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Guest Fandom: Fairy Tail
Sep. 11th, 2012 04:58 pmI just spent the day yesterday catching up on my Fairy Tail manga, so I felt that now would be an apt time to blog my feelings about this manga. But, just a heads-up, by the time I'd caught up on my reading yesterday, my plans for this post were not as positive as I thought they would be, but I'll get to that later. I'd like to start with the happy things.
Fairy Tail is, in my opinion, one of the best manga out there. I love its lightness of tone, with many of the jokes being peculiar, but spot-on for the creation of the manga's world. Then, I like the way that the lighter parts seem to serve in support of the manga's overall positive and pro-social values, such as camaraderie.
But, even without the content, I would have to say that the structuring of the Fairy Tail manga is absolutely superb: each member of the titular guild has their own story thread. But, while individual threads do sometimes form the basis for specific fights (such as Elfman vs. Sol and his guilt over the death of his sister) or specific story arcs (such as Erza's childhood as a slave and her relationship with Jellal), they're never out of the frame long enough to frustrate an interested reader, nor do they intrude upon each other.
This links, though, to the characterisation, which is another of Fairy Tail's triumphs. Part of the reason why the characters don't just disappear when their plot lines are not the focus is because they are interesting people in their own right. They have more to them than their history. Their relationships with each other are an important part of this - not just those pro-social guild bonds, but more specific ones, such as the troubled Grandfather-Grandson relationship between Makarov and Laxus, and the adorable romances between Levy and Gajeel and Elfman and Evergreen.
However, it's this way that I get to my main criticism of Fairy Tail, and that is the way that the manga treats its women. Up front, I'll say that many of the women in Fairy Tail are great as characters, and are both bad-asses and well-rounded individuals. Erza is definitely my favourite female manga character. No, it's not so much the way that they're characterised, as the way that they're drawn. Look, I didn't mind so much things such as Erza's Playboy bunny armour, as that was played for laughs, and even added to the character, and things like that were few and far between. But, in the most recent arc, the mangaka just seems to take every possible opportunity to get female characters barely clothed or actually naked on panel and to have it commented upon by an audience and commentators within the manga, as the current arc consists of an inter-guild tournament, and various plots intertwined with it. Ok, I'll list some of the examples:
1) Lucy's clothes being almost blasted off by the power of her attack, while Gemini has Lucy's appearance in a bath towel. While this sort of thing is often par for the course (Yoruichi's sleeves are blown off by the power of her shunko) I found it a bit overly erotic here - especially with all the cleavage and hair bondage on show in this fight. (You can see the particular page I took issue with here: http://www.mangareader.net/fairy-tail/272/14 )
2) Then, there's the comic relief eye candy. However, unlike Erza's Playboy bunny outfit, this one was played a lot more for audience titillation than laughs. It takes the form of a swimsuit contest between two former models, who are also mages - Jenny Realight of Blue Pegasus guild and Fairy Tail's Mirajane. They seriously choose to do this instead of do battle. It is actually page after page of these guys posing, inter-cut with panels of the audience's drooling reaction. That is until the final round in which they show their battle forms, and Mirajane uses hers to sucker punch Jenny and thus win. I can see the joke, but it didn't stop most of the episode being uncomfortable for me as a female reader.
3) Yukino Aguria, a member of the Sabertooth guild, as a punishment for losing a fight to the death, but surviving, is forced to strip naked in front of her guild mates and erase her own guild tattoo. Oh, the abuse doesn't stop there: Flare Corona, from the Raven Tail guild, is beaten up for almost losing to Fairy Tail's Lucy. I know that the point of this was to help characterise the villains, but, seriously, there's ways to do that other than the humiliation of women.
4) I've left my most egregious example until last, however, and that is the portrayal of Shelia and Wendy, who, for those who don't know, can't be older than nine or ten years old. I don't just mean during their fights, but during the swimming pool trip filler story. In the former, the commentator points out how cute the two are, while he and members of the audience make that face with love hearts in their eyes, and in the latter, the two are in bikinis like the other female members of the division, but they do so with bikini bodies that girls their age shouldn't have! It's not quite paedophilia, but it's uncomfortably close to it for me.
