>makes an account years ago
>never uses it
>start posting now that she got into NNT
>it's to criticize characters
Wow. Go me.
Aaaaanyway, let me rant for a bit. While I'm glad to see that many have addressed the Elaine-looks-like-a-child issue, I have even more issues with her. Both her character and her relationship with Ban.
As we know, she got stuck guarding the fountain of youth in King's place when the latter left, lost his memory, yadda, yadda. Her story with Ban illustrates that she was bored with this life, guarding something, never going out to see the world. Enter Ban, who comes from said world and starts narrating her things she has never seen, but would love to see. One week passes and the mess with the demon happens, she dies and accepts that Ban will spend his immortality trying to bring her back.
For me, Elaine's feelings for Ban have always been one of
"a means to an end" and
a way to fight her insane boredom. She wanted to go out to the world, Ban was her ticket, in a way. This whole "fairies can read people's hearts" makes it even harder to accept her feelings as true love; she didn't spend time with Ban, earning his trust thus making him open up to her with his past under his own volition, no. One peek and she knew his life. Where are the bonding experiences here?
If anything, they both seemed to have the same goal:
try to get a life that's better than it was. This was a good foundation, but foundation only. There is no build. Not only that, but the fact that we're supposed to think that their feelings are so deep when they passed a week together drives me nuts. When Ban talks about her ("This world without her is like hell"), it sounds like he spent a lifetime with her, that he had developed a lifestyle living with her for years and had created a blissful routine. And then the Ban Gaiden tells us that they stent a week together and then she died. Where is the epic romance here? Yes, there was the
start of something, but it doesn't go accordingly with Ban's current actions, which are borderline obsessive. Especially, an obsession strong enough to make him willing to kill his friend whom he
did know for years of camaraderie and experiences. Something he and Elaine never had. The newest chapters where he regrets it, puts Elaine and Mel on the same scale, which is outrageous.
When I see Ban's story, there is a theme being repeated: Ban really doesn't get along with humans. Mel is a demon, Elaine was a fairy, Zhivago was a beast-man... everything seems to show that Ban and humans don't mix. However, then
Jericho came along and human as she is, with her own greed and flaws and humane motivations for stupid behaviour, pretty much made Ban's feelings for Elaine clear:
Ban gets attached to people who accept him as he is.
He clings onto them. Elaine was one of those few, so he clings onto her as well. And since he has the pride of greed, the desire to want want want, he develops obsessions and becomes either a) stupidly blind to anything else (Jericho has learned a ton about Ban -his past, his father, his comrades, his whole characters with all his flaws and
still thinks of him as such a good man- but Ban seems to be blind to her) or b) he succumbs stupidly easily to any proposal regarding said obsessions, no matter who proposes them or what the price is (him attacking Mel fits this).
Ironically enough, now that Elaine is an zombie, she acts as stupidly obsessively as Ban: she attacks any person who dares to attract Ban's (totally platonic) attention even by simple talking to him. Ban attacked Mel just because a disembodied voice told him. Wow. Much clever, very love... not.
Sure, Ban and Elaine have longing and tragedy, but it seems to be more longing for what each has to offer to the other and the tragedy that they
didn't, in fact, become more. Quite selfish, the opposite of true love.
My second grip is with Meliodas. I find him so... unrelatable as a character. From the beginning, his confidence in front of the impossible feats of the Holy Knights made me uninterested since there was no struggle, no journey to be had with him. There seemed to be one now with getting over Liz's death and moving on but the mangaka shot himself on the foot by making Elizabeth Liz's reincarnation. Where's the journey, if the end goal is the same? Meliodas isn't moving on, he remains stuck in a place that made him miserable for years. And his groping has become annoying and disgusting. On the contrast with the majority here, I don't put the blame on Elizabeth; Meliodas is the one who should just fucking stop, Christ. It's not funny anymore.
Hopefully his relationship with the Ten Commandments will put him in some kind of journey we are supposed to see him in. I find Meliodas the blandest of the main characters, even more than Gowther, who at least does have flaws and creates situations with them.
I had so low expectations over Elizabeth that her having strong healing powers and decided to walk through a bug storm fearless made me happy. She's the typical ldamsel/love interest, so I never expected more from her. Her standing against others is enough as it is.
I agree that Hawk coming back was bull. If he was to come back, he shouldn't have died at all.
I have zero problems with King, however. At least, until we get his own backstory (is he really a fairy? how come he lost his memories?), which will either make of break the character for me.
