User blog comment:Omega natsu2/Episode 184: The Country, Until Tomorrow, Review./@comment-222.127.174.248-20140531101705/@comment-4829046-20140531102632

Enough with the magic circles already. It is getting redundant. We all know that you miss them and we don't all share your opinion that the old anime was great mainly cause of the magic circles. They were indeed epic but not enough to ruin the show simply by not being there.

And they can't use the OVA animation for reasons you already stated, "old animation team". If anything, you should be referring to the movie animation since that was closer to this. Though I think majority agrees with missing the old anime when compared with this. Like stated by Mega, the old animation prior to GMG arc(and KotSS) was marvelous, though I myself only go as far as saying up till Tenrou since I didn't like some of the animation but it was still better than GMG.