Maffy said:
I HAVE to give shade on Mavis. She's so useless it hurts. They are introducing her like this great strategist who became FT's founder and up until now there was not one single strategy of hers that actually worked or was even well thought out (except in the flashback and even that was a pretty basic strategy lol It was more like the rest of the team were stupid rather than her being brilliant).
Firstly, she tells us their attack plan was all according to her own plans (that we had no idea of and apparently almost no one else). Secondly, she had the great idea of sending Natsu, Wendy and Gajeel on a flying vehicle because she conveniently forgot their nausea. Thirdly, the feel when Makarov is being realistic for once and saying that Erza would probably not be able to win 1 of the 12, while Mavis' plan is "We must believe in her!". Fourthly, all goes shit and her thoughts are "No matter how you look at it... there's no winning this!"
Best strategy mastermind, amirite?
I would honestly never want her give me any directions whatsoever. It's obvious Mashima has no idea what strategy is and how to actually make it work. He never relied on it before, so it'd be silly to have such a character now. SMH~
This is something the medium of Anime in general suffers from.
Even "critically aclaimed" shows that advertise themselves for their strategic battles are mostly not.Shikamaru from Naruto, the whole HxH series. Tactics in One Piece.They all boil down too. Oh that move you never used before, now you use it in combination with that other move you always use and it´s a great combination because the one is a feint.
To write about a strategic mastermind requires to be a strategic mastermind, most often the most basic of tactics were labeled genius although it just happened coincidentally to be the required tacitc while just being a traditional fightning method for the winning side.
Oh, Genghis Khan was a genius because he lit animals on fire and let them run through the enemie base and because he bribed his enemies footsoldiers.
The situation from the readers pov is always easy to explain, but to value such a tactical decision it always requires to be viewed from the pov of the character.
I agree though that Mavis especially is a very cheap version of that "genius tactician" archetype that so many Anime and Manga use.