#narrative cohesion

The bond between Erza and Jellal had the foundation for something truly powerful — a relationship built not just on love, but on survival, memory and emotional depth. 

Their shared trauma — surviving slavery, being torn apart by tragedy — gave them every reason to find meaning in each other. To heal together.

But, the narrative never let them face it.

Instead of confronting that glaring and persistent pain, it distanced them.

It glossed over their scars, skipped the hard conversations and compressed their bond into a cycle of guilt, forgiveness and vague longing.

What we were left with was the outline of a great story — but never the emotional core.

This is the section where we’ll explore the opportunities the story missed: how accountability could have laid the groundwork for real growth, how Jellal’s arc could have developed with intention, and how Jerza could have become the emotionally resonant relationship it was always meant to be — not despite their pain,, but because they were allowed to speak it.

Organic Growth Starts With Accountability

Real relationships aren’t built by ignoring the past. 

They’re built by confronting it.

If Jellal had been allowed to take responsibility for his actions, he and Erza could have engaged in the honest, painful conversations their history demands.

Those moments — as difficult, vulnerable and uncomfortable as they are — are what create intimacy. They are what turn shared trauma into mutual understanding, not lingering uncertainty.

But instead of facing the truth, Jerza was forced into a repetitive loop of “starting over.”                                                            Every encounter resets their emotional boundaries, because they were never truly allowed to be defined in the first place. There’s no foundation — just fragments of what could have been.

Because of this, their reconciliation feels rushed.

Emotionally hollow.

There is no real processing. No reckoning.

Only symbolic gestures designed to satisfy the idea of Jerza, not the characters themselves.

If Jellal, Erza and Jerza were to truly experience growth — real, organic growth — the starting point would be accountability.

But the story never let them get there.

Of course some may come with the argument “This is just shounen” or “it’s just a story” so it doesn’t need to be as deep or realistic. Which is understandable. But when the said media operates off the payoff of emotional beats that affect a real audience, then it is the narrative’s duty to deliver the conclusion in a way that makes sense emotionally for the watchers/readers otherwise it not only confuses the logic established  but also becomes emotionally manipulative.

In Jerza’s case, their history is full of emotional beats and tensions that deeply moved and or resonated with others, though it’s on a screen, there’s a reason why they are being held reverently in the hearts of many. It transcends fiction, it becomes something real, sacred and for that emotional investment, it’s only fair to give it a fitting conclusion.

That’s where accountability comes in. 

It ties in all the loose ends of the characters, empowers their arcs, gives them emotional and mental clarity, and it undoes all the loose threads  that the current narrative left dangling.

But for this point specifically, without accountability between them, Jerza’s emotional journey is forced into a constant reset. Every interaction wipes the slate clean, erasing unresolved tension for the sake of moving forward — which is not only unfulfilling but it’s emotionally cruel given everything that happens between Jellal and Erza, directly and indirectly because of their unspoken hurt and how that ripples into more.

There is so much for them to unpack, and the story keeps adding to it. It never lets that chapter close for them. They are given the illusion of ‘oh hopefully this is done’ but then ghosts from the past haunt them, drag them back, hurt them, and they aren’t even allowed to say anything about it?

Not to themselves.

Not to each other.

Suffering is seen as their virtue, when really it’s their suicide.

It’s just not fair.

The reason Jellal and Erza probably want each other so badly and believe in each other so much, because they know, ‘the other has gone through it too’. ‘They will know the pain I can’t explain.’ They want that sense of comfort, of recognition that they don’t get from others. But the story denies them even that.

And that’s exactly the problem.

Not only has their relationship suffered because of tragedy, but the story doesn’t even allow them the means to rebuild it healthily.

Real relationships are built on continuity—on scars that are seen, named and healed through time. Everything Jerza is stripped of both as characters and as their ship. And it’s honestly just cruel.

You can’t build emotional depth if every arc, every chapter, ignores the last. If accountability was there, then it would anchor their bond in reality, allowing growth instead of loops.

More than stark realism, what I'm really asking for here is cohesion.

Emotional cohesion. 

For them.

For us.

For the story.

So we can follow it truly instead of constantly being left in the mist of it.

The Missed Potential in Jellal’s Arc

We went over this in previous parts but for the sake of the section I will reiterate and deepen my argument.

