Review for Fairy Tail: Part 5

Introduction

It’s been over fourteen months since I last watched an episode of Fairy Tail. It’s a shonen action anime with a difference. It fits that niche populated with shows like Naruto, One Piece and Bleach, with testosterone fuelled main characters, episode spanning fights, and lots of levelling up and training, but Fairy Tail does things its own way, with less of the more tedious clichés, a couple of prominent female characters, and a larger emphasis on comedy. In that respect it tends more towards the wackiness of One Piece rather than the tediousness of Bleach. But fourteen months is a long time in anime, a long time in which we’ve had to wait for Funimation to come to terms with the success of the first 48 episodes, and ride that wave of success to license and localise the next batch of episodes, and for those episodes to eventually work their way around the English speaking anime consuming territories of the world to finally make it to a UK release. It’s been long enough for Manga Entertainment to release this fifth collection on Blu-ray as well as DVD, and in the process commit to going back and re-releasing the earlier episodes in high definition as well, come next March.

Yes, fourteen months is a long time, and as I re-read my review for collection 4, and scratch my head at the effusive praise I lavished on those episodes, I realise that I have only the faintest recollection of the characters, no idea of what the story was about, and no idea why I liked the show so much. I’m back at square one with the show, the extended hiatus has killed its momentum stone dead, and I’m going to have to work to find what made it so special in the first place. On the bright side, I do get shiny new Blu-ray discs to motivate me in the right direction!


The Kingdom of Fiore is a rather special place, a nation of some 17 million where magic exists, is commonplace, and is a commodity to be bought and sold. Those who become proficient in magic are the wizards, and together they form guilds to serve the community, or serve themselves. The most famous, and indeed the most infamous guild of them all is Fairy Tail. 17-year-old Lucy Heartfilia is a wizard, or rather she wants to be a wizard. She’s already skilled in a Celestial magic, able to summon spirits to do her bidding using Gatekeys. Her dream is to be in Fairy Tail, and when she meets a travelsick young wizard named Natsu, and his talking cat companion Happy, it seems like destiny has brought them together. Now Lucy has joined the Fairy Tail Guild, and with its unique roster of wizards, including Natsu, the ice wizard Gray Fullbuster, and the armour wizard Erza Scarlet, and the flying cat Happy, they undertake the toughest, the most challenging, and the weirdest of missions.

Manga Entertainment release the next twelve episodes of Fairy Tail across two discs, and this collection has the Fairy Tail guild come to terms with Laxus’ betrayal, some love potion mayhem, and Lucy running into her father again, before the guild being assigned the next major mission. The Dark Guilds are getting active again, with the Oracion Seis group behind some ominous machinations. They’re a powerful guild, even though they only consist of six members, and it’s too much for one guild to handle alone. Fairy Tail has to team up with Blue Pegasus, Lamia Scale, and Cait Shelter, old friends and old enemies alike to deal with the problem. Cait Shelter’s contribution is just one little girl, Wendy, and her flying cat Charle, and it turns out that Wendy, just like Natsu, is a Dragon Slayer too. But Oracion Seis’s plans include reviving a dark wizard that everyone thought was dead, a very familiar face...

The twelve episodes of Fairy Tail Part 5 are presented across 2 Blu-ray discs from Manga Entertainment thus.


Disc 1
49. The Day of the Fateful Encounter
50. Special Request: Watch Out for the Guy You Like!
51. Love & Lucky
52. Allied Forces, Assemble!
53. Enter the Oracion Seis!
54. Maiden of the Sky
55. The Girl and the Ghost
56. Dead Grand Prix

Disc 2
57. Darkness
58. Celestial Skirmish
59. Jellal of Days Gone By
60. March of Destruction

Picture

Blu-ray should mean sharp, crystal clear, high definition animation. Not so much with Fairy Tail though, as while the show does get a 1080p widescreen presentation at the 1.78:1 aspect ratio, it’s clear that the show was animated at a lower resolution and scaled up. It looks little different from the DVD presentation, soft and with somewhat muted colours. I also get the feeling, given the odd bit of judder in pans and scrolls, particularly during the credit sequences, that it’s been converted to a progressive format from an interlaced source. What the HD presentation does offer is clarity and smoothness of character artwork, with no aliasing to speak of, and compression artefacts completely absent. And you do get a 24 fps progressive presentation, without any of the PAL speed-up or pitch correction that you would get with a PAL DVD. That alone is reason enough to opt for the Blu-ray.

The image is clear and generally very pleasant too watch. It’s a bright, lively anime, and given that it’s a long running series, the character designs are understandably simplistic, the world design not overly complex. It’s full of primary colours, and the animation itself is energetic, especially through the various spell sequences.

The images in this review are sourced from the PR, and aren’t necessarily representative of the final retail release.

