Fairy Tail / Tropes A to E

Tropes A to E | Tropes F to I | Tropes J to P | Tropes Q to S | Tropes T to Z

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Fairy Tail provides examples of the following tropes:

A

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Duke Everlue owns one. Happy goes for a swim in it.
• Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Most of the Exceed have clothing to some degree. Happy even has a little bag he ties around his neck.
• Accidental Murder: Zeref's magic is custom tailored for this. He ultimately kills Zancrow by waking up in his arms. Later happens to Makarov's mother, due to Mavis carrying the same curse as Zeref. Tragically, it is also how Mavis herself died. Zeref thought he had finally found someone he could safely love without killing by accident, only for her to die from the curse even though she was supposed to be immortal.
• Action Fashionista: Erza is a justified example. Her specialty is Requip magic, and she's amassed a ton of armors and outfits in her personal Hammerspace that she can don at any time. And most of them are functional: according her various powers for the occasion. Late on, Lucy gets in on the fun with her Star Dresses, based on the powers of her Zodiac keys.
• Action Girl: Erza, Mirajane, Cana, Lucy, Juvia, Ultear, Evergreen, Wendy, Lisanna, Bisca, Merudy, Levy, Sherria, Sherry, Kagura, Laki, Mavis... In fact, pick a girl. Pick any girl.
• Actor Allusion:
  • When describing Gray's magic, Happy mentions Equivalent Exchange, referencing Rie Kugimiya's previous role in Fullmetal Alchemist.
  • Gajeel screams "Who the hell do you think I am!" before attacking Natsu, referencing Tetsuya Kakihara's previous role in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
  • Azuma, when asked about Jellal, said that he's a man who walks the path of nihilism. Namikawa previously played Ulquiorra Cifer in Bleach.
  • Igneel, a dragon, is voiced by Hidekatsu Shibata, who also voices a character named Dragon in One Piece.
  • Also Cana argues with Aquarius and Lucy says that are very similar and they are played by Eri Kitamura as well.
    • As with her previous role in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, Eri Kitamura voiced a mermaid.
  • As with Soul Eater, Yūya Uchida (Samuel) plays a genius with glasses and a deadpan sense of humor.
  • Wendy's English VA, Brittney Karbowski, previously played a wind-using dragon warrior in Senran Kagura.
• A-Cup Angst: Levy, Wendy, and Mavis express this at one point or another.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The anime has given screen time to Fairy Tail's less plot-important members, most notably Loke and Lisanna.
  • The anime also throws in an occasional Chekhov's Gun/Gunman, or otherwise mentions points that came up much later in the manga. For instance, Laxus's symbol being used by everyone from the beginning of the story, or mention of Siegrain and Jellal being twins before fans can form ideas about them being the same person.
  • The backstories of the Oración Seis members (being slaves forced to work on the Tower of Heaven like Erza) are shown and integrated into several scenes and motivations, as opposed to being relegated to All There in the Manual trivia as in the manga.
  • It's done this a lot with the Edolas arc, which glossed over quite a bit in the manga. For example, we get to see some of Gajeel's adventure as he searches for Fairy Tail, and he even gets to meet his Edolas counterpart, who is never shown or even mentioned in the manga.
  • The anime also expanded Ultear's Troubled Backstory Flashback to not only show how torturous of an experience the experiments done on Ultear were, but why they happened: As it turns out, Brain, the to-be leader of Oración Seis, was running the facility to strengthen young wizards to use as candidates for members of his six-man guild. However, after Ultear returned to the facility to willingly strengthen herself and take revenge against her mother, Brain noticed that she was becoming too powerful to be a proper subordinate, and he had already gathered five other children to form his guild, so he up and left the facility right before it fell at the hands of the vengeful, overpowered little girl (and kind of expected it to happen).
  • There's more dialogue between Laxus and Hades in the anime than there is in the manga. The most significant part is when Laxus tells Hades that strength isn't as important as having the courage to stand up to someone stronger, then adds, "Ain't that right, Natsu?"
  • A blink-and-you-miss-it line in the middle of the Grand Magic Games arc refers to a Zentopia Incident that caused a number of Celestial Spirit mages to lose their powers. This gets depicted as part of the anime-only Key of the Starry Heavens Arc.
  • In the Grand Magic Games arc, Erza destroys 100 monsters in the Pandemonium gameoffscreen, but this is expanded in the anime.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: While the anime will often make little corrections to Mashima's consistency errors, coming close to the manga has caused it to create a few of it's own. The shadowy figure that Jellal is kept from pursuing is changed from a spiky haired silhouette to the hooded girl, for instance. While that was generally assumed to have been Mashima not knowing how the figure should look until later, a manga chapter that came out at almost exactly the same time as the episode revealed that it actually had been a separate person.
  • A minor one, but still quite noticeable- Makarov's punishment for everyone who disobeyed guild rules following the Galuna Island Arc is him chopping them on the head with a giant hand (and spanking Lucy on the ass). The anime more or less ignores this and instead shows some filler where the characters keep getting mixed around in others' bodies, then never gets back to the punishment. The first anime adaptation was known for making alterations like this, such as changing the characters' clothes and such.
  • The racy scene from the manga where Erza and Natsu were bathing together is rewritten so that all the plot-relevant events that take place happen outside of Warrod Sequen's hot spring, and the bathing elements eventually got relocated to an OVA. Unfortunately, it removes some explanation as to why Natsu whaled on Erza, because he was busy washing her hair in the original context.
• Adopting the Abused: Lucy as a child suffered from Parental Neglect for several years courtesy of her father Jude after her late mother Layla passed away, this ended up negatively effecting Lucy to the point where she is introduced as a moody Jerk with a Heart of Gold in contrast to the Nice Girl that she used to be when she was a child. All of that Parental Neglect culminated in her running away from home and joining the Fairy Tail guild who welcomed her with open arms as family, with the initial exception of Laxus, and have repeatedly shown being incredibly protective of her, most notably during the Phantom Lord arc. Lucy over the course of the series comes to reciprocate their love towards her and comes to see the Fairy Tail guild as being a much kinder and more loving second family to her then her own father Jude ever was, with guild master Makarov even admitting in the final chapter of the series while drunk that he views Lucy as being like a daughter to him. All of this positivity helps Lucy to heal from her pain over the course of the series leading her to develop back into the Nice Girl she always was deep down.
• Adventure Guild: They're everywhere.
• Adventurous Irish Violins: The entire musical score of Fairy Tail is practically made out of this trope. God bless Yasuharu Takanashi.
• Aerith and Bob: The names ranges from Lucy to Jellal, Makarov to Erza, Elfman to Ur, Merudy to Laxus, Yukino to Lahar. There are western names, eastern-ish names, as well as names that fans have never heard of. There's also an actual Bob, who makes up for the plain name by being a Creepy Crossdresser extraordinaire.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Cobra, after he is betrayed by his leader Brain.
  Cobra's thoughts: "My prayer...I...just wanted to hear the voice of my one friend...Cuberos..."
• The Alcoholic: Cana drinks about 30% of the guild's alcohol. She started drinking at age 13, 2 years before the minimum age of the country. On her guild card her likes are: Alcohol and her dislikes are: Non-alcoholic drinks.
  • Even more impressively, Bacchus of Quatro Cerberus not only managed to drink Cana under the table but also created his own drunken martial arts style.
• Alcohol-Induced Bisexuality:
  • In the fourth OVA while staying at an hot springs inn Lucy (along with her female friends) ends up wasted from drinking. Lucy gets so drunk to the point where she attempts unsuccessfully to flirt with an equally wasted Juvia even though Lucy has only shown official interest in men.
  • In the Christmas special, a drunken Erza starts a game where the master can give out orders to the losers until a new master is chosen through sticks. According to her, this is the opportunity to let out secret fantasies. Erza ends up ordering her fellow female guild mates to do various perverted things in order to fullfill Erza's desires, which include Erza ordering Levy and Juvia to grope Lucy (after Erza gropes Lucy herself). Erza then drops hot wax on Lucy's back while the latter moans, "Oh yeah... It feels so good!" Prior to the hot wax dripping, Erza openly looks at Lucy and proclaims, "If I could just get a girl to strip then things would get interesting." In spite of this the only person Erza has shown romantic interest in is Jellal.
• All of the Other Reindeer:
  • Mirajane first used her Satan Soul to defeat a demon attacking her town's church. Unfortunately, the other townsfolk became fearful of this power to the point where they called her a monster and promptly exiled her, along with Elfman and Lisanna. This incident made Mirajane hate her powers so much.
  • Juvia was frequently isolated because of all the downpours she caused, at least until she joined Phantom Lord...
  • Lector was frequently ridiculed in his youth by others who wouldn't believe him when he said Sting killed a dragon.
• All There in the Manual:
  • Cobra's pet snake Cubelios was actually a human turned into a snake.◊ Her name is Kinana and after the enchantment was removed, she even became a member of Fairy Tail. This is nearly, if not utterly, impossible to tell from just reading the manga or watching (the canon parts of) the anime. It is however made abundantly clear in the anime by way of Adaptation Expansion in the Key of the Starry Sky filler arc - though anyone who only reads the manga and doesn't watch the anime, or anyone who skips fillers when watching, has to read the extra information that comes with the published volumes to find out.
  • There's a lot that's only said in the extra info. For example, all of the members or Oración Seis were involved in the Tower of Heaven; Brain was Jellal's mentor, and everyone else was just doing regular work on the tower.
    • Same as with Kinana, Adaptation Expansion put scenes in the anime depicting this.
  • Gildarts hates Ivan Dreyar. We never see them interact in the manga or anime, but from this little fact we know that there was bad blood in the past, even if we have no idea what it was.
• All Part of the Show: The townsfolk of Magnolia think the fighting happening in the Fighting Festival arc is part of the preparation for the Fantasia parade.
• Almighty Janitor:
  • Natsu beats the Big Bad in most arcs, but he's still not an S-Class wizard, even though Erza admits that he's at least as strong as her, if not stronger.
  • Gray is usually portrayed as Natsu's rival, so that throws him into the mix. For example, the Big Bad of the Tartaros arc, Mard Geer, was beaten by none other than Gray, who defeated him with his newly-gained Devil Slayer Magic.
    • To both of the above this is actually justified it is noted that being an S class wizard in fairy tail is about more than just power, they didn't have the right mind set nor level of maturity necessary to be one even if they had the power.
  • Juvia was an S-Class wizard for Phantom Lord, but she lost that rank when they disbanded.
  • Gajeel was considered Phantom Lord's strongest mage, above even Juvia.
  • Going by the Grand Magic Games standards and assuming that the other guilds are/were fielding their strongest S-Class mages, it seems that what constitutes a Fairy Tail S-Class mage surpasses all the other guilds, because in both Fairy Tail A and B teams combined, reserves included, only 3 of the members are official S-Class mages.
• Alternate Species Counterpart: Ichiya's Edolas counterpart is an Exceed (a magical cat-like creature) named Nichiya. Porlyusica is the Edolas human counterpart to Grandeeney.
• Alternate Universe: The focus of the Edolas arc.
• Amazon Chaser: When Erza is presented in a showing of Fairy Tail's members and their capabilities, an audience member actually says, "Marry me, Titania!"
• Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: Lacrima. Especially the Slayer Lacrima that Laxus and Cobra use that give them the same abilities as a Dragon Slayer.
• Angry Cheek Puff: While first arriving at Tuly Village Natsu fires his fire dragon slayer magic between Lucy’s legs, Lucy is understandably less than happy by this (and unaware that Natsu did this in order to help a guy who was having his stuff stolen several miles away) and promptly puffs her cheeks out in response showing her displeasure over the act.
• Anti-Climax:
  • Brain seemed to be this due to his quick, no-effort, loss to Jura, but then subverts it when his other personality, Zero, is released.
