User blog comment:Omega natsu2/Fairy Tail Episode 199: The Grand Ball Games, Review./@comment-5268982-20140913090753

I loved this episode. It may very well be the best episode so far since Fairy Tail returned!

First of all, the art was awesome throughout the whole ep. Also, no filler scene fell out of place, and I rarely say this but I think the anime even did a better job than the manga for this one. I loved how Levy wrote a letter explaining how they altered fate, mirroring the tragic letter Future Levy wrote in the un-altered world. Her scene with Gajeel was also really beautiful.

I also liked the added final 5 minutes. Good intentions or not, Hisui almost caused the apocalypse, so it makes sense for her to be tried and punished. The way everyone stood up for her was really cute.

Some minor details made the episode even more awesome (like Freed being rejected by Laxus XD or Makarov telling Ooba to keep her clothes on), and all in all, while I feared that the whole episode being about the ball may lead to some stupid and unpurposeful fillers being added, that was not the case, for which I'm really glad!

I can't wait for the next episode. From the looks of it, Fairy Tail intends to follow the One Piece formula (1 ep = 1 chap) in order to prevent it from keeping up with the manga too fast. If we're lucky we may be able to keep going like this for a while.