This chapter was definitely better than last week's.
Shimon coming was sooooo out of the blue, that I think Mashima just kind of threw him in there for the hell of it and b/c he needed to change the pace slightly.
But with Natsu going berserk, next week should be pretty interesting to see what he does.
Hahaha, and anyone catch the cover page where Mashima was thanking all his fans. And then he goes on to say "I will try hard from now on too." Hahaha, granted that its translated properly -- what? he wasn't working hard to begin with? I guess that kind of shows with the recent arc not living up to the hype.