User blog comment:Alpha Male Apollo/One of Many Questions/@comment-3987368-20150813103206

FullMetal Alchemist is a shounen so different from your typical shounen that it's sometimes hard to consider it one. I've seen both the 2003 anime and Brotherhood in addition to having read the manga and it stands far above pretty much anything else in this demographic. I'm sorry to say that if you're trying to fill the void after that, Fairy Tail doesn't cut it. You've started with a pretty strong series so most others in this demographic will not hold up as well.

If you're meh towards Fairy Tail it's pretty understandable. Compared to FullMetal Alchemist and even Rave Master, its grasp on storytelling, characters and character development is often shallow and good chances for improvement are sacrificed for the sake of cheap laughter and fanservice.

For why exactly Fairy Tail has so much more fanservice than Rave Master, I'd say that it's mainly because the author has allowed for it. Rave Master, for all its flaws, still had an overarching story while Fairy Tail doesn't. Thus Fairy Tail uses the fanservice to fill the spaces in between and given that it's over 400 chapters by this time, there's guaranteed to be a lot of it.

If you're looking for some new shounen manga, I'd recommend Yu Yu Hakusho if you haven't already read it and you want to read a completed series. It's much shorter than your typical shounen but carries the same feeling of epic story and great characters as Rave Master, but no fanservice (that I can recall off the top of my head). If you want an ongoing manga, check out One Piece if you haven't already for a series with most of Fairy Tail's strengths but no fatal flaws. Though both have some occasionally messy artwork, they're both great reads overall.