General Discussion

So I was checking out the OBD, and I was looking at the Fairy Tail page, and I come across this sentence -

"The style of this manga closely resembles One Piece, also a reason why most One Piece fans revile it. Especially since it takes so much from the aforementioned manga and makes them hundreds of times more cliché and s*****."

Now, I really don't take anything that OBD takes seriously when it comes to reviews(or even their forum debates) because they are incredibly biased, but that sentence there caught my eye. Exactly what cliches are they talking about? Can someone give me some examples before I try and dive deeper into Fairy Tail? Because One Piece caught my eye, but the story of Fairy Tail seemed a bit more "interesting", to say the least.... well, at least in my opinion. I liked the concept of mages and magic. However, I do not enjoy the concept of cliches(especially repeated ones). So, if I could get some clarification on this, I would appreciate it. I don't want to walk into a self-inflicted death trap(i.e. your typical anime cliches).

Fairy Tail to me is a pretty generic shonen series. The main cliches they're probably referring to are, The dopey main character obsessed with fighting and food, random powerups, the power of friendship, etc. I'm not really interested in long running shonens anymore but I read some of this a few years back and it's a very generic battle shonen.
 
If you like that sort of thing you'll love this, lots of fights, fan service,  humour and fairly nice art.

@anifreakz:

At first, it looks like One Piece especially with the manga covers of older Fairy Tail volumes. As you read Fairy Tail or watch it, you see the difference in their style. See the 1st two covers.

Fairy Tail's author, Hiro Mashima, and One Piece's author, Eiichiro Oda, have similar art style and story because they were influenced by Akira Toriyama. They both love Dragon Ball Z.

As for Fairy Tail,

Check these my friends' reviews:

• JBog's Beginner Guide
• Wales's Review

Fairy Tail has great back stories of their characters, fan service (like One Piece), and nice action. Wales point out that Fairy Tail has a problem with Deus Ex Machina. The unique thing of Fairy Tail is their concept of guild which reinforces the idea of family and friends. You don't see much anime that has that concept. Just try Fairy Tail a bit. You may have to get past the 1st 12 episodes to get a better glimpse of the series.