  • Midnight in the Key of the Starry Skies filler arc quickly starts to fall behind Natsu once Lucy Mind Rapes him with the Infinity Clock's power and he turned out to be much easier to defeat after giving Erza and Jellal a rough time in a one on two battle during his previous canon arc.
  • All throughout the Grand Magic Games, Fairy Tail's opponents received a lot of hype...only to get utterly annihilated in turn. Some notable examples are:
    • Team Raven Tail: Ivan Dreyar is effortlessly curb-stomped by Laxus right after he takes out his elites a few moments earlier, all by himself and without breaking a sweat.
    • Sting and Rogue: They went Dragon Force. Yet still, they were beaten by Natsu alone without even having to resort to using Lightning Fire Dragon Mode! Sting falls into this category again on the final day; giving up entirely before throwing even a single punch right after being given the "Are-You-Sure-You-Wanna-Fuck-With-Us" stare by the bruised and battered Team Fairy Tail.
    • Bacchus: He is stated to be on equal footing with Erza, even dominating his fight with Elfman that the latter only wins by exploiting his fighting style's weakpoint, only to become the punching-bag to the other contestants after Quatro Cerberus became the laughing stock of the Grand Magic Games.
    • Kagura: Built up as one of Erza's big rivals, she proves herself throughout the tournament by defeating the likes of Yukino and Lyon. During the final day, she even holds her own against Erza and Minerva before FINALLY unsheathing Archenemy...only to still find herself unable to defeat Erza. She's then taken out from behind by Minerva via stabbing (in fairness, Kagura herself was about to willing concede victory to Erza after coming to a personal realization and no longer wanting to fight her).
    • Orga: Built up to be Laxus' rival, even OHKOing his opponent on the first day and achieving a previously-unheard-of score on the MPF...Jura (the man who scored double his score) OHKOs him on the final day. Sabertooth as a whole seem to fall into this due to the fact that they greatly overestimated their strength in comparison to the strongest members of other guilds.
    • Minerva: Touted as the strongest in Sabertooth, she gets to beat Erza (who was crippled at the time) around for a few chapters before Erza whips out an absurdly powerful armor to No-Sell her attacks and OHKO her after Erza finally unleashes Second Origin. In the Tartarus arc, she's beaten into submission by Erza, even though she should have been stronger by that point (from demonization) while Erza should have been weaker (from several chapters of torture and fighting the torturer).
  • Seilah. After having reduced Elfman to Inelegant Blubbering, destroying the Fairy Tail guild hall in an absolutely masterfully executed way that only failed due to Cana being a Spanner in the Works, and then spending her entire fight against Mirajane absolutely mopping the floor with her while hardly taking a scratch herself... she finally loses when Mirajane uses Seilah's own curse to call Elfman to pull a Dynamic Entry, effectively ending the fight with one giant sucker-punch. Somewhat mitigated due to her return later on, and showing that this battle didn't defeat her the first time around. YMMV indeed as to whether her return was worth it or not.
  • Silver. He's built up as being capable of using Ice Devil Slaying Magic, was responsible for freezing a whole village including a Dragon's Spirit, and he curbstomped Natsu with one finger. When Gray fights him, he does show some cool skills, but Gray takes him down only three chapters after they met.....using a steel ball. Justified in that he never aimed to win in the first place.
  • Able, Gômon, and D-6 from Avatar. After having had no less than three chapters building Avatar up as being the Dark Guild that fills the Evil Power Vacuum following the Balam Alliance's collapse... these three are single-handedly curb-stomped by Natsu, with two of them being on the receiving end of a One-Hit Kill, and only one of them even getting a chance to show off their magic. Notable for being the second time this happened in six chapters, only the first time was against Bluenote Stinger, which the fandom was generous enough to dismiss as being a rather textbook example of Villain Forgot to Level Grind. This arguably counts as an example of Big Bad Wannabe, since only the members of their guild were building themselves up as that much of a threat, with the council seemingly figuring that Gajeel and some random soldiers were enough to take on all of them.
  • Several members of the Spriggan Twelve go down relatively quickly despite all the hype of being equal to Ishgar's strongest mages.
    • God Serena gets torn apart by Acnologia with little fanfare. This is after Serena displays only half his arsenal defeating the 3 remaining Gods of Ishgar and Jura.
    • Brandish succumbs to hay fever due to the dust kicked up by Ajeel's sandstorm, allowing Cana to knock her out with a single hit to the back of the head. Averted later on, however, when she actually does get to fight and dominates Lucy with ease (and Dimaria reveals she's not even trying to kill Lucy, just putting on a show).
    • Invel Yura is defeated by Grey No Selling his ice magic with a Heroic Second Wind and Unstoppable Rage over Juvia's apparent Heroic Suicide (granted, Invel earlier had commented Gray's Ice Devil Slayer Magic was a hard counter to his abilities). Hilariously if Gray had used his Demon Slayer ability to eat ice, Invel would have gone down even faster.
    • The real Wahl Icht is defeated after Laxus uses a poorly explained red variant of his Lightning Dragon Slayer magic to overcome Wahl's lightning-absorbing abilities.
  • The Gray vs E.N.D showdown was built up since the end of Tartaros, but ultimatly just had them whaling on each other for a few chapters before Erza stepped in and got them to stop leaving the fight unresolved.
• Anti-Hero: Phantom Lord, being a legal guild that more or less acts like a dark one, is a Type V before their attack on Fairy Tail, and in a later flashback, Belno mentions that the council was considering disbanding them if they caused any trouble. Jellal, Ultear, and Merudy are Type IVs (Pay Evil unto Evil) after their Heel–Face Turn, since they fight against dark guilds in violation of the Council's ban on inter-guild warfare.
• Anti-Villain: More than half of the bad guys are sympathetic to a degree. (See the YMMV page for Type IVs)
  • Type I: Kageyama (dark guild member, but can't commit a mass murder when given the chance), Azuma.
  • Type II: Juvia before her Heel–Face Turn, Jellal (who is also a Type III), The ^{Oración Seis}Except Brain, Ultear and Merudy.
  • Type III: Reitei Lyon and his group, Laxus, Knightwalker, Hades.
• Arc Number
  • 7. All dragons disappeared at the same time, seven years prior to the story's present, on the 7th day of the 7th month of the year 777. This was also the same year that Lucy's mother (and possibly several other people) died and when Mystogan came to Earthland. There have also been several Quirky Miniboss Squad with seven members. And in Chapter 253 we have a seven year Time Skip.
  • In the same arc as the above, but earlier We have 7 teams headed by legitimate members of Fairy Tail, 7 paths lead to battles, 7 Fairy Tail members (Makarov, Erza, Mirajane, Gildarts, Carla, Pantherlily, Wendy) that aren't members of one of the seven legitimate teams. There are 21 (7 x 3) wizards holding hands for the protective magic prior to Acnologia's final attack.
  • In the Grand Magic Games arc, the 7/7/777 date is coming up again, the 14th anniversary of the dragons' disappearances. Something important is going to happen again.
  • When the Eclipse Gate finally opens 7 dragons emerge.
    • There are also 7 Dragon Slayers total at the time.
  • Fairy Tail was founded 105 years ago (7 x 15) in the year x686, another year evenly divisible by 7.
  • Also, 3: The Dragon Slayers in the Fairy Tail guild and three active S-Class wizards currently at the guild. Makarov is the third guild master. Lucy starts off with three gold keys and three silver keys. There are three S-Class wizards at any given time. You start off with Laxus, Mystogan, and Erza (Gildarts has been gone so long some people think he's not coming back.) Laxus is thrown out in the same arc that Mirajane gets her magic back. Mystogan leaves at the end of the arc where Gildarts returns. And then Gildarts leaves shortly after Laxus comes back.
• Armor Is Useless: Played straight with both genders in almost all situations. Only Erza (and not always) and a few warriors use armor in battle, the rest only magical barriers if anything at all. It stands to reason that a slab of metal is not going to protect you from fireballs, ice blasts, energy beams, etc.
  • Erza's metal armor is actually a hindrance in fighting Midnight in the Nirvana arc.
• Arson, Murder, and Lifesaving: Worth squat as far as the new council is concerned.
• Art Evolution:
  • Compare the first chapter to the most recent one. The artwork's much smoother, the lines are thicker, and the characters are less lanky. The art style has gone from being quite similar to One Piece to having its own style and being more classically anime-like with a slight Western look. For example, characters have gone from having normal mouths to usually having cheeky mouths, and the girls have bigger eyes and smaller noses. Lucy in particular goes from looking like One Piece's Nami to the degree that she could be a blonde Expy of her, to having very few similarities except for big breasts.
  • Starting with the Sun Village arc, the anime shifted to a muted, desaturated color palette, ditched the cutsey interstitials with smiling Exceeds and sprightly flutes in favor of sleek rotating shapes and chugging guitars, and started slapping subtitles on everything instead of having the narrator explain in an aside.
  • The Final Season reverted to the brighter color palette of the pre-Sun Village episodes, resulting in characters from Tartaros looking rather different in color scemes.
• Art Shift: A rather noticeable one in Episode 176 of the anime thanks to the change in studios from Satelight to Bridge which shifted several designs to better match the manga. As a result it doesn't really match up with Episode 175 that well. Several characters abruptly change outfits even when it doesn't make much sense in story namely Gajeel unless he raided an armory on his way back, Mercurius gets a complete redesign to match the manga, and Jellal's meeting with Future Lucy suddenly occurs on a street instead of a moonlit terrace.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Silver Fullbuster after Juvia kills the necromancer keeping him alive.
• Ass Shove: While everyone sleeps off their latest party/brawl in Chapter 200, Max is seen with a broom sticking out of his butt.
  • This somehow happens to him again in the midst of an explosion at the pool in Chapter 298.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
  • Lullaby was huge in the manga. He's noticeably even larger in the anime.
  • Also Makarov. His Titan magic allows him to change his size at will.
• Author Appeal
  • Ignoring the Fanservice (along with his fetish for feet), Mystogan's identity makes it seem that Hiro Mashima loves parallel world plots.
  • Also, Pantherlily's appearance makes much more sense if you know Mashima likes Blacksad.
  • It's become increasingly apparent, particularly after the time-skip, that Mashima loves giving characters cat ears, or at least cat ear-shaped hair and accessories. Heck, maybe he loves cats in general.
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Hades does this twice in the same arc. His actions during the Sirius Island arc do indeed 'awaken' Zeref... and subsequently piss him off enough for Zeref to track him down and then kill him for dragging him out of his self-imposed exile. And as if that wasn't bad enough, all of this leads to Acnologia showing up, too.
• Ax-Crazy: Several villains:
  • Gajeel,
  • Laxus (for a while),
  • A good number of the Oración Seis,
    • And the leader's Superpowered Evil Side Zero, who crosses Ax-Crazy and teeters into Omnicidal Maniac.
  • Zancrow is one of the best examples of Ax Crazy that Fairy Tail has to offer. Heck, just by his looks alone, you can tell that he's some kind of psycho.
  • Take everything bad about Zancrow, make him a demon that sees humans as little more than playthings, and then give him a penchant for forcing Sadistic Choices on others, and you get Jackal from Tartarus.

B

• Babies Ever After: It's heavily implied for Gajeel and Levy.
• Babies Make Everything Better: How Happy got his name.
• Backstory: Everyone has one. Everyone. And most are tragic.
• Badass Boast: ''Fairy Tail has its fair share of these.
  Natsu: Mages of Fairy Tail specialize in property damage!
  Natsu: I’m gonna stop it! Even if it splinters my body, I’ll just stop it with my soul!
  Gray: Sorry, but it doesn't matter if you're a woman or even a child. I don't go easy on anybody who hurts my comrades.
  Erza: My companions make my heart strong. If I'm fighting for those I love, I care not what happens to this body.
