User blog:LastationLover5000/Fairy Tail Episode 156 - Sky Labyrinth

"No. Eighth."

- Pumpkin to Fairy Tail on their rankings

Welcome to the Episode Review Corner

Hey guys! To those new to my blogs, welcome. To my continued readership, all I have to say is thanks. It's time to push the button

Ok, welcome to the second Fairy Tail Episode Review! Seems this is gonna be a thing now.

Last Time, On Fairy Tail The teams for the Magic tournament are chosen. Everyone arrives at Crocus City. Guilds interact. Natsu meets the Twin Dragons of Sabertooth. Wendy goes missing. And the elimination round begins!!! SKY LABYRINTH!!!

Those few sentences was pretty much the previous episode. This episode...I'm half and half on it. It's a good episode, but what irked me was some of the scenes added. For example:

Romeo wasn't in the chapter, and honestly, hasn't been in any recent chapters since Noire knows when. This is a Toshirō stunt, trying to market him off as bait for the girls. Seriously, Satelight, A-1 Pictures, stop. And putting him in a scene with Wendy is ship teasing when they have never interacted in one bit of canonical manga material. And now that I think on it, he's like, what, 11? WHY DOES HE HAVE MUSCLES? And when it comes to Romeo. RoWen. I don't need to explain any more. While some anime ships which they add in, expanded material or filler, whatever, are actually quite nice and can work, there are some which shouldn't exist. RoWen is the best example of this.

However, conversely, this episode has decent character focus. For those of you who give a damn about the minor characters, they're here, taking up screentime. Notably, Twilight Ogre got a bit more of a background here, which shows the anime does something right. As usual, the soundtrack was great, my favorite being at the beginning when Elfman grabbed everyone and ran up the stairs. It just fit the moment. Everyone's colourings, bar the official ones, were decent creations by the studio, Pyxis especially, who hadn't recieved an official colour and could very well come out having looked purple.

Doesn't make it look any less derpy

The animation was very good, the models are great and it doesn't fuck up like some other anime -cough-StudioPierrot-cough- However, censorship. Studio Pierrot is really good with avoiding this, Satelight, A-1 Pictures, ahahahahaha no. In the manga, there was visible signs of an assbeating when Twilight Ogre was taken down. Here? They...uh...fell down some stairs. The voice acting, like the last epiosde, is really good, and now that I've actually gotten used to it, I'm beginning to like each of the voices, Natsu's is growing on me.

My favorite scene:

Poll
What is your complaint with Romeo? He's trying to be a Natsu copy. I don't like the RoWen shipping. The anime is giving him more screentime than he deserves. All of the above.

Score
I liked the episode, the voice acting and animation was smooth, I liked it. The story however, bombed for me. This entire episode was the equivalent of half a chapter that they managed to expand by showing Romeo and other characters that mean little to the overall manga, so that detracted from the experience for me, but who knows, you all might like it. The soundtrack...does it need words? Overall, the episode was Good.

Fairy Tail is all done for today, but it should be back next week with Fairy Tail Episode 157 - New Guild!. Let's all give Per a great hand for helping me out, she'll be my assistant here, providing more facts and things on the episode that I miss during my viewing of it.