@Sonaldo If my take is what you had a problem with, then you should have addressed it. Instead, you told me to drop the manga altogether.
True, I could have worded them better, but my critique of the way the story progress isn't invalid.
In world 29, Labilia had shown signs of being heavily tortured, but when it's revealed it was Amira on 30, she is unscathed.
On 30, the real Labilia is hiding where Homura found her stripper clothes on 29, yet she isn't there the first time around.
Sylph's brother is guarding Drakken's most vulnerable room instead of being a front liner like on 29.
Shiki only knew about Overdrive on 29 and never managed to pull it there, yet he's capable of pulling it out on 30.
Shiki didn't turn into Overdrive mode on 29, despite knowing Drakken would kill his friends there, but he turns in 30. Guess he didn't care that much about his friends in 29?
Hell, he's even put in the same place and same situation as he was in 29, except back then, the situation was far more dire than it is in 30, as there's no time leap yet,
Drakken had thwarted all their victories, took over Edens Zero, captured all his friends and didn't even break a sweat doing so.
There's only so much information Rebecca had known about from world 29, and most of what I listed are not things she experienced or was shown being told about.
Yet, all those changes occur without input from the one person who is capable of altering the flow of events.
My alternate take was just hastily put together to, sure, make a snarky comment at how Mashima tends to write his stories. Yeah, it was poorly done,
but at least I can acknowledge the shortcomings of a story when I see them. Mashima apparently cannot, as he keeps using the same tired tropes he
is known for all the way back from Raven Master. Rebecca is a retread of Ellie, Shiki is single-minded friendship-focused like Natsu, Weisz is another
"maker" like Gray and Musica, torture is meaningless as it gets undone, dead characters are not really dead, etc.
Even the fights follow a very distinctive and repetitive pattern: Characters face an opponent they cannot win no matter what the first time around.
When they face the opponent again, they win. Elza was known precisely for this - she gets beaten up by her enemies, changes into all of her armors
and continues getting beaten, then she changes into the one armor that doesn't do anything and wins. Homura faces the exact same opponent she
had faced before, but this time she wins. She didn't win the first time around because she didn't think of using her Wind Cutter sword in that fight,
but she doesn't even have the excuse of not having it in hand because she can materialize her own swords at will! Then she can blow winds better than
Sylph, something she couldn't in 29, but can do in 30 because now Mashima decided it was time for Homura to win.
Back to Shiki turning "Super Saiyan", he's even put in the same place and same situation as he was in 29, except back then, the situation was far more dire than it is in 30,
as there's no time leap yet, Drakken had thwarted all their victories, took over Edens Zero, captured all his friends and didn't even break a sweat do. If being put in such
a dire situation didn't trigger Overdrive, how come now that they have the advantage, he triggers it? And how come he can see the events of a future that was overwritten,
he isn't the one with time leaping powers, Rebecca is!
These are the "ass-pulls" I was talking about. There has been no input from Rebecca to change the events that have been altered outside of the protagonists' range
before they invaded Drakken's ship, yet they have changed by themselves. Shiki can see into an alternate timeline, suddenly there was a spy taking Labilia's place, now
Weisz has a backstory related to Drakken that wasn't there in 29 (despite, narratively speaking, being the best time to introduce it, so he has more stakes from the start
of 30), etc.
Even the time leap thing isn't new for Mashima nor was it well-done in any of the times he attempted. He already did time travel in Fairy Tail, and he ended up retconing
the entire backstory of the Dragon Slayers and the fate of the dragons in the process. Now the dragons didn't disappear on the 7th of the 7th month of 777, giving meaning
to their disappearance, they just THINK the dragons disappeared that day, but in fact all Dragon Slayers were sent 4 thousand years into the future. Then a Lucy from the
future shows up and says one of the two new Dragon Slayers that were retconned into existing now will turn evil and travel to the past to get dragons to invade the present.
This explanation isn't as convoluted as Mashima's writing actually is!
So, what do I mean by "keeping the events close to the original timeline?" Essentially what time travel stories are well suited for - keeping the flow of events similar enough so the
characters and the audience can easily keep track of past, present and future events while giving the characters a chance to get better results than the original outcome. Harry
Potter did this with the duo making small alterations here and there to keep the flow of events the exact same as their known timeline, while they manage to save the hippogryph
from being executed at Hagrid's house, Sirius and Harry from the Dementors and break Sirius out of Azkaban. Given the story Mashima is telling here, I believe this would be the
best approach, making Rebecca's knowledge of future events and match ups the deciding factor in their new victories.
If you have been following Mashima for as long as I have, you are probably familiar with all of these pitfalls he keeps throwing himself into. He is well known for these patterns.
Now, you can tell from my comment here why I didn't spend more time adjusting my original comment. If I had to put everything into words, I'd end up writing exactly this.
It was far easier just making that snarky comment and leaving it be.
