After the first series sets up the universe for us by explaining the magic and magical guilds, the most interesting things about the show are the things you don't actually know about it, which is rather telling because this theme persists. The most interesting characters are the ones you never see, the most interesting places are places you don't get to go and the most interesting parts of the story are never fully elaborated on. Such as the mystery of the dragons which is only fully explored in the final chapter and the S ranked members they tease you with for ~200 episodes, then when they finally do appear towards the end it's a brief moment of badass fan service before returning to the same lame content you were dealing with before.
Ultimately the same formula is rinsed and repeated in every chapter. The guild members are contracted for a task by someone(s), they fail their task, usually by some form of ambush by a previously hidden third party, and then they return to the task after said initial defeat and, as you might expect, eventually overcome it. But what is really frustrating is the characters of the show don't overcome these challenges by some kind of endearing character development, it's just by sheer bloody bravado; merely confidence in ones own ability, their will power "to win". The characters never improve themselves or their abilities using skill or personal growth; though some do learn some more powerful magical techniques, these strong and often forbidden techniques they ironically overcome completely arbitrarily with their previously inferior ones, thus immediately rendering the newer, more impressive and powerful techniques obsolete. IE their original powers were superior all along, they just didn't realise it.
So the story is ultimately offensively shallow, but it does at least have some aesthetic. At least besides that horrendous CG magic circles that are rendered during every magical ability execution which inexplicably disappears/stops getting used (admittedly for the best) towards the middle of the show.
The characters aren't too sophisticated, in fact they're rather tropey. The most interesting ones with the most interesting abilities, you barely ever see and the ones you do you've seen a hundred times before. The run away who comes from a rich family, the strong one that has a messed up child hood, the feral kid raised by wild animals, the one keeping up appearances who has the most messed up family, etc.
Once you've watched the first 3 seasons you've pretty much watched them all. It's the same trashy vanilla sponge cake with a different colour fondant thrown over the top each time. You mostly just sit through ~25 episodes waiting for that one moment when something interesting eventually happens. "that one cool character" to show his face, "that one secret ability" to get finally used; and there's never any satisfaction to the series finalé's on account of the fact the characters only ever achieve victory but for the shallow cop-out reason that is "superior will power", blind faith in ones ability which trumps all; and of course they have the best will power because [insert arbitrary reason here].
Basically the show starts off well enough and there is the odd interesting support character, but the same tired formula getting abused becomes exhausting and i only completed it because i wasn't deep enough in the anime scene to know any decent alternatives at the time otherwise i would have dropped it.
