User blog comment:IamJakuhoRaikoben/Chapter 500: Fire and Ice, Review./@comment-27281341-20160906085027/@comment-2214433-20160906134437

Rave as a whole had much better plot. While the story could be divided into arcs, all of them lead to a single main point, the point of the series, which was the main character's purpose from the start. Hiro also took it more seriously, it had a darker setting and there were deaths that were not undone in any way. In spite of the the ending being happy, it was quite grim with how it happened imo.

Now, Fairy Tail is more about its characters or at least it was for most part. Literally half of its arcs are centered on someone, exploring their past and dealing with its aftereffects in the present. Which is pretty cool and those arcs were ones of the best, with Erza arc topping all of them of course. Hiro has apparently stated that after Rave, he wanted to write something much happier. Again, that is nice and all, but you can still write a happy series while having good and interesting writing. So yeah, there really isn't any excuse for this chapter. It's bad.