Fairy Tail: Phoenix Priestess [2012]
(Oh god, a Fairy Tail review?)
So yeah, one of the anime movie DVDs on the huge stack I got and am working through is this. Well, it's decently animated, since it's back at the height of popularity for Fairy Tail. And 'Phoenix Princess' is... exactly what a generic anime movie tends to be. It's got the exact same basic plotline as that first Bleach movie I watched. Cast meets an oh-so-cute girl, Eclair, with a mysterious past. Oh, and she of course has an ugly talking animal sidekick. Throw in a bunch of quirky villains in the nation of Veronica, and have the movie filler character die a tragic death and we can call it a day. Except where Bleach at least gave us some miniscule attempts at endearing Senna to us (which I even criticized -- I still think Senna's shit) they don't even bother to do this with Eclair.
As a 80+ minute anime movie special, Phoenix Princess at least has the nice pretty animation that is the sole great thing that I can say about this movie -- or indeed, the franchise as a whole -- without any hint of irony.
The fights progress as you'd expect, we get a fuckton of Erza and Lucy fanservice thrown in because of course Erza fights someone that weaponizes clothes-stripping magic, Lucy is a crybaby and we get like entire five-minute sequences devoted to her crying... Gajeel gets perhaps one of the cooler fights ever against a masked shadow guy, and that final battle against the giant magic monster does look visually impressive even if they just deus ex machina it down.
Overall, it's a surprisingly not-horrid turd of mess, but earlier Fairy Tail tends to at least be a mass of shonen cliches and lives in the moment without any real regard for any over-arching story. And this movie is, well, exactly just that -- an amalgamation of anime movie cliches. Even the dub voices in the DVD I watched is pretty banal, like the voice cast are just doing the bare minimum of what they're asked.
It's decently executed but also completely throwaway, but in retrospect it's probably one of the better Fairy Tail material out there, isn't it? It's got at least a pretty solid, if absolutely dry, story behind it....And yeah, that's all I have to say. It's not as horrible as expected, and the characters just do their one-note personalities from the manga. It doesn't even have the hilarity off the utter trashness of later Fairy Tail arcs, which I can't believe is an actual disappointment -- at least that'll give me something to talk about. And honestly, when it's all said and done, my opinion towards this movie is probably how the franchise will be remembered. Flashy and tries to mask its lack of story with lots of tears and explosions, helped out by good animation, but with such identikit characters and identikit fights that it ends up feeling just bland and leaving we with not much to talk about, beyond the fact that... it's... it's just there. It exists. It's not bad. There's just very little that's actually good about this.
Wow... Fairy Tail. This brings back memories, don't it? And considering some of my more detailed comments were made tearing into the series, I guess I may as well give a comment here, too, if only for my OCD completionist's sake XD.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, rather than rehash the plot, only thing I'll actually comment on in depth for is the ending itself... which was actually the thing that surprised me the most. Yeah, in retrospect, it’s pretty obvious that a filler character is most likely going to either die or leave for good, but this is Fairy Tail - the series that couldn't even reliably off useless nobodies outside the bad guys (and I mean "guys", as the likes of Minerva sadly attest to).
And while I couldn't really give a fig about Eclair, I did like the surprising twist of seeing this bland band of mary sues actually have to walk away with a bloody nose for once - I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this was the first time that they failed to bullshit a way of rescuing "a friend". The whole point of their attack was to save Eclair and it turns out she'd have died regardless when the Phoenix went down. (oh, and there's also the whole city full of people that we pretty much see die, but fuck that noise - moral myopia is king here, so I'll take whatever ounce of these characters feeling a consequence that I can get).
My biggest note though - and the one time I actually applauded a MESSAGE in this crapsacherine series - was the teams failure to go “good hearts mean it’s always the right action”. Eclair’s questions on whether or not magic causes as much (if not more) harm than good are never answered, and even "King Mary of Sues" Natsu isn’t able to give Lucy an definitive answer; all he can do is reassure her that they’ll face whatever happens together - which, while being the same answer FT /always/ gives to every problem, is surprisingly somber in this context since Natsu isn't saying it with the typical moral absolutism. Granted, I might be reading too much into it, but still feels an overall more somber tone then what Fairy Tail normally gives.
All in all… compared to standard Fairy Tail fare, I had some fun with this film -
things are still stupid, but it was closer to the more enjoyable or campy kind of stupid that the series used to have a bit of. Animation was pretty good, and the fights were constantly enjoyable (except for Lucy's and Erza's - some things never change :P). If nothing else, it was more a more enjoyable Fairy Tail story for being the only one that really showed not every tale has a perfect happy ending.
It does bring back memories, doesn't it?
