User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail 527: Emotion, Review/@comment-25111584-20170318144809/@comment-25111584-20170320131729

I know that DSM was the planned thing, and the Irene-Erza relation the unplanned.

However, I'd disagree that the relationship is stupid given the limitations involved. We had to resign ourselves to them being related, so I personally supported Irene being Erza's mother all along. Given Erza's incredible bullshit feats, her being the daughter of an entity so powerful that she is in a select group (I badly want to be sarcastic here...) like the Spriggan 12 is reasonable, although certainly not necessary. And the backstory... wasn't overly inconsistent and, more importantly, didn't demean anybody (except maybe Acnoloogia because Mashima lacks hindsight).

Honestly, the only problem with Erza being Irene's daughter is its effect on Irene near the end of the battle. And yes, I agree that Irene's surrender, unlike August's, was bloody stupid. But, imo, all of this was a result of Mashima's habit of overreaching himself. He made Irene too powerful and had to use the Irene-Erza relationship as an excuse to put her down. For me, what actually made the fight bad was Wendy's participation. It was clearly planned... and led to disaster. If Mashima had simply switched her out for some other, more suitable character(s), things would have gone extremely differently without a single change having to be made to the Irene-Erza relationship we were given. The connection by itself was nowhere as bad as it could have been. If it had had no effect on the battle, and no personality shift had taken place, it would have simply added depth to Irene's character. The only complaints would have been regarding Mashima's habit to constantly make connections.

Can the same be said of obviously planned stuff like the E.N.D. farce? Mavis' role, from the bloody retarded plan to defend Fiore to the Fairy Heart plot to her apparent plan to defeat Zeref by believing in Natsu? Gray's role, which is basically Gray vs. Invel, the whole Gruvia dumbfuckery, and Gray vs. Natsu? Heck, Mashima does not even realize that, from an out-of-universe perspective, the totality of Gray's actions has been to get rid of fodder and injure Natsu, which means his participation in the war can at best be considered to be useless. I would also mention Brandish's role here, but tbf, I can't tell whether it was planned or Mashima just bullshat his way along.

Maybe I should clarify. In comparison to the obviously planned stuff, stuff created on the fly has generally proved better. Mashima's plans end up as bullshit while his spontaneous creation would be great if not for aforementioned plans. Or, to put it another way, his plans end up as bullshit because he tries to pander his fans, while his spontaneous creation shows a glimmer (just a glimmer though) of the true writer behind Rave Master, but is sadly suppressed due to the aforementioned need to please his fans.