A lot of people already had an opinion, a bias, a preconceived notion about Edens Zero before they even began diving deeper into the series. A lot of people seemed to have prematurely judged this manga because of their sheer distaste towards Mashima since it was heavily and positively reinforced at the time (even until today) instead of actually experiencing the story themselves. If the series isn't your cup of tea, it's fine. However, I do believe it's rather unfair to scrutinize the series and the author so monumentally just because of the author without even attempting to read a generous number of chapters (unless such author has done something messed up in real life or any similar situation)

I think that Mashima's writing really improved. Moreover, a lot of character designs have become more unique, and the word "friend" is pretty much a running joke. Edens Zero pretty much subverts and even goes as far as take jabs on a lot of the negative aspects of his previous work. Arcs are tightly tied together, characters have interesting personalities and are entertaining, the implications of friendship are of a higher degree than of Fairy Tail, it has slightly dark undertones, stakes are existent, the storyline is compelling, the art is undeniably stunning and easy to follow, and the worldbuilding is amazing. When you look past the character designs, EZ is really good. It's been living under Fairy Tail's shadow for quite some time now and is being branded as FT 2.0 when in reality, they're pretty different.

Although, I do believe that Mashima dropped the ball with the final arc of FT, I still don't really understand the drive of people to hate on an author and his series because it's a popular opinion and that big personalities such as anitubers think so as well. What I do understand, however, is that Edens Zero is a major improvement from Fairy Tail. Genuinely hoping that it continues and/or even improve its already good trajectory.