You go to a fancy restaurant and order a multi course meal. The first course look amazing and tastes really good. You look forward to the next course...only to find it's the same food only not quite as delicious. The third course is the same but a bit lukewarm. And so on, and on, and on.
Visually Fairy Tail is stunning...until near the end of Season 1 when the budget clearly ran low and the art becomes a bit of a joke. The audio is also consistently one of the best in anime and makes the terrible storytelling somewhat bearable.
The character designs are varied and interesting, but unfortunately by and large are not matched with any character depth. The main male protagonist, Natsu, is among the most disappointing in shounen anime I find. Besides fighting for friendship, looking for his dragon parent and getting motion sick there is nothing to him by and large. Oh he also like to fight almost anything whatever the situation.
The worst aspect by far is the story though. Every arc follows a tired pattern which basically follows these steps:
1) Strong enemy appears
2) Strong enemy beats Fairy Tail back
3) Fairy Tail regroups and bats those enemies
4) The enemies boss appears and beats back Fairy Tail
5) Fairy Tail regroups and somehow wins using the power of friendship/feelings.
The final step is particularly vexing. Unlike say Bleach where they at least attempt to explain Ichigo's power ups Fairy Tail lazily writes it almost entirely off to the power of friendship. And rubs this into your face at every opportunity. This became so nausea inducing tat by halfway through I was actively rooting against Fairy Tail.
Again it's not like the writing doesn't have the occasional good moment, Lucy's backstory was handled alright. Some parts of the tournament arc were well written. But other parts were the opposite. The Mira Jane vs Jenny mode battle has to go down as the single worst instance of forcing pointless fanservice into an episode...
Ultimately the real regret is that this show was wasted potential. It feels like the early success caught the author by surprise and he continued on without a clear vision for it...the result is what could have been remembered as legendary became mediocre at best.
