English Dub Review: Fairy gone “Powerless Soldier”

Beevee Liscar’s plan to take over is foiled by Free and Dorothea.

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Beevee Liscar is still mid-storm in his storming of the Imperial castle. He slashes left and right with his fairy blade, vanquishing all of the castle guards in a single sweep of the sword. Meanwhile, Dorothea comes onto the scene and teams up with the military minister in order to help defend the monarch. It’s tough going against a soldier like Beevee, but Free is up to the task (along with some help from his teammates), and they manage to repel out the invaders and save the day.

Our Take:

The final episode in the first half of Fairy gone is now ended with this twelfth episode. How did it fair in the grand scheme of things? Well, to be honest, this wasn’t exactly the season one finale I had hoped for. After watching the last twelve episodes, it’s safe to say for me that the show has peaked in the second episode and it’s all been downhill from there. That second episode had a great mix of action, character drama, and exposition. Fairy gone has never managed to recapture that same balance, with most of its later episodes drowning in exposition and dwelling on random side character instead of Free and Marlya, who honestly started to feel like side characters themselves sometimes during the middle and last arcs.

Let’s get the good bits out of the way first. The showdown between Free and Beevee is definitely the most exciting, well-animated sequence the show has done since episode two… maybe even better than that. The shot composition was varied, the action was choreographed well, and the pacing wasn’t overdone or underutilized. It was pretty much the only part of Powerless Soldier that had me in suspense. Beevee and Free are evenly matched and I had a sliver of doubt in mind about Free’s ability to succeed. When Beevee was battling the random soldiers and guards, though, I found myself bored. None of their fighting was exceptionally done, and it was obvious none of them could take him on. At least his fun quips kept me from falling completely asleep. (Can’t say the same for the expositional history lesson given to Wolfran about Ledrad, Golbarn, etc.)

Marlya gets a bit of attention this week, though not as much as I’d like. The focus is still on Beevee and his battling, so she barely has time to get in a few inner thought monologues. I did appreciate how her struggles with fighting were tied in with avenging Ozz and deciding that bad guys have to be stopped by force. However, I can’t say I’m entirely in agreement with her ‘fighting fire with fire’ attitude.

The finale’s dub was pretty good, especially so if you enjoy Beevee’s solid one-liners he delivers while fighting. Bryan Massey does a nice job handing out lines like this: “If you lacked resolve, why bother standing on the battlefield?” He must be passing on notes to his peons, because Dipper quips: “Peace rots a soldier from the inside out, and this place stinks of it.” Marlya sounded a bit too naive here, I have to admit: “I don’t understand it… why do people fight?” Free’s little prayer to his fallen friend was sweet: “Ozz, I’m not going to ask you to help me out here. Just watch me, wherever you are.” Beevee always knows what to say: “Times change, but I don’t.” Free isn’t too bad at trash talking while trashing the enemy, either: “We fight as one, because we’re Dorothea.”

The season one finale ended up being a pretty good summation of the series as a whole. It had a little bit of excitement and a lot of expositional history that nearly put me to sleep. I’m glad Free and Marlya got some time to shine, and the way they finished off Beevee together was a good little conclusion to their relationship and character arcs. Fairy gone didn’t go off with a bang, but it wasn’t altogether dead, either. Season two is coming this fall, and I’m hoping it will be more like the first few episodes of this season than the last ones.