User blog comment:LastationLover5000/Fairy Tail 403 - In Which I Wonder Why I Punish Myself Further (Erza vs. Kyouka)/@comment-4326112-20141007050307

You know, I keep reminding myself that I don't care for anything that Hiro writes for this Final Arc, but the few Chapters that won me over are starting to make me feel conflicted. I know for a damned fact that Hiro has the capacity to write some good story, seen from his handling of the series UP to the point of the Magic Games ending and the Seven Dragons Arc beginning (that was good till BS made its way back into the story). Hell, some of the best moments had been genuinely full of feelz in this Arc. From Lucy inheriting Aquarius's water powers upon her demise, to Gray inheriting his father's Ice Demon Slaying Magic, and especially Gajeel's moment of protection over Levy when she gave him the kiss of life and Wendy's moment of Epic as a Dragon Mode Badass.

If anything, if they wanted to make me feel like this Arc stood for a potential amount of suspense, they should have KO'd ERZA and not Laxus. While Laxus is admittedly hax, he has good reason for it and he certainly doesn't PREACH about it. He acts like a man and takes the hits like a man should. He's grown a lot as a character and it's a damned shame he got pwned so early into the Arc. If Hiro wanted me to take this Arc seriously, AT ALL, they should have taken Erza out of the game and/or put Natsu mostly out of comission for most of the end Arc (you can't remove him completely due to his status as the Guild's poster boy).

But this...THIS I feel so bad for Hiro. You can tell that he's built this up as a very emotionally invested Chapter. I'm sure the vast majority of mindless fans he's wrapped up into his fantasy BS are crying tears of feelz at this. But he is SO wrong on how he executed this. Because this is the 100th time he's beat the dead horse of friendship, I CANNOT FEEL ANYTHING THAT ERZA IS GOING THROUGH. If Erza had legitimately lost, had legitimately gotten close to death, and legitimately wasn't going to win an encounter in a predictably cheezy ass fashion I would be rooting for her. But I can't because HIRO has degenerated from a very decent fantasy author to a TERRIBLE and CONTRIVED Shymalan of Shounen.

FUCK. THIS. CHAPTER