  Gajeel: I don’t even know the meaning of going easy on someone.
  Makarov: You have laid hand on the monster's children. Don't think any human laws will protect you.
  Laxus: I came to visit Mavis's grave, and looky what I found? The Second Master's here, too. Since you're here and all, maybe I'll make a grave for you, too.
  Laxus: That power was just from one leg. I've got another one. And both my arms. I have my head, and my entire body. If I attack with all of them at once, we're not talking two or three times stronger... Wanna try me?
• Badass in Distress: Quite a few, surprisingly.
  • Erza in the Tower of Heaven arc.
  • The entire guild including such powerful guys like Makarov, Mirajane, and Gildarts, when they're sucked into Edolas and turned into an immobile magic lacrima. Only the three Dragon Slayers (who were immune to the teleportation spell), Lucy (who was protected by her spirits), and Mystogan (who is revealed to be native to Edolas) managed to stay free. Gray and Erza were later freed halfway through the arc, but the rest of the guild spent the entire arc helpless.
  • During the same arc, Natsu and Wendy were captured by the king of Edolas and drained of their magic; having been unable to use it in Edolas, they couldn't use their powers to escape and had to be rescued by Lucy, Erza and Gray.
  • And now again during the Tartaros Arc. The entire guild minus Lucy is trapped as the Cube transforms into some kind of creature and starts digesting them.
• Bait-and-Switch Character Intro: Guildmaster Makarov first appears in his giant form, shouting angrily at his rowdy guild like some sort of enraged monster, leading Audience Surrogate Lucy to wonder what she's gotten herself into. Realizing he has a new recruit to deal with, he immediately reverts to his tiny, normal form and takes on a polite demeanor, which serves to weird her out even more.
• Bait-and-Switch: In the Grand Magic Games arc, during the Pandemonium portion, the S class monster is claimed to be super deadly and dangerous...and it's revealed at the end to be a tiny little eye. Averted by the fact that it becomes three times stronger if it's the last opponent left, as Erza quickly finds out.
• Bat Deduction: The trick to finding Mavis's grave.
• Bathtub Bonding: Between Lucy and Cana before the S-Class Trial arc.
• Batman Gambit: Phantom Lord's Guild Master, Jose Porla. The first thing he does upon reaching Magnolia is fire his super-weapon, Jupiter at the city. He knew full well Erza would try to block it with her Adamantine Armor and was fully counting on that - he never intended to hit with the first shot, as doing so would risk killing Lucy before he could kidnap her again. The shot served as a warning, and an easy way of knocking out one of the Guild's most powerful wizards.
  • Laxus is reaching his limit in his battle against Wahl due to Tempester's poison having lasting effects on his internal organs. So, he draws a barrier around them with runes he learned from Freed, knowing that Wahl would use his Magic Barrier Particle Nullifier to nullify the barrier and the magic particles inside him.
• Battle Aura
  • In the anime, Dragon Slayers get a standard Power Glow Battle Aura.
  • Gildarts gets a huge one when he releases his full power.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: A small scale one in the Edolas arc. Carla tells the enemy she's a princess. It doesn't keep their pu rsuers from chasing them for long, though it does save Lucy. It's inadvertently true, though.
• Beach Episode: Chapter 261. Full of fanservice.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: When Erza's Requip armor and weapons prove utterly useless against Ikaruga, an assassin with Implausible Fencing Powers, Erza decides to fight her using an outfit with no magic and ordinary swords. She wins.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. The girls up the cast get banged-up and bloody just as often (if not moreso) than the boys, and the injuries often last at least until the end of the arc. In Gray's case, it's completely averted, since he's acquired multiple scars over the course of the series that remain even after the Time Skip. In the end, Juvia also keeps a sizable scar she got from the Alvarez war. When asked by Gray why she didn't ask for it to be healed, she counters why he hasn't done the same.
• Beleaguered Childhood Friend: Jellal is (sometimes) this for Erza.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension:
  • Gajeel and Levy.
  • Elfman and Evergreen. Lampshaded by Rusty Rose:
  Rusty Rose: The communication between two lovers sometimes goes hand-in-hand with a violent skinship.
  Elfman and Evergreen: THAT'S NOT HOW IT IS!
• Berserk Button: Never, under any circumstance, piss off Fairy Tail! That attempting to harm their True Companions or, worse still, their guild as a whole is a surefire way of being ass-kicked without prejudice is a lesson learned the hard way by countless mages and magic guilds alike. No other guilds in their universe come together and go berserk like Fairy Tail whenever harm comes their way. Lucy put it best when Gajeel asked why Phantom Lord should be scared.
  Lucy: They'll never let you get away with this. They take revenge. They'll never stop, and if I were you, I'd be watching my back from now on 'cause the world's scariest guild will be after you. As long as you live!
  • Do not mention Elfman or Mirajane's deceased sister Lisanna.
    • Well, this gets better after Lisanna comes back post-Edolas arc.
  • Do not mess with Erza's strawberry cake.
  • Absolutely do not threaten Gray in Juvia's presence.
  • Destroy the guild hall and Natsu WILL murder you. Heck, do anything bad to Fairy Tail at all and Natsu is going to hunt you down and kill you.
• Between My Legs: Flare in the fifth OVA, framing Lucy.
• Beware the Nice Ones
  • During the Fighting Festival arc, Mirajane finally gets pushed too far, and both the audience and her opponent get a demonstration of why she used to be an S-Class wizard with the nickname "Demon".
  • Also a possible Brown Note moment, simply because the wizard she pummels has a demon form of his own that he ends up using and still gets his ass handed to him, proving that you do not push Mirajane too far unless you are ready to have her rip you a new one then pummel you into the ground.
  • Wendy is quite possibly the nicest, sweetest girl you'll ever meet. But if you piss her off, don't think for a second that it won't end very badly for you. She's called the Sky Dragon for a reason.
  • Makarov, too. He is perfectly content to ignore Phantom Lord's unprovoked attack on the guild hall... until they attack Team Shadow Gear. Then, he leads everyone in the immediate vicinity in a march right up to Phantom Lord's doorstep.
  • Basically almost anyone in Fairy Tail, no matter how nice or friendly they seem, mess with their nakama and they will go into a frenzied rage that will leave you a pile of ash.
• BFS:
  • Erza has plenty of these.
  • Pantherlily's original sword Bustermarm was big. It's not quite Jack Rakan big, but the handle alone is large as Lily himself. And Lily's a pretty big guy in his Combat Form. Lily's sword is actually significantly bigger than he is (at least in the anime). Happy comments on how absurdly large it is and uses a little size comparison to show that Lily's sword is at least 4 times as big as he is. That's why Lily is able to knock chunks out of a floating island with his sword. Although Gajeel eventually breaks it in their fight in Edolas, Lily eventually takes a Musica Sword with similar powers from a Grimoire Heart mook during the Sirius Island arc and immediately declares, "I'm keeping it!''
• Bifauxnen: If some scans are to be believed, Midnight of Oración Seis is a woman who looks like a Bishōnen male. If that's the case, then "she" is also Daddy's Little Villain. He's actually a dude who looks like a girl.
• Big Bad Ensemble: For the majority of the series, there have been arc villains that served as main villains, however the biggest villains of the series are Zeref, Acnologia and E.N.D.
• Big Brother Instinct: Natsu and Gajeel are Wendy's unofficial older brothers. Natsu is something of an idol and inspiration to her, while Gajeel has often been the one to comfort her when she's upset.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Natsu's Edolas counterpart is introduced this way.
  • There are a lot of these in the Edolas arc.
    • In Chapter 180, Gajeel probably pulls off the biggest damn heroes moment in the arc. Too bad it's all offscreen.
    • Mystogan sending everyone back to Earthland just in the nick of time.
    • The entire Edolas Fairy Tail Guild during the final battle of the arc.
  • This actually seems to be Gajeel's hat in the guild.
  • Gildarts pulls one of these off just in time to save Cana from being killed by Bluenote, despite having already left the area beforehand.
    • He brought Fried and Bickslow back with him, much to Rustyrose's horror.
  • Chapter 244. Laxus. Nuff said.
  • The original Big Good, the first master of Fairy Tail, Mavis Vermillion in Chapter 255.
  • This is practically Natsu's signature move with regards to Lucy: In fact, she relies on it once when she jumps from a tower in the Phantom Lord guild, having heard Natsu in the distance and knowing he'd come to save her.
• Big Dumb Object / Sinister Geometry: The giant black sphere (an egg that contains a monster), cube (a magical prison), and spike (attached to a sea monster) in Fairy Tail: Ice Trail.
• Big Good: Makarov Dreyar, Mavis Vermillion and Igneel.
  • Erza also used to qualify before becoming The Big Guy.
• Big "NO!": Erza when Simon dies.
  • Natsu in Episode 264 English Dub when Igneel gets killed by Acnologia.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: YUKA SUZUKI. His eyebrows look like they could cannibalize Maito Gai's and Amarao's without even trying.
• Bilingual Bonus: Those familiar with English will get a laugh when Mystogan appears in the second OVA as the school gardener, with a spray can (a literal mist gun) in each hand.
  • Lluvia, the noun for rain in Spanish, is pronounced Juvia in Argentina.
  • The Fairy Tail guild (and the series in general) takes place in the kingdom of Fiore, which means 'Tail' in Maori. It also means 'flower' in Italian, which also makes sense since every city in Fiore is named for flowers (Magnolia, Crocus, Marguerite (a daisy), etc.).
  • Lucy's last name, Heartfilia, is a combination of the English heart and Latin filia (meaning "daughter").
  • Sherry’s name sounds identical to cherie, a French pet name translating to “dear” or (appropriately) “love.” Should also apply to her love-obsessed cousin Sherria.
  • It might actually be more prudent to say that this spans the whole series, as Mashima loves using foreign names for characters, teams, guilds magical abilities, towns/cities/countries/continents, etc. Chances are that if you looked up half the named nouns in the series, you'll find some sort of Bilingual Bonus.
• Bizarro Universe: Edolas, where the land's in the sky, Gray's extremely sensitive to the cold and has an open crush on Juvia, Jet and Droy are the strongest of the guild, Elfman's a wuss, Lucy's a delinquent, and Natsu loves to drive but is a complete wuss when not driving. Alzack and Bisca are also Sickeningly Sweethearts. Fairy Tail as a whole is an illegal guild, due to all guilds being banned, and thus being the only magic guild who resists the King's orders. Also, the only person from Earthland who can still use magic normally is Lucy thanks to the mana potion Mystogan had her drink; he provides such for the others later, too.
  • The anime implied that King Faust might be the Edolas version of Makarov. Although astute viewers would have noticed that Edolas' Fairy Tail stated that their guildmaster was killed. And Faust looks a whole lot more like the new head of the magic council. If what we've seen of him so far says anything, their personalities are a pretty good match. Edolas-Gajeel's a Non-Action Guy Intrepid Reporter and he and Earthland!Gajeel get along smashingly. Porlyusica is actually an Edolas version of Grandeeney the Sky Dragon.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Job request pages whenever we see them on the Fairy Tail message board, which are all written in Babelfish-quality English.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Lucy, Wendy/Gray and Erza/Natsu respectively.
• Blow You Away: Erigor, Ren, Wendy and Chelia.
  • If you see someone in this series using this element they are most likely to be the designated antagonists or outright evil(sans the aforementioned Wendy since she is also a Combat Medic) not unlike Firebenders in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Earth-aligned demons in Golden Sun and many water elementals in several Digimon anime.
• Bloodless Carnage: Due to the anime airing on one of TV Tokyo's Saturday-morning time slots, certain scenes that contain blood had to be toned down.
  • While some earlier removals of blood are forgiven, A-1 Pictures handling scenes like Gray being unharmed after being impaled by a ice tiger is not. To top it off, they had him try to stop the bleeding with ice anyway.
