Customer Reviews

Fairy Tail, Vol. 1

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Fairy Tail I and II

Every now ant then, you have to mix things up. At the Fairy Tail Guild, the fire eating Natsu initiates Lucy, a young wizard, into an oddball mix of accomplished practishoners. Womanizers, a scarcely clad ice wizard, a heavy drinker, and a world inhabited by magic powers towns and shops.

If you have ever read Myth Inc, then you will appreciate the dry humor, the offbeat magicians and battles, and the guild that bands together no matter how bizarre their circumstance. The best summary of the Fairy Guild is a description of what happened to them. From page 106 to 111, the council is upset at the Fairy Tail Guild. Sure, they seduced the grand-daughter of the senior council member, drank 15 kegs, charged expenses to the entertainment, destroyed 7 homes. But what happens in magic, stays there, right? According to Makarov, the master of the Fairy Tail Guild. "Magic isn't some miracle...if you spend time worrying about what those in authority think of you, your magic will never advance...Follow the path you truly believe in!!!"

I almost expected to see Yosamite Sam step out from behind Makarov. He has the moustache, the same temper, and the same stature. Perhaps the WB style art is more of the appeal than we would care to admit.

Two volumes are being released at the same time. Enjoy Manga that doesn't take itself seriously.

Fairy Tail I and II, the third is due out soon.

[...]

Tim Lasiuta

Seventeen-year-old Lucy is a buxom blonde with a sweet face and an attitude to match. She's also a celestial wizard. She has the power to summon creatures from other realms with the use of gate keys. To most people, this would sound extraordinary, but in the land of Fiore, wizards are just as common as merchants and teachers. They even align themselves with guilds to keep employed.

Like any normal teen wizard, Lucy is ready to make her way in the world. She dreams of joining the Fairy Tail guild, a group of powerful wizards that she has been reading about in magazines. She just needs to figure out how to get in.

Her ambition to join gets her in deep water (literally), but a fortunate chance meeting with the fire wizard Natsu, a boy with flaming hair and a scarf that resemble scales, opens the door to get her foot inside Fairy Tail. Now if only the place was as cool as it appeared in the magazines.. . .

The Fairy Tail guild is filled with powerful wizards, certainly, but they they're also a scruffy bunch of drunkards, playboys, nudists, and brawlers. Even Natsu isn't much of a prince. He eats fire as well as anything else within arms' reach. Plus, he gets motion sickness and goes overboard when he gets in a fight. Most of the Magic Council members, the governing body that moderates the guilds, think Fairy Tail is full of idiots. Their antics tend to rack up bills, destroy property, and generally annoy the public. Still, they're good guys and take great pride in their name. Despite the shock from the reality check, Lucy is ecstatic to get her chance to join the guild and show them what she's got.

Fairy Tail is a popular series in the manga underground, and now it has finally made its way to North American bookshelves with the recent translation from Del Rey. The manga offers a wide cast of lovable characters, each with his or her own unique set of skills. This is pretty common in other large cast series where everyone needs their own gimmick to stand out.

This series is definitely for the Naruto/Bleach crowd, but unlike those two popular shounen (boys) titles, Fairy Tail appeals to both boys and girls. Yes, Mashima's female characters do seem to have "magically enhanced" breasts, which can be a bit distracting considering the youth-centric story. Seriously, almost every screen of Lucy could read: "Oh, look, my boobs!" But hey, it's forgivable. The art is consistent, strong, and well suited to the story.

Despite the disjointed feel of the dialogue, Fairy Tail is overall very charming and will appeal to a wide audience. It has magically inclined teens with a ragtag cast of characters, each unique in both powers and flaws. It is a very easy series to get into if you want something light and fun.

