I called it assault. As in an attack. And unlike in a battle, where you fight to achieve a goal, Gajeel caused pain simply to cause pain.
The line isn’t arbitrary, you can gloss over a villain switching sides.
You cannot gloss over a villain going from this:
To this:
Without making at least some readers queasy along the way.
The level of mental trauma Levy would have suffered wouldn’t be a joke. Making a relationship even with a fully stabilized Gajeel, questionable.
Instead Mashima makes her one of the first to be understanding towards him, when her mental state should be closer to the kind where mentioning him causes a panic attack.
When things go into PTSD territory, when you get to the type of stuff that IRL causes people just drop relationships rather than figure things out, you simply can’t take things in certain directions while glossing over the steps to get there, without evoking visceral disgust in a lot of readers.
Fine. Have Gajeel switch sides and redeem him. Do not have him canonically pair off with and impregnate an underage girl he brutally tortured and crucified.
They didn’t gloss over it, there was plenty of arcs where he constantly improved himself and showed how he changed, despite your claim that never happened.
So why do you think he didn’t change? You’ve provided no examples, yet all the arcs show how it happened through his actions.
Again, with the narrative you are free to ignore and interpret the stories your own way.
I don’t remember the story to that extent. I remember being disgusted with how his character was handled.
You brought up points about the story I couldn’t recall, but even if his change was displayed, it wasn’t enough. It would never have been enough, not for where Mashima went with things. The endpoint we got should have been off-limits regardless.
Also, if I’m free to interpret things how I like, who is downvoting me?
Me since you kept arguing the same thing without addressing anything I brought up. As I said you ignored the good things he was doing, since you already thought he was passed redemption.
Which is very strange for an anime that you already said had to move fast and gloss over stuff. So why not gloss past this like everything else before you already did?
