Left to right: Serge Tova, Marlya Noel, Free Underbar, Klara Kysenaria.
"Once, a fairy was a weapon."
Eastald: A land where fairies possess and reside within animals, granting them special powers. By surgically removing and transplanting the organs of a possessed animal into a human, people can partially summon the fairy and use it as a weapon. In U.E. 481, all of Eastald is engulfed in a great conflict known as the War of Unification. During this war, the use of "Fairy Soldiers," humans who have been modified in this manner, becomes commonplace.— Anime Tagline
It is now U.E. 505, nine years after the war's end with the Empire of Zesskia claiming victory. The few surviving Fairy Soldiers find themselves struggling to adapt to peacetime: some continue to work for the new government, while others pursue darker paths, turning to terrorism or organized crime. Marlya is a new recruit of the organization "Dorothea," a government agency dedicated to the investigation and suppression of fairy-related crimes and incidents in a nation still suffering from instability and chaos.
Produced by P. A. Works and written by Aoi Jumonji, and directed by Kenichi Suzuki, the series spans 24 episodes, with the first half airing in the Winter 2019 season and the second half in the Fall season.
Funimation announced that an English voice track will be released to English-speaking countries/territories on April 28, 2019.
Fairy Gone provides examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: The manga adaptation expands a little of the beginning of the story: when the fairy primordial breaks out of its bottle, one of the Carlin mafia men panics and attempts to shoot it at point-blank range. Marlya jumps between them and grabs the fairy, which is why it possesses her. This is a slight change from the anime, where she reached out for it because a mafia guard was trying to shoot Veronica's fairy but the shots were ricocheting off it and coming close to hitting the Fairy Primordial.
- Aerith and Bob: While most characters have common names like Veronica, Marco, Patricia and Damien, there are some unusual names like Wolfran and Bitter Sweet.
- Demonic Possession: Or Fairy Possession in this case. Fairies enter the body of a living being, creating some sort of Guardian Entity. Marlya is the first human shown in the series that is directly possessed by a Fairy Primordial instead of having a certain organ transplanted into her to do so like Fairy Soldiers.
- Deployable Cover: A very unconventional use of fairies. They are impervious to bullets, so their users can manifest them as mobile cover as needed.
- Doomed Hometown: The village of Suna where Marlya and Veronica were from, burnt during the war by traitorous fellow villager Ray Dawn. Wolfran as well, as his hometown of Branhut, Ledrad, was shelled and destroyed in the closing days of the war with his wife and daughter killed.
- Elite Army: The total number of Fairy Soldiers created during the war was just a bit over 300, counting all nations. Of these, only 17 have survived to see peacetime.
- The Fair Folk: The fairies in the show play more like this than the usual. While some primordial fairies look more like insects but very fairy-like, while the fairies that are actually used in fights look like the classic, more monstrous fairies.
- Feminist Fantasy: It doesn’t make a big thing of it but it’s notable that the female characters are not sexualised (even Femme Fatale Bitter Sweet wears pant suits), pass the Bechdel Test and save the men at least as often as the reverse. Even Marlya’s near breakdown after Ozz is killed protecting her is presented with realism, with it being emphasized he would have done the same for any of his comrades, rather than hysterical women not being suitable for combat.
- Fictional Currency: "Galey" is used in this universe.
- Government Agency of Fiction: Dorothea, the regulatory agency that arrests humans illegally using fairies, and the Ministry of Fairies it reports to under the government of Unified Zesskia.
- Great Offscreen War: The war that engulfed the Eastald continent is told mostly in narration until it was stopped after the continent was united under the great nation of Zesskia.
- Guardian Entity: Fairies manifest these, and like Stands, any damage taken by it reflects on its user, though when it comes to more serious injures like dismemberment or death, the user only feels the pain instead.
- Guns Are Worthless: Pistols and rifles have little effect on fairies, with bullets bouncing harmlessly off of them. Melee weapons give better results.
- Institutional Allegiance Concealment: A standard measurement used by Dorothea to infiltrate hostile places.
- Free goes undercover under the identity of a mafia member to unmask who's responsible for running an underground auction on fairies.
- Marlya goes with Klara to investigate Escreque in Sinquenje.
- MacGuffin: The Black Fairy Tome, the latest and missing addition to the original Fairy Tome compilation, an authoritative compendium of knowledge on fairies from 200 years ago. The original Fairy Tome contains five works: the Original Text, the Blue Tome, the Red Tome and the White Tome, to which the Black Fairy Tome is the missing piece and concerns the phenomenon "Fairy Possession."
- Our Fairies Are Different: They are primordial spirits that possess animals and plants, and if organs of a fairy are transplanted to a human, they become able to summon it as a Guardian Entity.
- Realpolitik: Used throughout the anime. Groups will act friendly in order to establish an edge for their own side. Backstabbing is rampant and facades are maintained to ensure that there's some semblance of peace after the Great Offscreen War.
- Rule of Seven: The Seven Knights, a group of soldiers who fought during the war of unification. Five of them are still alive, but their allegiances have changed since.
- Schizo Tech: Eastald's tech level roughly resembles that of the late 1890s and early 20th century, with cars, motorcycles, and trains in widespread use, while the most common firearms are bolt-action rifles and double-action revolvers. On the other hand, there are also Arcame's legged trucks and more significantly, massive numbers of Artificial Fairies, which are basically Mecha-Mooks that can be commanded by operators using special whistles that emit ultra-low frequency sound waves. It's implied technological development went down an unusual path thanks to the 15-year long Unification War as one country after another was furiously researching how to weaponize fairies.
- Shout-Out: The Fairy Tomes with their color theme naming to Andrew Lang's "Colored" Fairy Books.
- Spider Tank: The Arcame mafia uses transport trucks that move around using 4 legs on their cabs with the trailer on wheels.
- Super-Soldier: Fairy Soldiers are people who were transplanted a compatible Fairy organ, which allows them to summon a fairy and gives them heavily enhanced physical abilities as well, being able to make incredible jumps and demonstrating much greater agility and situational awareness than ordinary people. In Episode 12, both Nein Auler and Beevee Liscar can take on entire platoons of soldiers by themselves. And that's before they manifest their fairies...
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The final episode shows a brief timeskip three months after the Divine Beast is destroyed and what everyone's up to. Robert, Serge, and Klara arrest Axel, Director Nein is indicated to be a strong candidate to be the next Prime Minister, Damian goes to work for the Ministry of Fairies, Bitter Sweet & Patricia leave Eastald and sail for Westald, Wolfran returns to Branhut for good, and Marlya makes a grave for Veronica before hitching a ride with Free back to Rondacia.
