Season 6 of Fairy Tail is 25 episodes long, based upon the manga series. Since the fifth season was filler, most of which occurred then was inconsequential and thus forgotten. However, the first episode is dedicated to the characters talking about those events but also utilizes that time to say goodbye to all the supporting characters that had returned. We can expect to never see them again. The anime then continues on its merry way and properly deals with the seven year absence of the core members of the Fairy Tail guild.
In those seven years, Fairy Tail has become a joke. They were one of the strongest, if not the strongest, guilds, but they have now sunken to become a laughing stock. They are the lowest ranked guild and this is a bitter pill to swallow. It’s surprising that it only took seven years for this massive fall in grace. The world has also changed in those years with new guilds popping up and taking the number one spot. There are some new customs too, the main one of which is the annual competition that takes up the whole of this season.
The annual competition is one in which all guilds can participate in. Winning this competition cements that guild as the number one guild in Fiore. It is a convenient way, and an easy excuse, to have a big tournament arc in ths anime. Of course, Fairy Tail cannot miss this opportunity to reclaim their title and they enter the competition. It takes a few episodes for the characters to prepare and party until the competition actually starts. The characters need some training to power up their abilities. Thanks to their seven years of absence, people they had one knew had gotten a lot more powerful, so they need some training to catch up. Sadly, the characters boost their powers via a shortcut, feeling like they cheated and removes any meaning to their additional strength.
The competition itself isn’t filled by one-on-one battles, otherwise it would be too boring. It’s composed of various challenges so it’s like a slightly more serious (and dangerous) sports festival. It tries to amp up the atmosphere with strong rival teams as well as cheating rival times. You fully expect Fairy Tail, who are the dark horse of the competition, to one up all the others and show the world who is boss. There is another arc wrapped into this given that the competition organizers are shrouded in mystery. There is something shady going on so while the Fairy Tail members are genuinely participating to win, there are others who are there to investigate the unusual magical activity.
There are further hints at a deeper plot happening in the background. Characters with nefarious plans are trying to do something yet ultimately it doesn’t amount to much. It feels like it is constantly teasing you as the focus still stays on the tournament itself. It tries to build up too much so that when some of the arcs are resolved, it is anticlimactic as it wasn’t not as big a deal as it was trying to make it out to be. Furthermore, the anime has so many one-off characters in the past such that when they are reintroduced in a way that is supposed to be significant, you probably had forgotten who they were, and all the impact was lost.
For an anime with traditionally low-quality animation and poor fight scenes, it does surprisingly well this season. There is an abundance of fight scenes but it uses the usual tricks to better effect. The season is more exciting and fun to watch in general. It’s not going to win any awards but at least it is slightly more than just a slideshow. The downside is that since the season has to cover so many battles, it rushes a lot of them and they end too quickly. It builds up some of the events to successfully create eagerness from you, only to fail at satisfying that during the actual event. While at other times, you don’t expect anything good as it’s probably filler but it is better than normal.
The power levels are out of whack since despite Fairy Tail members having trouble against certain opponents in the first half of the season, somehow, they completely decimate and dominate others in the second half. Yes Fairy Tail members are supposed to be strong but they went from zero to infinity in the blink of an eye and this is a tough pill to swallow. It doesn’t help that their opponents were also hyped up to be serious challengers. There is a similar problem with the relative power levels of each character. When characters are facing off against each other, you expected one to win based on what we were told and what we had seen before, but then the anime ignores that and flips the victor to the other side. This feels inconsistent.
Lucy unfortunately gets the short end of the stick time and time again. At this point, you’d have to wonder if the writer hates her. She starts off well, getting a power boost and comfortably squaring off against a strong opponent. Then just when she may be able to get the limelight and justify her own place in the Fairy Tail guild, she gets curbstomped and put out of action. It’s disappointing when this is constantly her fate. On the flipside, Natsu remains his normal self, which can be annoying. Love or hate him, it does feel good when he fights for his fellow guild members. However, even though it was satisfying to see him beat the pulp out of his opponents, the fact that he gained his massive boost in power by taking a no-effort shortcut at the beginning of the season cheapens a lot of Fairy Tail’s wins in this tournament.
Surprisingly, the arc does not end by the end of this season. It gets close to finishing it but you’ll realize when there were only five or so episodes left that there was no way it could be finished off. It’s a bit disappointing, particularly since the anime seemed to have finally found a good balance and started becoming enjoyable. A lot of the humor remains the same as previous seasons, which means that it can be cringeworthy and cheap. Yet there are times where it is decent and funny. It is at these moments that the anime shines with what could have been had it managed to provide consistent higher quality content.
Overall, the sixth season of Fairy Tail is actually the best season yet. After over a hundred episodes and multiple seasons, it finally struck that balance between its low budget animation and enjoyable storytelling. Granted, it’s still not the most complex or amazing story, and the tournament arc is a lazy and unoriginal story attempt, yet it was fun to watch. There remains the cheesy and cringeworthy moments, there’s the plot points that feels pointless, but for the first time, you aren’t bored out of your mind for most of the season and there are plenty of episodes with genuine emotions.