  • Getting really silly when Gajeel claims that his dragon's breath (it's made of blades of iron) has torn Natsu's body to shreds. Natsu doesn't have a scratch on him.
  • And then there's Erza vs. Ikaruga.
  • Finally subverted to an extent during Gray and Ultear's fight, where he actually slashes at his chest and freezes his blood to use as a weapon. Granted, there was a flash of light drawn instead of blood when he did the deed, but the wound is shown sealed with ice, and we actually get to see the ice on his shoulders turn a deep crimson. So that can be forgiven.
  • Averted in the 2014 reboot/continuation.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Usually Lucy, Carla, Pantherlily, Max, Warren, and to a certain extent Gajeel are the Tsukkomi. Parodied in Episode 29 by Gray in an attempt to replace the missing Lucy and is quickly told how bad he is much to his dismay.
• Book Ends:
  • The first and last fights of the Laxus arc both end the same way: with Gajeel Taking the Bullet in order to save someone from a fatal attack from Laxus.
  • On a larger scale the first fight in the series takes place in Hargeon, while the final battle against Acnologia in the physical world ends in Hargeon.
  • In a meta-sense for the anime. The first anime was produced by A-1 Pictures and directed by Shinji Ishihira. Now the third and final season will be produced by A1 Pictures and directed by Ishihira as well.
• Boomerang Bigot: Porlyusica hates humans. Semi-subverted, however, as it turns out Porlyusica is the Edolas version of Grandeeney, a dragon, though what species that technically makes Porlyusica is unclear.
• Brain Bleach: Natsu, Gray, and Gajeel all find themselves in serious need of the stuff after spotting Makarov swimming naked in the pool in the Welcome to Fairy Hills OVA.
  • It's the ladies' turn in the Halloween Special when people around turn into zombies with Ichiya's disconcerting face.
    Lucy: I think my mind just threw up!
• Brainwashed and Crazy
  • Jellal all the way.
  • Sherry during the Oración Seis arc, due to Nirvana affecting her negative feelings.
  • And Juvia, during the fight with Vidaldus.
• Brawler Lock: Erza Scarlet and Erza Knightwalker due to Combat Breakdown induced Fear Ful Symmetry.
• Bread and Circuses: The capital city of Edolas looks more like a giant amusement park than a city. This helps keep the populace happy despite the fact that their ruler is a greedy nutcase.
• Breaking the Fellowship: After the battle with Tartarus, Natsu leaves to go train and Makarov disbands the guild, causing everyone to go their separate ways, with Lucy becoming a reporter and Wendy and Carla joining Lamia Scale.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The anime has done this occasionally, with Lucy complaining at the end of one filler episode about how it has No Ending, and how another episode ends in the middle of a fight with a Cliffhanger. Also at one point, the narrator has one of the characters provide the audience with an explanation for a problem that would otherwise go unexplained. It would appear that Happy is better at talking to the audience than other characters.
  • During the fight with Kain, the narrator provides an explanation of Kain's powers. As soon as he is done talking, Happy says "You heard the man, Natsu!"
  • Lucy and Natsu do this in a preview of the next episode in the Oración Seis arc, saying "Do you know how many episodes ago that was?" upon the return of Lyon and Sherry.
• Brick Joke: While doing a recap of the facts on Geluna Island, Erza walks right into the pitfall trap that Lucy had dug the previous night, much to the shock of everyone watching.
• Broken Bird: Erza, after she was enslaved and tortured, witnessed the death of a close companion, and then suffered betrayal from her childhood crush. She can't even seek comfort in anyone else because telling anyone about what happened will get all of her old friends killed. She gets better though.
  • Mirajane as well. She lost her parents, and was despised and harassed by townspeople because they thought she was possessed by demons, even after Mira used her Take-Over powers to defend their church. This led to her and her siblings being forced out of town by an angry mob, leading her to join Fairy Tail. Mira even tried to leave Fairy Tail, not wanting to bring them bad luck before her younger siblings showed her that they learned Take-Over magic for her.
  • Jellal is a Rare Male Example, for most of the same reasons as Erza above, plus being mentally enslaved as well as physically for half his childhood.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer:
  • Most of Fairy Tail could qualify, between Natsu's constant fight-picking, Grey's streaking, Juvia's insane crush on Grey, Elfman's obsession with machismo... it seems pretty much everyone in the guild has some bizarre quirk, even the tertiary characters! Despite berating them all for this constantly, Erza is arguably one of the worst about it, with her forgetfulness, tendency to overpack on journeys that shouldn't require much luggage (especially bizarre since she doesn't need to pack clothes at all - she requips into all of her outfits), and prior to the Tower Of Heaven arc her tendency to pull unfortunate victims into an iron-plated Marshmallow Hell hug.
  • The Blue Pegasus Guild might be even better at this than Fairy Tail. From what we see of them they're basically all huge Chivalrous Perverts with bizarre powers, led by one of the most ridiculously campy Agent Peacocks ever.
• Butt-Monkey: Lucy, oddly enough considering she's also the closest to being the female lead in the story. Her butt monkey status isn't as bad as some characters out there, but she is the one who's most commonly the butt of any joke. Her butt monkey moments also often overlap with her Ms. Fanservice moments.

C

• Call-Back: The very first chapter ends with Natsu and Happy running from the authorities, dragging Lucy along with them so that she can join Fairy Tail. Chapter 419 ends with the three running from the authorities again, this time to rebuild Fairy Tail.
  • During Juvia's fight with Gray during the Phantom Lord arc, the man that dumped her over her Personal Raincloud just happened to be the "fake" Salamannder from the first episode. Given his involvement in human trafficking, that may have turned out for the best.
• Calling Your Attacks: It's a shounen series. What did you expect?
  • Subverted beautifully by Happy at one point to trick his opponents. He calls out a poison gas attack, but it turns out it was just flour.
  • Lampshaded by Toby; if you call your attack Paralysis Claw, its effects aren't exactly secret anymore.
  • Double Subverted during Natsu's fight against Cobra. He calls his attack as a dragon's roar, which Cobra thinks means a giant fireball. Turns out, it's an actual dragon's roar, let loose point blank on Cobra's ultra-sensitive ears.
• Calvinball: In an animé filler arc, Cana is challenged to a competitive card game called Guild Wars by the Eclipse Version of Scorpio. While the game has a set basic structure and win condition as established by Scorpio, the cards and their effects drawn from each player's deck are completely made up by each player as they go, resulting in the cards becoming more and more powerful as they play. The last few cards have such ridiculously overpowered abilities that they'd certainly be banned from any real life version of the game.
• The Cameo:
  • Exaggerated during the Fantasia Parade in Episode 48. If you pay attention, you can see, amidst the audience, The Galuna Devils village chief, his son, and the chick who likes Gray (in human form during night, for some reason), the contractors from the Daybreak arc, Kageyama and his Gonk-ish friend (out of jail, for some reason), Lyon and the Lamia Scale wizards, Erza's friends, Bora and the anime-only That Guy And That Chick from the Phantom Lord arc, and a girl that suspiciously looks like Wendy.
  • In Chapter 325, Haru, Elie, Musica, Let, Ruby, and Griff make a cameo in the background.
• Camp Gay: Bob, the guild master of Blue Pegasus.
• Cannot Spit It Out:
  • A non-romantic example is Cana, who is Gildarts' daughter. However, she was originally raised by her mother who apparently never told Gildarts about her, and after her mother died, Cana sought out Gildarts but couldn't work up the nerve to tell him she was his daughter. It was more than a decade before Gildarts found out.
  • And then there's Bisca and Alzack. They are Happily Married after the Time Skip.
• Cast of Snowflakes
• Catapult Nightmare: Erza invokes this in Chapter 75 when remembering her past as a child slave.
• Cat Fight: As though it weren't already obvious, the first thing that Juvia does in her hypnotized fight with Lucy is to rip her top off.
  • The Mirror Match fight between Erza and Edolas Erza reaches this point after an extended Combat Breakdown leaves two very busty warriors fighting with fists and barely enough to stay decent.
• Cat Folk: The Exceed.
• Cats Are Mean
  • Subverted with Happy. No matter what anyone tells him about what horrible things he was supposed to do, he refuses to accept it, and fights against expectations to stick by his friends.
  • The Exceed in Edolas effectively rule the human world from afar, murdering any humans which are in excess of the population to both demonstrate their power and to prevent the humans from draining the limited magical supply. They also dispatched a hundred covert assassins to assassinate the Dragon Slayers of Earthland, only changing the mission to "capture" once they realized that the targets made for excellent sources of magic. This is ultimately inverted at the end of the arc. The Exceed don't actually have the ability to do all that. Everything was simply an act to protect themselves by intimidating the human population, which had done horrible things to them in the past. The "assassination mission" never actually existed; Carla isn't remembering downloaded or transmitted instructions, she's seeing snippets of the future with the clairvoyance she inherited from her mother, Queen Shagotte, who herself turns out to be a Broken Bird. The actual purpose of sending all those eggs to Earthland was to save their children and preserve their race against the End of the World the Queen foresaw.
• Cats Are Snarkers: Almost all of the Exceeds have their moments.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Done gradually and tactfully.
  • The first couple missions are simple rescues, then comes confronting a Rival Turned Evil. The next one has the entire guild fighting a rival guild with Natsu's Evil Counterpart, who kicked it off by destroying Fairy Tail's guild hall. The Tower of Heaven arc involves a Brainwashed and Crazy slavemaster trying to revive Black Wizard Zeref. The Fighting Festival arc inverts this, as the only thing at stake is one town and it's heavily implied that Laxus holding Magnolia hostage is an empty threat. It returns with the Nirvana arc, where a Mad Scientist attempting to bring out an artifact that can turn people Brainwashed and Crazy. The Edolas arc has the few survivors of being sucked through the Anima trying to stop a parallel world from turning Earthland's wizards into lacrima. And the Sirius Island arc is once again trying to revive Zeref, only thing time, it's an entire dark guild led by Makarov's former mentor. And they inadvertently succeed in reviving him. Except he was awake all the time.
  • The Grand Magic Games arc introduced a number of darker changes, including a legitimate guild that was pretty much the antithesis of Fairy Tail in every way, cloaked figures with Zeref's magic running around, a time travel conspiracy involving soldiers from the kingdom, Carla having visions of entire buildings being destroyed and a crying/singing Lucy, and to top it all off... a scarred Levy is narrating all this from the future, the survivor of some horrific event occurring on 7/7/777, one day away from Chapter 303.
  • The Tartarus Arc introduced the Tartarus guild, primarily composed of demons from the Books of Zeref, who have no problem attacking populated areas and using innocent bystanders for Sadistic Choices.
  • In the final Alvarez Empire arc, an entire country was introduced with wizards that made the 10 wizard saints look like wimps, many of whom were to put it lightly, not good people. And the kicker? It's run by Zeref. Yes, that Zeref.
• Chainmail Bikini
  • Most of Erza's armor is actually pretty covering, but some are revealing pieces of metal Fanservice. She has an actual metal bikini too.
  • Played straight, on the other hand, by Erza Knightwalker.
• Chainsaw Good: Because having a sword for an arm isn't badass enough, the anime gives the possibility to Gajeel to use his power to transform his arm in what looks pretty much like a chainsaw.
• Chaos While They're Not Looking: A Running Gag has rivals Natsu and Gray repeatedly fight unless Erza was looking. When she was looking the two would act like best friends to avoid angering her and getting beat up as a result.
• Character Exaggeration / Flanderization: The anime has done this with some characters.
