Lots of potential, but sadly lacking.

Written by Wolqua on March 19, 2012 at 11:59 PM

When I read the review and watched the first few episodes of this, I thought that it would be a series that would really go into magic, explore consequences of it, have some amusing characters and have some good bits of plot along the way.
It wasn't long before I discovered that this wasn't going to happen. Probably ever.

The main character, Natsu, became extremely annoying after just 10 episodes, and has become even more so as the series has somehow ground its way through another 112 episodes. He is amazingly stupid, stubborn and spends most of his time attacking everyone who comes his way. Somehow, he manages to spend a lot of time in the limelight, despite quite easily being the least interesting character of all.
The other characters, when they get a chance to appear or do anything, have significantly more depth, character and backstory. With, perhaps the exception of Natsu's cat, Happy, who is just as moronic as he is and spends a large amount of time making stupid comments. Otherwise, they are quite interesting and could do quite well if they didn't have Natsu as a lead character.

Plot is extremely drawn out. Excellent when it's happening, but it doesn't happen often enough. It watches a bit like a video game. It would probably make a wonderful game actually, but fight scenes in TV series and movies become very boring very quickly. When most of the series is like that, it's almost not worth watching. There are some absolute gems in there though, and they're definitely worth watching, if you can find them. There aren't many, so be patient when looking for them.

In general, there's a whole lot of stuff that this anime could be doing, and very well, but wastes lots of time with nothings and fight scenes. It doesn't go anywhere near into the depth it should, either. Probably the things it could benefit from most are getting rid of Natsu and Happy, and not trying to make an episode every week. There's nothing that encourages bad writing like an episode every week.