Potential? Hardly, the b.s. was already starting to creep in as early as the Lullaby arc (remember the "flames of emotion" that was presented as one of Natsu's core attributes before never being mentioned again?). Even the arcs I previously enjoyed like Phantom Lord are average-decent at best, as they suffered from Hiro's lack of dramatic buildup, overy-fast pacing, and asspulls. As soon as Hiro introduced the concept of the Balm Alliance, it set the standard for turning away from actual world-building and exploring different lands and all type of folklore for the sake of having generic battle arcs against boring two-dimensional villains…..and even then, a good majority of those fights range from lackluster to complete trainwrecks.
@Prismeru:
I don't get why you argue so much about Fairy Tail if we already know it's like a weirdly fetish porn. You always read it with curiousity and expectative but you always end up grossed out, dumbfounded and sometimes with your pants down.
Thanks for mentioning that, because after this arc, I'm seriously putting FT down for good. After dropping the series the first time after Tenroujima, I got back into it when the "Youtube Anime Community" went apeshit over chapters 321 and 322, and enjoyed laughing at the sorry excuse of a "fight to save humanity" against the dragons and "ORIGINL CHARACTER DNS". Honestly, why can't FT be the "funny" kind of bad like in GMG, instead of the snooze fest we're getting with smug bishonen #85 leading a guild of not-demons and always seems to have a plan behind a plan one after another?
Who knows, maybe my condescending attitude or bile fascination has run dry since a year ago. Either way, as soon as Natsu gets his random powerup, Lame Geer goes through both the "villainous breakdown" and "arrogance brings downfall" clichés, and FT wins, I'm pretty much done. There's is 0 value (not even petty self-ego-feeding) in reading this lackluster story with the same subpar repetitive shonen arcs over and over again, and even if the actual "main plot" (which can be summed up as "something about Zeref" and "something about Dragons") finally starts to move forward and unfold after this arc, I guarantee you it'll suck too.