First Master!
What They Say:
“The Country Until Tomorrow”
The Lucy rescue team led by Natsu finally makes it out of Hell Palace after an epic battle with the Garou Knights… but they’re stopped dead in their tracks by a single mysterious figure before them!
The Review: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
So it’s really cool watching three pretty badass girls fight each other in a tournament full of men and their ambitions. Like, what’s driven a lot of Fairy Tail thus far, especially this arc? Natsu and company are fighting to redeem their guild, the Twin Dragons are trying to get better than their idols Natsu and Gajeel, some other stuff involving guys, most notably Quatro Cerberus, or Quatro Puppy as they are now known.
To watch Erza, who fights for her friends, Lucy especially, Minerva, who fights for her own selfish reasons of power, and Kagura, who fights to kill the man who oppressed her friends, fight against each other is pretty cool.
Now, here’s where I have a big problem with this season of Fairy Tail. I previously praised the animation and character designs for being a step up from season one. I was wrong. After nine episodes, I know I was super, super wrong. There is something really off about these character designs and animation that I still feel wasn’t present in that first episode. Perhaps they had a bigger budget, or spent a bunch of it on, the first episode. But man has it gone to hell. Eyes especially look REALLY off for no reason other than laziness. Juvia especially looks awful. Those cool fight scenes I was just talking about? Poorly animated. One of the funniest scenes I saw in the episode came when Freed suddenly dropped his hand, like they just forgot to put in in-between animation. What the hell?
The episode’s content is light on material, but pushes forward the important bits. The fight in the Grand Magic Games continues while the Lucy rescue team is finally almost out of their dank dungeon, only to meet…Lucy? I guess?
Whatever Fairy Tail.
In Summary:
The fighting in here could only be enhanced by being better animated. I would love to see Erza, Kagura, and Minerva fight and it actually look good. Or basically anyone fight and for it to look good. They use some stills in the episode, which makes the fight scenes look a little better, just because they only have to draw a picture and not an animation.
Plot-wise, it’s moving forward nice enough. The tournament takes a back seat to the saving Lucy, and suffers for it, but we’re (hopefully) back in full swing next week with this Kagura v. Erza fight. I just want to see two sword wielding badasses duke it out. Is that so much to ask?
Grade: C+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Equipment: Radeon 7850, 24” Dell UltraSharp U2410 set at 1920 x 1200, Creative GigaWorks T20 Series II
