The Summer 2024 anime season has brought back some fan-favorite series like the Fairy Tail franchise with its official sequel, Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest. The original anime's conflicts have long since been resolved, with Zeref Dragneel and the Spriggan 12 group facing total defeat in the original story. Natsy, Lucy, and their many wizard friends are now getting a fresh start with boundless curiosity and enthusiasm as the 100 Years Quest begins.

Wizard guilds like the Fairy Tail guild are meant to accept and complete contracts for a reward, a part of Fairy Tail's lore that was sometimes neglected in the original anime when other conflicts took center stage. The Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest anime is focusing on official wizard jobs once again as Team Natsu launches their adventure, to mixed results. It's little franchise fans haven't seen before, but 100 Years Quest is off to an okay enough start with room to deepen this seemingly simple storyline.

Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest's Characterization is Exactly On Par For the Franchise

The characterization of Fairy Tail's main cast is spread a bit thin, as opposed to a more focused series like Demon Slayer. Only a handful of main characters have real depth, while everyone else is defined by a few basic traits. Even then, Fairy Tail's main characters have fairly conventional designs and mediocre arcs, which was true in the original anime and is still true now. This includes the himbo protagonist Natsu Dragneel, the clever Lucy Heartfilia, the big sisterly Erza Scarlet, and more.

The Fairy Tail franchise trades serious depth in its characters in exchange for having a large, colorful cast and story arcs where handfuls of characters are relevant at any one time. This make for a busy narrative, as seen in Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest. Compared to more competitive shonen titles like My Hero Academia and Jujutsu Kaisen, it may feel a bit underwhelming, but it's still on par with what the original Fairy Tail anime did. In that sense, the 100 Years Quest anime does justice for its main squad of heroes, primarily the members of Team Natsu. Everyone speaks and acts as fans might expect, from Natsu's blunt speech to the elderly Elefeseria to Juvia Lockser being a total megadere bordering on a yandere for her love interest, Gray Fullbuster.

The other cast members just have a few token lines each, like Mirajane being smart yet sensitive to Cana Alberona hugging her booze barrel and Gajeel Redfox exaspering Levy McGarden with his newfound detective antics. It's as though the 100 Years Quest is warming fans up for what these characters will be like going forward. They're all being their usual selves, but casual fans who haven't seen or read any Fairy Tail material in 5+ years may want this refresher on what every member of the Fairy Tail guild is like. There's nothing emotionally deep or thought-provoking here, but it at least does the simple job it's trying to.

Fairy Tail Introduces Touka and Launches a Mysterious Subplot

Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest Episode 1 mainly focuses on fan-favorite characters like the members of Team Natsu and the Strauss siblings, but it also makes room for a few new cast members – including a mysterious young woman calling herself Touka. Touka and two young men offer to join the Fairy Tail guild and enjoy all its perks, only for Laxus Dreyar's tough-guy routine to scare the young men off, leaving just Touka as the Fairy Tail guild's newest member. This is absolutely in the spirit of the anime, like when Wendy, Juvia, and Gajeel joined the guild in the previous anime, keeping the spirit of "let's make new friends" alive.

Touka is clearly hiding something, however – or several somethings. For now, most members of the Fairy Tail guild are welcoming Touka and taking her at face value, including the guild's elderly head, Makarov Dreyar. Given how busy Episode 1 is, there isn't much time for Touka to describe her background or demonstrate her magical abilities, which only adds to the fun mystery of her character. This helps the anime get off to a strong start as far as her character is concerned.

Touka promises to be a delightful and intriguing addition to the Fairy Tail crew. If the mystery wasn't obvious enough already, Gajeel Redfox is already investigating Touka, complete with a film noir outfit. It's an entertaining subplot that shows how theatrical Gajeel can be outside of combat, making his character more than yet another tough guy in the guild. This subplot promises to pay off hugely in the episodes to follow, which may strengthen this anime's simple plot.

Fairy Tail's Worldbuilding is Just Good Enough For Its Own Purposes

In the grand scheme of things, Fairy Tail's worldbuilding is not that strong, falling short of enticing in-universe mysteries like the Void Century in One Piece or the tricky international politics of Naruto. Instead, the Fairy Tail franchise treats its fantasy setting as exactly that – a colorful, exotic world where characters may go on adventures and meet new people. Fairy Tail's setting is really just a backdrop for the story. Every now and then, the franchise will throw audiences for a loop by introducing a new continent with new towns and characters. The original anime did this with the Alakitasia continent, home of the Alvarez Empire, and the new 100 Years Quest anime does the same with the new northern continent of Guiltina.

By the anime's own standards, Guiltina is a fun new place to visit, home to magical "snow," weird jelly creatures that travel in packs, and new towns like the por town of Ermina to explore in Guiltina's Valeria region along the coast. By most other standards, though, the worldbuilding is pretty weak, serving exactly one purpose: giving Team Natsu a new place to explore so there's ample room to develop the 100 Years Quest. This new continent's existence merely explains why this quest and all characters related to it didn't show up in the original anime. Fans should probably not expect much fun worldbuilding here, nothing on par with the pseudo-isekai world of Edolas. It's simply a new venue where the quest and characters matter, not the world or its politics and history. That may be disappointing for some anime fans, but the plot promises to make up for that with sheer enthusiasm and colorful action sequences.

Elefseria's 100 Years Quest is the Core of Episode 1

Aside from the main storyline, Episode 1 of Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest ranges from decent to weak. Fortunately, while the episode focuses on its main plot, there's plenty of fun to be had. Natsu, Lucy, and the others are naturally curious and enthusiastic wizards, so Team Natsu is the right squad for the job. They're smart and cautious about it when they meet the quest giver, but they're not ones to back down from a challenge, even when they're told to do the impossible. Not long into the episode, Team Natsu steps inside Magia Dragon, the world's first wizarding guild, and they meet its sole member, Elefseria. He's a human who has been turned into a dragon.

This is a simple yet solid way to expand Fairy Tail's lore, showing how wizard guilds got their start. This particular guild faded away as its human members died off and younger wizards joined other guilds that followed Magia Dragon's example, but the 100 Years Quest itself endures. Elefseria has tried and failed to complete that quest with other wizard, including Gildarts Clive, but Team Natsu may be up for the job. The anime greatly ups the stakes when the quest's main goal is revealed: to hunt down and seal away the five Dragon Gods, great beings on par with the villain Acnologia himself. That's a huge ask, even for S-rank wizards, but the reward is incredible, with Team Natsu being offered one wish as thanks for a job well done.

This narrative, more so than Touka's mystery and far more so than the limp worldbuilding, helps Episode 1 start off strongly, flamboyantly upping the ante and ensuring the power levels keep rising. When the orignal anime ended, fighting dragons and elite wizards had already become the norm, and Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest is picking up where the original story left off, which is an undeniable strength. Gone are the days of fighting wizard bandits or even clashing with dark guilds like Phantom Lord. Now Team Natsu is fighting a pantheon of Dragon Gods, meaning this anime really starts with a bang. And there's still room to expand upon why the gods must be sealed and the other lore surrounding them, making this new quest that much stronger. The more this anime focuses on that quest, the better.