The third season of Fairy Tail is 28 episodes long. As is the tradition for Fairy Tail, the season starts with a few episodes of filler. It follows the guild Fairy Tail, in particular, the characters Lucy, Natsu, Happy, Erza, Gray, and now joined by Wendy and Carla from the previous season. They go out on a few quests as Wendy and Carla accustoms themselves in the guild before it moves onto something more interesting, and in a surprisingly quick way. A new character, one whom is touted as the strongest in the guild, makes an appearance, and brings with them a promising tidbit about the dragons that had gone missing in this world, but that part is quickly dropped.
While the season doesn’t go over the same plot as previous seasons, it still falls in the same trap of constantly retconning things in the guide of revealing more backstory of the characters. Nevertheless, it takes a somewhat surprising turn of events. Although once you realise what it is doing, the events that follow are usually predictable. The season tends to focus on Natsu and Wendy, along with Happy and Carla, so the other characters can feel like that they are being left out. Lucy has a short timeframe where she shines. She is usually the weakest member but by some twist, she is now one of the strongest, superseding even Natsu, although this is a temporary thing. However, she is the anime’s primary fan service character, and those types of scenes are starting to increase in frequency.
The anime finally gets its footing in terms of balancing the tone between silliness and seriousness. In the past, when it got too serious, it was always quite boring and hard to take seriously. When it got too silly, it was just… too silly. Now, it strikes a good balance, especially with how it dealt with its plot twist and the effects it has on the characters.
Unfortunately, the animation continues to feel low budget. There are a lot of static scenes where the only thing moving are the characters’ mouths. And don’t even think about fight scenes, since when the animation has to go this far for just the dialogue scenes, there’s no hope for anything else. Plus, the animation studio isn’t exactly known for their quality. The writing, which isn’t spectacular in the first place, can only go so far to help mask the poor animation. The pacing remains slow, because even when things are happening, there are filler scenes inserted in between, which can make it off-putting and boring.
Despite its flaws, the story pacing and the general interestingness of the plot is improving. It’s probably one of the best, if not the best, thus far, even accounting for the cliché bombs of twists and turns. Gray and Erza doesn’t have too much presence in the beginning, so when they finally do appear for the main show, it’s very welcomed and you’re genuinely excited to see them. The world is greatly expanded upon, although probably not in the way you would have wanted. It will be interesting to see if the future direction will take these events into account, but it will most likely just be another blip and be completely ignored afterwards.
The season is predominantly taken up by one arc. This arc, like most of the others so far, drags on for longer than it should. It loses steam towards the end when you just want it to finish and move on. The ending is far too idealistic. It’s one of those where things are easily forgiven, and characters become friends and allies. The villains get an easy way out and people make up, just like that, there are no lasting consequences. While it is sad to say goodbye to some characters, there will be others that show up with their return after you thought they were permanently gone. This fate cheapens the character development that previous seasons were pushing so hard for.
The last part of the season deals with guild matters after pushing it out of focus for most of the season. It focuses on another supporting character, giving them a bit more depth than just someone who looks pretty and drinks a lot. We see a little bit of how the guild operates and promotes its members through the ranks. It only spends a few episodes on it before the season ends right when it feels it is just starting to get into it. It’s weird when you look at the season discretely, but not so much when you consider that when it was on air, the next season started the week after, so it’s just a formality.
Overall, the third season of Fairy Tail, while still not stellar, is one of the better seasons in that the arc was much more interesting. Granted, it felt like it retconned a lot of things, trying to disguise it as if it was the intent all along (and maybe it was, just that it didn’t feel like it was elegantly done). The pacing and characters are more engaging, although it runs out of steam towards the end, where it was stretching it, giving you several false ends. Having a tiny bit of the next arc shoved into the end of the season is kind of weird if you watch by seasons, but if you are watching it back-to-back, then it’s not as jarring.
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