#ft criticism

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Man, I irrationally love Natsu but even I want him to get the hell out of the spotlight for the Acno fight. If Acno has to be oneshoted, what on earth would have been wrong with all the DS launching an attack that would combine in midair? 

Then they could all be more direct agents in Acno’s defeat, a much truer act of friendship & teamwork than another OP Natsu fight we really don’t need.

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Okay folks I’m not seeing enough people criticize Gruvia’s “it’s mine” comment.

Love or hate Gruvia, I think that comment needs to be called out for what it is: horribly sexist, gross objectification, and a detriment to both characters.

My two cents is that that comment should not be considered at all cute or romantic. I don’t care how in love you are even, if it’s mutual, nobody should lay claim to another’s body like that. Gray and Juvia both deserved better.

Mashima just gave direct approval and encouragement for objectifying women to an alarming degree. I think that’s a terrible message to send. It’s certainly not the kind message I want from my protagonists. I don’t know who else but the fandom is going to call him out for these things and demand better from our media.

I can’t believe those words came out of the same guy who had that memorable comment about physical scars not mattering and invisible ones being the ones you have to look out for. That was great. That’s the kind of message I want from my protagonists. What happened to that Gray?

Ship what you like and enjoy the heck out of it but please guys, let’s not accept harmful messages and such unsavory behavior because it services a ship. I’ve come to learn that you can love a thing while acknowledging it’s flaws. <3

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Rather long for an ask so I’m just gonna post this @ac-fairytail, as long as you don’t mind this method?  

Zeref Dragneel straight up conquered death didn’t he? 

No price to pay*, no particularly rare resources (that we know of) needed, and even zero consequences for the revived (they don’t even need to be tied to a book apparently).

First, I find it seriously irritating this doesn’t even seem to be a big deal to the characters or Mashima, despite that IT’S HUGE and just about all the FT people have suffered the untimely loss of at least one friend/family.

Second, it’s just irritating for death to have so little meaning/consequence in ANY story. (Obviously not the first time Mashima’s had a problem with that)

Third, it feels a lot to me like Mavis and Natsu have effectively ‘killed’ even more people than Zeref even did because they killed the guy who knew how to reverse death, effectively throwing the secret down the drain and dooming untold billions of future lives. Sure they’re not going to cause extra deaths but they were so close to the cure to almost everything and saving everyone who is ever going to die from disease, accident, murder, etc.….and I guess it didn’t even occur to them. Fantastic.

*I wish I could argue the curse was a price because that would be a pretty good one but it seems to me that the curse was never actually CONFIRMED to be from the gods as a direct result of Zeref’s tampering with death. His professor assumed it but he could have been dead wrong. (And I’m deleting text here so I don’t ramble on because Zeref’s curse is a whole issue beyond what I’m trying to say here….)

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It really irks me how Natsu seems a-okay with murdering his brother.

Like, I get it. Zeref’s the bad guy. He’s done terrible things and is trying to do more.*

But still. Killing him?

Natsu hasn’t had one second of pause about murdering a family member. No matter what that person has done, I think the question still needs to be at least asked: “can I really kill this person?”

Switch out Zeref for one of Natsu’s current friends. Say that tomorrow Natsu forgot all about Lucy. They get separated and he forgets they ever even met. Then years later they met up again, but she’s been through hell and is making choices he doesn’t like. Should he kill her? KILL her? As a first resort? Especially if there isn’t much reason not to just lock her up where she can’t hurt anyone?

I’m not trying to say Zeref should get a pass.** I just think it’s wrong for Natsu to be so quick and certain about killing him. To skip over any hesitation, curiosity, or compassion for this person he once loved. Rejecting him I get. Being furious I get. Stopping him I get. But not killing him. 

If Natsu has a cliche last second change of heart...I’ll still be mad because I don’t see how it could feel anything but forced and too little too late at that point. 

___

*Although personally I think his time reset plan isn’t all that evil. 

**Though if it was ME I’d be trying to help him more than hurt him because he’s clearly hurting and out of his mind. I’d be trying to stop him for sure, but not kill him. 

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Salt about recent Acno stuff...

Should have said earlier before he came back out of that hole but I didn’t care/don’t care that Acno didn’t actually go down in the timelapse. 

Because no matter how awesome whatever happens next is (though I’m expecting disappointment), it’s too late. Anna and Ichiya still happened. I, and many others, had no choice but to believe that was his end and we were mad about it. No mater what comes next it was still stupid, always will be, and nothing can get rid of it. Too late. I didn’t enjoy that big part of the story so Mashima has already failed. 

Besides the fact that it was ridiculous, we were given no reason to expect that wasn’t actually the end of Acno. Stories rely a lot on hype so we’re properly excited and invested. Mashima is often very good at hype, but especially lately has been very, very bad at payoff. (Irene, August, END etc). Acno is sorta the opposite problem. By having the time lapse plan work so neatly, Mashima killed any further hype. I saw Acno, Anna, and Ichiya go down and with it any further excitement for Acno’s plot. No way I was going to be excited or fearful for his return since it looked like that wouldn’t happen. 

At the same time it was so ridiculous that I did doubt but it was also dramatic and felt final, so ultimately I sat around just not knowing what Mashima wanted me to feel. Should I fear Acno’s return? Or should I be celebrating his defeat and getting feels over the sacrifice??????????? Those are not good things to leave uncertain in a story.

Surprises returns can be really good but this one isn’t. For me, because the original stop was so dumb and unsatisfying. Why would I expect this second wind to be better? As with all the fake deaths in this story, how will I satisfactorily believe it when the real conclusion comes around? 

Maybe Mashima thought he was building tension and mystery here. I didn’t feel an ounce. 

