#its so obvious in the 100yq when natsu sees that edo natsu and edo lucy married and had a child

[konohamaru-sensei]

OP, I'm so very delighted to have stumbled over this and I agree with my whole heart with everything you said. I do not come to argue (because I'm very argument shy), I just want to add my five own thoughts.

I started FT in January because JJK made me so miserable (and this is not to say jjk sucks or whatever, I love that story) and it had this reputation of "nobody dies" and I really wanted "nobody dies" so I thought, why not? I had seen a few ep back in 2009, a long time ago and remembered nothing so I went in with a fresh mind. Let me tell you, I did not expect to cry as often and as hard as I did watching this.

It has the reputation to be "good at the beginning" but then to "fall off" like so many shonen do, but I watched it from beginning to end in a few months and I can't say I noticed a big decline. The opposite really, I noticed how things were set up arcs in advance that got a pay off later, something one piece fans praise oda (rightfully) for. LIke sure, here and there one or two things I would have liked differently but when is a narrative ever perfect?

I don't have a problem with people that want a more gruesome story, a little less friendship saves the day and hey, there are enough manga /anime out there to find with exactly that, but to me Fairy Tail is about love in all forms, family in all forms and bonds in all forms. And how all those different types of bonds and love help you overcome the darkest times. Mashima loves his happy endings yes, so what? I love them too.

What I also noticed is that though all of its fanservice (which, I can blend out well, but I also don't need it), the female charactes are treated with much more respect than in other shonen series. It sounds goofy, but not only is LUcy a clear leading lady (not sidelined for a male character or whatever, she definitely has the center of attention), Erza (and Mira) is also mentioned over and over and over again as being stronger as the main character, even when Natsu punches bad guy. Heck, in the tartaros arc FT would have lost if not for Lucy. Erza gets to take down a big bad in the final arc and there is no guy to help the damsell in distress.

(Inicdentially thats what I love about erza and jellal so much. I mean I love when he jumps in to help her, Im a stupid romantic and thats my otp, but often than not they just nod at each other from afar and go "no, he/ she can handle himself / herself"....ahh)

Sigh, there is so much there! So much pain and misery and love and belonging. But if I would go too much into detail it would just be a rehash of what you, op, already said, so I will refrain. I will just say how much it guts me that all three of Ur's children, that she sacrificed her life for, not only carried that death with them their whole lives but also in turn became self-sacrificial too. Ultear of course gets her own redemption but Lyon doesn't get absolve until the very end and well Gray just loads more guilt onto himself (also not to derail but that scene when gray tells lyon that he needs to move forward is my favourite thing oh my god help me im going to cry)

These characters have so much trauma. They have so much baggage. Friendship wins, yes, but what is the cost? The people who stayed behind SEVEN YEARS and waited for their friends to come back, they suffered, and its not like we don't get to see that. Gajeel still regrets what he did to levy after years have passed, Juvia still apologises when it rains, even though she didn't do anything...

Ok I'm trying to wrap this up, because I'm forgetting things I wanted to say, but, I see you didn't mention Gray and Juvia, which is fine of course maybe you don't like their dynamic - but I do :D (sorry) And i know, I KNOW mashima didn't write juvia that way, I KNOW she is supposed to be a joke character to laugh at, but the dynamic of a boy who just hates everything about himself, looks down on how he is, thinks he is weak and the girl who just like loves him, loud and aggressive and unwavering - its so lovely.

It's a good series. I have been advertising it to friends heavily since I've seen it. It's not the best narrative ive ever read or my favourite anime, but it gets a reputation it does not deserve and I will fight for it.

Probably no one cares but I need to rant about Fairy Tail now that I finally finished it. Because I feel like it gets a lot more hate than it deserves considering that almost everything it set out to do it did right. Starting from characterization and relationship dynamics. Those were fucking great. They're so fucking fleshed out, I love them.

And I've seen people complaining about Natsu and Lucy's relationship being dragged out but I feel they're missing on the fact that, first and foremost, they're partners, and no amount of romance or lack thereof can change that. Not long after meeting him Lucy jumps out of a window with no hesitation and no back up plan because she heard Natsu's voice and that meant she would be safe. That is not just a high level of trust, that is insane. And that's the entirety of their relationship. Making them romantic wouldn't change anything. It would just mean slapping a different label on it, because their relationship simply cannot be more deep and meaningful than it already is. (And this might be my aroace ass speaking, but I cannot imagine Natsu being stereotypically romantic. Even if they decided that they were, in fact, dating, I feel nothing would change in the ways they act around each other)

Also about Erza and Jellal, really. They're clearly meant to be together, they love each other. But they can't share any amount of time on the same room without it becoming awkward or dramatic because the amount of shared trauma between them is fucking astronomical. They need twenty years of therapy before they can do any significantly romantic thing and that's great. It's awesome! Just because you're in love with someone doesn't mean that being together will be easy! But that doesn't make their relationship any less meaningful or tender.

And the platonic relationships! The family ones! Makarov will risk himself and use the fairy law and Mavis tries to stop him. Tells him she has a plan that will lead to victory. Only for Makarov to say "I know this. But I need it now because the children are suffering and I won't wait a second longer" before obliterating an entire army.

Gildarts might be a womanizer but he's good with kids and he's so fucking delighted at having a child. He's so proud, and so embarrassing. I love him.

The raijinshuu are friends, and it shows, and I kinda love that the one to have a raging crush on Laxus is not Ever, the only woman among them. And the Strauss siblings have such a good relationship too. And thankfully don't fall into any of the worst sibling cliches. Levi and Gajeel spend the whole time they know eachother developing a relationship on the background, and by the time you pay atention they're sleeping together. That's hilarious. It's fantastic.

