Almost none of those expectations were met.
The fight scenes are terrible and leave so much to be desired. The humor isn't funny anymore. The dialogue is cringe-worthy at times. Natsu has become a pansy. I haven't felt any satisfaction from anything that has happened so far this season.
Overall Fairy Tail feels like it has become exclusively an anime for children and young teens. But then there's the raunchy fan-service and Lucy getting naked for no good reason so that probably isn't the case. After some censoring it's one of those shows I'd expect to be on Disney XD on Saturday mornings. It's like a 4Kids dub and it hasn't even been dubbed yet.
It suffers from the biggest case of "main character gets his ass kicked and somehow pulls through at the end with the power of friendship" that I've ever seen. And if you've watched Fairy Tail since the beginning you know it's always been suffering from this. It really feels like they sacrificed Natsu's awesomeness for the sake of hilarity (Natsu gets beaten around by low-tier enemies and screams wildly while it happens) except it isn't funny. Remember how epic it was when Natsu finally got serious and had that look in his eyes like nothing better stand in his way? Yeh, none of that happens either.
Everything that happens is completely predictable 5 minutes before it happens. This isn't an exaggeration. Fairy Tail is riddled with so many tropes it's like the writers went to TVtropes and said "yeh this looks good, let's put this in the show." Everything follows the same tired formula over and over and over.
One good thing that remains is the music. Fairy Tail always had great music that was unlike any other show out there. Also, many people aren't too fond of the new art but I think it's a step up from the previous seasons. Maybe that's just me.
So maybe Fairy Tail is going through a slump and it'll make me eat my words this year. I really hope that's the case. But as far as 2014 goes, Fairy Tail was forgettable and almost laughable.
