The fourth season of Fairy Tail is 25 episodes long. Given that the last few episodes of the third season started a brand new arc, it is only natural that this season continued straight after it. Most of the main characters within Fairy Tail are on the island as they are participating in the trial to become S-Class members of the guild. Unfortunately, they are gate crashed with an opposing guild whose aim seems to be at first to just crush them. They practically came to invade the island, having planned this earlier. There was some slight foreshadowing given some characters had shown up earlier before.
The attacking guild has powerful members. This is expected given that the story needs to give the protagonists at least some sort of challenge. The whole season is pretty much just filled with combat. The Fairy Guild members are effectively separated into teams to fight against the opposing guild. Given that are so many characters, there’s not much time to showcase each of the clashes and that’s why the pacing can feel too fast as it rushes through each pairing. That’s in addition to the standard low quality fight choreography where characters yelling and scenes with minimal movement makes up most of the “action”.
The core motivation behind the opposing team invading is quite simple. Rather, it is too simple. Granted, it is nice to see that their motivation, the legendary wizard Zeref, is a character who had been mentioned many times already in the past so that there is some sort of continuity. On the other hand, it’s a shallow reason that has been done many times before also in the past. The anime relies too heavily on flashbacks. Due to its large cast, it is still trying to show off the backstory of nearly every single guild member. Yes, it does make some of the uninteresting ones more interesting but this also means a lot of characters lose focus or that they only have small roles going forward. It doesn’t help that every single character seemingly has some significant role or history, which feels too contrived.
Unfortunately, as is the usual for the anime, there are characters introduced with a seemingly deep seated hatred or a really strong reason as their motivation. Yet after one battle, it is completely resolved, whether it is because they have realized that it was a misunderstanding, or that they’ve now seen the light and changed their mind. This means that no matter how hard the anime tries, the characters remain shallow and the resolutions being anti-climactic.
Even in the most serious of scenes, this isn’t an anime that takes itself too seriously. There are a lot of attempts at humor with most of it being childish and predictable. This is understandable given the target demographic. From time to time, there are some funnier gags. One thing that the anime does do much better than before are those moments where it showcases Fairy Tail as one team and one guild. There’s nothing better than when the characters are in unison and perfectly in sync with each other, whether that is when they’re fighting, or in their ideals.
The continuous fighting drags down the season, leaving little room for good storytelling. As mentioned already, the fights are not amazing, especially when you know the results. There’s just nothing interesting happening in those fights so each of them blends into each other, lacking identity and uniqueness. The exposition of the story is not great. The worst thing is that there is some potential because the anime has quite a bit of foreshadowing at times, but it is let down by the poor quality of absolutely everything else in this adaptation.
The end of the arc had a huge surprise. After having the whole season being predictable and cliched, there was one moment where the plot went in a direction that was completely left field. Yes, this type of plot development and surprise has been done before but it was still something completely expected. It definitely has a lot of potential and it’s up to the next season to see if it is used properly, or just yet another blimp of things that had happened and will be forgotten. Although the twist was ruined and degraded given it was resolved the very next episode with little repercussions.
Overall, the fourth season of Fairy Tail is basically more of the same. If you liked it before, you will like it now. If you didn’t, then there is nothing here that will change your mind. There are some serious storytelling and pacing issues, as the season was dominated by boring fight scenes and a heavy reliance on flashbacks. The low budget nature of the animation hurts it a lot and is the sole reason why this adaptation can be so poor at times.
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