Laughs in Acno feats
(I know you don't 'believe' in them.)
Bruh, I'm not meaning to be bad natured here but were you ever not done with Jellal hype?
I don't want to discount Elfman but you have to admit that him suddenly having the strength to have punches that match/exceed a Demo Fist is somewhat unbelievable, right? Meanwhile Mira was put in the same league as Laxus, and he just completely demolished a DE with a couple of nameless feats and a Secret Art. If either of the two were going to damage Madmole to that extent, it would make more sense for Mira to have done it.
Hell, Elfman got hurt just by punching Madmole:
Even the next time after that Skullion and Madmole don't have any scratches of them while Mira and Elfman are noticeably damaged:
And then the last look we get at them prior to Skullion/Madmole retreating is the one where its seemingly more even:
Elfman is still in the exact same Soul as he was when he got hurt just from punching Madmole.
Its these kinds of things that I feel should be scrutinised. To be fair Elfman isn't alone in this either, Mira couldn't even hurt Skullion at all and was getting outmanoeuvred in the only proper bit of the fight we saw. Yet then when the fight ended, Skullion and Madmole were damaged. Essentially, BBS Mira and Elfman were shown to be outclassed by both Skullion and Madmole respectively in the only real on-panel part of the fight. Then by the end Mira and Elfman somehow have Madmole and Skullion all scratched up despite being in the exact same Souls as they were in at the start.
I agree with you that the intent was to paint the fight as Madmole vs Elfman and Skullion vs Mira, but the fight itself makes zero sense when you put together what pieces of it we have. Since neither Mira or Elfman used different Souls during the fight it consequently means the end result doesn't match the rest of the fight. Like I said at the beginning, I don't want to outright discount these feats for the Strauss', but it needs to be looked at more carefully because I think there's pretty decent ground to call this off-panel fight a complete outlier for both of them.