@The:
Natsu is "fight happy", he's hot tempered, simple, and…just about all the most easily written, stock character traits you can think of. The only thing that didn't feel stitched on like some horrible shonen-protagonist frankensteins monster, the only thing that felt like legitimately his own thing, was the motion sickness.
Mostly I'm just annoyed how he's the series poster boy despite the fact that the story doesn't revolve around him in the slightest, and the fact that he's not even at least some sort of group leader.
Natsu is to this series as Vaan was to FFXII.
So very true.
Natsu is defintely overly bland. I can't even say his design is interesting, the pink hair really bugs me. He's got sandals instead of any practical footware. Luffy, Naruto and Ichigo got that covered. He likes to fight! Luffy and Oga got that. I fight for my friends! Luffy, Ichigo, Naruto, Tsuna all pretty much had that. He's a bit slow, stupid, stubborn. Every other main character is thick headed.
Natsu having motion sickness was pretty unique, although I still found it lame. I guess to have a shonen you need to have some traits that are recognizable within the genre, but he's so blank slate. Fire powers aren't even that interesting really. I feel like most main characters that use a particular power seem to be attuned to fire.
For a while there I thought Ezra was the unspoken leader as she was supposed to be the strongest among the group that got called out for missions all the time. But they don't really seem to ever function as a group aside from loaning Natsu their strength when they came up on a boss. Now that you brought it up maybe that's why they wind up struggling so much? Nobody is there to lead them properly.
I think Natsu is tied with Ichigo and Tsuna for least interesting leads in a shounen.