  • Juvia. In the manga when she first sees Lucy after joining Fairy Tail, she gives a chipper "Oh hey, love rival." to which Lucy responds "I'm really not." In the anime, Juvia glares at her instead, and shouts "LOVE RIVAL!" while blasting Lucy with dark vibes. It wouldn't be the last time. One of the manga covers even lampshades the fact that they're actually very good friends. You wouldn't know it from the anime.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: If the Vanish Brothers (and by extension, mercenary guilds) are anything to go by, a mere human who trains hard enough can hurl people through solid walls, catapult a grown man several meters into the air, punch so hard they create an impact crater, attain an iron body, and probably more without using any form of magic whatsoever.
• Chaste Hero: Natsu.
  • Hilarious Example: Lucy's Edolas counterpart offers to drop her towel so she can compare her body to Lucy's. Natsu isn't interested, he thinks they should do mirror sketches.
  • Chapter 261 reverses this into him actively attempting to peek on Lucy and the rest of the girls while they're in the bath. He's joined by Gray, Jet, and Droy.
• Chekhov's Armory: You can generally assume any attention-getting detail that's suddenly unmentioned will be critically important in some point in the future.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: Erza's right eye.
• Chekhov's Gun
  • In the anime, the sign that Laxus taught his grandfather has spread throughout the entire guild, as seen in Episode 2.
  • Gildarts' beating of Natsu and telling him that fear isn't evil and is sometimes necessary.
  • Mystogan never formally quits being a member. He just stays behind at the end of the Edolas arc.
  • The Dragon King Festival, mentioned in Chapter 100 and again in 292.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Zeref, Virgo, and Lucy's Mother, among a ton of others.
  • The Oracion Seis is a particularly notable example. They first appeared (post-timeskip) in the Key of the Starry Skies filler arc. At first, it would seem to be a throwaway filler arc with a brief mention in manga canon. But it turned out to serve the purpose of re-introducing Oracion Seis to the manga audience as well, particularly Cobra and his eventually pivotal role in the Grand Magic Games arc and subsequently, a notable role in the Tartaros arc.
• Chekhov's Skill: Gray learnt how to handle himself in a motorcycle chase against Racer, and can strip in a split second. In his fight against Sugarboy he steals a motorcycle to pursue him and and dodges an attack by taking off his jacket quicker than the eye can see.
• The Chessmaster: Jellal attempts to play this role, even using actual chess figures to represent other characters unsuccessfully. He ends up as a pawn for his supposed minion, Ultear.
• Chivalrous Pervert
  • Loke and everybody from Blue Pegasus except for Ichiya. Especially the chivalry part.
  • The summon spirit Taurus, whose contract essentially stipulates that as long as Lucy stays hot, he'll gladly protect her sexy, sexy body. So, to that end, on one occasion he summons himself to block an attack that Lucy couldn't otherwise have dealt with.
• Child Mage: Most wizards learn magic at a very early age.
  • Wendy is the resident Child Mage.
  • Romeo, after the Time Skip.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Erza and Jellal, although they are a more tragic variant.
  • Natsu and Lisanna as well. However, this goes completely Out of Focus after their reunion at the end of the Edolas Arc.
• The Chosen One: Parodied. Lucy wonders if she's this when she's the only one who can use magic in Edolas. She is immediately shot down. Then everyone else gets their own mana potions to drink, and they're right back to using their powers.
• Christmas Episode: There is an omake that was later adapted and expanded into one of the OVAs which centers around the Fairy Tail guild celebrating Christmas. Unlike most depictions, however, its presentation is more in line with the actual Western basis of the holiday, with the characters mostly focusing on family and friends opposed to romance (with the exception of some occasional Ship Tease).
• Chunky Updraft
  • Mirajane.
  • Also Gildarts, even more than the above character.
• Cliffhanger Copout: Wendy gets hit by a spell and vanishes into thin air at the end of the chapter, and at the start of the next she's just inside Hologorium, who conveniently popped up right then and is clinging to the ceiling.
  • Pretty funny that, before we realize that Wendy is safe and not hit by Hades' attack, Hades keeps a very calm face, as Wendy disappearing was supposed to happen. Shouldn't he be like 'What happened to my spell?' Unless, of course, her disappearing actually was supposed to happen. Considering the extent of Hades' magic knowledge, that is not incocievable.
• Clothing Damage: Lots. Especially for Lucy.
  • It's mostly Lucy and Erza who gets this, though Erza usually switches armor shortly after. Despite having in the most battles, Natsu doesn't seem to get this as much. Although after a long fight, Erza will leave her damaged clothing on for a long time.
  • Possibly justified with Natsu, since he doesn't ever wear a shirt to begin with. Just a vest and a scarf. His pants and vest are often frayed and worn by the end of a fight, though. And recently his scarf changed colors under ominous circumstances.
  • Gray subverts this. He takes his clothes off in advance. And not just before fights. Avoiding clothing damage is not the reason, he just likes taking his shirt off.
  • Jellal, when fighting Natsu. His overcoat catches fire as he takes it off and it burns to ashes in an instant. This is the only affect Natsu's attack has on him. Though the suit he's wearing after that is completely wrecked once Natsu find's a suitably outrageous power up.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: A graphic example in Chapter 365, in which Kyouka does this to Erza by stripping her naked, and then flogging her after using magic to make her extremely sensitive to pain. For extra effect, she shows Mirajane, also stripped naked and covered in tentacles, and says if Erza doesn't tell her where Jellal is, she's going to turn Mirajane into a demon. Erza quickly broke down into Tears of Fear, and pleas to spare Mirajane while swearing that she doesn't know anything about Jellal's location.
  • This isn't the first time Erza has been tortured. Way back when she was a slave in the Tower of Heaven, she was falsely accused of a failed escape attempt, she is dragged off to the "punishment chamber". When Jellal comes to save her, she's covered in whiplashes and something has happened to her right eye, apparently horrifying enough for Jellal to scream at the sight of the injury. Jellal himself gets whipped bloody (or hit with magical electricity in the anime) for killing three cultists on the way to rescuing Erza, as death was deemed too simple a punishment, which soured him up to the point where he was the perfect target for Zeref's ghost (actually Ultear's brainwashing).
• Colony Drop: King Faust plans to use the lacrima of the Fairy Tail guild as a magical bomb on Extalia.
• Combat Breakdown: Happens on occasion with lengthy fights. The most prominent being tbe Mirror Match fight between Erza and Edolas Erza. Each hit the other with their most powerful weapons...and both of them broke; the fight devolves into a Cat Fight.
• The Comically Serious:
  • Mystogan would like some more apples.
  • Erza as well.
  • Gajeel, from time to time.
  • Fried has his moments.
  • Virgo wants to know if you would punish her after she does something.
  • In the anime episode 2, after Gray loses his clothes in a "fight" between the Fairy Tail members, he nonchalantly asks Lucy to lend him her underwear, with a deadpan tone.
• Complete Immortality: Zeref and Mavis
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Observe...
  • Natsu and the gang (12 members) have been easily defeated by Oración Seis (6 members)
  • Shortly afterwards they were separated into pairs (2 members)
  • Each pair fought a whole guild (30+ members) and won.
  • And the good guys who later fought an Oración Seis one-on-one won.
  • Also in the beginning, Erza and Lucy took down most of Eisenwald.
  • The Raijin Tribe, Lucy (by herself), Natsu, and Gray vs. the Naked Mummy guild they lose everytime.
  • The rules for the determining the outcome of a battle seem to be: 1. the team with more people will lose, 2. if it's one-on-one, Fairy Tail wins, and 3. if the enemy is a boss, Fairy Tail still wins.
• Continuity Cavalcade:
  • The second OVA, for example: Carla dressing up as Laxus and accidently blurts out that she wants to take over Fairy Academy.
  • From the same OVA, Gajeel seems to be channeling Bixlow for a moment.
  • The tenth ending has the whole series up until the Sirius Island arc done in a board game-like setting.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Any new members of Fairy Tail we are introduced to appear in the background of the guild whenever they can, and at one point you can see Romeo hanging with Macao when Wendy introduces herself to the guild. Lyon and his group appear on newspapers and magazines from time to time, as well. The fact that they didn't do this with Mest is the first sign that he's not what he seems.
    • Then Makarov reveals that Doranbolt was a member of Fairy Tail the entire time and had wiped his own memories.
  • The horn from the demon that Erza vanquished and brought to the guild in her introduction is seen as a display in the guild 200 chapters later.
  • Mashima recently has been using this in reference to the extra details included in the anime such as Makarov's character design as a young man and Ultear's Ice Make magic having the same flower theme as Ur's, which was only made known in the anime.
  • In the Daphne arc, at one point, Happy and Lucy mimic Cobra and Hoteye's Catchphrase/Verbal Tic respectively.
  • Gajeel and Natsu once argue about The Tortoise and the Hare, later it's parodied in a filler episode.
• Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: The Magic Council, especially the new council always seems to time themselves to arrive right after the day has been saved so they can arrest or take a character in to custody for property destruction/illegal war/manipulating the council/being a member of Oración Seis. If they're so high and mighty would it really kill them to try this on the villains as well.
  • Considering the level of mages in this universe, yes.
    • Right after deciding to take on Tartaros, they were killed by a member of said guild. It WILL kill them.
• Cooldown Hug:
  • Natsu and Lucy in Chapter 174.
  • Lisanna looked like she wanted to try that with Elfman when he lost control of himself. It didn't work out.
  • There's also a brief one between Erza and Gray during the Phantom arc.
• Covert Pervert:
  • Erza might be one if what Levy says on this page is any indication.
  • And in the anime adaptation she is seen holding Laki's handcuffs blushing.
  • After Evergreen's stone spell wears off of her, she sees Natsu standing over her and notices that she's very warm. (He'd been trying to burn the stone off of her.) Her reaction makes sense if she thought he was doing something less noble.
  • Erza's favourite "armor", in which she dresses up as what is essentially a playboy bunny, tells us a bit about her character.
  • Chapter 236's "Seduction Armor" pretty much confirms this. The sad part is, it probably would have worked.
• Covers Always Lie: In the Volume 6 cover, Levy is slightly more busty than she should be... Though to be fair, it's also a question of Art Evolution. The page caption is from the start of the series, where she was actually drawn having breasts, just quite smaller than the ones she got in the caption. Nowadays, she is the series' resident Pettanko, not counting Wendy who is simply too young to have grown breasts.
• Cracks in the Icy Façade: Ezra Scarlet is introduced as a stone-faced disciplinarian who a highly-trained badass that is often too serious during peaceful moments unlike the rest of her guild. She often would chastise her guild for goofing off and not taking things seriously, especially Natsu. This would also cause her to have a Lack of empathy, in which she takes everyone away from the village without understanding why it would be important for them to stay and protect them.
  • It's later revealed that she a Broken Bird suffering from a traumatic Dark and Troubled Past that left her with such a massive amount of feelings of guilt and betrayal that for a long time, she became hardened and more closed off to everyone else. After, Gray calls her out for her lack of empathy, she begins to try and make an attempt to open up and be more light-hearted and understanding of others.
• Crack in the Sky: In the final arc, the protagonists think they've successfully sealed away Acnologia in a space time rift that he'll never get out of, albeit at the sacrifice of two of their members who have rammed him into it. Not long after Zeref is finally defeated and everyone starts to relax, Wendy notices the sky suddenly cracking before Acnologia suddenly breaks through, having eaten the magic in the rift to free himself. On the upside, said members are likewise revealed to be alive.
• Crapsaccharine World: The capital of Edolas is a shiny amusement park of a city kept prosperous with stolen magic, while the rest of the world is literally falling apart.
• Crazy Workplace: When Lucy Heartfilia first comes to the Fairy Tail Guild, she is utterly amazed to be there, among some of the best wizards in the world... and then she finds out that Natsu works for them too, and that everyone there is seemingly as mad as he is.
