I was shocked by how much I ended up loving Rave's manga. I just picked it up at random in my High School's library because I had read and re-read One Piece and Yu Yu Hakusho so many times and I recalled the anime airing on Toonami back in the day. So I just gave it a shot.
And now I'm sat here regretting I didn't buy it all before it stopped being circulated regularly over here.
Meanwhile Fairy Tail is fucking easy as cake to find.
I DON'T understand how Mashima went from something like Rave to something like Fairy Tail.
I just... don't understand how that happens...fuck.
I get the impression that Fairy Tail was designed to be something light and easy to work on, and thus he didn't put much effort into the world building and such. Thus, he was blindsided by its popularity. Meanwhile, Rave had a core storyline from the start, and had a smaller starting cast of characters. Both Rave and Fairy Tail had the strategy of introducing characters, finding out which ones are popular, and having them become recurring good guys, and this mostly worked out in Rave--a common reaction is that this is one of the few series where villainous characters become more interesting and badass after they become good guys--but Fairy Tail had too many from the start and it lasted long enough for it to really bog things down. Rave had fan service, but it was about what you'd expect from a Dragon Ball inspired series. Fairy Tail wasn't too heavy on fan service at the start, but people responded really well to what was there, so we got what we have now.