Fairy Gone Review Episode 9

A Train Derailment To Set The Story Straight

Fairy Gone Episode 9

After making an assassination attempt against the prime minister dull, I wasn’t expecting much from Fairy Gone despite a certain other blogger’s assurances that things were about to get somewhat more interesting. After 8 episodes of poor pacing, badly timed or irrelevant flash backs, action sequences that look like they should be cool but really don’t pull it off, and having characters that I’ve struggled to care about, Fairy Gone found its groove in episode 9 and managed twenty minutes of actually pretty compelling viewing.

This is the issue with episodic reviewing. This episode doesn’t make the previous 8 suddenly better. They were pretty tiresome to watch outside of a potentially intriguing premise. However, this episode couldn’t have worked without those previous 8 episodes. Whether or not this is a turning point that means this series is going to go from one that is fairly missable to one that is worth checking out remains to be seen, but there’s suddenly some light at the end of the tunnel.

The political situation in Fairy Gone is pretty complicated with almost everyone out for themselves and running their own agenda. There are so many factions, organisations, and government branches that it really is difficult to keep them all straight. That said, when we get a simple complication such as the transportation of an important weapon and the guys who are clearly trying to steal it, though whether that is because they want the weapon or because they want to undermine Dorothea’s authority remains to be seen, things get a great deal more interesting.

I mentioned in a previous review that I was wondering whether or not Dorothea was actually competent given they don’t seem to have succeeded at much since the start of the anime. This episode, while wonderfully dramatic and tense as the enemy derails the train carriage and rains bullets down upon them before liberally cutting down any sign of resistance from Dorothea, really demonstrated how under powered they are for the job they apparently have.

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The dramatic injury and subsequent death of one of their members kind of pins the severity of the situation but once again, Fairy Gone just hasn’t quite done enough to make me overly concerned about that particular character. More worrying is the impact this will have on Marlya and it is interesting that the flashback we got before the fight broke out (after the train derailed) was of Marlya learning to hunt. For the first time it felt like a meaningful placement of a flashback and one that might have consequences. As such, it felt like the death was less about making us feel sad for the now deceased character, and more about motivating Marlya into some kind of action.

Also, the villain is one of those smug over-confident types who lectures his opponents as he cuts them down and leaves them alive to get stronger to fight again. I hate this kind of villain at the best of times and in this situation it just seemed ridiculous.

However, despite the few complaints, the episode worked. It drew me back into the story and made me wonder what the next steps would be. I also had to wonder what the consequence of this failure would be for the organisation. Fairy Gone isn’t suddenly getting amazing but  this was certainly a much appreciated step in the right direction.

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Karandi James

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• Fairy Gone Episodes 1 + 2
• Fairy Gone Episodes 3 + 4
• Fairy Gone Episode 5
• Fairy Gone Episode 6
• Fairy Gone Episodes 7 + 8
• Fairy Gone Episode 9
• Fairy Gone Episode 10
• Images from: Fairy Gone. Dir. K Suzuki. P.A. Works. 2019.