P.A. Works is back with another anime original called Fairy gone. Original anime are a godsend to someone like me who likes to watch the anime first and then, maybe, the source material second. Since original anime have no source material, I don’t have to worry about comparing it and I can just sit back and enjoy it for what it is. Be that as it may, the question is whether or not Fairy gone was interesting enough to keep watching past its first episode.
Let’s Go!
First Impressions
The town of Suna was razed during the war. Once the King announced their surrender, two girls named Veronica and Marlya run off with their town burning behind them. We flash forward several years to an auction where Marlya is part of the mafia and providing security for the auction. Suddenly, during the auction over a page from the Black Fairy Tome, a mysterious woman attacks and steals it. Marlya and her boss, Free, battle her until Marlya realizes that the girl attacking them is Veronica from Suna. Marlya tries to stop the fight but things are getting out of control. She interacts with a fairy that gets loose from one of its containers and fuses with it. When she awakes, Veronica and Free are gone.
Marlya gives chase and finds the two of them continuing to battle outside in the streets. She wants to put an end to the fight between them so she summons her fairy which ends up getting them to stop. Veronica tells Marlya that the person she knows is long gone and not to bother with her before disappearing. Free states that he’s actually not with the Mafia, but rather, Dorothea, a regulatory agency for illegal fairies… i.e. any Fairy Solider still in existence… i.e. anyone who can still use fairies like Veronica, Marlya, and Free.
Free gives her the choice of either getting arrested or join Dorothea. Marlya decides to join the organization and our episode comes to an end… or so we think. After the credits, we see Veronica hand over the page to an unknown person who claims that the page is a fake. Veronica simply shrugs it off and leaves before calling out Marlya’s name to herself.
Pretty interesting first episode, I must say. While the fairies are composed of… *ahem* … BAD CG #GiggukVoice, the action was pretty well animated and there’s enough intrigue in the story and the characters. I can already tell that Veronica desperately wants to reunite with Marlya; however, there’s something holding her back from doing so. Perhaps she just doesn’t want Marlya to see what she has become since the two of them left the town of Suna. If so, that would be a letdown since that’s a really generic reason for wanting to avoid a former friend. It’s also a predictable outcome where Marlya will try and try and never get anywhere until one day she ends up in a situation where Veronica has to make a decision and she will decide to save Marlya and then they’ll reconcile and live happily ever after again.
Or they can take the dark route and have Marlya kill Veronica at some point. I’d rather that outcome but I am a bit messed up like that! Hue hue hue…
Worth Watching?
YES – I enjoyed the first episode of Fairy gone and I think there is a bit of an interesting story being set up there. Even though the mafia aspect is a bit off in this series, I like a good mafia story. I don’t know how much “mafia” we are going to get but the story of two friends trying to reconcile and having shounen-style power battles is pretty intriguing. The first episode really did set the tone for the series but it also reeks of a “blow our budget on episode 1 and then give them barely anything in Episode 2. Repeat until the finale.” We’ll have to see if this show can stave away from following the typical pattern of most anime. One of the dead giveaways that I feel this might happen is that we got the opening and ending in the first episode and it was your typical dark rock style mixed with some strings and J-poppy feels. In other words, a generic opening. Usually shows with generic openings end up as previously speculated. Hey, there’s always the option of proving me wrong, though… right?
