User blog comment:Ash9876/Power Scaling in the FTverse/@comment-5914413-20150604221308/@comment-4072803-20150609164327

To throw my own two glorious cents in... I agree wholeheartedly with Maximus here. Before the current arc (and I'll explain why in a minute or so), I didn't hate FT (still don't, but I can't say I like it anymore either). Don't get me wrong, it had problems. Very, very big problems, but I could generally roll with them depending on what we were getting in exchange. The host of awfulness that came from the GMG and Dragon Festival stuff was easily offset by the fact that we got to see a bunch of cool guilds from around Fiore and THE FACT THAT WE GOT TO SEE AWESOME LOOKING DRAGONS FLYINg AROUND. Honestly, Future Rogue may have been a generic and confusing villain who didn't really have enough time to make the audience hate or want him defeated (a common problem with 'twist villains', though I have seen those done better), but the fact that Natsu was fightiing someone on the back of a dragon was pretty fun and awesome to me. The series's wasn't really good by any standards... but it was fun. And I can read something fun from week to week and not really regret it. The same holds true for the Tartarus/Tartaros Arc. It honestly felt like Hiro had just planned out certain events and then ad-libbed the rest of it (not a good thing when it looks like the mangaka has no idea what he's doing), but the moments that were planned out. Wendy going Dragon Force, Natsu and Gajeel's tag team, Silver's whole revelation, Gray getting freaking DEVIL SLAYER MAGIC. They were epic, a tad contrived, but I could still enjoy them based on pure fun factor. Would I say the arc was good? Oh, hell no. But can I say it had it's moments of awesomeness and entertainment. Well, yeah. Not as much as I'd like, but they were there and I don't regret reading them. Aside from the collossal waste of the dragons at the end, it was... not soul-rending.

But this arc, THIS ARC, is what hurts me. And maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, but this arc has caused me more dread at reading the next FT than ever before. Thankfully, the new stuff Hiro's rolling out now has peaked my interest again, so I hope he doesn't waste a concept once more... *Ahem* Anyhow...

Aparently Hiro's stated that he wrote the whole Avatar arc based on the theme of "hope". And this, dear readers, is where he has failed, at least for me and maybe for others, though some might indeed find the arc hopeful. But I personally, do not. And here is why:

Hope, to me, is not the protagonist effortlessly defeating every opponent in his way (peons are an exception, as peons at this point in any shonen are there to be effortlessly defeated). Hope is not having everything turn out A-Okay despite things looking like your best friend has betrayed you and is willing to kill thousands of people, only to discover that he was just messin' with ya, brother. Hope is not conveniently finding the answers to your problems and easily overcoming your opponents at every turn. Hope is not some main character I actually like sometimes spouting off whatever the hell he says nowadays! To me, hope is NONE of those things!

You know what I think hope is, ESPECIALLY in regards to a shonen series?! HOPE is seeing heroes, or at least the main characters we've grown to root for and love, being faced with the darkest of evil that they've ever encountered, and staying strong, not flinching as they face against it. HOPE is having these characters use all their abilities and spirit to pull through, going through blood, sweat, tears, and at times even loss to defeat their enemy and triumph, no matter what happens. HOPE is being effortlessly crushed by an immensley strong opponent, but still standing up again despite how wounded they are, despite knowing that they WILL lose, and continuing to fight simply because of what they believe in, no matter the outcome. HOPE is being promised the potential of a better tommorow, no matter how dark and horrible things seem now, all through the actions and potentially sacrifice of our main characters.

That, to me, is hope in regards to most shonen and fiction in general. Hiro Mashima has not communicated hope to me in the entirety of this arc, only a mounting sense of dread in how Natsu is going to be super-OP this week and how FT is going to not struggle at all save for temporary setbacks. He had good intentions, sure, but, to extrapolate the hell out of this, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and he has failed to make me feel hope at reading this.

And yet here I am, excited at the ideas he's throwing around despite also being interested in Avatar and then being forced to watch as they were crushed insignificantly (the Zeref chapter being an exception, I actually really liked that one and it felt planned out). THAT'S why I have trouble reading FT now. All it does is build me up in the hopes that it's busting out something new and cool, while also being terrified that he'll screw it up again. That's the problem.