User blog comment:Wrath022/Chapter 524: Black Future, Review/@comment-2214433-20170225111656/@comment-203.215.120.229-20170225145657

That trend's quite noticeable, and I find it disappointing. Still, it's more bearable when we're simply talking about magic-wielding combatants with certain specializations and signature moves (pretty much almost all of the characters with magic abilities), but it's grating when we're talking about a certified wizard whose mastery is said to cover a wide range of magic (to an extent, this problem includes Zeref as well, but then again he already has character issues, plus that curse of his).

Of course part of it is because Mashima is selective when it comes to fleshing out characters. But with how August has been treated (and perhaps we can even extend this to Haja and Shakuma in Rave), it seems Mashima likes to undermine or give another spin on the classical image of old learned wizards...