Fairy Tail 4

Hiro Mashima – Del Rey – 2008 – 14+ volumes

I’m not totally taken in by this yet, but I like that it seems to be a far-above-average shounen action series, and there’s a bunch of pretty unique things about it.

Well, maybe not a bunch.  Mostly I’m thinking of the magic system, which I still love reading about.  Lucy’s keys are my favorite, and I always look forward to seeing her use them.  There’s nothing brand new per se in this volume as far as her magic goes, but we do get introduced to one of her older contracts.

I also really like most of the characters.  Happy and Natsu especially, but Gray too, and maybe Erza sometimes.  Erza I can take or leave, and Gray hasn’t left much of an impression except for the nudity, which will never get old.  I think I like Happy and Natsu most because of their boundless enthusiasm, which always attracts me to characters.  There’s still not a lot of depth to any of the characters at this point, though Gray gets the beginnings of a backstory in this volume, but I wouldn’t be too upset if Happy and Natsu stayed how they were.  Unfortunately, I think it would take a miracle for me to like Lucy, who is perhaps one of the shallowest characters in the history of manga.  She does cool things sometimes, which makes the series readable, and the stupid gags that make me hate her aren’t really her fault… I know what I hate is just fanservice.  But she and I… we’ll never be friends.

This volume starts off another story arc where the main group takes on a difficult mission to uncurse an island.  The mission is an S-rank mission, so their pride as guild members is at stake (as well as their membership, most likely), but I’m not exactly sure what to think of it at the end of this volume.  I like it well enough, but I think I’ll have to read the ending before I form a real opinion of it.

The sense of humor is still a little too wacky for me, and again, I hate the fanservice we get through Lucy.  But Fairy Tale is probably one of the only series I read where most the jokes fall flat and it still manages to be really funny.  I mean, it’s cracking a thousand jokes, so some are going to be funny on accident, but most anything Happy says makes me laugh, and I’m sure that’s worth something.