metsujin said:
Realistically Lucy is not the best fighter,
that's the problem. The Star dress stuff the aquarius stuff was supposed to FIX that. Lucy always had strong oneshot attack but could not legitimately fight. Via what happened in tartaros that was supposedly fixed. That was the whole point of Aquarius sorrowful parting with Lucy and the gift for her and what CSK said to Lucy - so lucy could in fact be able to stand on her own and live up to her potential...The way she performed in Tartaros and the star dress power up should really make her be in upper levels of FT power chart.
Except that come this arc, literally everything of that feels negligible and she is back to jobbing the same way as if she never got those power ups. There's not a legitimate reason for her to job. It just happens for no reason except so she could be placed naked and/or Natsu could saver her.
In here for example, if this was ANY other character, we would see some dramatic struggle and possible a win. Hell it happened with Gray, Gajeel, shitloads of other characters with this arc. Lucy? She gets to pose her butt a bit, then gets offscreened and tied to a bondage chair so Natsu can have his big moment.
And yeah, Natsu's story blah blah blah, but one of biggest Elemetns of FT was lucy's mystery and her journey - she was his equal in story importance. Now not only was her backstory literally wasted to explain away a part of Natsu's and did not have any relevance to her("Hey you know your mom mystery the whole story teased for YEARS? Oh she sudoku'd so the MC's backstory would not have plotholes") , but her getting stronger is literally pointless as the story ignores that.
Which is kind of ironic that while Lucy is denied her very much deserved development and progress, Gray finds himself gaining more and more plot out of nowhere and more and more power out of nowhere.
Its like reverse-RAVE. Had Mashima not written Rave, I would hoonestly believe he is as sexist as Kishimoto.