[Editor’s note: Spoilers ahead for both Fairy Tail and X-Men. So be wary of that. Again, for the sake of brevity, my laziness, and ease of comparison, I will only be comparing X-Men with Fairy Tail as opposed to adding, I don’t know, One Piece or some other stuff. I’ll only be working off the X-Men comic (which includes “Golgotha,” “Bizarre Love Triangle,” “Decimation,” and “Blood of Apocalypse.”) and the Fairy Tail manga.]
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Fairy Tail (even though this is an anime blog), it’s a story about the guild of Fairy Tail. The stories themselves are arc-y with no overarching goal besides becoming stronger (which is a common theme in shonen anime) and defeating the enemy at the time. The theme of the anime, though, is of friendship and companionship between your guild members. These folks want to become stronger and defeat the enemy not for themselves, but for the betterment of their guild.
This is my first introduction into the X-Men world beyond X-Men: Evolution, some comics I vaguely remember from ninth grade, and the Hollywood X-Men movies with Patrick Stewart and that guy who played Cyclops (I prefer Kirby Morrow, personally). I have to say that it was overwhelming. I jumped into the story in the middle, which didn’t help the whelming, and there were a lot of the characters I was unfamiliar with given my limited past with the series. But the point of this comparison is between X-Men and Fairy Tail, both of which feature teams (the Japanese sentai and the Fairy Tail guild in Fairy Tail and the X-Men in X-Men). The interesting part to me is the approach that the Japanese take to the team mentality and storytelling compared to the American take. Nevertheless, let’s dive in.
The biggest difference I continue to see between American works and Japanese works is that the Americans focus heavily on the individual, even in something like X-Men. It’s about Gambit and Rogue working through their stuff, the conflict between Havok and Iceman over Lorna, the relationship between Cyclops and Emma Frost. The relationships themselves are not individual, but the way they structure the story makes it very individualistic. It’s based in how Rogue feels and how Gambit feels and how Havok feels, etc. Meanwhile, the Japanese have this deeply rooted history in the sentai when, even in something like Naruto where it’s heavily rooted in the character of Naruto, it emphasized teamwork in a way that I don’t see as much of in American works. Both Fairy Tail and One Piece provide perfect examples of the sentai and teamwork, especially in One Piece (but I shall restrain myself to just Fairy Tail).
In Fairy Tail, we immediately meet the newcomer Lucy Heartfilia, a celestial spirit mage that wants to join the Fairy Tail guild. She meets a fake Salamander who’s wooing women to enslave them. Fake Salamander is fortunately stopped by the real Salamander and Lucy’s combined efforts. The real Salamander is the other series protagonist (there are actually five main protagonists with a plethora of supporting characters) whose real name is Natsu Dragneel and he’s the fire dragon slayer. We’re quickly introduced to Natsu’s rival Gray, their sort of mother/authority figure Erza, and, later, the wind dragon slayer, Wendy. And thus rounds out the group of Team Natsu in Fairy Tail. Very, very typical Japanese sentai team of three men and two women with a male leader (who happens to have a red color scheme with his fire magic).
Of course, Fairy Tail isn’t all team fighting against team. In fact, both Fairy Tail and One Piece have very few battles that aren’t one-on-one. But the execution of those fights is what matters and what’s interesting. Most fights in Fairy Tail are for the group, especially in this latest arc. But what empowers the characters in Fairy Tail is the connections to their friends and guildmates rather than to defeat the foe in front of them.
Let’s delve into the characters of Gambit and Elfman.
Gambit turns into the embodiment of Death as one of Apocalypse’s Four Horsemen. He chose to do this to protect the X-Men. But what’s focused on here is his individuality from the persona of Death. He even states that he is both Death and Gambit. And in Fairy Tail, Elfman’s sole motivation is the betterment of the guild. But, while he fights a losing battle against Rustyrose, he continues against all odds because he wants to see his guild succeed. It’s less about Elfman continuing to try to become an S-Class mage (which Natsu is still focused on amidst Grimoire Heart’s invasion) and more about him overcoming the injuries, that a little while ago he was unable to move because of, and being empowered by the arrival of Freed and Bickslow.