• Creator's Culture Carryover: The continent of Ishgar is very eclectic, with a strange mix of settings, cultures, and customs for a place that seems so small relatively speaking. Fiore is predominantly European in culture, yet there are elements that seem otherwise out of place. For example, Magnolia has a Japanese bathhouse, with a transparent justification that it was created by somebody who loved the Orient so much that he built The Theme Park Version of it. And they observe hanami (flower viewing) rather than a more European festival like May Day. Then again, Magnolia also holds an annual Harvest Festival. Meanwhile, Marguerite (home of Lamia Scale) observes a Thanksgiving Festival.
• Crossover:
  • Also with Flunk Punk Rumble.
  • Had a Christmas special with The Seven Deadly Sins by Suzuki Nakaba. Though rather then the characters crossing over, each author just took over the other respective series for a one shot. In Suzuki's, it involved Natsu noticing someone trying to go down the chimney of the Fairy Tail building only to find out it's Marakov playing Santa. Of course the discovery comes only after Natsu unleashes a fire blast his way. There's a proper crossover where Meliodas, Elizabeth, and Hawk wander into Magnolia.
  • A one-shot with Parasyte, of all things!
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: The treasure hunters act like idiots, but they're tough enough to give Team Natsu a challenge.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Erza vs Aria. Aria was the strongest of Phantom Lord's Element Four and Erza took him out in a matter of seconds. Even though he released his formerly restrained power and Erza was still recovering from having blocked Jupiter's blast.
  • Makarov vs. Jose at the end of the Phantom Lord arc turns into this, when Makarov unleashes Fairy Law, defeating Jose and all of his summoned minions in one blast.
  • Gildarts repels all of Natsu's attacks without moving an inch before flaring his Battle Aura and reducing Natsu to tears of fear.
  • Later, Hades wipes the floor with Makarov using the same kind of light magic as him. He even blasts a hole through Makarov's chest.
  • And then he does it again with Lucy, Natsu, Gray, Erza, and Wendy. Guy's a former Master for a reason.
  • Reversed in Chapter 248 when Hades' source of power, the Devil's Heart, is destroyed and the good guys' power source, the Sirius Tree, is restored.
  • From the Grand Magic Games:
    • Erza vs. all the enemy monsters in the Pandemonium battle.
    • Laxus vs. all of Team Raven Tail (including his own father).
    • Minerva (Sabertooth's Master's daughter) vs. Lucy. Minerva holds back while Juvia does most of the work by eliminating Chelia, Lisley and Jenny (the latter of whom took out the Quattro Puppy member), even though her guildmates suggest she could likely have dealt with everyone herself. After teleporting Juvia out of the arena, Minerva steals Lucy's keys, blasts her to the edge, teleports her back, and beats her unconscious as the rest of Team Sabertooth except for Rogue smugly laugh.
    • What we saw in the Natsu & Gajeel vs. Rogue & Sting battle. Rogue & Sting have gone through no less 2 power ups, resulting in little more than some dust build up on Natsu & Gajeel. Natsu & Gajeel on the other hand have been beating the ever loving tar out of them with the most effort used being to close the initial distance between them. They are now using Dragon Force to power up again just to attempt to compete with Natsu and Gajeel. A later chapter shows Natsu sending Gajeel away on a minecart, which came out of nowhere btw, before utterly wiping the floor with Sting and Rogue. All without undergoing any kind of powerup.
    • And after unlocking her Second Origin and re-equiping into the Nagakami Armor, Erza epicly curbstomped Minerva into submission. Minerva even begged for mercy before getting flattened.
    • Everybody Jura fights in the tournament, with the exception of Laxus and Jellal.
    • Gajeel after absorbs Rogue's shadow property and manages to keep up with him even after Rogue gets a boost from his future self.
    • Future Rogue 2-shot KO's Natsu after killing Future Lucy.
• Cursed with Awesome: The earlier generations of Dragon Slayer mages who overused their powers ended up becoming dragons themselves. This was treated as if it were a horrible fate, almost worse than death. Never mind the extraordinary strength, longevity and magical power that came with it. You can't even justify it by saying that Acnologia would come after them for being dragons, because he'll target dragon slayers just as readily.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Wendy, who's introduced tripping while on her way to a meeting of the alliance of guilds to stop Oracion Seis. She's improved.
  • Chelia also does this, and she and Wendy trip when on their way to her match. In the guide to the contestants, her special attribute apart from offense, defense, speed and intelligence even references this trope.
• Cute Kitten: Natsu has Happy, Wendy has Carla, and Gajeel has Pantherlily. Sabertooth's Dragon Slayers Sting and Rogue have Lector and Frosch, respectively.
• Cute Little Fangs: Variation with the Dragon Slayers; every Dragon Slayer has very pronounced teeth, thought not pronounced enough for fangs to stick out of closed mouths. Even Wendy has them. Just compare her teeth when she's smiling to any other girl in the series.
  • Zeref appears to have them too. Rumors have been flying since Gildarts' introduction that Zeref is a Dragon Slayer himself.
• Cuteness Proximity: The entire guild after seeing Happy hatch and land on Natsu's head. There's a reason the scene is the image for the Heartwarming page.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: The anime openings frequently show Natsu flying around using his fire magic as propulsion because it looks cool. In the actual anime and manga, he can only use his magic to enhance his jumps, and needs Happy to fly. Somewhat subverted; he uses it against Jellal (who can achieve flight by casting Meteor on himself) in the anime.

D

• Damsel out of Distress: Both Lucy (during her first capture) and Erza manage to take out the person keeping watch of them and get out of their cells.
• Dark and Troubled Past: All of the main characters were set on the path that eventually led them to Fairy Tail by some past trauma. Each of character arcs has the spotlight character confronting (although not necessarily in direct combat) and overcoming the villain who inflicted such trauma on them, all the while relying on their True Companions to help them through.
• Darkest Hour: Gray Fullbuster dies a gruesome death, a crying Jet holds a lifeless Droy in his arms, Bacchus is stabbed by the enemy and Macao Conbolt is seen being pilled up by dragons before the tearful eyes of his son. Then Ultear sacrifices her life to rewind time but it only turns back ONE MINUTE! We then find out that minute saved the lives of the aforementioned people together with countless others, however, bear in mind the battle with dragons is only in the beginning and humanity still haven't defeated a single one of them so this trope still counts.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • The demonic residents of Galuna Island can't enter the local temple due to their dark nature, but they're extremely friendly, if a tad reclusive due to fears of persecution.
  • Mirajane's Take Over. Her attacks are even called things like "Darkness Stream" and "Evil Spark".
  • Fried counts as well. Runes of Darkness combined with a demon transformation of his own; his title is even "Fried the Dark". He's also the most sympathetic member of the Raijin Tribe.
  • Edolas Fairy Tail, which hasn't disbanded despite the ban on magic guilds and is thus considered a 'dark' guild for acting outside the law. It's just as bent on helping people as its Earthland counterpart, and is only considered illegal because of laws intended to conserve Edolas's finite magical energy.
  • Rogue the Shadow Dragon Slayer. Although first appearing alongside Sting as a rival to Fairy Tail's dragon slayers, he is eventually revealed to be one of the five children sent from the past as part of an elaborate plan to defeat Acnologia. Once the rivalry is put aside, Rogue shows he is just as just-minded as all the good-natured wizards (he once possessed a Superpowered Evil Side, but it's revealed to have come from a Bad Future). This echoes with his guardian, Skiadrum the Shadow Dragon. When he is finally revealed, he is shown to be a very noble and just dragon.
• Darker and Edgier: The S-Class Trial arc.
  • The Big Bad is The Man Behind the Man to Ultear, who has been The Chessmaster to several other big bads. Not only that, but he's the first one in the entire series to ever beat Makarov in a fair fight. Makarov's only other loss was due to a sneak attack.
  • Most, if not all, of Hades' Quirky Mini Boss Squad are more powerful than previous Big Bads. They use lost magic, which is absurdly powerful. One of them is basically a more powerful version of Natsu. He can eat Natsu's flames, and uses fire that Natsu chokes on.
  • And to top it off, the goal of the whole thing is to revive the Black Wizard Zeref.
    • This is nothing. At the end of the arc, Acnologia the Black Dragon of the Apocalypse arrives and nukes Fairy Tail and Sirius Island into oblivion.
  • At the end of the Grand Magic Games, after said timeskip, a Manipulative Bastard time traveler brings an army of dragons from the past and the Kingdom of Fiore begins to be torn apart while the strongest mages can do nothing against them. Good thing the city was evacuated beforehand.
  • And all of the above is nothing compared to the Tartaros arc. While most of the previous arcs' conflicts' scope was limited between Fairy Tail and dark guilds, the Tartaros arc has now involved innocent civilians with well over a hundred deaths and counting.
  • Topped of course by the final arc: the Alvarez Empire arc.
• Daydream Surprise: How Midnight is finished off when his illusions backfire on him.
  • A hilarious one happens where Lucy declares her undying love to Gray and tries to lay him down. Thank you, Juvia.
• D-Cup Distress: Within the Freaky Friday episode; Gray ends up in Lucy's body, and the first indication is that he starts bitching about how her back hurts.
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: Inverted in the Edolas arc, with Mirajane and Elfman's dead little sister Lisanna, as Earthland's (the main setting) version of Lisanna is dead, but the Edolas version is alive. turns out to be played straight later, as Edolas Lisanna really is Earthland Lisanna who was transported into Edolas, while the real Edolas Lisanna is already dead.
• Deader than Dead: How does being broken up at the atomic level and shot into the sky sound? And yet, Jellal got better...
• Deadly Upgrade:
  • Natsu after he eats Etherion magic, actually enters Dragon Force, but due to it being made of other magic is deadly to his health.
    • Whenever he eats magic that's not fire.
  • The reformed Ultear has an ability to unlock Second Origin: untapped magic potential in other wizards, which has an excruciatingly painful effect as experienced by the Fairy Tail members who decided to accept it. This is primarily due to Ultear's Arc of Time magic not so much unlocking it itself but accelerating the process: compressing what would normally take years into hours. The only person this doesn't affect is Erza: the implication being her own ordeals already caused her to unlock Second Origin.
• Death by Origin Story: Most of the main cast has at least once dead or missing loved one somewhere in their backstory.
• Death Seeker: Possibly all Jellals. Confirmed for Earth Jellal after the Time Skip, as he admitted to Erza during a one-on-one talk that nothing he could do could ever make up for his actions during the Tower of Heaven arc. In response, she gives him a slap and a Get A Hold Of Yourself Man lecture to snap him out of it.
  • Zeref is (or was, rather) this for the longest time, believing that Natsu was the only person capable of killing him. He breaks down into tears when he realizes that Natsu still isn't strong enough to do so yet.
• Death Glare: Gildarts takes it to a whole new level by breaking Natsu's will to fight with a look.
  • More Played for Laughs, Lucy delivers one to Natsu and Gray in Chapter 72/Episode 31 and actually gets them to shut up and leave, a feat normally only accomplished by Erza.
  • During Loke's backstory (Chapter 73/Episode 32), freaking BOB pulled off one of these on Karen Lilica. It must be seen to be believed and is glorious.
  • Team Fairy Tail gave one to Sting on the final day of the Grand Magic Games, cowering him into submission.
  • And Zeref is so good at this that he reduced seasoned dark mages like Rusty Rose and Kain to Tears of Fear. Seriously, look at him◊!
• Deceptive Disciple:
  • Laxus, who initially looked up to his grandfather, but then became a rebellious jerk who cares little for anyone outside of his personal clique, until he underwent Character Development and got better.
  • Played straight with Ivan, who is Laxus's father also master of the dark guild Raven Tail.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Surprisingly averted, for the most part: Despite lots of Heel Face Turns, there are very few who fit this trope.
  • Juvia and Gajeel meet this trope as they were once part of the rival guild Phantom Lord.