Like I said, this has ended up being way, way more negative than I wanted it to be (I wanted it to be 1000 words of how awesome Erza is, and why she's a great character - seriously), but, don't blame me. Blame Hiro Mashima for ruining it.
Fairy Tail is, in my opinion, one of the best manga out there. I love its lightness of tone, with many of the jokes being peculiar, but spot-on for the creation of the manga's world. Then, I like the way that the lighter parts seem to serve in support of the manga's overall positive and pro-social values, such as camaraderie.
But, even without the content, I would have to say that the structuring of the Fairy Tail manga is absolutely superb: each member of the titular guild has their own story thread. But, while individual threads do sometimes form the basis for specific fights (such as Elfman vs. Sol and his guilt over the death of his sister) or specific story arcs (such as Erza's childhood as a slave and her relationship with Jellal), they're never out of the frame long enough to frustrate an interested reader, nor do they intrude upon each other.
This links, though, to the characterisation, which is another of Fairy Tail's triumphs. Part of the reason why the characters don't just disappear when their plot lines are not the focus is because they are interesting people in their own right. They have more to them than their history. Their relationships with each other are an important part of this - not just those pro-social guild bonds, but more specific ones, such as the troubled Grandfather-Grandson relationship between Makarov and Laxus, and the adorable romances between Levy and Gajeel and Elfman and Evergreen.
However, it's this way that I get to my main criticism of Fairy Tail, and that is the way that the manga treats its women. Up front, I'll say that many of the women in Fairy Tail are great as characters, and are both bad-asses and well-rounded individuals. Erza is definitely my favourite female manga character. No, it's not so much the way that they're characterised, as the way that they're drawn. Look, I didn't mind so much things such as Erza's Playboy bunny armour, as that was played for laughs, and even added to the character, and things like that were few and far between. But, in the most recent arc, the mangaka just seems to take every possible opportunity to get female characters barely clothed or actually naked on panel and to have it commented upon by an audience and commentators within the manga, as the current arc consists of an inter-guild tournament, and various plots intertwined with it. Ok, I'll list some of the examples:
1) Lucy's clothes being almost blasted off by the power of her attack, while Gemini has Lucy's appearance in a bath towel. While this sort of thing is often par for the course (Yoruichi's sleeves are blown off by the power of her shunko) I found it a bit overly erotic here - especially with all the cleavage and hair bondage on show in this fight. (You can see the particular page I took issue with here: http://www.mangareader.net/fairy-tail/272/14 )
2) Then, there's the comic relief eye candy. However, unlike Erza's Playboy bunny outfit, this one was played a lot more for audience titillation than laughs. It takes the form of a swimsuit contest between two former models, who are also mages - Jenny Realight of Blue Pegasus guild and Fairy Tail's Mirajane. They seriously choose to do this instead of do battle. It is actually page after page of these guys posing, inter-cut with panels of the audience's drooling reaction. That is until the final round in which they show their battle forms, and Mirajane uses hers to sucker punch Jenny and thus win. I can see the joke, but it didn't stop most of the episode being uncomfortable for me as a female reader.
3) Yukino Aguria, a member of the Sabertooth guild, as a punishment for losing a fight to the death, but surviving, is forced to strip naked in front of her guild mates and erase her own guild tattoo. Oh, the abuse doesn't stop there: Flare Corona, from the Raven Tail guild, is beaten up for almost losing to Fairy Tail's Lucy. I know that the point of this was to help characterise the villains, but, seriously, there's ways to do that other than the humiliation of women.
4) I've left my most egregious example until last, however, and that is the portrayal of Shelia and Wendy, who, for those who don't know, can't be older than nine or ten years old. I don't just mean during their fights, but during the swimming pool trip filler story. In the former, the commentator points out how cute the two are, while he and members of the audience make that face with love hearts in their eyes, and in the latter, the two are in bikinis like the other female members of the division, but they do so with bikini bodies that girls their age shouldn't have! It's not quite paedophilia, but it's uncomfortably close to it for me.
Like I said, this has ended up being way, way more negative than I wanted it to be (I wanted it to be 1000 words of how awesome Erza is, and why she's a great character - seriously), but, don't blame me. Blame Hiro Mashima for ruining it.
