Movie Review: Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry

Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry [2017]

Huh. I didn't really care enough for this series to track down this movie, considering my complete and utter disdain for what Fairy Tail has became in its later years. But one way or another, I ended watching it some time in the past couple of months. I just didn't care enough to review it then, but I hey, here we are, because I apparently took enough notes for me to scribble a coherent review for when I'm not going to be able to post regularly. Like right now.

So let's get over the few bits of faint praise I have for the movie. It's... it's well animated, with anime-movie quality visuals. The actual fights between the Fairy Tail members and the random miniboss squad that takes place in the middle of the movie are genuinely well-done. Sure, it's ultimately a huge, flashy distraction that adds nothing to the plot, and the random miniboss squad is boring as all hell, but that's at least pretty to look at.

The music's also nice! And the voice acting is still top-notch, for what inane dialogue the voice actors are forced to say. And I suppose it fits relatively snugly between the Timeskip For No Reason Arc (I think that's what it's called?) and the Alvarez Arc. It's a bit of a rarity among ongoing shonen manga series to have any sort of tie-in movie actually fit properly within the story's canon while still involving a fair amount of elements based on the canon, so kudos on that.

The rest of the movie, though? The actual meat and potatoes of the movie? Huh. I was told that "Dragon Cry" was going to give some extra explanation for the END and Acnologia stuff from the final arc of Fairy Tail, but all that amounts is to a one-minute post-credits scene that basically has Acnologia holding the ribbon created from the movie-exclusive characters' backstory. Yeah, it's definitely not "an opportunity to explore a backstory that the manga didn't have time to".

But while shonen summer movies tend to emphasize more on being a dumb popcorn flick, this one is really scraping the end of the barrel. Quite literally the first half of the movie has an extended bikini dance sequence for no real reason that lingers on for waaay too long, the movie starting in medias res for no real goddamned reason (a personal pet peeve of mine is when in medias res is done just for the sake of being 'artsy' and not actually adding tension or confusion), very unfunny jokes surrounding Happy and Juvia... actually, what was the point of the B-team running around in the background? They genuinely add nothing, and I'm not sure why they can't be removed or hang around the main cast in the first place.

The movie tries its best, mind you, to explore the motivations of the movie-exclusive characters, the rulers of the Stella Country, but even with the low expectations I have for a one-off movie villain, there really isn't much to them. Maybe if the movie spent a bit less time animating Lucy's bouncing tits or that uncomfortably long (and rapey!) prison scene, and actually devoting time to set up the Animus/Sonya plot twist, it'd flow better. As it is, the fact that Animus and Sonya are two personalities in the same body genuinely feels like it shows up without foreshadowing because these are two characters that quite literally are blank slates, 'mysterious anime girl' and 'creepy king'. The plot twist could be anything and it'd make sense due to the lack of... anything surrounding them.

After Obviously Evil Vizier Zach does his bid to steal the plot device staff Dragon Cry (and our cast fight the Movie Goon Squad), he gets blown up in an anticlimactic moment, Animus transforms into a dragon, and then we get a brief and genuinely bland fight before Natsu pulls out Dragonization and wins. Something something friendship, and then the movie credits roll. Oh, and there's that Stinger, which really ends up leaving me with nothing but a shrug.

Overall... yeah, this movie probably has a fair amount of the same symptoms that plague the rest of Fairy Tail. It's unfair to use a technically-standalone movie to lambast the franchise as a whole, because that genuinely feels like just beating on a dead horse, but this movie just... it just feels so bland. So much attention is devoted to the same old jokes and bland, identikit fights, there's little attention devoted to the plot, and I just... yeah, I dunno. I just don't really want to devote any more energy talking about this crap, so I'm going to stop now.