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Last year, P.A. Works came out with an original anime that was lukewarm at first but grew on me so much that I could easily call it one of my favorites from the whole year. This anime was Sirius the Jaeger (available to watch on Netflix now). This season, another P.A. Works came out and it’s called Fairy Gone. After last year’s big success? Fairy Gone was a definite on my watch list. But how is it? Well, spoiler alert: I wish I had better things to say about it.

Fairy Gone as a premise that I actually think is very interesting. There are people who are called “Fairy soldiers” who essentially have the ability to summon fairies.  They were used in some great war but have since become outlawed. This, I thought, sounded pretty darn cool. Unfortunately, the execution of this plot has been less than stellar. It’s been pretty disappointing actually. With Sirius the Jaeger, I was hooked by the end of the first episode, even if it took all the way to the end for me to get into it. With Fairy Gone, I kind of feel unsatisfied with the first episode. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t terrible. It was decidedly lukewarm. The animation is pretty good and the backgrounds are so lovely. But…aside from a few beautiful scenes, the first episode was lackluster. It was pretty clear that this first episode wasn’t so keen about establishing (what I assume is) the plot so much as it was about showing off the animation. By the end of it, homegirl Marlya had joined Dorothea, an organization who was hunting illegal fairy soldiers, and her childhood friend was one of those hunters. What happened in between this revelation and the beginning of the episode, I honestly couldn’t say. There might’ve been a little back story about how Maryla and her friend got separated.

Which is fine! Some anime’s need a second episode before you get hooked…but the second episode of Fairy Gone didn’t really make a case for it. Without spoiling it…the second episode was more or less the same as the first. And, once again, underwhelming. To be honest, I’m not even sure if the third is worth watching… But then again I don’t hate the characters. I actually really like them so far, and I feel like they could be worth sticking around for. Possibly…

But so what makes this show so underwhelming? Well, I can think of a few things. First off, the fairy soldiers aren’t nearly as interesting as I’d imagined. But hey, we’re still only at the beginning so that could develop further. But then there are the similarities with Sirius the Jaeger. We have a pair of friends/sibling types at the forefront. Both on opposing sides of some conflict. One of them older and had disappeared in an attack that involved fire. The younger one finds them and then proceeds to track them. Yeah…it’s Yuliy and Mikhail all over again. But as girls instead and with their relationship not as established as being related per say. Then there are the faeries themselves which just are so disappointing. They are CGI. Now, I don’t have a problem with CGI, but it just looks so out of place with Fairy Gone’s art style. I admit some of the fairies have very cool designs, but when they are presented as CGI they all look like cheap renditions of ghouls to me and I don’t know why. The plus side to this though is that the actual human fighting being really cool to watch. P.A. Works really knows how to animate a fight scene.

The first episode also feels both extremely rushed and extremely slow. Rushed because it feels like it’s plowing through some plots to get MC into Dorothea, but slow in that it’s just not exciting enough to fly by. A lot of the back story feels like it’s just going through the motions instead of taking a moment to let it sink in, or better yet, taking a moment before it’s revealed. Still, I have some faith this show will get better. I’m hoping that it’s spending its early episodes getting some establishing plot out of the way so that it can get really good. Even Sirius had it’s moments of tedium after all. So, for now, would I recommend Fairy Gone? Not enthusiastically but it could be worth a watch. If anything it’s very pleasing to look at.

If you’ve seen Fairy Gone let me know what you thought in the comments! Until next time, these have just been my first impressions.

xoxo

Luna

First Impression Rating – 4/10 fairies in a bottle