User blog comment:IamJakuhoRaikoben/Chapter 483: The Seven Stars, Review./@comment-128.189.225.76-20160427215017

Whenever I read this series I get a kind of love/hate feeling...

On one hand, it has great art, good character designs, and some really good build-up plots. Remember when Mavis and Zeref's past was finally revealed? Remember when the sand emperor guy came riding in with this huge-ass fleet of flying ships, and everything was heading towards an epic final battle? I was actually getting hyped, because it seemed like the manga was going to redeem itself in its final arc, and go out with a proper bang.

But while Mashima is really good at the setup, he can never quite nail the payoff. Even the best fights in this series (Hades and Mard Geer come to mind) were generally just powered through by the main characters, in pretty much the same way as all the other battles. You look at the last Hunter X Hunter chapter, and you have a fight with kind of scruffy-looking art, but then it doesn't even matter, because the characters are duking it out with skill and cunning, analyzing each other's abilities and making clever and interesting plays. What's more, we have no idea of who will win! Whereas with FT... you get these wonderfully drawn fights, and yet they're all foregone conclusions. Sure, the good guys will win in the end, but maybe they could at least suffer some defeats, and actually have to struggle a bit to claim victory.

Essentially, I think Mashima may have chosen the wrong style of manga. You look at FT Zero, and sure it's not perfect, but it was new and interesting and a heck of a lot better than his main series. And the difference? The lack of action. Zero was focused mainly on the characters and their journey, which is what Mashima is actually reasonably good at (he even had that game at the beginning, where Mavis and Makarov's dad face off... that was actually cool! Why can't he write battles with that kind of cunning involved?!).

IDK. It could be that FT is dumbed-down for kids, or maybe the author just can't bring himself to break from the formula and allow himself to grow. It's what makes this manga so infuriating to so many people: it's too good at times to just label as crap, but it never really lives up to its potential.