  • Gajeel wants to make Pantherlily his cat... so they battle. Gajeel really wants a kitty.
  • One of the most powerful friendships to develop in the series came from a version of this trope, when Wendy faced Sherria in the Grand Magic Games. Despite Sherria's clear advantage in sky magic, Wendy impressed her with her cleverness and determination. Wendy didn't so much defeat her as surprise her and keep up the fight until a draw was declared. Afterward, Sherria acknowledged her and offered to be friends, creating one of the most heartwarming moments in the entire series.
• Defrosting Ice Queen:
  • Erza, although she completely thawed out after the Tower of Heaven arc.
    Erza: I thought my armor protected me, but it did more harm than good. It shielded me from pain but it kept me distanced from others. My heart was too guarded to connect with anyone... that is, until I joined Fairy Tail. Everyone was so warm and caring that my cold shell began to crack, and I began to feel emotions again! I can't rely on my armor anymore - I know I'm strong enough to defeat you without it!
  • Carla seems to be one as well. She initially thinks little of the rest of the guild besides Wendy, especially Happy, whom she kept calling "male cat." Over time, though, she opens up more to the others and starts calling Happy by name.
• Designated Girl Fight: The only times when Lucy doesn't end up fighting a girl are when Erza fights the girl instead. Though neither of them got paired up with Juvia in the Phantom Lord arc. And when Ultear fought Natsu she was disguised as an old guy.
  • The majority of Lucy's fights have been against men. Although she always fights someone who fights uses something else so her fights are more like Pokémon battles, only with her taking a more active role with her whip.
  • The Naval Battle event involves the female members of most of the guilds, with the exception of Quatro Puppy, which is almost entirely male.
• Destructive Savior: One of the reasons Fairy Tail is one of the most notorious guilds around, despite the relatively high caliber of their wizards. Erza, Gray, and Natsu are especially bad at avoiding property damage. Put the three together, and, well, as Lucy put it...
  "We were a bigger menace to that town than that cult ever was, and we're paying for it out of our reward..."
  • In Chapter 23, the Magic Council formally charges Erza for the MASSIVE property damage that occurred throughout the Lullaby arc. Fortunately for Erza it was just a formality: She wouldn't have actually spent any time in jail. Unfortunately, Natsu busted into the proceedings in a misguided attempt to help her and got both of them thrown into jail for the night.
  • This turns out to be to their advantage during the conclusion of the Tower of Heaven arc, which features Team Natsu destroying the Tower of Heaven with everything they have. Natsu even lampshades it:
    Natsu: "The mages of Fairy Tail specialize in property damage!"
  • Gildarts takes this trope to its logical conclusion. The townspeople literally change the town's layout when they hear Gildarts is returning in order to give him a clear pathway to the guild.
  • Later on, we learn that Fairy Tail's tendency for property damage goes way back. Even First Master Mavis had to deal with the same kinds of headaches (letters of apology, reimbursement bills, repair estimates, etc.) that Makarov deals with today. And we're not talking occasional instances, either, but enough letters to fill a room.
• Deus Exit Machina: Typically, arcs that have more than a small team of heroes have something near the beginning happen that keeps the strongest guild members there from kicking all the villains' asses themselves, which they don't get out of until only the strongest villains are left.
  • Makarov gets his magic drained at the beginning of the Phantom Lord arc and trapped behind a Containment Field during the Fighting Festival arc (the same barrier also trapped Natsu and Gajeel).
  • Erza got turned into stone during the Fighting Festival arc and poisoned in the Oración Seis arc.
  • Lately, Loke's been coming up with excuse upon excuse to be of no help.
  • Also the Edolas arc, in which Mystogan by all accounts could solve the conflict in ten minutes and is the only one who actually knows what's going on from the beginning, doesn't bother to show up, instead settling on sending Lucy of all people as a backup. And that's exactly what happens. Of course, there is a perfectly valid reason for why he was waiting. How else would he get his exploits mentioned here???
  • Gildarts, Fried, and Bickslow leave Sirius Island just before Grimoire Heart arrives. Bad timing. They could have beeen of some use. They however return.
  • Gildarts lives and breathes this trope. He could have taken out Master Jose and ended the Phantom Lord arc in less than half the time it took had he not been on the 100 year mission. It's debatable if he would have been any use during Fighting Festival; Fried would have just set his runes to lock in anyone over 40, rather than 80.
    • Laxus completely skips out on the Phantom Lord arc even though he made it pretty clear that he could have defeated most of the guild easily, and Gajeel says as much after fighting against him. However, he took the whole thing as a laughing matter.
  • Subverted in the Grand Magic Games arc. Just when the fans are wondering why Laxus, Mirajane, and Gajeel aren't on Fairy Tail's team, you find out that they submitted two teams. The second team is Gajeel, Mira, Laxus, Juvia, and Jellal disguised as Mystogan.
• Deus ex Machina: There is absolutely zero buildup to Anna Heartfillia's appearance in the present before she eventually shows up, and it happens right when it appears there is no hope of beating Acnologia, whom she also happens to have figured out how to defeat. But then subverted. After all the effort to get Anna's plan to work and trap Agnologia, he breaks out anyway, and it's ultimately a two-pronged effort on the part of Natsu and Lucy that ultimately defeats him.
• Diabolus ex Machina:
  • Immediately after the guild alliance destroyed Nirvana, the new magic council comes to arrest two of the people who helped to save everyone. Well, they were well-known villains. They were going to have to get arrested some time, might as well be then.
  • Again, at the end of the S-Class Trial arc, just as the arc appeared to be wrapping up, the Black Dragon Acnologia shows up...
  • The first day of the Grand Magic Games for Fairy Tail.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Quite a few of the highly specialised wizards. The strongest example is Fried, who can basically rewrite the laws of nature.
  • Magic Tool Users like Ichiya, Mystogan, Cana and Celestial Spirit Mages can have their tools taken away from them or be unable to use their tools due to being restrained. However they benefit from a very versatile powerset in exchange, with a very wide range of possible effects. For example, Celestial Spirit Mages are inherently unpredictable since there is no way of knowing what and how many Celestial Keys a given mage may own. Getting those keys however can be a difficult prospect.
• Dirty Old Man: Makarov likes to take on this role during times of peace, or as close to peace as things get.
• Disability Immunity: One of Erza's eyes isn't real (though she can still see through it, which is a subversion of this trope). This gives immunity/resistance to magic that involves her eyes, including illusions and petrification through staring (since it only goes through one eye). This resistance increases if she closes her real eye.
• Dishing Out Dirt: Jura, Max, Hoteye, and Mikuni. Virgo may also count, as she has an affinity for tunneling.
• Disowned Parent:
  • After Lucy comes home and learns the full extent of her father Jude's involvement in the guild war between Phantom Lord and Fairy Tail as well the selfish reasons he was willing to go through to bring her back for an Arranged Marriage. Lucy promptly disowns him as her father with her acknowledging Fairy Tail as being far more deserving of being called her family then him. The two of them do eventually reconcile shortly after Jude loses his fortune.
  • Erza is repulsed that her biological mother, Irene Belserion, gave birth to her just so she could take over her body, abandoned her in a random village when she failed, and is actively trying to kill her out of spite. Because of this, despite knowing the circumstances that drove Irene to such lows, Erza understandably has no problems telling Irene that Fairy Tail is her real family. However, at the end of their fight, Erza changes her tune when Irene commits suicide to protect her from herself during a Moment of Lucidity.
  • During his fight against Raven Tail in the Grand Magic Games Laxus makes it explicitly clear that he no longer views Ivan as his father with Laxus disowning him and telling Ivan that he sees the rest of the Fairy Tail guild as his only family now.
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • Gender-reversed version. Juvia gets incredibly distracted when fighting Gray. Of course, then she misunderstands things and thinks that he's in love with Lucy, and gets ticked.
  • Gemini pulls this on Hibiki. Turning into Lucy and removing her top. Lucy was not pleased.
  • Natsu manages to try and get Lucy to pull this on Hughes. It doesn't work.
  • Lyon is distracted long enough by the sight of Juvia's underwear as she leaps down from above for her to kick him in the face.
  • This tends to happen to Taurus as well.
• Distress Ball: Happens to Erza during the Tower of Heaven arc with Jellal, though it's slightly justified. She just had waaaaay too much faith in her old friend and thus, let her guard down enough that he was able to slap her with the magical equivalent of the Standard Female Grab Area. All so that Natsu could save the day, of course.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Gray was inside Juvia, not Lucy.
  • Not to mention the one Exceed who waves his hand like he's playing RPS... except, without changing it from rock. And apparently, as of Chapter 198, Erza, Lucy, Gray, and Natsu have done it too. Hmm.
  • Tempesta's final attack is eerily reminiscent of a chemical weapons attack... Not to mention the mass genocide that occurs from its first appearance
• Double Agent: Gajeel. He's first revealed to be infiltrating Fairy Tail for a Dark Guild, and then later is shown to be playing that part in the service of Fairy Tail.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Largely averted. There are several times (more so early in the series) where Erza dealing corporal punishment to Natsu and Gray is portrayed as comedic, but it's only after repeatedly challenging and getting beaten up by her that the two are afraid of her. Natsu unintentionally hits Erza twice during the Sun Village arc (with Gray the first time), and its played for comedy. In the aftermath of the Edolas arc, a sleeping Natsu punches Lucy through the roof while fighting in his dreams, and that too is Played for Laughs.
• Downer Ending: The Movie.
• The Dragon:
  • Ultear thus far, has played second to most of the villains. Though she turns out to be the real Big Bad in the Tower of Heaven arc. Aaaand she's back as the Dragon of the Big Bad, Master Hades.
  • More recently, Cobra of Oración Seis seems to be this to Brain. He is loyal, gets extremely happy when their plans seem to succeed, and stands to defend him from Natsu, although that's probably because Brain is too busy guiding Nirvana towards Cait Shelter to deal with him. And it turns out Cobra fits the role almost literally, being the Poison Dragon Slayer.
  • Some fans give this role to Midnight, being the strongest member of Oración Seis except for Brain's Superpowered Evil Side and the leader's son.
  • Gajeel to Master Jose of Phantom Lord.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Ultear, to Lyon and Jellal. And later to Master Hades.
• Dream Team: Pretty much implied with the combined Fairy Tail Team in the Grand Magic Games arc, as Mirajane put it, consisting of Natsu, Gajeel, Gray, Laxus and Erza.
  Mirajane: This truly is the strongest team....
• Dressing as the Enemy: Erza posing as her Edolas counterpart. What made this strangely amusing was Erza stripped her counterpart of her clothes in the process, leaving Edolas' Erza mostly naked.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: The Tartarus arc begins with one of the guild's core members killing the council in a explosion that takes Lahar as collateral damage.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: In the Erigor/Lullaby arc, at one point Happy takes the time to exposit about Gray's Maker Magic, and he explains that a user of Maker Magic can create objects out of their respective element, or destroy that element. (For example, Grey's Ice Make Magic can create objects from ice, or disintegrate ice.) The English dub mistranslates it to "its users can give magic a tangible form, however there's another type of magic that can destroy" implying that the destruction aspect is an entirely separate school of magic, which may lead to some confusion when Grey uses his Ice Make Magic to counter a villain's ice magic in the next arc.
  • In the anime dub, Lucy suddenly being on good terms with Flare when she shows up again in the Sun Village arc falls into this. Flare's actual apology to Lucy was covered in the Ryuzetsu Land OVA which wasn't localized in English, leaving fans confused by Lucy change of attitude.
  • In the Tartaros arc, the official localization of the manga calls the demons of the book of Zeref "Aetherious" rather than "Etherious." This caused problems at the end of the arc, where it's revealed that E.N.D., the name for the strongest demon Zeref ever created, stands for "Etherious Natsu Dragneel," which obviously makes no sense if it's spelled with an A.