It’s pretty clear by now, that Jellal’s redemption has always been framed around his guilt, but rarely his choices. The story acknowledges his remorse, but stops short of exploring why he made the decisions he did — beyond surface-level manipulation.

But this is where his arc had real potential.

Not in rewriting history to absolve him, but in diving deeper into his thought process.

What did he believe at the time? How did he justify his actions to himself in the moment? What fears, weaknesses, or fractured values made him susceptible to that descent?

A layered, introspective journey could have shown Jellal not just as a man wracked with guilt, but as someone who understands himself — his flaws, his failings, and how those led to real harm.

Redemption isn’t just about regret.

It’s about insight. It’s about knowing how and why you fell — so you can choose differently when it matters most.

Without that reckoning, Jellal’s redemption feels unearned.

Not because he’s unforgivable, but because the story skips the work of showing his internal growth.

And to bypass this, his “redemption” ends up relying more on Erza’s forgiveness than his own self-awareness, which already changes the meaning of it. As redemption is about internal change and reckoning, not external validation or approval. 

But since the story doesn’t live up to the word, it’s a narrative disservice — to him and to what his arc could have been.

Missing Potential and Coherence In Future Arcs 

Before I go into my next main point in this section, I just want to quickly mention how the lack of accountability bricks Jellal’s future arc’s and importance too. He was introduced as a villain, and not a small one — but one of the first real ones that activated many emotional stakes in the narrative. In his villainy he made moves, he infiltrated a damn council all under zealot ideology. All these impressive feats and skills he possessed.

But they don’t mean anything when the story absolved him of responsibility from them.

As twisted and corrupt they were, these feats he achieved were shows of his intelligence and ambition. His drive. Strip that away from him, what does he actually become? What does he actually have? He is stunned mentally in a tortured child’s body with no room to grow or heal, yet is being burdened with the consequences of someone who did all he didn’t.

And the story knows Jellal’s importance hinged on TOH mainly, his time as a villain literally ripples/offsets the dilemmas of future arcs (e.g. Tartaros (him being the holder of the key as Siegrain), now in 100YQ with his fights against Gears and God Serena — all references back to his time as a ‘villain’. Hell even his showdown with August and his whole hunt for Zeref relates back to that).

These are all strong moments that could have shown him reckoning with the consequences of his evil, but instead we get the narrative washing his hands of it but not really when to bring back Jellal of relevance. So he’s just suspended —given no narrative coherence. He is guilty when the story pleases, and not when it pleases too.

The story wants him to carry the weight, impact and importance of his sins without letting him understand them in the first place.

Which not only messes up his whole redemption angle but it makes everything about him confusing and it really does feel like he is being shoehorned everywhere. Because if his sins are over, why are they constantly being bought up? Why is something always happening in response to them rather than someone finally saying “he was innocent?”.

On that note, there’s something that Jellal says which at first comes off like self flagellation. That “he does not walk the path of light” despite being part of crime sorciere, and turning suicidal by his guilt. It comes off as self loathing, but now thinking about it, there’s a deeper meaning.

Maybe because he doesn’t actually know where he aligns, because that is never defined to him, he doesn’t want to claim he is “walking the path of light.” Because if anything he probably has the internal confusion of everything and where he stands in it. If his redemption is something he is acting because it's true. Or something he’s acting on because it’s told. 

It’s not that he doesn’t want to claim it, it’s that he can’t claim it.

Not honestly.

But yeah, I digress.

Healing Requires Accountability and Self-Awareness

The act of healing isn’t passive. It’s not just something that “happens” because time passes or because someone else forgives you. It’s an active process that’s complicated, built including self-awareness and accountability.

For Jellal, this is where the story falters. 

While his guilt is constantly shown, his understanding of himself is never fully explored. 

He regrets what he did, yes — but the why is left ambiguous. Untouched.

Without that internal reflection, there is no true healing.

Only guilt on repeat.

To heal it requires more than saying “I'm sorry.”

It demands asking the harder questions:

What did I learn? How do I prevent this from happening again? How do I repair the damage I’ve done?

But in Jellal’s case…the story avoids this journey.

His path to healing is treated as a side effect of Erza’s forgiveness and surface-level “atonement” missions, rather than an internal reckoning.

This makes his redemption feel incomplete.

Because healing — real healing — can’t exist without the person in pain actively engaging with their own actions and growth.

