Fairy Tail ended its 11-year-long run in July 2017. The manga author Hiro Mashima is a diligent creator who has never skipped his weekly publications. He loves his work and its fans so much that he even gave us 2 chapters at a time for 3 consecutive weeks. He’s nothing but amazing. It’s sad to see it end and we will miss it, but it’s fortunate of us to be able to read the full story.

Just as the manga series ended, a new season of the anime adaptation was announced. I’m already thrilled about it, and I expect it to be a careful and accurate adaptation that fully grasps the original work. Today, I’d like to look back at some of the essential parts of the story that have already been aired.

Spoiler Alert
This article contains spoilers for Episode 258 of the Fairy Tail anime and Chapters 401 and 402 of the manga.
Proceed with caution if you haven’t seen or read this far!

The key plot of the story of Fairy Tail is the strong guild bond between the main characters and the existence of dragons. Let’s look at the episode where two dragons, Acnologia and Igneel, clash with each other. It appears in Episode 258 ‘Tartaros Chapter – Fire Dragon Iron Fist’ of the anime, and episodes 401 and 402 of the manga (Volume 47).

Change of pacing

日付も変わり、本日11/7(土)午前10:30～は、FT第258話「冥府の門(ﾀﾙﾀﾛｽ)編 火竜の鉄拳」の放送です。前話でナツの体内から突如現れたイグニールが、アクノロギアと対峙！
人知を超える闘いはド迫力です。#フェアリーテイル pic.twitter.com/gZ7AaAW52f

— TVアニメ FAIRY TAIL 公式 (@fairytail_PR) November 6, 2015

In the anime adaptation, you can see how detailed the humans are depicted, looking up at Acnologia and Igneel as they start fighting. Those of Fairy Tail, the Exceed, as well as Minerva, and others, comment on the dragons in turns. The original manga has this scene but not described as well as in the anime. I remember that some viewers complained that it was too slow-paced in the anime when it aired.

The Tartaros Chapter was long and the arc was still running in the manga at the time. The manga series was being released weekly just like the anime series, but as usual, anime series proceed faster. They could put 2 to 4 chapters of the manga into one anime episode of 30 minutes, and they’re more likely to do so with a battle action series like Fairy Tail. That is, if they had adapted the manga at its regular pacing, they could have easily caught up with it. I’d imagine they had to slow down and add some anime-original scenes so that it wouldn’t catch up to the manga.

This method of slowing down happens a lot with Japanese anime series based on manga. In some extraordinary cases, an anime episode may even spend half of its time reviewing the previous story. They can’t alter the story at the producer’s discretion as they are producing the anime adaptation only because the manga is popular. I think the producer side had to resort to desperate measures and slowed down the story, accepting potential complaints. It must have been tough for them!

(Next Page: The son of the dragon)