English Dub Review: Fairy Tail “Dearest Friends”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The dragon slayers trapped in the time rift with Acnologia channel all their power into Natsu as a last-ditch effort. With all his friends lending him their strength, Natsu delivers a major blow to Acnologia, shattering him and the time rift into pieces. Freed from the rift and their foe, Natsu and his fellow dragon slayers reunite happily with all their friends.

After the showdown is over, the show skips ahead an entire year. We join Lucy and the rest of her friends from Fairy Tail at an event commemorating her winning the Best New Writer Award for her novel. As the night progresses, we see the goings-on at the party, as well as get caught up on what’s been happening the past year through narration from Lucy. She ends up getting wasted and Natsu has to take her home. The next morning, they join their friends on a job Natsu’s been wanting to do for a while. They may not know what’s coming next, but they do know they’ll always be together.

Our Take:

The final episode of Fairy Tail has arrived, and it’s somewhat surprisingly slow-paced and mellow. As the conclusion to the entire Acnologia arc, I was expecting an episode mainly focused on fighting, but that wasn’t the case. Dearest Friends is less about fights and more about friendships. The time skip that takes place allows us to look forward to the future of the characters and see what they’ve been up to with all their free time. The ending is a pretty low stakes affair, with no major drama or huge shocking twists. Which is about what I’ve come to expect from Fairy Tail.

Let’s start with the dragon slayer’s battle against Acnologia: it was underwhelming. I can’t help but feel let down by how easily the arcane dragon was defeated. After too many episodes full of fear of his powers, he’s taken out with a single blast from Natsu. Granted, it was a blast that contained all the powers from the other dragon slayers as well, but still. They had all been attacking Acnologia together, so I’m not entirely sure what bottling it all up into one person’s attacks did that was so powerful. With all his big talk about destruction, Acnologia went out with the opposite of a bang. I always knew, of course, that Acnologia would be vanquished by Natsu and company. I just hoped it would be more exciting to watch.

Once the villain is taken care of, everyone reunites with happy tears back home. Then the show decides to skip ahead an entire year, where we rejoin the gang at a party celebrating Lucy’s new fame as a published author. It’s not an unheard-of decision for a final episode, but I’m not sure the show makes good use of the time skip as it could have. We get to hear a lot of exposition about things that have changed, but none of them are very interesting or clever. It’s mainly just a lot of ‘oh, there are rumors that this couple got together!’. King Fiore has retired, with Princess Hisui taking over as queen. She pardoned Jellal and his cohorts, which has affected the way Erza does her hair, I guess? Wendy and Carla revive the Sky Sisters act for the Thanksgiving Festival, but we don’t get to see it happen. Mr. Ichiya wins the most handsome man of the year and does a dumb dance routine. And there’s a lot of drinking at Lucy’s celebratory party, which leads to gross situations like two guys chasing after a woman calling out things like ‘have a little fun’ and ‘we don’t bite’.

The dub finishes how it always was, with solid performances from the main cast but more than a few awkwardly worded lines and weird phrasing in English. “I need more. More blood. More destruction. More pain and tears.” Acnologia went out so quickly, I wish the show had devoted more time to his demise and less time to, say, Mr. Ichiya’s dancing. “This day marked the end of an era. But perhaps more importantly, it was the first day of a brand new one.” I almost think it would’ve been more interesting to pick up right after the conflict than skip ahead a year. “And of course my big night’s a big mess.” It wouldn’t be Fairy Tail otherwise, right? “One time, I sent a thank you letter to a guild for helping me, and they tracked me down with weapons in hand.” Wow, just how bad are Erza’s writing skills? “If I hadn’t met you guys back then, I wouldn’t’ve become the person I am today.” Lucy’s memories of all the times they’ve had are probably one of the best highlights of the episode.

The final episode of Fairy Tail fails to deliver much in the way of surprise or excitement. Acnologia’s arc ends in droll, non-memorable way. The time skip allows for a few cool reveals, but nothing too crazy or intense. And maybe that’s a good thing. After so many adventures, we leave Natsu and his friends on a low-key note – just before they set off on their eternal quest.