Fairy Tail Zero is honestly such an improvement on the main series, it's crazy to see how well Mashima Hiro can actually write. Although FT has a special place in my heart, it's mostly just annoying plotline after annoying plotline, with the actually good ones being overshadowed by the overbearing amount of ecchi. There's a lot of problems with FT's storytelling, but the vast majority of them are absent within FT Zero. The characters are fun, the art is beautiful, and the story is downright heartbreaking. Mashima's storytelling really improves in these story stories where he doesn't have the time to load them with boring plotarmour and titties. Hope to see more of this from him in the future. It really was a surprise to find this to be so good considering his two most recent works.