that most people spent their childhood watching it and screamed over it lol :D i started watching fairy tail last summer and i got to this series recently...a month ago or so :D this last one is getting better and better each episode and i'm enjoying it so much :D story 9/10:this series has the most perfect stories from the 2009 and 2014 ones...we are in the end game of natsu vs zeref story here so i'm enjoying it so much :D the final series is about bringing the fairy tail guild back together and saving its own ... Jun 1, 2019
Story-
Fairy Tail's Last Arc should have been the best of all arc. But it's not. In this Arc, there are many characters. They introduced the spriggan 12 and said that each of them has strength similar to GOD SERENA. Zeref said he will put Natsu in bigger despair. But there was no despair or too much of a hurdle. Characters- Unlike Naruto or One Piece, Fairy Tail's each and every characters are invincible. They do not die in the hands of 10 times stronger enemies. Enemy characters are given overwhelming magic power without any talent on how to use it including ACNOLOGIA. There were some characters ... Sep 23, 2019
do you remember when fairy tail was good series also do you know something when brain dead like me realize there is something wrong with this series you will be sure that this thing is just kinda fucked up at this point
, this season is the worst season in this series so far and there is a lot of reasons why also i love fairy tail but in this season they just destroy everything from the power system to even the characters themselves i tried to not spoil this but i spoiled it anyway because i am mad about how bad this has been ... Feb 16, 2024
I enjoyed the previous seasons, but not this one. I believe the major reason wasn't that they made any bad decisions with the story, but it is the fact that they didn't change anything at all.
It could also be the result of abusing the shounen loop of "get beaten up, remember your friends, stand up, and beat your way out". This is Fairy Tail in a nutshell. You will see nothing more than that. So just before watching the final season; I sort of knew what I was going to see, but I still finished it just because I don't like to drop series and ... Feb 23, 2019
People have been talking shit about Fairy Tail ever since it was serialized and eventually turned into an anime in the late 2000s. They called it a "poor man's One Piece" and not investing. While I do agree there were and remain too much plot armor and PLOT, the Final Series is definitely the highest peak of the entire show. It maintains the great music and character that was introduced in the first season, while also looking even more fantastic with better fightscenes than the already improved (artistically) Fairy Tail 2014. The Final Series contains the raw emotions of the main cast, as well
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Mar 11, 2019
This season, especially the Alvarez arc, is much better than the others in terms of character motivations (particularly that of Zeref), which the other arcs (like the Tenrou Island arc [Hades had no character-driven reason to seek out the Grand Magic World], lacked).
It does contain quite a lot of plot armor and deus ex machina moments (like Ultear showing up to save Wendy and Shelia out of nowhere and Natsu magically recovering from his coma) and crappy fight sequences (like ruining the tension of the fight for a stupid nudity joke in the Jacob fight). I would recommend this season to fans of the previous ... Jul 10, 2019
Best days of my life watching this marvelous Anime. I've been a fan since 2013 I know I'm not a veteran fan to FT and I wish I could turn back time to be as thrilled as now to wait for every Ep. and I wish I started watching it since 2009. I cried, laughed, and got mad and excited watching it! I never experienced these kinds of emotions in my whole life. I learned a lot from every character ESPECIALLY from my hero Natsu D. <3 much love and support from me. Actually, I don't get the others when they say it's hentai or
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