And speaking of Laxus, he goes from being a crazy fuck to incredibly cool and dependable without it feeling like he got a complete personality transplant. Partly because it soon becomes clear that most dragon slayers are, at any given time, one wrong turn away from completely losing the plot regardless of their best intentions. But also because his core values remain the same. Guild pride is the thing that drives him. When we first see him he's obsessed with making Fairy Tail strong so that it can stand proud on the face of anything. After taking a forceful journey of self discovery he learns that the guild is the sum of every individual person on it, instead of an abstract ideal of power, but the fact remains that the guild is the important thing to him. That's why he gets Natsu to defeat Hades instead of doing it himself. Because at that point he's not a part of the guild, so if he's the one to win it'd mean that Fairy Tail didn't, and that simply cannot stand.

All in all, it does such a good job of depicting good and complicated relationships with care and nuance, and makes a place for the ones that are bad. Lucy's dad has to work to get accepted back into her life, and that's amaizing. Where else have you seen a parent that doesn't get instant forgiveness after saying sorry? It's certainly not as often as I would like.

But I mostly feel like talking about the "darker" things, because it sometimes gets labeled as childish because no one dies (which is a big fucking lie. And I did not sign up for that. At all. I was fucking counting on it, and it was a LIE. And sure, Silver was technically already dead, but still) and like. I get it. Most main characters who "die" get miraculously saved. But that doesn't mean trauma in-world is any lighter.

On the seven year timeskip most people don't care about the characters that stayed behind, because they're secondary, and weaker, and not very cool. But we're told the reason the guild fell behing wasn't because it lost it's stronger members, but because they spent years upon years neglecting jobs for the sake of searching for the missing ones. And that's very fucking big.

But, again. The darker shit. They're not happy go lucky. They're not naive. They declare war no less than three times and every single one they make it clear that it is not about justice, it's about vengeance. About retribution. About "you don't fucking fuck with us". (And, lets remember, declaring war was fucking illegal).

They repeatedly say that they don't do good things because they're the good guys. They do the shit they wanted to do and it might just be that it could be considered good (and if not, they can convince people in high places to overlook it, pretty please. Because they have the friends to manage that).

Natsu has a whole argument with an outright assassin, and it never comes up that "murder is bad". It's framed more as a professional disagreement, rather than a moral argument. Natsu's main problem is that, while taking killing jobs, they call themselves a guild, the thing he asociates with family. The thing he considers sacred above all else. And since killing jobs are dirty (not unethical) they should, therefore, never touch a guild.

Before the final batle he outright says that killing kinda sucks but he will do it if he has to. And then kills around 900 people in a single second. Lucy is ready to kill. She's alone with Brandish in the bath and she's ready to shiv her in the neck. She might feel cornered, like this is the only option she has left. But in that moment she's ready and willing to see it through.

Invel is facing Gray and tells him "yes! Sucumb to the darkness so you may understand and join our purpose". Only for Gray to go "you dumb ass bitch. Do you think I care about going dark? Do you seriously believe I'm playing hero? All I care about is taking you down and if I have to be evil for that then that's how we roll".

All of that. I love that. They don't give a single fuck. Family comes first not because that's good, but because that's the way they are. They don't much care about what place their guild occupies relative to the rest of the world, or where any one member falls on a scale from good to bad. When all is said and done, all that mathers to them is the line between them and us, and they don't care to sugarcoat it.

And so many shows do that wrong. You get good guys who commit untold atrocities that go unaknowledged because they're the good guys! They can do no wrong! And I feel Fairy Tail should get more credit than it does on those grounds alone, but it does help that the character dynamics are good.

And I could write an entire (incoherent) essay on how Zeref is truly the most sympathetic villain I've ever seen. Everything about how he ended up makes perfect sense with his fucked up situation beyond a simple "I suffered so now I'm a self righteous asshole". You can see all the ways his mind had to twist itself into pretzels for him to maintain any semblance of functionality. If you're an hyperempathetic young man who suddenly and involuntarily kills anything he cares about then you really need to convince your brain that you don't care about anything, actually. Problem with that is that you're now convinced that it's true, because it doesn't work unless it's true. But the thing is that you also want to die, and you can't do it while actively wanting to die, so you need to die while thinking you don't want to. What's the best way to do that? You need someone else's help. And the best way to get someone to kill you is probably if they really really hate you. And the best way to do that is to become a supervillain, probably. Which also comes in handy for the whole "convince myself I'm truly an asshole" thing. And you end up becoming a calamity and fucking over the lives of anyone who could have loved you. But at least you can finally die.

And Mavis! The sweet looking, undeniably good person who turned out to be a ruthless strategist, quite detached from the world around her, who has a hard time weighing the value of individual human lives when there's a bigger picture to look at. But she's not an unfeeling stereotype either. She does love people, she wants them to have good things. But that doesn't change the fact that she doesn't relate to people the way others do, even if she could've lived her life without ever realizing (and I love that they tell us the wars the mages participated in were merchant wars. Just a random little tidbit, but yes. Wars do tend to be about money)

And this was a very long post and I said a whole bunch of nothing because I can't keep a train of thought to save my life. I just wordvomited a bunch of things that I liked. Long story short: characteryzation in Fairy Tail is top tier and I won't be taking criticism about it. You can try to critisize me though, I do enjoy arguing when I have enough braincells to put words together in the right order