Fairy Tail

Fairy Tail is finally ending! Only 9 chapters remain. FT started off strong but after the Tenrou Island arc, its quality sharply dropped. If you’ve read anything else I’ve written you know that I think it’s one of the worst manga out there right now. The only reason I still read it is to see it through and that I have hope it’ll somehow redeem itself by the end. It still hasn’t and probably won’t ever though.

Tying up loose ends

The comic is resolving all of its conflict in preparation for the inevitable end. The last chapter gave us the death of Acnologia, the Black Dragon, and eater of all magic. It wouldn’t be so bad if his end wasn’t so anticlimactic.

He fell into time magic. That’s it. THAT’S HOW HE DIES?

After several arcs of hyping up his character, he meets his end in such a wonky way. To be fair, he might not have died immediately, as the formula for FT chapters these days is to have enemies come back more powerful only to meet their ends by some convenient plot point. An example of that formula in action is Zeref.

Zeref was painted as a God who had the curse of contradiction put on him. And how does he die again? The first master of Fairy Tail comes in and lies to him about how she hates him, and because she’s also under that curse they both die.That all happens after he puts time magic inside him or something, I don’t even care anymore.

But cool, not like that’s a waste of time or anything.

I once had high hopes for Fairy Tail. The world, the magic, and its characters were all so likable. Natsu being a no-nonsense typical protagonist was endearing. Facing his problems head on and eating other magic to add to his firepower was so great.

Eventually, the mangaka reduced good coherent plot points in favor of fanservice characters and art. We stopped getting fights that made sense and started getting more of characters that don’t matter to the overall plot.

Nobody ever stays dead

You would think that when a story kills a character, it’s for good right?

Not this one, ladies and gentlemen.

FT has played it safe throughout its entire run. Remember the Tenrou Island arc and how we thought everyone died? Only to have everyone come back because of some trash magic move we hadn’t ever heard of before? Remember when Juvia sacrificed herself for Gray only to still be alive? Remember when Makarov died heroically for his family?

You might think I want the author to actively go out and kill his creations, but that isn’t my point. Being trigger happy is also bad. My point is that if you’re going to kill a character, do it, don’t go backtracking on everything just because your fans want a happy ending.

Huge character moments are ruined as soon as you revive a dead person.

Sure you might be like “Oh but what about all those characters that died like Zeref, or the first master’s friend? Or what about all those villains that were killed? They died and never came back.”

Right, but who honestly cared about them dying? I sure didn’t. There are ways to have the reader care for dying characters without killing them off and then bringing them back.

End it now

To sum it all up Fairy Tail used to be great. At the very beginning, there were some genuinely enjoyable moments, but that all changed along the way. It’s as if the author didn’t plan the story further than 200 chapters and then found himself having to add trash to glue the story together the further it went. I can’t bear to see Fairy Tail prostituting itself out for views by turning to fan service instead of what once made it great. The ideal outcome would be to just end it now, but luckily there are only 9 chapters left.