Fairy Tail - Part 1 [DVD]

Lucy is a young wizard looking to join one of Fiore's magic guilds. The guild she wants to join most is Fairy Tail, a guild infamous for the amount of collateral damage they cause. After a meeting with the eccentric Natsu and his flying cat Happy, Lucy gets the chance to follower her dream and join the energetic and friendly guild.

This two disc set of the `Fairy Tail' anime contains the first twelve episodes of the series. Unfortunately, the beginning of the manga was always somewhat weak and the same can be said of this anime as it isn't until episode eleven and the beginning of the Demon Island arc that the series gets better than average. The first few arcs of the story are really only introductory arcs, designed to get people use to the world and characters and it isn't until the final two episodes of this set that things begin to get interesting. The adaption is, so far, relatively faithful to the original manga with only a single filler episode and that does have some scenes based on one of the manga's extra chapters.

The animation for the series is generally good but it is somewhat annoying that they use stock footage for some of the attacks and spells. It is also somewhat annoying that they have a transformation sequence when Erza changes her armour as her magic is said in series to be quicker than anyone else's.

The English dub also something of a mixed bag with some good points and some bad. On the good side, Colleen Clinkenbeard is perfect as Erza and Monica Rial is also very good as Mirajane. On the other hand I am not a fan of Todd Haberkorn voicing Natsu and some of the other voices will take a little getting used to. The set does, of course, include the original Japanese as well though.

While it is true that, as of writing this, FUNimation has only licenced the first forty-eight episode season of the series for release in the West, there is always the chance that they may acquire the others at some point in the future if the series proves popular enough, they only got the rights for these episodes in 2011 after all.

Overall, I would give this first set of episodes for the `Fairy Tail' anime three and a half stars, four if I was feeling very generous, but I would say that you shouldn't judge the series as a whole by these episodes as it does get better.

I wasn't too sure what to expect with Fairy Tail, given that the other major long-running shounen series like Bleach, Naruto and One Piece never really appealed to me. After taking a punt and buying this release, I was pleasantly surprised to find Fairy Tail (based on the first twelve episodes) is an amusing adventure anime, though it does have its cliched moments.

The basic premise of the show is nothing to write home about - girl has seemingly hopeless dream of joining a certain magical guild, yet ends up a member more by luck than judgement. Fairy Tail's main strength is in the core set of characters. Lucy, Natsu, Happy, Erza and Gray all combine to form a group of adventurers that keep the viewer entertained with their various antics. Happy in particular has some one-liners (usually directed at Lucy) that made me laugh out loud.

With there only being twelve episodes in this first release, the story does not advance too much, and there are only two or three short storylines, but they all serve as effective introductions to the main characters and quite a few of the side characters too.

I've heard quite a few people complain that the UK has only recieved a DVD release for Fairy Tail, but as I understand it, the US blu-ray releases are only upscales. Watching this DVD release on a blu-ray player gives a picture quality that, at least in my opinion, looks perfectly fine.

In short, I'd recommend Fairy Tail to anyone who is a fan of shounen anime, and to anyone who is looking for an amusing long-running series to invest in. There's nothing high-brow or sophisticated about the series, but I think that's part of Fairy Tail's charm. It's a fun ride that you can sit back, relax and enjoy. I'm already looking forward to continuing the journey in part 2.