DeleteYeaaah... I guess that is somewhat different, is it? But at the same time, back in the earlier arcs (which I assume was when this movie was produced) we do have supporting characters end up dead (like Simon, the only death that stuck) or dead-all-along like Wendy's weird guild. But yeah, considering how much of the story revolved around "we must save our brand-new nakama!" stuff, it's definitely refreshing to see the story go in a different direction. I also agree that the message was actually different from Fairy Tail's "we're always right 'cause we're the good guys" moral absolutism, but it ends up buried underneath so much cliche that when I initially wrote this review I didn't really think too much about it.
Definitely agree that this movie was definitely far closer to the "generic shonen" that the earlier arcs of Fairy Tail was, instead of the "let's cram as many tropes as we can and not explain anything and just throw plot twists for the sake of plot twists" bullcrap that Fairy Tail ended up devolving into. Probably because movies tend to be outsourced by a third party (at least judging by what Naruto and Dragon Ball movies are, anyway -- the mangaka only provides the character designs and rough outline of the plot, as far as I know) so maybe it's actually because it's a movie that it's allowed to actually derive from the saccharine might-makes-right mentality that the original manga has?
Agree on the early arc deaths, but most of the pre-timeskip stuff fell in that catagory; far as I know, this is one of the only stories *post* Trenou that feels like it comes close. That being said, I agree that the cliches did still grate on me after a while (case in point; Eclair and Lucy instantly becoming friends over their dead dads, Lucy shower scenes, Erza winning for "it works because she's Erza" reasons, etc). But at the very least, it balanced it out with cliches it rarely used (Natsu actually losing a round for once, having a neater plot compared to most others, the risky move of having a rather graphic death for Momon the bird, etc). So yeah; not great, but it was a fun enough time for me to say "Hey - I can call something from Fairy Tail a guilty pleasure and *not* die a little inside!"
DeleteAs for movie quality being tied to outsourcing... I'd have to agree, personally - at least for Fairy Tail's case. Mainly because of one sad fact; Dragon Cry exists. The "why" on that is because, as far as I know, Mashima had a lot more oversight on that one - either directly in production or because the script was practically cut content from the manga written by the man himself... and spoiler warning; it shows. I won't go into detail here because if I did, it'd pretty much be a full-blown review (and believe me, I'm tempted to do that anyway, if only to spare you from the film myself). Suffice to say that, in my personal opinion, Dragon Cry is practically the epitome of EVERYTHING that was wrong with the late-stage arcs of Fairy Tail in an animated format - and all because they let Mashima pretty much have control over the story and direction. Hence, it's a prime reason why I believe you about outsourcing's benefits and that Phoenix Priestess was one such case.
I wasn’t particularly paying attention to whether this story was set pre-Tenrou or post-Tenrou, so I definitely didn’t consider the placement of this movie. Also, yeah, definitely agree that it’s a lot less cliché’d movie than most of Fairy Tail’s repertoire. I wouldn’t go so far as to call the movie a ‘guilty pleasure’, but it’s definitely a decent watch that didn’t make me go “this is fucking bad” every other scene.
DeleteAs someone who’s been watching a fair amount of anime movies recently… yeah, whether the IP is completely outsourced or not really affects the movie’s production quality. Sometimes for the worse. Like, nearly all of the DBZ movies are outsourced with Toriyama providing little to none other than character designs, and they’re all the worse because they try to ‘play it safe’ and not have much deviate from the generic “villain comes, explains origin, overpowers heroes, friendship speech, spirit bomb, yay win” formula. But that’s because the formula of DBZ tended to focus more on long buildups and the big moments coming from a long-earned character development and new forms, so all of these clichés feel absolutely counter towards what DBZ is meant to be, so to speak. Ditto for movies made for things like One Piece, Hunter-x-Hunter, Bleach and Naruto, all mangas that try to play it long-term.
But Fairy Tail is a different beast. Beating up enemy minions that aren’t particularly developed IS the name of the game for ‘regular’ Fairy Tail, so this is a generic Fairy Tail plot, just one that feels a lot shorter and therefore with a lot less chance to build up bullshit – something that a non-Mashima writer is definitely far more equipped to do. So a non-serial movie like this (or some of the better Fairy Tail fillers) feel less of a ‘why do we have this’ but more of a ‘generic shonen anime tropes done right’.
And, like you said… Dragon Cry, a movie scripted by Mashima, exists. And that’s a movie that I tried to watch. I tried to. Never got past the opening scene every time I realize it’s going to be Acnologia bull.
Maybe one day I'll watch Dragon Cry. When I'm really, really drunk, or when I really feel masochistic, or if it happens to be airing on television as I'm channel surfing. But don't expect it any time soon.