Blog Archive

Monday, September 14, 2015

Fairy Tail is #1:

I've renovated my top anime rankings a bit.  Series like Working and Non Non Biyori went down, while shows like Hibike! Euphonium and Gate went up.

Kyoukai no Rinne went up a good deal for another reason -- a 2nd season was announced for it starting in 2016.  With more material comes a higher rating, quite naturally, as more is always better.

Fairy Tail is perhaps the most important change, however.  The reason is simple -- Fairy Tail's anime is a better adaption than One Piece's or Naruto's.  One Piece has terribly slow pacing, which is making a slow boring manga arc into an even slower and more boring anime arc.  Naruto has so much filler and flashback you barely actually get to watch anything of interest.  Just when you do think you're safely in canon material, they pull out a loony tunes animated fight like Pain vs. fox-possessed Naruto that looks unbelievably awful and unforgivable at such a crucial emotional climax.

Fairy Tail has no drop in quality.  Its pacing is fine.  Its artwork is the best in anime.  The filler is easily avoided and infrequent.  On top of all that, the Fairy Tail anime is adapting the best manga in the business so it's only natural that it would also end up the best anime of all time, and thus the greatest work of art of all time.

The Fairy Tail anime is guaranteed to extend at least until chapter 416 of the manga.  Naruto's manga is 712 chapters and One Piece's is 799 chapters right now, so at best these anime franchises can have twice as much content as Fairy Tail has.  But there's no reason to believe the Fairy Tail anime will be canceled after the Tartaros arc, as there's plenty of stuff still incoming like the 2nd Fairy Tail movie showing that the franchise still has strong levels of support.  One Piece may end up over twice as long in terms of actual content than Fairy Tail, but Naruto has no shot at that.

One Piece's chapters are generally less than half as good as Fairy Tail's chapters, so having twice as many chapters doesn't do One Piece any good.  We've been stuck fighting Don Flamingo for seemingly 1/3 of the entire One Piece manga by now, and it just isn't that interesting a fight.  Even if One Piece is three times as long as Fairy Tail by the end, the decision to deliberately slow down the pacing makes the anime feel worse than it should be, if it had been adapted well like the Fairy Tail anime has been.  I previously asked if there are really three times as many good moments in Fairy Tail as there are in One Piece, and came up with a negative answer.  However, if you ask has there been twice as many, the answer is affirmative.  Twice as many looks to be the more honest comparison than three times as many, given the respective lengths of the mangas that are being adapted vs. each other.

Charlotte has not reached the level of quality necessary to enter my rankings.  Honestly, it's worse than Rokka no Yuusha, never mind shows like Gate.  This will be the first time Key has let me down.  It's hard to swallow, but at least Charlotte is a 'good' anime and can make my runners-up list (which is where Rokka no Yuusha currently resides as well.)

Owarimonogatari is not actually going to reach the ending of the story.  It will just be 12 episodes covering two books.  The remainder is set to be released at some later date.  Take your time and get it right.  There's no rush.

MIX had a couple more chapters translated, so I moved it from the abandoned category to the sporadically translated category.  Yay!

Fairy Tail's Tartaros arc is even more emotional and impactful in anime form than I had ever imagined when I was just reading the black and white silent manga version.  And yet, I can't stress enough that the Tartaros arc is weak compared to what comes next in the manga.  Just imagine how good the anime will make what comes next look!  At this point I'm at a loss for superlatives.  We've transcended human limits and are now in uncharted territory.  Hiro Mishima is leading the way into the unknown frontiers of greatness.  He's just leaving the rest of us behind, like Eneru's flight to the moon.  Stay healthy Hiro Mashima!  You're our star of hope.

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