Like essentially, I think the selling point of the anime when it started was the Magic Circle. Even that is entirely removed. Where haveball the flashy spells gone?
Oh yes, that they removed the magic circles in the anime was a very bad decision imo. I really liked them and it filled the anime more with fantasy and magic imo.
Everyone's a Bacchus now (worst character I have ever seen in this series, hyped over nothing). What happened to Juvia's Water Lock? Heaven's Wheel Blumenblatt, Satan Soul's "Evil" spells, Cana mixing up cards for different effects, Mest's memory manipulation, Freed's Rune? Even Capricorn's magic isn't actually truly shown within the manga.
Yeah it's really sad, that Mashima and also many other authors in this genre don't use their characters anymore in a proper way.
Mashima is still better than some other authors especially with FT. Even now we have still few characters or fights where we got some cool spells/attacks. But compared to the old days it's much lesser than before.
As an example Anchor or Luso showed us many spells, Hakune or Yoko also showed us few spells, but overall we didn't see much. As an example the BDSK, Haku, Kirin and Misaki didn't show us many spells, each of them maybe only 1-2 spells. Suzaku was the only one who showed us few more like 4-5 spells overall.
In the 100YQ we have always the same types of battles.
1. A battle where we don't see much magic, like the battle against Motherglare.
2. A battle where the enemy shows his/her powers and that even with some spells like Aldoron, Luso or Yoko or Hakune
3. A battle where one of the heroes shows few spells like Lucy or Gray
4. A battle where both side use spells, tactic and where it feels more like a magic battle like Midnight vs Zero or Gray and Juvia vs Anchor
The 4th one is the most rare one in the 100YQ
In the original manga we got more spells and the side characters were shown much often like Gajeel, Sting, Cana, Fried, Kagura, Sheria, Jura, etc and the fights were also written better (overall).
Like I said compared to some other shonen manga the 100YQ is still better in these points but compared to the original manga not.
What I hate is that Mashima can write good stuff if he wants. We saw it in few battles in the 100YQ. Sure they were not perfect but still good or at least okay fights. But most of the time we don't get good battles and I don't know why.
If he's run out of ideas for magic, then maybe just don't keep introducing new characters. Develop the ones we already have!
I don't think that he has no ideas, it's more the opposite, some new characters showed us many and/or good stuff. He can if he wants. He just doesn't want it most of the time.
But the things with new characters can be said about other shonens imo.
But what is also important so say, it depends on what interest you have as a reader if you want see a good story than other shonens are better than FT. If you want to see battles with explosions and action than other mangas are better too.
If you want to see team battles, side characters, enemies (servants) and sometimes good spells/attacks then FT is the better manga than some other shonen mangas imo.
One of the strongest things about FT is/was the balance between main and side characters as well that we got many team battles and attacks (at least in the past). Thats something that is imo a rare thing in shonen mangas overall. But they have other stuffs where they are better.
Thats why FT is among my favorite mangas. Because we have so many characters, enemies, team battles etc. Something I really hate in other mangas, because we never see much side characters and that what I also dislike about the 100YQ because we have these things much lesser than before.
