FAIRY TAIL / First Impressions

Summary:

Given how the dark guild Eisenwald has taken over a train, Lucy, Erza, Natsu, and Gray rush to the next station and find a large crowd gathered outside. They head in and find Erigor along with the rest of his guild waiting for them, and Erigor makes it sound like he plans to broadcast the death magic of Lullaby to the crowd gathered outside. Erigor, however, departs the scene and leaves the members of Eisenwald to take care of Natsu and company. In response to this, Erza decides to send Natsu and Gray after him, and she makes it a point to emphasize that they should work together. Two of the top Eisenwald members go after them, but that still leaves a ton of opponents for Erza and Lucy. That proves not to be a problem though because Erza makes use of her ability to switch out equipment on the fly, giving her access to a vast array of weapons.

Erza is also able to switch out her armor, and after doing so, she’s able to wipe out almost all of the enemies in one attack. The one remaining guy runs away, so Erza sends Lucy after him. Erza herself then grabs a megaphone and disperses the crowd outside, but much to her surprise, Erigor subsequently surrounds the station in a barrier made of wind and pushes Erza back inside. Natsu and Gray meanwhile decide to go down different paths, and after finding the station’s broadcast studio empty, Gray starts to question what Erigor’s real goal is. He then gets attacked by one of the guys who chased after him, but Gray doesn’t have too much trouble handling him. Gray gets the guy to reveal that Erigor’s real goal is to trap them here so that Erigor himself can fly to the meeting of guild masters and use the Lullaby on them. This gets Gray really pissed off, and he vows to stop them.

Preview

After all the setup last week, this turned out to be a pretty good episode. The main highlight was Erza of course, and as overpowered as she was, she was still a lot of fun to watch with all of her attacks and mahou shoujo-esque transformation. I also noticed that her armor got a lot more revealing, and in general, bust sizes seemed to increase this episode. In any case, the battles this episode were kind of weak since not even Gray’s opponent posed much of a challenge, but I suspect the main purpose of this episode was to showcase Erza and Gray’s abilities. As such, Kageyama will probably be a bit harder of a fight since we’ve already seen Natsu’s abilities plenty of times, and Erigor will likely be the real challenge, so I’m looking forward to next episode.

On a different note, I saw Watarirouka Hashiritai singing this series’ ending song on NHK’s Music Japan, and it felt odd to see them performing such a cutesy anime-connected song among the line-up of much more well-known (at least to me) artists like Otsuka Ai, flumpool, and MINMI. Then again, I don’t think very highly of the song, so I’m probably biased against it.

38 Comments

  4. Erza requipping to the Titania armor was pretty. It was a bit over extended but it was pretty.
    I’m tired of the whole summoning sequence for Lucy’s celestial spirits though. Maybe the first time is fine, but if it’s going to be shown each time she summons it feels like a drag, and it’s a bit corny too with their poses and catch phrases they say when they come out.

    koager
    Reply

  8. @Trinergy

    lol welcome to typical shounen stories lol…

    Show Spoiler ▼

    Putang
    Reply

  9. Some of the animation puts me off, sigh. Manga art is a billion times better.
    So glad they fixed Gerad OP pic as well. Much, MUCH better than before. It was so horrid.
    Erza henshin…. I had to facepalm xPPP Still raging at the stills, but oh well… all the Erza action had me say this is best episode yet. A-1/Sat need to stop re-using sequences 🙁

    Rei
    Reply

  11. Tch, was looking forward to Erza and all but turns out the girl borrows heavily:

    – First sword she used: I’ve seen that design in so many places I can’t even count. What vividly comes to memory though is Luca Blight’s sword from Suikoden II
    – Hiding weapons in another dimension: definitely saw that before some where
    – shoujo transformation: the sailor moon effect is obviously not over yet
    – Armor transformation: Jeanne D’arc is who comes to mind, seeing as Erza is alot like her
    – Sword incantation: Dance, my bleach white swords

    And the damn-est thing is: it works!! damn it, it works.

    Gmoney
    Reply

  21. Decent ep.
    Like mentioned, it’s be “so-so” really as a series.
    Saying that, like all shonens, you need to give it time for all the characters to be introduced, relationships clearly formed, and plot to unravel.
    I’ll judge the series come the 26 ep mark, but it’s been fairly enjoyable so far.
    Can’t say the manga is any better really. People are making it out to be a huge, epic difference, which simply isn’t the case. It’s a good, enjoyable shonen which heavily takes influence from One Piece. Nothing more, nothing less.
    It hovers around the same level as Hitman Reborn and D.Gray-Man in terms of status and quality.

    blinx01
    Reply

  23. I don’t think Lucy even summons Cancer in the manga. I guess they wanted to make her seem a little less useless.

    On the topic of anime/manga differences, blinx01 was pretty much dead on with Fairy Tail being on the same level as Hitman Reborn and D.Gray-Man. Pretty much all of the blood is removed so the villains or heroes never really seem to get ‘hurt’, the art in the manga is better, animation sequences for attacks/summons are added, certain scenes are toned down or made more ‘kiddyish’ etc. Obviously things are going to be changed from the manga because the anime is an ‘adaption’.

    rara
    Reply

  29. Hmm, the fight scenes seem so… static in their animation. I guess it’s on par for a standard shonen anime, but its going to be pretty annoying if the quality doesn’t pick up… Though perhaps I’m just spoiled by FMA and DtB.

    OTOH, the more I hear the voice acting, the more I like it. ^_^

    Also, three cheers for Gray and equal-opportunity fanservice!

    hellrose
    Reply

  34. I’m extremely disappointed with this episode. This anime adaptation is an insult to the manga. The most powerful woman in Fairy Tail gets some kind of Sailor Moon’s transformation treatment? Are you kidding me? What kind of crap is that?

    pierce
    Reply

  35. @v1cious: It’s her first showing. She doesn’t pull the full Gate of Babylon lookalike until Luxus arc.

    @pierce: Honestly, I always did want to see the anime do it magical-girl-style at least once, so I was pretty happy 😀 OTOH, if they’re going to KEEP doing it that way, you might have a complaint.

    MechR
    Reply

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