Idk if this counts as an unpopular opinion now, but at the time it certainly seemed to be. I think both the time skips (7 years after the Tenrou Island exams and 1 year after the Tartarous incident) really messed with characterisation for several characters, and worse undermined one of the core tenets of the series (that being the Fairy Tail guild is like a family and they’d do anything for each other) and this series has never really recovered from that.
starting with the 7 year skip, one unintended consequence was to really draw attention to the fact the guild always had two tiers of members, basically everyone who was on Tenrou island (the gang with backstory and at least some agency), and everyone who wasn’t (filler characters there to pad out the guild’s membership and provide the occasional comedic moment). While this was inevitable in a series like this (I understand giving Everyone their own background arc wouldn’t be possible) it had been much less visible before, and it was easier to sort of believe the ‘one big family’ spiel. I can understand why he wanted Fairy Tail to be an underdog for the Grand Magic Games, but he really messed up some fundamental dynamics in doing it, and the Guild sort of went from feeling like an important home for the characters previously to just a background location for them to regroup between missions afterwards. That’s particularly bad for a series where the smaller slice of life moments were among if not the best moments it had to offer. In terms of messing up characterisation I’ll just go over a couple of missed opportunities and a couple of characters who took weird turns afterwards, as frankly this skip should have had meaningful positive and negative consequences for everyone in the story.
Romeo is the obvious missed opportunity. If anyone was there waiting to grow into his own and had the motive to try and fill the gap left by Natsu’s absence, well…
If Laxus had missed out on the Timeskip, he could’ve matured into a really compelling guildmaster if he’d gone back to take up the reins - and being in that role wouldn’t necessarily have stopped the overall slide of Fairy Tail’s ranking as he’d be tied up with paperwork as master a lot of the time.
Second origin was a total cop-out, Natsu in particular I thought was really harmed by it. It made the 4 dragonslayer battle a while later a total farce. Either Natsu and Gajeel should have been forced to work together to win against Sting and Rogue, or they should have failed to stop the infighting and lost as a consequence.
With the year long skip, the fact that everyone just shrugged and went their separate ways, with very few implied to have kept in any sort of close contact is weird for a self-described ‘family’. The fact Lucy didn’t feel able to reach out to anyone during this period is also really weird when they’d all put their lives on the line to keep her safe from Phantom Lord at that time less than a year prior (At least as perceived by half the guild members and Lucy herself). This is also feels like a massive regression for Lucy’s self confidence which had been building up over the course of the series. If she was that lonely she still couldn’t bring herself to reach out to anyone she’d known without having Natsu come and hold her hand first? Really?
Evil Gray when he was already teasing evil Natsu was a bit much, and it was never explained why Gray killed Frosch in this period? The fact he led Juvia on then just abandoned her without a word as to why always sat wrong with me too. The fact Gray and Erza took off without even speaking to Lucy first is another really weird contrivance to arrive at the isolated Lucy point as well. Post timeskip Erza also went through a phase where it felt like she’d given up trying to improve herself and just become a Natsu cheerleader… thankfully that wasn’t followed through with. The fight against Ikusatsunagi at the climax of the Avatar arc was a perfect opportunity to call back to the Lullaby 3 on 1 fight, but no, just another Natsu one punch.
I do feel like at least Wendy should have defected for good. If everyone really did go and move on then he should have made that a consequence of the guild being gone for a year. I can understand those who grew up from children in FT jumping at the opportunity to go back but Wendy had only been there for a few months, so arguably she should have been even better friends with Chelia and everyone at Lamia Scale after a whole year! Overall the lack of changes like this just made it feel like a contrived holding pattern for Natsu’s dramatic powered up re-emergence, not an event which actually had any meaning!
Finally, ‘never really recovered’ may seem a bit dramatic, but I really think something went missing in these skips. It felt like the series’ scope contracted, the small amount of effort put into developing characters outside of the core 4 stopped almost entirely, it’s just become about throwing Natsu up against increasingly ludicrous enemies cuz he’s just that amazingly stronk now. Even Erza and Gray are almost never the ones to help turn the tide anymore (and that’s on the rare occasion things actually are going against them in the first place!). I’m glad 100YQ has sort of given us a bit of worldbuilding again, even though it’s been quite limited. I would like to see a return to some of the drive the characters had in the early part of the series too.
Sorry this was a bit of a long post, I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic for this series recently and I used to love doing a breakdown of the story dynamics!
