I've finished my full blu-ray rewatch of Fairy Tail. This is the best looking series ever made, which is why I have an entire art gallery devoted solely to screenshots from it. Yasuharu Takanashi is a fantastic composer who captured the mood of the series perfectly. Fairy Tail has 34 memorable and lovable characters, more than any other continuous franchise. The only way to beat Fairy Tail is to restart with a new entry, like Final Fantasy 1-16, or Tales of 'x, y, and z', or Pretty Cure 'x, y, and z.' Fairy Tail is simply Fairy Tail. The same Fairy Tail with the same people from start to finish. To have that many interesting characters in the same united plot and setting is inimitable.
The second best character count using the same rules of a continuous plot and setting is Naruto at 23. That's 11 fewer! Naruto would have to grow by 50% to match Fairy Tail, and that's the second best.
Though there is a bit of filler and unnecessary flashbacks/recap in Fairy Tail, it's nowhere near as bad as its competitors like Bleach and One Piece. You can basically watch it without worry.
The fights in Fairy Tail are fantastic. They don't last overly long, but are decisive in quick and exciting fashion. It's rare for any fight to last longer than a single episode, and if it does it's usually because the episode is covering multiple different people so it isn't actually an episode long single fight. In the real world, in sword fights and the like, fights end quickly, within minutes, so I appreciate Fairy Tail moving things along like this. Most fights are a chance to see a clash of wills and ideals, and what we're actually interested in is the thoughts and feelings involved, not the mechanical, dry exchange of fists. Hunter x Hunter spends an insane amount of time talking about how one character cleverly used his abilities to defeat another, but lost in all this is any characterization of the actual characters. So Hisoka has ten thousand words dedicated to his chewing gum ability but he himself is just an insane battle maniac psychopath with the simplest and stupidest of motivations.
Fairy Tail is the exact opposite, the fight mechanic is very simple, your magic responds to your feelings so if you feel the need to win the most you'll probably win. But the focus on people's feelings creates fantastic emotionally moving results -- like Juvia's fight with Meldy, which was literally about shared feelings, or Lucy's fight with Angel, where the celestial spirits were so unnerved by Lucy's feelings that they could no longer oppose her. This is a show full of feelings. Time and time again I was laughing, crying, smiling or feeling warm and fuzzy with love. The most brutal emotional attack was when Wendy and Charle had to take out a Tartaros Gate demon and a Face all on their own. That scene is so memorable you can never shake it even though I knew well ahead of time that it all works out. But that was only one of many tearjerker moments. They're everywhere, in every arc or at least almost every arc.
Part of having 34 memorable characters is the wonder and beauty of Fairy Tail's plot, which sets aside space for everyone to personally shine. In a lot of series, like Bleach, there are characters who seem to disappear or simply 'opt out' of world crisis because the author forgets about them. This makes no sense, if the world is on the line everyone should try their hardest. In Fairy Tail that's exactly what happens. When the Spriggan 12 invaded everyone in Fiore, everyone we'd ever seen before in the series worked together to fight back, and they all contributed meaningfully. Sting and Rogue took down Lascarde, something only they could do. Sherria and Ultear defeated Dimaria, something only they could do. These guys aren't even in the Fairy Tail guild! Of course the members of Fairy Tail all did great as well, not only against the Spriggan 12, when even sideliners like Fried and Bisca got a chance to shine, but also during the Tartaros arc, where Mirajane saved the day multiple times, where Wendy and Lucy, usually weak, came through and saved the whole world all on their own.
Some arcs of Fairy Tail, especially the earlier ones, I've seen so often I'm pretty tired of them. But they're all absolutely necessary. Each arc serves an important purpose -- Phantom = Lucy's back story, Oracion Seis = Wendy's back story, Edolas = Happy and Charle's back story, Deliora = Gray's back story, R-system = Erza's back story. Though each arc has exciting new fights, encounters with new people and adventures in new lands, it masterfully weaves in the history of each main character in the story and how they became the people they were and what traumas they still need to overcome in the future to attain happiness.
