currently hiatus

The manga stream translation is out and that has 48 pages.

Natsu never knows what to do with an emotional Lucy. He’s always like a deer in headlights, with Erza or Gray he usually starts a fight or makes a passing quip but with Lucy he doesn’t want to hurt her and doesn’t know how to placate her. 

Natsu’s response is very similar to the scene where Lucy is telling Natsu off for leaving her and essentially hurting her.

This is one of my favourite nalu scenes, Natsu is insulting Gray for leaving Juvia and Lucy, my girl doesn’t put up with that, she basically responded with a ‘Bitch, oh no you didn’t! Your ass is sleeping on the sofa’ vibe. And Juvia knows ;) 

Natsu, once again, doesn’t give her a proper response and deflects the conversation (he’s too chicken sh*t lmao).  Natsu isn’t good with voicing intimate emotions, voicing his intent to kick ass is no problem. Telling Lucy he loves her, that’s an entirely different matter. Look at what happened after Igneel died, rather than talking about it with his friends and being emotionally vulnerable with Lucy he chose to run away. And he runs away in this scenario too. 

Natsu isn’t stupid he knows Lucy and I believe him saying “We’ll always be together” is his way of placating her. He knows she’s a hapless romantic and saying things like that will turn her into a puddle of gooey mush lol 

Mashima drew Natsu getting a boner over Lucy (and only her). Omake or not, whether you like fanservice or not, I don’t give a sh*t.

At the end of the day if Mishima didn’t think it was within Natsu’s character to see Lucy as ‘his’  then he wouldn’t draw it. It’s canon.

Natsu chickened out of confessing but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. Do people have memory loss of the last 545 chapters of the manga and the character building and moments between the two? 

Expecting to have a shojo moment in a shonen manga is an unrealistic expectation. Compared to other shonen manga’s Mashima has spoiled us rotten for ship moments. Nalu, in particular, got over 40 panels centred around them in the last chapter, so we did pretty well. 

Plus, waxing lyrical about his love for Lucy is OOC for Natsu. In that kind of moment and the vibe of the scene, it wouldn’t happen. 

I am anticipating a short sequel or omake’s that clarify and expand on the ending - Mashima did leave it suspiciously open.

I’m going to do a detailed post later but these are my initial thoughts. 

Tbh context matters and from this translation Natsu is saying “We’ll be together from now on too” after Lucy is berating him for ruining the moment and not taking her feelings seriously. So to me, that confirms NaLu as canon. He acknowledges her feelings and confirms they will be together, if he was talking about friends, Lucy wouldn’t be placated like she is shown to be. It was a moment between them and about them, no one else. 

Thank you Hiro Mashima for this wonderful manga!!