For Jerza, this gap matters even more. Without Jellal’s self-awareness, their relationship lacks the foundation for mutual restoration. Erza’s forgiveness becomes a bandage. Jellal’s guilt stays raw. And nothing changes.

Neither of them move forward.

Because healing doesn’t come from just being forgiven.

It comes from becoming someone who understands why forgiveness was needed in the first place.

Otherwise, growth without accountability is a narrative illusion. Characters evolve when they confront their choices — not when the story absolves them to protect aesthetics. 

Jellal needed to reclaim agency, not through guilt, but through introspection and mindful action.

The Emotional Core Jerza Deserved 

Since the last point touched a bit on Jerza, in this one we will go into them more and what they could have had.

As I have already stated before, Jerza had the potential to be one of Fairy Tail’s most emotionally powerful relationships. They had all the pieces to have the most timeless, enduring bond. Their shared history of trauma — growing up as children in slavery, being each other's greatest supports and comforts in a world where they shouldn’t have had any, and then having been torn apart by their circumstances — should have all been the heart of their dynamic.

Because all this is what differentiates Jerza from any other tragic ships, pain and experiences that can’t be replicated, yet love and innocence found a way to bud through.

But instead of the narrative allowing them the emotional space to address their loss, their wounds and any other unresolved parts of themselves linked to that dark time, the story isolates them. Suspends their growth, forcing them into roles that ignore the depth of what they lived and endured.

Their reconciliation feels jilted and rushed because the pain that defined their relationship was never truly unpacked. Rather than exploring that shared wound, their arc became more about fulfilling the needs of the ship than resolving the emotional scars they carry.

But it didn’t have to be that way.

Had their journey been written as one of mutual growth, they could have confronted their trauma together.

Their reconciliation wouldn't be a narrative checkbox — it would have been the emotional climax of their story. Because only through seeing each other fully — not as broken, but as survivors — could they have genuinely healed.

Could they have possibly gained peace of mind.

This was the emotional core Jerza deserved.

This was the opportunity the story missed.

In trying to make Jerza perfect, the story stripped the both of them of what would make their love fully resonate. Honesty. Letting them confront their complicated history wouldn’t have taken anything away from them, it would have freed them from symbolic limbo, allowing them to choose each other with clarity, not obligation.

I think the biggest tragedy in all of this is that Jerza’s isn’t a bad ship. Not by any means. But because the story refuses to explore beyond what it introduced them with, with what it built upon. That’s the real loss here.

Everything was there to make them one of the most moving, emotionally complex, tragedy-worn yet hopeful relationships in the series, but because of the refusal to explore what connects them with emotional honesty, they stopped being individuals and became ideals. 

Accountability would have been that thing that changed that. 

But without it, their dynamic became an ever repeating cycle of guilt and symbolic forgiveness.

The narrative ignored/sidelined their shared trauma, rushed their reconciliation, and missed the chance to give them the organic, mutual growth they were perfectly set up for.

They didn’t need to be perfect.

They didn’t even need to be idealised.

They just needed space to heal.

And be human — together.

(I will be going more into the damage done of the story’s insistence on symbolism over depth and how it flattened their potential in Part 9 of this post)

✦•

Now that we have come to the end of Part 5, we’ve looked closely at Jellal, Erza and the narrative choices that shaped (and limited) their dynamic. But now, it’s worth taking a step back — not to place blame, but to understand why these choices persist.

Because the avoidance of accountability in their story isn’t just a writing oversight.

It’s also influenced by how we, as audiences, engage with stories, and what we are conditioned to expect from redemption, romance and emotional conflict.

This next part will be exploring how fandom psychology, cultural expectations, and even narrative shortcuts contribute to why Jerza’s story — and stories like theirs — often shy away from the emotional work accountability requires.

This isn’t about calling anyone out.

It’s about understanding the patterns that shape how these stories are told — and why it’s so difficult to break free from them.

And that’s where we now turn.

With Section I having laid the emotional and narrative groundwork, Section II will widen the lens — exploring not just the characters, but the broader storytelling instincts and cultural reflexes that shape how redemption, romance, and resolution are handled.

These next parts step beyond Jerza as a dynamic and ask the harder question: why are stories like theirs written this way to begin with?

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✦ End of Section I – Foundations & Fallout

✦ Continue on to Part IV: (Beginning of Section II) → Romantic Tropes & Fandom Avoidance