The later arcs I've rewatched comparatively less so they're still gripping and thrilling. Tartaros has a huge dropoff in artistic and musical quality, it feels like the budget fell off a cliff. But the plot is still so good you hardly notice. The only time it really sticks out is the giant village arc which had the awful low budget look and a boring plot. That only lasts for a few episodes though and then you're right back on the roller coaster.
It's hard to say what my favorite arc is, because the whole story is interconnected and all of them are working together. If I had to say though it would be the Avatar, Spriggan 12, Alvarez, Acnologia, Fairy Tail Final, however you want to phrase it. Though it's unsatisfying how most of the Spriggan 12 were defeated because they weren't fighting seriously, the way we learned about everyone's shrouded pasts -- like Erza, Natsu, Mavis, Zeref, Acnologia, etc., was wonderful. All the mysteries of the series were answered satisfactorily before the curtain closed. And the incredible emotions, the pure love on display, throughout the arc is unforgettable. The love between Levy and Gajeel, Lucy and Natsu, Gray and Juvia, Mavis and Zeref, all produced unforgettable high points like a continuous barrage of artillery.
The Grand Magic Games, where future Lucy's death was so incredibly moving (and future Natsu's death for that matter), comes in a close second.
I said in '100 Waifus' that Fairy Tail is my ideal, and it's true. The love and friendship and fighting spirit and playful focus on having fun are all my ideal. So why isn't Fairy Tail my #1 ranked anime? Why is it stuck at #2?
The answer is simple -- because it isn't a completed work. Unfinished stories are mega-annoying. If Fairy Tail were fully adapted it would be longer than One Piece. But it isn't fully adapted. We're missing all the gaiden manga, which were nearly as good as the main series and certainly shouldn't be consigned to oblivion like they have been, and even worse the sequel manga, '100 Years Quest.' 100 Years Quest is by Hiro Mashima and involves the main cast tackling their greatest challenge yet. This is a completely valid arc of the series, as important as any of the others, and it's being totally ignored.
There's little hope '100 Years Quest' will ever be animated, considering they titled the previous Fairy Tail series as 'Fairy Tail Final.' But it needs to be animated. This contradiction is what keeps the show at #2. A perfect series would be animated in full, from start to finish, however long it took. Fairy Tail isn't being properly respected so it can't be #1.
If One Piece ever ended and One Pace, the fan series that condenses the material to get rid of filler, ever adapted it all, it might surpass Fairy Tail for the simple reason that it's a complete series and Fairy Tail isn't. It would be a very unfair way to win but so it goes. Fairy Tail isn't even safe at the #2 position, despite being the pinnacle of imagination.
Meanwhile, I added a new permapost, 'The Challenges of 2050,' something I wrote all the way back in 2011 but is still completely accurate and relevant today, as a 'see also' link to the 'My Philosophy' permapost. It's an outgrowth of my philosophy so it belongs there. It sums up all the problems on Earth and all their solutions if you use the lodestar of my philosophy to come up with answers to every question. Unfortunately in the ten years since that post was written, nothing has been solved and all of it has only gotten worse. We're rapidly approaching 2050 and it's as apocalyptic an approach as I feared.
I've been reading and editing '100 Waifus' for the 29th time, slowly but surely, and I'm about halfway done. This round of editing has been catching and deleting the word 'just' as often as possible. In any particular sentence the word 'just' can improve the quality of the text, but that doesn't take into account its negative externalities for the rest of the book. 'Just' is like spice you can sprinkle on your food -- a little bit improves the taste, but too much overwhelms the taste of the food and ends up with a meal that tastes, too strongly, of the spice alone. With so many 'justs' floating around the book started to feel like nothing but 'just,' it was hard to even think about any other word in the text. Hopefully with this 29th edition the problem has been solved, but of course I'm only halfway through so there are still edits left to go, and even then I'll need a 30th edition because I swore to never stop editing the book until I could read through it without having to edit anything, and I had to edit plenty this 29th time.
I also took advantage of my Fairy Tail rewatch to better describe Lucy's star dresses, so the two things I've been concentrating on recently have synergistically intertwined.
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