Fairy Tail Collection 7   Starring (voice): Aya Hirano, Tetsuya Kakihara, Akira Ishida, Daisuke Kishio and Daisuke Namikawa Distributor: Manga Entertainment RRP: £24.99 MANG3153 Certificate: 12 Release Date: 28 April 2014

Trapped in a parallel universe the guild of Fairy Tale has been kidnapped by the universe's ruler, Faust, to restore magic back to his realm. Only with the help of Faust’s son and a race of winged cats can this goal be achieved...

Fairy Tail: Collection 7 (2011. eps 73 – 84) continues the show about magical guilds, based on the manga written and illustrated by Hiro Mashima. The show was directed by Shinji Ishihira and is presented as a two disc DVD set.

Wow who would have thought that a show which has only just past its seventieth episode should revert to having filler episodes already, as the first four episode are, well... filler. Not that they are too bad and we finally get back to the manga story in episode 77 and the start of the Edolas arc.

That said the show has consistently been in the top ten of recent shonen series. One of the down sides of releasing only a specific number of episodes in each set is that you will not get to see the end of the Edolas story with this set.

It’s not too difficult to see why the show is a success, it's family friendly with a good script, character design and detailed animation. The show has balanced its humour, action and character based stories better than a lot of its contemporaries.

Audio is a fine English 5.1 or the original Japanese 2.0 with English subs. For extras you get a full length commentary, on disc one, for episodes 74 and 79, they are a combination of information and fun, this time looking at the casting and writing process. Disc two has the textless opening and closing sequence as well as the American trailer. The animation remains of good quality, although the picture looks a little soft on the DVD.

8

Charles Packer