Sound

You have the choice between Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround English, and Dolby TrueHD 2.0 Stereo Japanese, with optional translated subtitles and a signs only track. You do get the added clarity and range of a lossless presentation, but it’s still pretty similar to the DVD, although I must once again reiterate that it’s at the native frame rate and without any speed-up or pitch correction. I sampled the English dub, and found it to be a typical anime comedy dub, high pitched female voices, and loudness and manic intensity substituting for humour. My preference as always was for the Japanese audio track with the subtitles. It too is adequate, although one slight point of annoyance for some may be the lead character of Lucy played by Aya Hirano, who simply supplies another variation of her stock Haruhi Suzumiya tsundere voice. Otherwise it’s a fairly run of the mill audio track, playing the show for laughs, with little yet to stretch the characters. More impressive is the show’s music, which with a pop Celtic theme supplements the show’s magical themes very well, although it is boosted by a wholesale plundering of the classical music archives. The subtitles are clear, well timed, and free of error throughout and with a nice smooth HD font.

Extras

The discs get animated menus, and appear to be the Funimation discs repackaged, given the FBI warning and the US trailers. No localisation here from Madman...

Disc 1 autoplays with a trailer for Guilty Crown, and has on it an audio commentary that accompanies episode 49. In it ADR director Tyler Walker is joined by voice of Happy, Todd Haberkorn, Cherami Leigh (Lucy) and ADR Engineer Kyle Phillips.


Disc 2 autoplays with a trailer for Haganai, and its commentary accompanies episode 58. Tyler Walker returns with Cherami Leigh, and also in the booth are Aaron Dismuke (Hibiki), and Lindsay Seidel (Angel).

Neither of the commentaries shed a lot of light on the series, and are really more devoted to staff gossip.

Also on disc 2 are the textless credits, and the US trailer for this collection.

Under trailers you’ll also find SD trailers for One Piece, Toriko, and Hetalia Axis Powers, as well as HD trailers for Eureka Seven AO (salt in the wound), Oh Edo Rocket, Fairy Tail part 6, the Remnant Knights Game and Funimation.com.

Conclusion

Fourteen months really is a long time. I felt totally adrift with this collection of episodes, and even by the end of the set, there was so much in the way of continuity and ongoing plot threads that had slipped my grasp that I really had no idea what was going on for much of it. For Fairy Tail fans that have the luxury of time, watching the first 48 episodes again before resuming with collection 5 would be very much advised at this point. I was trying to think back to just who I was, that I gave collection 4 such a high rating, was so effusive in my praise about it, as I really wasn’t feeling any of that for this set of twelve episodes.


It doesn’t help that Fairy Tail collection 5 starts off with the most dull and uninspiring episode in The Day of the Fateful Encounter. It’s set after the Battle of Fairy Tail and the expulsion of Makarov’s grandson Laxus from the guild. There isn’t much of a flashback to remind of that momentous arc though, as this episode is more a combination of Lucy’s love life and the arrival of a news reporter to do a story on the Guild. The next two episodes are standalones too; with a bit of nonsense about Juvia and a faulty love potion, and something a little more substantial, with an episode about Lucy and her father. He’s down on his luck and looking for a little help from the daughter he had previously disowned. It’s an episode about reconciliation, but it also introduces the Dark Guild Naked Mummy, which leads on into the next major story arc, about the Oracion Seis Dark Guild, and its plan for revolution in the magic world, using the prohibited Nirvana magic.

As with any long arc in Fairy Tail, it involves Lucy, Natsu, Happy, Gray and Erza, but this time they join forces with other guilds as well. My memory being as wafer thin as it is, I had completely forgotten that they had encountered some of these characters before, and had a history with them, so plot references and call-backs were going over my head. This arc also introduces a new character, Wendy, who like Natsu is a Dragon Slayer, one who uses healing magic. She’s obviously a major addition to the cast, and has a significant back-story which will no doubt pan out in subsequent episodes.


But I really wish I had the time to re-watch the earlier episodes, as so much of this arc relies on what has come before. I had just the faintest recollection of who Jellal is, and what role he played in the earlier series, but not enough to truly get the point of his resurrection in this arc. As such these episodes really played like just another standard shonen action story. However, there were a couple of points where I caught a glimpse of what I must have loved about the earlier episodes. From episode 58, where Lucy battles another Celestial Wizard named Angel, it’s an episode which as well as delivering on the action, the drama and the laughs, really manages to hit you in the emotions, and that’s something I recall raving about when I watched the show before. That sense of emotional connection continues in the next few episodes as Jellal encounters Erza again, and the reunion develops in an unexpected way.

I don’t think this collection of episodes is as good as the last set, but as it comes to a close I’m reminded of what it is that I did like about Fairy Tail. It takes a while to get there, but I’m beginning to get my memory jogged about this show. Fairy Tail fans won’t have a pile of review discs to prioritise, so I suggest you re-watch the earlier episodes to get into the right frame of mind for collection 5. As for the Blu-ray release, at least you get the show in the correct frame rate without PAL speed-up.