Fairy Gone | Anime Review | Pinnedupink.com

Fairy Gone

Demons and Fantasy settings generally align to bring many series much promise and popularity. These themes are pretty famous among anime fans and have shown significant levels of success over the years. Kimetsu no Yaiba, Ao no Exorcist, The Devil is a Part-Timer, High School DxD, Kuroshitsuji, and Jujutsu Kaisen are examples. But not every series that gets on this bandwagon is destined for greatness. Many titles get overshadowed and are seen a lackluster in comparison to the titans. While fans clamor for sequels for the iconic ones, they also wonder how particular series got sequels at all.

Fairy Gone is one such series, which received both its Season 1 Part 1 and a Season 1 Part 2 in 2019. Each season featured 12 episodes and ran as Spring 2019 and Fall 2019 anime, respectively. Season 1 Part 1 aired from April 8th, 2019, until June 24th, 2019. The sheer amount of Producers that worked on this series is impressive as it includes Mainichi Broadcasting System, Movic, AT-X, TOHO Animation, Medicos Entertainment, BS11, and Sanyo. It was licensed by Funimation and a product of Studio P.A. Works.

Fairy Gone is an original series featuring Action, Demons, Fantasy, Magic, and Supernatural. The rating is PG-13 for Teens 13 years of age or older. Considering all the parties that worked on it, it's a wonder how Fairy Gone turned out so disappointing. Season 1 Part 2 had the same groups working on it and ran from October 7th, 2019, to December 23th, 2019.

"Once upon a time, fairies were tools of war,” a pretty decent opening statement. But that's as far as it can go, unfortunately. The story is set in a world where fairies possess and live within animals. This grants these creatures mysterious abilities. Whenever there is such power, humanity wishes to harness it.

The organs of such possessed animals are removed and harvested, then transplanted into humans, allowing them to summon the fairies as alter egos and be utilized as weapons. These hybrid beings who used fairies as tools of war are termed as “Fairy Soldiers'', but once the war ended, the soldiers’ roles were completed, and many lost their purposes in life. They decided to chose for themselves what to do afterward; some worked for the government, some turned to the mafia, and others even resorted to terrorism.

Nine years after the end of the war, series protagonist Mariya Noel is the newest recruit of the “Dorothea” organization, which works to investigate and suppress all fairy-related crimes. Criminals with festering wounds left by the war and past unresolved conflicts emerge amidst the nation’s unstable political situations. They have resorted to terrorism and are in pursuit of vengeance. The series revolves around the remnant Fairy Soldiers who fight for their own ideals in a chaotic postwar world.

Fairy Gone honestly feels like a cheap rip-off series of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, with the fairies instead of the “Stands''. Each of the main characters wields such a Fairy, a super powered, pretty cool looking monster that can be summoned into battle. This is the main point of the series which can at least remotely be considered original and pretty badass at face-value.

They have conventional designs, an enigmatic way of moving, and are animated with terrible CGI at low frame rates. On the plus side, each Fairy’s abilities complement its wielder’s specific fighting style; like the sword fighter possessing a brawler werewolf fairy, the rifle user has a pyrokinetic fairy and the sniper with a long-distance lookout fairy. A Fairy is tied to its wielder's life, if it takes any damage, so will the user, and if it sustains too much damage, it needs to recover before the next summoning. These are the stakes and rules for the Fairy Soldiers, who have to constantly be wary of the damage their fairies incur.

The best moments in the series are those in which the soldiers are engaged in close-range sword duels or rifle gun shootouts with their Fairies mirroring their wielders' movements in the fight but on a much larger scale. However, these moments are few, then not. As far as the action and fighting are concerned, the series can be stomached, but what throws viewers off is the mind-numbingly boring and dull dialogue thrown into the middle of the action.

This leads to the biggest issue with Fairy Gone; the overwhelming amount of unnecessary exposition. Every episode ends with too much information that becomes difficult to process and doesn’t even make sense once thought through. A decent plot exists buried under all the exposition, but the execution, delivery and solidity are so bad.

The animation is okay, but generally P.A. Works does so much better. The initial episodes have some nice detailed backgrounds, buildings, environments and dynamic lighting. But as the series progresses the animation just goes downhill. The character designs tend to be off-model and missing essential details most of the time, so the art itself is sloppy. The original character designs are pretty good and they looked badass on promotional material, but none of it makes its way into the anime in one piece.

The series also attempts to make a huge deal out of the vast amount of mumbo-jumbo. But ultimately, it's too confusing and doesn't make sense. Their attempt at making a political drama ends up a complicated mess, and it feels like it would've been better just to drop the politics altogether.

The characters are just too numerous to count, and none of them are introduced nor appropriately established. Character development is non-existent, considering even the protagonist was kept at a stalemate.

Viewers are expected to piece the characters and their relevance to the story together entirely from messy flashbacks. The supporting cast is just as lack-luster, and the antagonists, particularly the main villain, have all the powers, skills and abilities but he doesn't seem to use them at all, on top of being a logic and physics defying maniac.

The Opening is "KNOCK on the CORE" by (K)NoW_NAME, and the Ending is "Ash-like Snow" by (K)NoW_NAME. The Opening itself portrays the lousy art and animation in the midst of good music. The OSTs are the typical and forgettable type. Compared to them the Ending is pretty good but it tries to excite something that didn't even happen nor is going to happen.

Both seasons of Fairy Gone are just bad. Whatever little potential it had to be a decent anime at least was butchered and destroyed in its execution. It honestly feels like the creators themselves didn't care for it and threw all “Random stuff” into the mix, miraculously expecting it to work.

The best reason most can muster to watch it is the hope that it will get better, but sadly, it does not. The series is original and had some promise initially. It had the potential to get better and some badass powers, but it all comes crumbling down in a devastating mess in their execution. Unless you are willing to watch this anime patiently while accepting this huge mess, this anime is best avoided.