After reading the latest few chapters, I think I might have just lost all my respect for Mashima Hiro. For a while now, the quality of Fairy Tail has been steadily dropping. I stayed with it because I believed the humor was worth reading each new update, because the intros to many arcs are intriguing, because I liked reading Fairy Tail. It was a refreshing break from life, even though I honestly prefer more serious manga.
In the beginning, Fairy Tail is a fun read. Nothing is repetitive, characters are being introduced, arcs explain the stories of the main characters, etc. Sure, there is some fanservice, and for all intents and purposes, seems like pretty much every other battle shounen I had read, but I was interested nevertheless.
Then it starts to get a bit more cliche. Lucy becomes less of a "female lead" and more of a person with giant tits. Big boobs are her entire persona ... Fight scene get a bit repetitive. When we reach the time skip, I quite honestly think I freaked out. Time skips are a big no no for me. It's a stupid, overused way to create drama, to power up the characters (and in this case, the heightened level of power is quickly forgotten) and just NONONONO.
This is when I began noticing things. The Japanese may view manga from a very culturally different standpoint than we. I never quite understood how the same repetitiveness I find in most really famous manga (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, etc.) could still continue to be so successful. However, I think we share one thing in common. We noticed Fairy Tail was not quite up to par anymore.
The mangaka introduces a ridiculous amount of characters, but the plot never seems to move forward. We are left we the same questions as ever. What happened to the dragons? What happened that day? Who is Zeref?
I suppose a drop in the rankings prompted the manga to include so much ecchi. That is simply my best guess. The fanservice has been so abundant lately that the latest few chapters seem to have been literally cut and paste from some hentai I read. I don't know if adding so many boobs would really increase sales and rankings (Porn is available so freely on the Internet?). It has, however, lost one female reader.
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