It's one of the big manga and anime franchises. It made Hiro Mashima famous internationally (and often got his art compared with Eiichiro Oda's One Piece). This original manga ran for eleven years and 63 volumes, plus another 30 volumes of spin-offs and prequels... and that's without considering its sequel (Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest) that started in 2018 and is still running. Mashima's only the writer and storyboard artist there. That's a lot of manga. The volume count has reached triple figures... and, yes, there's also anime. The first TV series had 328 episodes and two movies, then this year they started adapting 100 Years Quest.

It's a big deal. I'd never got into it, probably just due to timing, but I was interested in seeing what I'd been missing.

First reaction: I see why it made everyone shout "One Piece". It's hard not to compare the two mega-series, and not just because of the art. They're both shounen adventure series with a silly, cartoonish tone and (in this volume) characters who go to sea. The most obvious difference in this volume is that Fairy Tail's Lucy is proud of her sex appeal and will sometimes pretend to be a bimbo, e.g. when trying to persuade a shopkeeper to lower a price. She's trash, but lively and quite fun. Yes, she's buxom and sexy... but this is a boys' adventure series and even the mildest fanservice is a long, long way down Mashima's list of priorities, below silly reaction shots, goofy comedy, slapstick, etc.

That will change. Over time, I've heard that the clothing damage and nudity got ever more blatant, e.g. the Stone Age omake and the hot springs chapter 355 that even Mashima himself subsequently admitted went too far. Here, though, it's negligible.

To my surprise, the manga's title isn't a typo or bad English. It's a literal, accurate translation of the name of the Fairy Tail guild, all of whose members are nutcases and liable to trash any bar, port or indeed city. Gather them together and it's amazing that the guild building is still standing. (Fan theory: they're magicians, so someone cast a spell on it.) The bar fight when Natsu comes home is awesome and the funniest, most memorable thing in this volume.

In contrast, I disliked chapter 3, with woman-chasing monkeys and a bull that can't shut up about Lucy's boobs. I don't mind silliness, but that was the wrong kind of silly.

The manga's quite fun, though. The cast are a laugh, although I haven't yet got used to Lucy's spirit-summoning powers. I definitely won't be reading another 110-plus volumes of this, but I'd cheerfully read more if, say, Natsuki bought one or two. It seems more to my tastes than fight-based manga like Naruto, Bleach, etc. although it might end up going that way. My provisional judgement is that Eiichiro Oda seems like a better writer, but One Piece has its own problems and at least this isn't a heroic pirate series. They're not clones of each other, anyway. Except for chapter 3, I quite enjoyed this volume.