And again NO its not always been like that...for me, We all know Natsu got a lot of plot shield during the heavens tower arc have it not because Jellal failure in casting abyss break due to injury that he got from Erza earlier, we all know he'll win, but instead of finishing him off Hiro take him away and make him ended up with the Oracion Seis, its an indication that Hiro must have something in store for him,
Oh really ? he prefers characters ? so what makes characters in manga great ? development ? back story ? the amount of bodypart they're showing ? or its about how handsome and pretty they are ? sure every last one of them have that tragic sob story as far as i see, but what about development ? NOTHING well at least for Gray....
a series with great characters required a lot of work, so if you're saying the mangaka prefer characters over plot then you should kindly explain what so great about the characters in this manga instead of going on with that "simple and straight forward statement" because giving a lot of attention for characters also means that he has to create something which make them grow through the series in other words plot is required for that, with simple plot come simple and manga cliche characters vice versa....
Well it looks like you don't understand what i mean by that comparison, am not trying to compared One Piece with FT no sir that's an act of vandalism, One Piece is light years ahead of FT thought i agree that FT is and in a way similar with One Piece but that's not what i mean by that comparison, what i mean is the shounen genre have evolved so much in less than a decade by the 80's and early 90's every popular manga is either a baseball/comedy manga or that simple and straight forward battle manga, but in mid 90's we have Detective Conan,Rurouni Kenshin and One Piece as the most popular manga around that time, am only using that as an example in case you're trying justified FT being simple and straight forward because its a shounen, but you're not doing that so my bad.....
A beginning is supposed to be simple and straightforward, but to believed and justified the illusion that what happened in the beginning defines the entire series ? now that's ridiculous.