-- Courtney Kraft

This isn't the most noteworthy of the volumes because the first couple of chapters is mostly playing around and character introduction, but I'm read up to a high chapter and I can say that as the volumes go on it just seems to get better and better with: some romance, cute characters, character progression, strong male characters and female characters.
This is only some of it, but the summary would be the introduction of the magician natsu and his first friend. They meet up, become a team after joining the guild Fairy Tail and get ready to start their first mission (for money, of course).

Fairy Tail is, in my opinion, one of the best shonen manga out there as of now. It's mix of humor, action, and inspiration makes it the paragon of the genre.

In it, you follow Lucy, Natsu, and the other members of the mage guild Fairy Tail as they go about the world defeating incredible monsters and other powerful enemies mages. Fairy Tail is no average guild, however. Each of its members are incredibly lively and just as incredibly destructive to everything they come across. With a story that doesn't skip a beat and scenes that stir the spirit, Fairy Tail is number one on my list of recommended manga.

One last fun note I think is worth mentioning: Unlike in many other manga and anime where a friendship speech is followed by gooey-eyed expressions, friendship speeches in Fairy Tail and followed by an epic beatdown that gives me the shivers like nothing else!

Volatile wizards, small quaint towns, bobbleheaded flying cats and as much mayhem as the sorcerers can cram into a day's work.

That's pretty much the description of the setting and characters of "Fairy Tail," which opens with a bang (and a mass of flame, and a brawl) in its first volume. This particular part is mostly about introducing the characters in the Fairy Tail guild and seeing our heroes off on their first missions, but it still produces some chuckleworthy humor and some hints of future storylines.

Celestial wizard Lucy has always wanted to be in the wizard guild Fairy Tail, and she thinks she's got an in when she's invited to a yacht party with the charming if sleazy Salamander, who claims to be a member.

Along the way, she also encounters a quirky young wizard named Natsu, and his bobble-headed cat Happy. But when the yacht turns out to be a slave-ship, Natsu appears to stop the evil wizard and save the day... except he immediately gets violently seasick. As Lucy struggles to use her own magic to help him, she discovers who the REAL Salamander is, and sees the true power that Natsu wields as a wizard of Fairy Tail!

It turns out that the other wizards of Fairy Tail are as violent and nuts as Natsu -- nudists, drunks, lechers and so on. And Lucy accompanies Natsu and Happy on her first missions as a guild wizard: when a little boy pleads with them to find his father (a wizard who disappeared on a mission), Natsu takes it personally and sets out to find the guy. And when a new mission comes up to infiltrate a lecherous duke's castle, guess who's perfect for the job.

The whole point of "Fairy Tail Volume 1" is to introduce the universe, the Fairy Tail guild, and the highly eccentric cast of characters. It feels pretty relaxed at this point, and there's not much actual plot yet. But Mashima does litter it with hints of potential storylines (such a Natsu's search for his adoptive father) and a few in-jokes for fans of "Rave Master" (guess who Canis Minor is -- none other than Plue).

And the straightforward stories of the first volume are liberally swathed in comic relief, mostly of the belly-laugh variety. Lots of strange antics (at one point Lucy hides from a monster inside a talking clock) and fun dialogue ("AAAAA! Where's my underwear?!"), and lots of mass mayhem when the wizards start brawling. Most of them aren't fleshed out yet, but they are pretty cool.

Oh yeah, and he comes up with some unique and intriguing magic -- such as Celestial Magic, in which a wizard can summon incarnations of the constellations.

And Natsu and Lucy are a pretty fun pair of protagonists. He's a not-too-bright, rather destructive guy who still has a good heart, eats fire, suffers from acute motion sickness and has great abs. And she's a smarter if less powerful wizard, who serves as the common sense of the team and seems to be a bit lower-key than the other Fairy Tail wizards. And Happy... I dunno about him. He's a flying cat with a giant head. I guess we'll find out more.

The first volume of "Fairy Tail" is a good introduction to Hiro Mashima's fantasy/comedy series. Although it doesn't have much of a plot on its own, it's a fun little diversion.