Jellal's easily one of the most underrated characters.
Some here are acting like he's some weakling when he has been mentioned among the strongest by Gray, Natsu and Lucy (along with Laxus, Gajeel and Mirajane), has been kind of portrayed as a rival to Laxus, and was left completely unscathed from Kyria's roar, which took Erza, Lucy, Wendy and Mercphobia. Him struggling against Gears just upscales the latter, it doesn't make him look like trash. Hopefully this arc does him some justice.
I think mostly people are disappointed here because he was very cool as a villain compared to the simp he is now. It has nothing to do with his exploits or his lack of exploits. But yeah the hatred against him whether from the fans or the author is way too strong.
Yeah, Jellal is a big disappointment, because he used to be good back in the days. As a villain, he was amongst the best in the series. But now he's a pathetical simp.
He soured on me back in the main series itself, specifically at around Alverass arc. Which is a shame, because Jellal embodies what is a "true mage" for me, amongst the main cast - an archmage with mastery in several magic.
But Mashima can't be bothered at all, dude knows all that magic but Mashima will keep having him spam grand chariot for the 100th time. SMH
That being said, he is way too downplayed by the fandom at this point.
Jellybean has become pretty comical for me as of late. He's portrayed like this serious and powerful edgelord, but the story just keeps clowning on him.
- He founded crime sorciere to help him take out Zeref, but doesn't even meet the guy.
- Gets taken out by Nineheart, and used a power-up GC to oneshot him, a feat matched by base Natsu's nameless punch
- An upgraded version of his ultimate attack gets oneshotted by Erza, who then continues on with that momentum and destroys the one who casted it
- He ends up hunting the white witch, but gets dispatched almost instantly when he found her
- He has this ominous staredown with Laxus in the Aldoron arc, but ends up tied down in his underwear while the latter gets to have a serious fight with Erza instead
Kinda hard to take the guy seriously, but I'm curious if he's gonna have an actual hype victory in this arc
Yeah, this is all true except for the Neinhart part though. Dude took no damage from the blast itself, fainted because he ingested too much water. Which is why he was back without a single scratch once the water was sucked out of him. If Jellal went down due to damage instead, then sucking out water from him wouldn't have mattered, would it?
With Jellal, it isn't that he has anti feats TBH. It's more of Mashima clowning on him all the time cause he thinks it's some "funny" ship moment.
The issue is that Jellal gets feats that are impressive on paper, but not really quantifiable.
- His feat of one shotting Neinhart was impressive when it happened, but then base Natsu one shotted Neinhart too lol. At this point, I'd consider him making Neinhart shit his pants by flexing his magic power a more impressive feat, since this implies that Jellal's magic power is on a different level from the "average Spriggan"
- His feat against Acnologia was impressive on paper, but we don't know how to quantify it because we know that a serious Acno would one shot him
- His feat against Gears is impressive on paper since the main Aldo seed implied Gears was the strongest seed apart from him. But again we don't know how to quantify this feat because other God seeds weren't really impressive either. One was taken out by fodders + Wendy, one was taken out by base Gray + Juvia.
But regardless, IMO the fact that Mashima wouldn't do Jellal vs Laxus, after teasing it multiple times in the series, does imply that he sees them as basically equal (as was implied constantly in the main series) and wouldn't know how to draw the fight because he wouldn't want either to win/lose. Just my interpretation, giving JelLol some benefit of doubt.