E

• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • In the anime, Duke Everlue's face can be seen on a request on the board, presumably the one Natsu picks up in the next episode.
  • In Episode 34, you can see kid versions of some of the Oración Seis during Erza's flashback.
  • Wendy, who was made the "fateful encounter" that Lucy meets (in the manga it was originally Natsu and Happy).
  • A twist on the theme, the 10th opening credits and Episode 113 show us Romeo 7 years older.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Levi's early appearances actually illustrate her having decently sized breasts before she was established to be a Pettanko.
  • In the start of the anime, Natsu being unaware of Salamander being his nickname causing him to think it's Igneels.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Applies to each major arc, but is especially relevant after the Time Skip as it involves Fairy Tail having lost its fame and half of its members, becoming the most laughed-at guild in the region. Participating in the Grand Magic Games is treated as the only way that the guild can win back its status. So it's pretty painful to watch when the two Fairy Tail teams spend the first half of the Games trying to claw their way up from last place, sometimes due other guilds cheating. They manage to fight their way into first place by the end, but when they do finally win the Games, it's only because Sting of Sabertooth lost the will to fight in the last round and surrendered.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • Everyone but Jellal, regardless of how horrible their plans were. Granted Jellal caused the most suffering for any member of the main cast and is the only one who killed another character onscreen. This also applies to outside the story. Fans pretty readily ignore characters' past actions. Again, Jellal is not always accepted by them, despite him being the only one with reasonable evidence that he wasn't completely in control of his actions. Jellal did kill three people (villains) before that potential excuse kicks in. Still, a lot of other forgiven criminals are known to have or at least attempted murder.
  • Played with in the case of Gajeel Makarov declares Gajeel's actions unforgivable (complete with a very scary look on his face) but goes on to declare that letting Gajeel fall into darker moods and darker habits would be even more unforgivable, and that's why he makes the invitation. Plus, Gajeel doesn't earn full forgiveness until he allows two of the members of Fairy Tail that he'd beaten and nailed to a tree to beat him down in return, and then tank some friendly fire that was going to hit Levy—the third one he nailed to the tree. She was too kindhearted to attack him with the others.
  • Laxus with his Raijin Tribe turned against Fairy Tail and tried to destroy not only the guild but the entire town where it resided... twice. The only punishment he got for it was expulsion from the guild, and Natsu, despite not getting along with Laxus for most of their time together, felt even that was too harsh.
  • Ultear has her Freudian Excuse to back her up, but she's still killed hundreds of people and destroyed Merudy's hometown (who forgives her anyway). Partly justified in how she doesn't expect redemption, but still tries to do good deeds regardless.
  • Gray goes undercover to infiltrate the Avatar cult, and in the process, leaves Juvia alone without any explanation for half a year, to the point at which she literally worries herself sick over him. When they reunite, she doesn't hold it against him.
• Eating the Enemy
  • Fukaro, an Ominous Owl man, eats his opponents and digests them to to absorb their magic and make it his own. He was able to eat Natsu after using his jetpack to give to give Natsu motion sickness. When Gray comes in later, he's able to attack him and Happy with Natsu's fire powers. However, the powers he takes aren't as potent as the original user's and this keeps him from being able to harm Gray much. Thus he tries to take Gray's ice powers as well, but Gray proves too cold for him to eat and the Ice Mage is able to beat Natsu out of him before he's digested.
  • Cosmos, one of the Garou Knights tasked with executing prisoners, wields plant magic. Here favorite method of executing prisoners is to create big Man Eating Plants to devour them. She tried to do this Wendy but was freed by Mirajane. Than she tried to have a giant flower eat them all up with its Vacuum Mouth after Kamika subdued them. But they're able to free themselves thanks to Wendy using her air magic.
  • Zirconis was one of the dragons opposed to befriending humanity that Future Rogue enlisted to help him take over the world. His reason being that he finds humans to be delicious. During his fight against Wendy and Laxus, he was actually going to eat them. Luckily, Ultear hitting the temporal Reset Button in her Heroic Sacrifice gave them a second chance to avoid getting devoured.
• Eldritch Abomination: Acnologia, the Black Dragon of the Apocalypse, definitely qualifies compared to what we know of other dragons. The gap between it and human beings is so immense that communicating with it to fathom its thoughts is completely impossible even though it's fully capable of understanding human speech.
  Zeref: "In spite of that, the reason it doesn't use words is because it doesn't think of humans as anything more than insects. You wouldn't stop and talk to a pest buzzing around you. It's the same for the dragon. You also wouldn't bother taking an obnoxious insect seriously even for a moment. There are things in this world that you cannot oppose or fight back against, no matter how hard you try."
• Elemental Baggage: Subverted. The ice wizards make ice, the fire wizards make fire, et cetera, et cetera. Sure, being able to eat one's element gives a Dragon Slayer a temporary boost, but for the most part the elemental wizards don't need the element on hand.
• Elemental Dragon: Dragons and humans with dragon slayer magic alike have elements they are associated with. Natsu is the most famous example because he is a fire dragon slayer.
• Elemental Powers: Many of the different wizards who are able to manipulate and control an element.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Averted for the most part.
  • However, Natsu's fight with Erigor play this back and forth. The fight starts off shaky for Natsu, since Erigor's wind disperses and extinguishes Natsu's fire before it can touch him. But then Natsu turns up the heat so much that the air pressure changes and Erigor loses control of the wind.
  • Gray and Juvia's fight also plays with it a bit. You'd expect Gray to freeze her and have an easy victory, but when she gets mad, she can boil herself.
• Elemental Shapeshifter: Juvia can transform her body into water.
• Elemental Tiers: In the Phantom Lord Arc we have the Element Four. Aria of the Air is explicitly stated to be the strongest of them all.
• Elite Four: Phantom Lord guild has the Elemental Four, each of whom has mastery over a different element. They serves as the enforcers to the guild's leader, Jose.
• End of an Era: Chapter 416, Fairy Tail disbands.
• Endurance Duel: Elfman's fight with Bacchus becomes this once he transforms into a lizardman with spiked scales. It becomes a test of wills to see who falls first: Elfman from getting struck, or Bacchus from getting his hands sliced up.
• Enemy Civil War: Faust orders Code ETD, which crystallizes the Exceed forces sent to capture the heroes, then declares war against them all in a bid to steal their magic.
• Enemy Mine: Natsu and Gajeel teaming up against Laxus, though it's more "rival mine" since they were supposed to be in the same guild by then.
• Energy Absorption: Part of Jellal's Batman Gambit, the Tower of Heaven is really made out of magic-absorbing Phlebotinum, so firing the Kill Sat at the tower actually harvests the energy necessary for the ritual.
• Enfante Terrible: Mirajane was one of these until the death of her sister Lisanna caused her to turn into the mild-mannered Proper Lady she is now.
  • Amusingly, whereas the personalities of the Edolas versions of Fairy Tail's mages are mostly polar opposites of their Earthland counterparts, the two Mirajanes are essentially the same - because they started out as opposites, and then only one experienced a drastic personality shift from the trauma of losing Lisanna.
• Escalating Brawl: The first time we see Fairy Tail, Natsu causes one of these. Luckily Makarov stops the brawl before they resort to magic.
• Everyone Can See It:
  • Bisca and Alzack, minor characters who are the only ones unaware of the fact that their feelings are mutual.
  • Juvia's crush on Gray, at first. Gray might be paying attention more often these days.
  • Gajeel and Levy, Natsu and Lucy as well. Even little Asuka thinks the latter is dating.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In the Phantom Lord arc, Jose Porla thinks Fairy Tail is protecting Lucy from him simply because of her wealth. However, it never occurs to him that the guild views Lucy as one of its True Companions until it's far too late.
• Evil Costume Switch: Juvia when Mind Controlled by Vidaldus. However, she is made of water, so her clothes are just more water she layers over herself, so it wouldn't exactly be hard for her to change.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Gajeel is originally introduced as Natsu's. Currently he's The Rival. (Since Natsu's original rival became The Lancer of his Five-Man Band.)
  • In recent chapters, Ax-Crazy Zancrow has taken on this role, who was revealed to be a God-Slayer, which is apparently far above the level of Dragon Slayer.
  • Also Lyon to Gray until his Heel–Face Turn.
  • Erza Knightwalker is this to Erza in more ways than one.
  • Makarov has had two: Master Jose and Master Hades.
  • It looks like Bluenote is going to be one for Gildarts.
  • Natsu and Gajeel each get a new one in the Tournament Arc: Rogue and Sting. They're Third Generation Dragon Slayers (meaning they were both trained by a dragon and they have Slayer Lacrima) and they killed their dragon parent to become "true Dragon Slayers".
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Zancrow really should have been more careful while handling a legendary Black Wizard who commands absolute power over life and death. He becomes one of the few confirmed casualties in the series when Zeref kills him. Later followed by Master Hades. Turns out interrupting the self-imposed exile of an unstoppable Black Wizard really isn't a good idea.
• Evil Twin: Sort of. Apparently it wasn't supposed to be incredibly obvious in the manga who Siegrain and Jellal were, so in the anime they threw in the thing about Siegrain being his evil twin immediately, right at the start of the arc. Of course, they're really the same person.
  • An inversion with Mystogan though he is from another world.
• Evil Versus Evil: King Faust and his underlings lost no time backstabbing the Exceed. Leaders of the latter presented themselves as nasty, murderous, specieist tyrants by that point, and Faust was a power-grabbing megalomaniac. Subverted when later Exceed were revealed to be just pretending to be powerful and evil, with the help of their queen's prophetic abilities, to keep humans frightened and avoid annihilation.
  • Zeref and Acnologia, two of the series' main antagonists, are also enemies with each other.
• Expy:
  • A more minor one. Kageyama's character design just happens to coincide with Shikamaru's so much. Guess what kind of magic he uses...
  • Midnight bears a striking resemblance to Albel Nox from Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.
  • And now we have what could be called a Whole Concept Expy during the Grand Magic Games arc. The first round of the tournament features a game called Hidden, the concept and rules of which have been lifted entirely out of the multiplayer stages of the Assassin's Creed series. The competitors must move through a town populated by masses of clones of themselves. They have to blend into the crowd and locate the real participants and get a hit in on them in order to score points and lose points if they strike a clone instead.
  • Lahar, one of the captains of the reformed Magic Council looks exactly like Uryuu Ishida, right down to the push-glasses-up-bridge-of-nose-dramatic-glint habit.
  • We also have Bacchus of Quatro Cerberus, whose fighting style is basically an Expy of Neji & Rock Lee's. I'm sure some fans were happy to see how a Drunken Gentle Fist would look like.
  • Jiemma and Sabertooth seem to be what Laxus and Fairy Tail would have turned into had he not been stopped in the Fighting Festival arc.
  • The Anime-only character Dan Straight, who appears in the Anime-only filler arc ("Key of the Starry Sky") both looks and behaves a bit like Patrick Colasour from Mobile Suit Gundam 00.
  • Yukino, the Celestial Spirit Wizard from Sabertooth, is basically a Rei Ayanami Expy, right down to her personality. The biggest difference is that Yukino seems embarrassed to let her comrades see her naked. Rei wouldn't.
  • As said above, Lily had a strong resemblance to the protagonist of Blacksad, a favorite comic of Mashima.
• Extreme Omnivore:
  • We've seen Natsu eat meat and mushrooms... and fire... and etherion. Supposedly, he's also tried eating lightning.
    • He successfully ate Laxus' lightning breath when fighting Hades in the S-Class wizards arc.
    • He also has a noticable habit of questioning how a new dragon slayer's element tastes when he's made aware of them.
    Natsu: "Souls are edible?! Do they taste good?"
  • In Episode 9, Team Natsu minus Lucy were willing to chop up/cook/freeze and eat monsters to satisfy their hunger.

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