Several examples of Anti-Climax Boss, partly due to the series' fast pacing, exist in both Fairy Tail and its sequel, Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest.
Warning: Due to the sheer amount Walking Spoiler characters that are involved in Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest, all spoilers are unmarked.
Fairy Tail
- Raven Tail, whose team during the Grand Magic Games was allegedly meant to counter Fairy Tail, only for each member to get one-shot by Laxus after trying to gang up on him.
- Sting already looked pretty bad losing with Rogue two-against-one to Natsu, when they were in Dragon Force and he wasn't. Pressured by Minerva to win the Grand Magic Games finale for Lector's safe return, he decides to wait for Fairy Tail to finish off the rest of the competition so he can fight them all at once... whereupon he decides that such a victory would be dishonorable and simply surrenders.
- This is something of an issue with some of the battles on the final day of the Games such Laxus vs Jura or Minerva vs Erza that wrap up rather quickly considering the buildup.
- War God Ikusa-Tsunagi, summoned by Avatar's leader Arlock, ends up doing little more than swinging its sword once before Natsu destroys it.
- Zeref, after all the buildup suggesting that the heroes would need extraordinary circumstances to defeat him, and Natsu losing Igneel's magic power and his Dragon and Demon Seeds, ultimately succumbs to Natsu's base form after an underwhelming fight in which he failed to properly utilize any of his devastating powers, even after he'd been further strengthened by Fairy Heart.
- Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry: Zash. After being built up as the most prominent villain apart from Animus, he's ultimate defeated by a single kick from Lucy and Capricorn before he runs away. He's eventually disintegrated by the Dragon Cry without ever having a single proper fight.
Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest
- Faris the White Mage, despite her absolutely insane displays of power throughout the manga, gets severely injured by Happy tossing one of Aldoron's orbs at her, causing her to undergo Body Horror and forcing her to release Natsu. After that, she's unable to threaten anyone and passes out for a day or two after Wendy manages to separate both Faris and Touka from each other. Faris later explains that she wasn't the original White Mage and that she claimed the title for herself because the real one was still missing, and that she was just trying to save her home dimension.
- Alta Face is introduced as powerful enough to threaten all of Elentir - yet the main heroes destroyed it in about two chapters after Wendy overcomes its Magic Power overload and lets the team use that massive power against it.
- Invoked and defied in a truly spectacular way with Selene. Suzaku deals her human form a devastating blow, after which she seems genuinely stunned and on the ropes, even trying to flee - except it was all an act so she could be brought to the Guild Master and slaughter him in revenge for murdering her son.
- Most unfortunately, however, Selene’s luck runs out horrifically when she goes up against Ignia. Fans were hoping for the battle of gods to surpass the one between Igneel and Acnologia, which lasted several chapters (admittedly juggling between several other fights in the meantime)… and so the battle begins with both Dragon Gods cutting loose and blasting away with some of the most incredible and epic attacks we’ve ever seen, going back and forth with their taunts, boasts, and reactions to the other’s flashy and powerful moves… and then it’s abruptly cut short when Selene gets a massive hole blasted through her neck by Ignia's full-power surprise attack due to Natsu's interruption and topples over after just one chapter of fighting. The very next chapter, Ignia greets a returned Dogramag and simply leaves Selene to bleed out pathetically on the ground while he himself only has scratches on his body. This utterly destroys any and all hype that was to be had about Selene and Ignia being a Big Bad Ensemble with opposing ideologies (Selene believes the age of dragons is over and wants to rule over a new generation of incredibly powerful humans whereas Ignia wants to bring back the age of dragons greater than before) whose clash would be extremely devastating. Luckily, she fully recovers and is now doubling down on her plans to destroy him and Viernes, but several fans still wish for her to receive a better fight, especially a rematch against Ignia.
- Unfortunately for said Guild Master (Georg), he therefore ends up being on the receiving end of this trope instead of Selene, suffering a One-Hit Kill at her hands before any of his magic attacks even hit her. To his credit, she admits that he could have potentially posed a risk to her if she had planned on messing around and not using her full power immediately.
- Haku and Misaki, two of the four Dark Dragon Slayer Knights, are hyped up for possessing immense power and skills surpassing the vast majority of Fairy Tail, with Misaki being compared to Gildarts himself. Wendy takes out Haku in a single use of her ultimate skills, whereas Misaki gets royally owned by just two of Erza’s attacks (in her own Blue Dimension, no less, where she loses control of the space she’s so utterly familiar with to Erza). Both of them are left out cold with rather humiliating appearances and positions after just those few moves and fail to show up in time to help Fairy Tail, Selene, and Kiria destroy the Dogra Cores, only appearing again in the final chapter of the arc to save Natsu and Suzaku.
- Dogramag’s Dragon form, which lasted a few panels at most only to crumble apart after a single Unison Raid between Natsu and Suzaku. Admittedly, this was deliberate; Fairy Tail and Diabolos were working together to destroy all his magical cores stored throughout his labyrinth, which drastically weakened the dragon.
- The Singularity Sisters of Gold Owl suffer from this as well. Initially hyped up by God Serena himself claiming he doesn't compare to them. This was backed up by the reveal of their broken sounding "World Alchemy", and followed by Rousseau facing Erza, Minerva, and Jelial at the same time and dominating them over a few chapters with the implication her sister is scarier. But come the next battle with the heroes, and Rousseau turns out to be a Glass Cannon and goes down in a single chapter against Erza alone once she loses the upper hand. This is immediately followed by Erza facing Enny, who despite getting a visually intimidating armor and a frantic sword fight goes down in the next chapter as well. This makes God Serena's claim of how powerful they are ring hollow and has been promptly mocked by fans, especially since Erza beat the both of them faster than Jellal beat God Serena in a 1-vs-1, and she did it without any new requipping powers aside from just attacking very fast.
- Barbaroa is no better, considering that even after he and Athena II severely beat up Natsu and the original Athena off-panel, Natsu just uses Lightning Dragon Slayer magic to compensate for having his Fire Dragon Slayer powers stolen, which is somehow powerful enough to put Duke on the ground while he doesn't even get a chance to throw a single punch or spell.
- Immediately after the above, Athena II (who had been wrecking the entire team sent to fight Viernes) loses all her downloaded abilities, has a meltdown, rushes at Natsu… and gets punched across the room by Athena. She is then not shown again until Athena transfers herself into Athena II's body since she had to give up her original body to destroy Viernes. Essentially, Athena II has seemingly suffered a Death of Personality. All the hype for her to surpass the Dragon Gods just ends like that.
- For all the trouble Fairy Tail had to go through to turn Viernes into a tangible opponent, he only lasts three chapters before Natsu, empowered by his comrades' magic, blows his head off. It doesn't help that he only gets a few simplistic lines of dialogue.