Another problem with this situation while I’m at it: Mashima, through Anna, told us that nothing could exist in the timelapse. I didn’t know how she knew that but characters have to know and say things like that so the audience understands the situation. But it seems she was just kinda wrong because Acno existed long enough to eat his way out so in the future, my ability to believe characters and trust the hype building of those statements is damaged. Who do I trust? When do I trust characters/Mashima? When do I get impressed by the impact of something? When do I get intrigued by doubt? But honestly this particular problem existed in FT long before Anna came along.

So I’m moving into the rest of the story not really not excited for it. Part because Mashima’s just generally let me down on pretty much everything lately. The hype for Acno was already killed. Defeated or not, Acno got pushed around too much by side characters. The emotional journey of this has been jarringly messy. I don’t know who or what to believe. I’m still mad how he fake went down. Plus his return is weird, a bit implausible, and an unneeded power-up. There’s too many things distracting me from the simple excitement of Acno being scary.

Mostly it’s my first point: that it’s just too late to completely save the story because the giant stain of freaking Anna and Ichiya taking out Acno is still there and even in hindsight I don’t like that part. 

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After so many fake-outs I genuinely can’t tell if Mashima even wants us to be shocked by FT deaths anymore.

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526 Reaction

Complaining ahead.

First prize is a last name, congrats. Who knew this was a competition.

I’d care more if I’d been giving a reason to care about Larcade, but I’ve been un-accepting and suspicious of him from the beginning. I knew I wanted more proof before believing he was a true Dragneel. Fannon gave him a sympathetic backstory but cannon didn’t so his fall here is just meh to me. 

One good thing to come of it though is the idea that Larcade was presumably another dead child Zeref resurrected as a test before Natsu. I like that idea since it’s the one logical thing Zeref’s done in ages. I had wondered if he’d done tests before experimenting on his precious brother. The fandom had wondered if one of those open pods in 436 belonged to Larcade:

I’ll assume Larcade will turn on Zeref now and be another person to find love and family with Fairy Tail (and I’ll be shallow and throw out there that him also being a demon/resurrected child makes my fav Natsu less special). Moving on.

I don’t care how old her mind is, Mashima. Her body is a child so pregnancy is really awful to picture! Totally unnecessary creep factor. The numerous problems with how this baby was conceived and born, ranging from icky implications to outright plot holes, makes me suspect that this twist was very much not originally planned. So far it has done nothing but detract from the story so I’ve no idea why a Zervis child was even added at all at this point.

What the--! WHERE DID YOU GET THAT BABY?! HOW DID YOU--! 

UG so many questions. And not interesting “oh I can’t wait to find out!” questions. Irritating questions about plausibility and necessity of these plot developments.

What do you mean “mistake” did you somehow not have enough time to consider the choice? Neither light or dark? Okay then, WHERE’S THE PROBLEM? It’s a baby--raise it. Is there not a whole guild-full of people upstairs who would be totally down to raise the baby of their founder?

I....what. Abandoned? Again, WHY? Questioning whether to bring the baby to life was stressing him out but he’s cool with leaving it to die slowly in a basket?

Oohhhh you just will not stop being creepy will you and so many problems from one panel. Black silhouette children with magical intelligence beyond their years are always “fun”. How CONVENIENT that you remembered the parents you never met. I could have sworn that later in this chapter your magic turned out to be copying not memory magic so what gives? Who. Raised. You?

Why are you forcing such ridiculous amounts of nonsense into this Mashima???

Is he running with bread in his mouth? Whatever. I’m more grumpy about that fact that given this is FT, I expect most/all villains to get redemption but this would permanently and irrevocably alter a person’s personality in severe ways and as someone who doesn't even ship Zervis that much I’m shallowly bitter about this happening to their child.

Ah good, more cannon fodder for the “how many people does Zeref just HAPPEN to meet in the forest” post I’ve been meaning to make. Let me guess, August CONVENIENTLY had weirdly advanced tracking magic that helped him track down the father nobody told him about. 

Now....why would you mention Lucy so specifically at this time?

Better how? His curse maybe I guess?

“Hi I’m a four year old wild child with no education! Let’s build a country!”

He doesn’t even have a name so who know’s how he even learned to talk. Or developed a concept of what a country even IS.

Awwwww what a clean and well dressed street kid!!!!!

I think this is my first full ‘reaction post’ but it felt like fun to do for this chapter since it had so many wtf moments. The wtf is sadly not contained to this chapter but descriptive of this whole arc. Why is this happening? The unnecessary elements have been going on for far too long. Larcade was revealed as a Dragneel at least 7 months ago. His introduction went nowhere and the twist that the child is actually August adds nothing either. Especially including the Irene nonsense, this whole thing is causing other perfectly interesting material that had been set up for years previously to be neglected.

Uncomfortable situations and nonsensical developments abound. I’m not disappointed or angry because FT’s divergence from content I like has been going on for ages. I look forward to being able to look back on this arc when it’s complete and see if future developments make Mashima’s reasoning any clearer. Not that future content can “fix” anything; stories that take this long to develop need to be an interesting ride all the way through, not viewed as good only once they’re finished. 

Some questions are fine, good even, but the questions this chapter re-enforces just take the reader out of the story. I for one get a strong sense of Mashima randomly coming up with new ideas, failing to consider their impact on the narrative, and forcing them into the story with a startling lack of effort to mesh them properly with previous developments.

It’s weird since I had previously gushed about the clever END foreshadowing. I fully believed Mashima had some idea where the story was going and I’d have thought Mashima had spent years imagining what the climatic situations could be. So I just don’t get why this material feels so anticlimactic, rushed, and out of the blue.

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Hahahaha. I’m laughing cause I’m so mad.

Did Natsu just OPT OUT of the end problem?!

Is that it? Is it over? Natsu DECIDES to be human and just...gets to be?!