So while both Gambit and Elfman are working for the safety of their respective guilds, their motivations behind that are quite different. And this isn’t an isolated incident. Lorna leaves the X-Men completely, along with Havok, because Lorna has lost her powers and Havok wants to make sure she’s safe without her powers or the protection of the X-Men. This is a completely selfish move, albeit a brilliant character move. Lorna is trying to find herself now that she doesn’t have powers and Havok is trying to rekindle her love with Lorna following Lorna’s relationship with Iceman. Fairy Tail’s best parallel of that would be Laxus being excommunicated from the guild. He’s just gone through this elaborate coup d'état to become the next guild master, usurping his grandfather, and is thrust out of the guild in grand fashion.
The difference here is that Laxus was trying to usurp guild master Makarov and Lorna was just trying to find herself. But these kind of excommunications are always implied to be final in anime and manga (which is contradictory to everything else). But the Japanese have a very strong sense of pride and, I believe, that links to the excommunication. You would never see a samurai begging to return to his daimyo and you would never see the daimyo welcome back the samurai with open arms, if the samurai was excommunicated. Anime and manga take from this cultural tradition of honor and pride and put it into their writing. Meanwhile, we Americans have a very tender feeling toward nostalgia and friends, so, while Lorna and Havok leave, the door is left wide open for their return; this is something we rarely see in anime and manga in the kind of excommunication like Laxus’s.
In terms of the team’s motivations as a whole (and I’ll go off my knowledge of the X-Men in general rather than any particular source) are quite different. In X-Men, the motivation is, in general, to get humankind to accept mutantkind. Right off the bat, they’re segregated by a class or race system. It’s humankind and mutantkind, just like it’s upper class and lower class and black and white. And that’s a big theme of X-Men even into the “Blood of Apocalypse” arc with Apocalypse wanting to even the populace of humankind to that of mutantkind (at least even it in proportion). This is a big theme in a lot of American works. We want to see the underdog (the mutants, as weird as that may seem given their powers) succeed. We want to cheer for the underdog. We want to see the underdog hit rock bottom and we want to see him crawl his way up and back, earning himself redemption. But in Fairy Tail, it isn’t about Fairy Tail being the underdog. It’s quite the opposite in terms of strength. After the Oracion Seis, Fairy Tail is considered one of the strongest, if not the strongest, guild in Magnolia. What Fairy Tail has to battle against is the politics of them destroying everything, albeit while getting the job done. As you might imagine, the Magic Council doesn’t appreciate the destruction of things. So what Fairy Tail has to go through is climbing through a jungle gym of political nonsense that, as comedic effect, the master often just disregards. Because, as they say, “We are Fairy Tail!”
This contrasts with the individual characters in the story quite a bit. Throughout X-Men, the individual X-Men are seen to be physically equal to a good portion of their opponents. This is contradictory with their political standing as a whole, which is very much underneath that of humankind. But the Fairy Tail guild stands on its two feet very strongly. But the individual members oftentimes find themselves in uphill battles against nigh on unbeatable characters. The very first major opponent Natsu faces (Erigor of Eisenwald) is their guild master. But knowing what would happen if Natsu didn’t defeat Erigor and knowing that his friends were behind him and supported him gave him the strength to fight and defeat this unbeatable opponent. Time after time this happens with Cobra and Zero of the Oracion Seis; Gildarts, Zancrow, and Master Hades of Grimoire Heart; and, eventually, someone in the Grand Magic Tournament. This individual hardship that the characters face in Fairy Tail is a very common theme in anime and manga. The type of fighting where you face a strong opponent, then a stronger one, and a stronger one, and so on. It happens very commonly in tournament battles and battles that involve a large organization of some kind (Bruce Lee used it as a method of storytelling in The Game of Death). However, in Fairy Tail, Hiro Mashima is using it on a much larger scale where the entire series is this tiered fighting instead of just arc by arc (theoretically, all fighting shows have to do this if they’re extended over a long period of time because, logically, the fighters would get stronger. It’s just much more noticeable in anime and manga where they have to get stronger to a certain point to defeat a certain enemy).
So while the Japanese and American styles of storytelling differ in some places, both major and minor, they often swap those based on the culture. Essentially, the Japanese and the Americans are telling the same story, just in a different format. The Japanese focus on the trials of the group while the Americans focus on the trials of the individual. The Japanese like to see their individual characters overcome physical strife while the Americans like to see their individuals overcome mental strife. So I believe that it’s just the culture and approach to storytelling that differentiates the Japanese from the Americans, but, again, the Japanese and Americans are telling the same story.
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