I think it's pretty disappointing if we can just ascribe numbers to mangas that influence other peoples' beliefs, simply because we're turned off at first sight. I mean, I'm a firm believe of individual choice, but to post a "wall of text" rant just because the characters look like something you've seen is, honestly, one of the worst ways I've seen to review a Manga.
Moving on, I admit that I was initially surprised by how similar the characters looked like OP - in fact, I went to check if the authors were the same (Hiro Mashima and Oda are two different people). That aside, I tried to read on and enjoy the story - and I did! In fact, this is all the more surprising because I normally don't like mangas that have odd-looking characters - novelty has to be reigned in by, uh, a willingness not to repulse your readers, I think. (I don't like ecchi either, so sue me.)
Rarely do we find Shounens that're willing to let their main characters take the backstage, or let others take down the first big boss, or tell stories about everyone else. In short, character evolution. I admire Fairy Tail - as I did Fruits Basket - for its ability to put aside Natsu or Lucy now and then and talk about others - I especially liked the Loki/Leo arc nearly as much as I did Momiji in FB, if you've read it.
I'm not stingy with my marks, but I'm not generous either. People have an aversion for giving 10 sometimes, and cover it up with something weird like 9.8476, so that they can later point to 10 people with the standard "haha, you're WRONG, nothing is perfect in this world". Well, I think that's a ridiculous way of thinking. Assigning arbitrary numbers to determine value has always been an imperfect - if not impossible - art. So I have no qualms about giving a 10 so long as it has beautiful, climatic moments here and there, and doesn't do something ludicrously stupid - like letting Ichigo acquire some world-destroying power to kill Aizen, or killing Hitsugaya only to tell us it was a clone, for example. Those are fine so long as there's foreshadowing - which was what made the Aizen betrayal so wildly popular - but it becomes unbelievable if it's there to fit in the plot. And Fairy Tail nicely dances past the pitfalls that're typical of these popular Shounen. I mean, the greatest criticism could be that Natsu has been powering up all the way, but it's been gradual so far, and Erza's told us all along that she knew Natsu had more power than her. And at no point in time does Mashima randomly give Lucy a Bankai without reason - she beat the Trinity via Unison with Juvia (already at S-class level) and Bixlow with Loke, and even when I was preparing to be disappointed and downgrade FT during the S-class arc when Lucy and Kana thrashed Fried and Bixlow... Mashima got me again with a realistic explanation that I never predicted.
It's nice if you can tie everything in a story to some beautiful, deep, central theme, but that's just one style of storytelling and has its own constraints. Even if FT doesn't seem to have that, every arc adds believable layers to everyone's personalities, and has it's own strengths and originality. Perhaps the icing that might make me severely tempted to try giving FT a 11 is if in the final arc, it might give us something we missed all along - a Grand Unifying Theory that's been hinted at all along - but right now I think Mashima'll be content with my 10.
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