Fairy Tail is an adventure and fantasy manga written and illustrated by Hiro Mashima, first published on August 23, 2006. There are 545 printed chapters, which have been collected in 63 volumes (tankōbon) when the manga ended in July 2017. The series has also inspired several spin-off manga, including a prequel, Fairy Tail Zero, and a sequel titled Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest. On October 12, 2009, the anime adaptation premiered, whose first season ended on March 30, 2013, with a total of 175 episodes. In August 2012, an anime film was released based on a story derived from the manga. A second anime was produced starting on April 5, 2014, and ending on March 26, 2016, containing 102 new episodes. A new anime part came out in 2018. In this article, we have given you a full watch order of the Fairy Tail anime series.
How many Fairy Tail seasons, movies, and OVAs are there?
As you can see, the overall structure of the Fairy Tail series is not that complex. Namely, the series consists of one 328-episode anime series, split into nine uneven seasons, with the shortest one having only 12 episodes and the longest having an incredible 90 episodes. An additional OVA series was produced, consisting of just nine episodes. Along with that, two feature-length anime movies are connected between themselves. This means that, in total, there are nine seasons and 328 episodes of the main anime, nine OVA episodes, and two feature-length anime movies.
Fairy Tail watch order by release date (at a glance)
In this section, we are going to bring you an overview of Fairy Tail works in the proper release order:
- Fairy Tail, Season 1 (anime, 2009—2010)
- Fairy Tail, Season 2 (anime, 2010—2011)
- Fairy Tail, Season 3 (anime, 2011)
- “Welcome to Fairy Hills!!” (OVA, 2011)
- “Fairy Academy: Yankee-kun and Yankee-chan” (OVA, 2011)
- Fairy Tail, Season 4 (anime, 2011—2012)
- “Memory Days” (OVA, 2012)
- Fairy Tail, Season 5 (anime, 2012)
- Fairy Tail the Movie: Phoenix Priestess (movie, 2012)
- “Fairies’ Training Camp” (OVA, 2012)
- Fairy Tail, Season 6 (anime, 2012—2013)
- “The First Morning” (OVA, 2013)
- “The Exciting Ryuzetsu Land” (OVA, 2013)
- “Fairy Tail x Rave” (OVA, 2013)
- Fairy Tail, Season 7 (anime, 2014—2015)
- Fairy Tail, Season 8 (anime, 2016)
- “Fairies’ Penalty Game” (OVA, 2016)
- “Natsu vs. Mavis” (OVA, 2016)
- “Fairies’ Christmas” (OVA, 2016)
- Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry (movie, 2017)
- Fairy Tail, Season 9 (anime, 2018—2019)
In the next part of this article, we will tell you how you should watch the series chronologically.
Do you need to watch Fairy Tail in a specific order?
Fairy Tail is a series that has two possible approaches. You’ll either love or hate it, depending on how much quirkiness you can handle. You can watch the series according to the release order we have provided above, or you can watch based on the proper chronological order we will provide in the next section (we recommend the latter).
What is the best way to watch Fairy Tail?
Fans of Fairy Tail can, as we have said, simply follow the proper release order, as it won’t really matter overall. Still, if you want a better and more thorough viewing experience that will follow the chronological order of the story, you should follow this watching order:
- Fairy Tail, Seasons 1 and 2 – watch episodes 1 to 69
- “Welcome to Fairy Hills!!” (OVA)
- “Fairy Academy: Yankee-kun and Yankee-chan” (OVA)
- “Memory Days” (OVA)
- Fairy Tail, Seasons 2 to 4 – watch episodes 70 to 124
- “Prologue: The Sunrise” (prologue to the movie)
- Fairy Tail the Movie: Phoenix Priestess (movie)
- Fairy Tail, Seasons 4 and 5 – watch episodes 125 to 150
- “Fairy Tail x Rave” (OVA)
- Fairy Tail, Season 6 – watch episodes 151 to 154
- “Fairies’ Training Camp” (OVA)
- Fairy Tail, Season 6 – watch episodes 155 to 170
- “The Exciting Ryuzetsu Land” (OVA)
- Fairy Tail, Season 6 – watch episodes 171 to 175
- “The First Morning” (OVA movie)
- Fairy Tail, Season 7 – watch episodes 176 to 203
- “Fairies’ Penalty Game” (OVA)
- Fairy Tail, Season 7 – watch episodes 204 to 233
- “Natsu vs. Mavis” (OVA)
- “Fairies’ Christmas” (OVA)
- Fairy Tail, Seasons 7 and 8 – watch episodes 234 to 277
- Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry (movie)
- Fairy Tail, Season 9 – watch episodes 278 to 328
Where to watch Fairy Tail?
In the past, Fairy Tail was, like many anime series in the West, tied to Funimation, one the biggest anime distributor in the world. But, when Sony, the company owning Funimation, acquired Crunchyroll, the whole series – including the dubbed and subbed versions – was moved from Funimation to Crunchyroll. So, the one place where you can stream the Fairy Tail series is Crunchyroll, the best and biggest Western anime provider.
Will there be more Fairy Tail?
Now, this was the complete rundown of the production of the Fairy Tail anime series. As you can see, the production had a lot of varied moments, a lot of changes, but with 328 episodes and an adaptation of the prequel manga, FAIRY TAIL ZERØ, they managed to adapt the whole series, which made Fairy Tail fans quite happy. But, knowing what we know, is this the end of Fairy Tail? Well, it is not. Namely, the ongoing sequel manga, Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest, is also scheduled for an anime adaptation sometime in the future, and while we don’t really know when it is going to happen – as a date has not been provided – we know that we can look forward to new episodes of the Fairy Tail anime and that fact made us very, very happy.
