User blog comment:FairyRaven/Fairy Tail Chapter 421: Wendy and Chelia, Review and Commentary/@comment-24360548-20150224232958/@comment-9595671-20150227075036

@Nick: I think the main issue is that no one in the Tenrou Team's really changed since they only aged a week in the sphere for what was really 67 years outside. While some characters like Jet and Bisca barely changed most of the others had noticeable differences.

I think everyone had that "a timeskip, we'll finally see them look older!" and when we saw Natsu and Lucy's appearances everyone had a good feeling... until Cancer gave Natsu his old haircut back. Also I agree with Wendy, if there's any time anyone has a big change in growth its when they hit that, and puberty doesn't go past 13 for girls so Wendy's had to hit it by now. If it was just recently... well I think that can be forgiven in that case.

I think another fault comes from every other series that I've seen with a timeskip has shown the characters having a noticeable difference over the years, even Luffy while mainly looking the same has one noticeable change, he's got more muscle on him than before.

Basically, there's so many popular manga that have timeskips with new designs based on them becoming older that most people feel its automatic and will happen by default. So that's how most Fairy Tail fans felt, they expected them to change atleast a bit as they finally aged and we had a timeskip even though it was just a year.