I should get around to editing that last paragraph, since the Tartarus arc has basically been nothing but a downhill slope since I posted this review. I'll probably do it after the arc concludes.
I would personally be interested in hearing your thoughts about the arc when it's over, if you feel up to it.
The second half of Tartarus made me change my tune so radically, I decided to just rewrite the whole thing. Go figure.
And I probably won't edit it further unless the next few arcs are God's gift to man, and even then I wouldn't do so until after the series ends.
I gotta disagree with Mashima not being a competent writer on account of his Rave Masters series. However with that said, I completely agree with the rest of the review...well except one more thing. I don't think the problem with Natsu is a typical shonen hero, that would had not necessarily made the series better but at least slightly bearable. Natsu is an unintentional parody of a shonen hero, talking about friendship every other sentence, wanting to fight everyone and anyone without much of a reason, and always choosing the stupidest and or wildest option and or approach to things, not for any sort of characteristic or influence, but because he's too lazy minded to actually try and think of something different.
Like you said, Fairy Tail is character driven, but instead of making the characters interesting and how they interact in the plot, it's like Mashima is the "in-universe" god that forces things in just a way to force-fed us just awesome this characters are suppose to be.
Honestly my only exposure to Rave Master is a vague recollection of watching a few isolated episodes of the anime, so I can't really argue that. Though if that was a genuinely good series, I can't help but wonder how he dropped the ball so badly with Fairy Tail.
And I can't say I disagree about your opinion of Natsu, either; I just didn't want to go too in-depth out of fear I'd go way over the word limit.
"Though perhaps their not being in the spotlight as often is what makes them more bearable; that way, they’re not around long enough to get sick of them"
I've often wondered about this. It seems to be very common in anime for fans to feel that the supporting cast is better than the main cast, and I wonder if fans would still feel the same if those characters became the main characters.
Austin,
That's an interesting observation and question.
I'm not familiar enough with Fairy Tail to say how it applies there, but I'll use Girls und Panzer as an example.
Erwin, the commander of the StuG, is highly popular for dressing as and acting as Erwin Rommel, making references to historical battles in the middle of tankery matches. There's not much else to her, and she doesn't have all that much screentime or Character Development, with her main moment in the spotlight being the fifth OVA (a 10-minute long video about her and Yukari's going out on reconnaissance). In spite of the latter and because of the former, though, she became quite popular.
Naturally, some fanfic writers, who like her more than they do Miho (the main character), write fics in which Erwin is the main character. That's understandable, but to make her the main character, they have to flesh her out as a character beyond her obsessive love of history, and in doing so, she often loses some of what made her popular to begin with.
To sum it up, that illustrates the difference between a popular main character and a popular side character. It's generally easy to make a side character with a few memorable traits that is interesting enough to develop a fanbase, but harder to make said side character into a character that's deep and fleshed out enough to be a main character.
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Lives and dies by its characters (mostly dies)
As a series with such a huge ensemble cast, it’s hardly a surprise that the quality of Fairy Tail depends almost entirely on how well they’re written. And the answer to that is: not very well at all.
Despite its large cast, most of the characters are glorified side characters. Team Natsu are the only members of the titular guild to appear in half of the arcs, and in the other half they still get the majority of the focus. This would be fine if Team Natsu was at all well-written, but instead they’re among the most grating characters in the entire series.
Natsu himself is by far the worst offender, being a bog standard shonen protagonist, with the exception of a single tedious running gag being thrown into the mix. In any panel where he appears, Natsu is a void that actively drains any coolness away from fights, poignancy from emotional moments, and humor from comedic moments. The series could be exactly the same, with the sole change of having literally anyone other than Natsu as the protagonist, and it’d be significantly better off for it.
That said, it would still only be decent at best. The rest of Team Natsu alternate between dull and only slightly more bearable than their leader, with the majority leaning toward the latter in any given arc. Perhaps more telling than anything is that as of the most recent arc, the only one I didn’t detest was Wendy, the character created solely for kid appeal.
The worst part about Team Natsu being so uninteresting is that the supporting members of the guild are so much more likable. Though perhaps their not being in the spotlight as often is what makes them more bearable; that way, they’re not around long enough to get sick of them. Even if that was the case, the series would benefit greatly from rotating the focus more, instead of clinging to Natsu in a desperate attempt to prove he’s in any way interesting or likable.
I would say I’ve gone on about the characters for long enough, but there’s really nothing else to discuss about the series. The general plot lines sure aren’t anything to write home about, and the quality of the various minutiae of the series depends entirely on how the characters are written. If Mashima was a competent writer, Fairy Tail could have been an otherwise standard battle manga with enjoyable characters and character dynamics.
Mashima is not a competent writer.