Yup, I’m dropping like it’s…a lot this week and to be honest, I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time now. These two anime are, in my humble opinion, no longer worth watching. Thing is, I’ve had them on hold for quite some time now. Since I sort of “specialize” in romance comedies and nearly never mention anything about heated, action, “power-of-will” shounen series, I could see how this might come as a bit of a shocked that I used to watch Fairy Tail and Naruto. Hell, I used to LOVE Naruto, and that’s probably why I’ve been (on-)holding on to it for so long, instead of just plain dropping it. And so here, I’m going to tell you what finally pushed me over the edge.

Fairy Tail

Episodes 80/175

I started this series, dubbed, on Netflix one fateful afternoon. I was still a young, high school lad with the rest of his life ahead of him. Dubs were a preference for me at that point, and so I welcomed the English voice cast with open arms. Going back to listen to some of their old performances, I still think they did a pretty good job. But one day, Funimation stopped dubbing it, leaving the Animax dub alternative. To this day I still haven’t managed to find a worse dub than that irredeemable piece of trash, though that may just be because I made the switch over to sub.

So, that’s what initially took me out of the series. Since then, Funimation went back and dubbed the episodes. Plus, I pretty much exclusively watch subbed now anyway. With that being said, I cannot find it in me to come back to the series and finish it. One reason for that would be that it would be impossible to finish what doesn’t have an end…well, that’s pretty much the biggest reason, but let me get into why that’s truly such a problem to me.

I do not like where the industry goes with these long running, indefinite shows. There are some people that enjoy fiction because they can find characters that they can latch onto. In a way, I’m kind of like that myself. However, I recognize that at some point I want to move on from these characters and their stories. What I do not desire is fiction that exists and will continue to exist in perpetuity. I am undoubtedly a person that cares about the destination as much, if not more than the journey, so things that tout itself as an endless one always fail to capture my intrigue.

Fairy Tale wasn’t a series that, at the time of me being a stupid and naïve teenager, seemed to go nowhere. While it lacked an obvious long term goal, there were plenty of short term ones to be had, plus character mysteries hinted at that would surely be revealed at some point. But the story never ended. Arcs would end, but then another would just take the last one’s place. New characters kept being introduced left and right, many of which were never worth remembering.

I never got to the second season, or whatever you call it, where the art style completely changes. From a glance, however, it looked even worse than what I’d left off on. Honestly, a lot of it seems to have gotten strangely exploitative. I watched a bit of a recent episode to just capture a couple of screenshots, and what I saw was just plain weird, in comparison to the Fairy Tail I once knew. Basically, what happened was Natsu made a flaming entrance into a colosseum, causing the stadium to melt, as well as the clothes of everyone in the stadium. Including Lucy. And then they just stare at each other as she holds her arms up over her bare breasts. Her skirt didn’t melt though, because you can’t show that on TV. Roll credits.

Now, it’s not the “fanservice” that bothers me here. More so, it’s just the fact that what I just saw barely resembles the show I’d once knew whatsoever. Maybe to people who have been keeping up with the series, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for how the show gradually transitioned over time to become this. But quite frankly, there is not one part of me that cares enough to find out, and that’s why I dropped this anime.

I’ll get to Naruto (hopefully) next week. I’m excited about it, because I’ve had some things that I’ve wanted to say about Naruto for a quite a while now. Until then, thanks for reading.