#yami analyses

Building on the earlier discussion of how victimhood framing traps Jellal, this section asks: what if that was the story’s final answer? What if he was never meant to be accountable? And what does that make Jerza’s story become?

As discussed throughout, without agency, Jellal’s guilt loops without resolution. But if we accept this as intentional framing, we face a larger issue: the story keeps demanding atonement while refusing to define sin,

Playing devil’s advocate here, if we accept the idea that Jellal had no agency in his actions at all—that everything he did was purely the result of possession, manipulation, and external forces and nothing of his own accord—then the entire framework of his atonement collapses.

I can’t stress this point enough: 

You simply cannot SEEK redemption for a SIN that was NEVER yours.

You CANNOT be forgiven for something you NEVER consciously did.

And yet, the narrative keeps showing us different.

It keeps asking for Jellal to repent.

It keeps showing Erza forgiving.

But for what?

Without Accountability, Jerza Becomes Mutual Victimhood, Not Reconciliation

If Jellal is framed as a complete victim, Jerza stops being a story about forgiveness and healing. It instead becomes a story of two people hurt by the world, comforting each other through the shared tragedy.

That is not inherently a bad story.

But it’s not the story we were told.

The canon built its emotional beats on the idea of guilt, atonement and redemption. Yet it refuses to define the sin. If Jellal bears no blame, what exactly is being forgiven? What is being repaired?

This is the question that keeps spinning in my head.

The Emotional Tension Evaporates 

Without accountability, there’s no real conflict between them:

No reckoning of choices.

No risk of confrontation.

No evolution of their bond.

Their dynamic becomes a long pause—static, unresolved. Just like I expressed before, without something to atone for—Jellal’s guilt becomes a hollow loop. Without something to confront, Erza’s forgiveness becomes performative.

Why We Cared…Loses Meaning 

What draws people to Jerza isn’t just the tragedy—it’s the hope of reconciliation, of confronting past pain and growing from it.

But if Jellal is simply a passive sufferer, and Erza is simply a forgiving saint, what is there left to explore?

There’s no conflict.

There’s no growth.

Just an endless cycle of guilt and grace that never evolves.

The Emotional Climax Becomes Empty 

If Jellal did nothing wrong, why does it take so long to resolve their tension?

Why the hesitation?

Why the silence?

Why the shame?

You cannot build an emotional climax around a wound you refuse to define. The result is a relationship that feels haunted by a phantom pain — present, but never acknowledged.

Erza’s Role: Forgiveness Without Closure 

Erza’s care for Jellal is unquestionable. She is his anchor, his moral guide after everything became lost to him. But caring for someone doesn’t mean shielding them from emotional growth.

By never demanding Jellal to face his actions, Erza’s forgiveness becomes her only narrative function. She’s not allowed to express anger, to process her hurt, or to ask the hard questions.

This isn’t a flaw in Erza as a person — it’s a limitation placed on her by the narrative.

She’s positioned as the saviour 

But she’s denied the space to be a survivor 

Her pain is used to validate Jellals guilt, not heal her own wounds.

The result is emotional labor without catharsis.

Strength without agency.

The Narrative Risks Corrupting Her

If we go with the timeline of canon events between Jellal and Erza, we find out that Erza has been told multiple times by others pertaining to Jellal that ‘he was not in control’ of what happened in the TOH.

Azuma tells her during their fight. Ultear too. 

So by now she knows that Jellal is not at fault for what happened. Before the Nirvana arc, she didn’t and her anger was justified. But now the narrative has changed that, and you would assume that her view on Jellal would change too.

But instead the story keeps making her insist on Jellal’s atonement and repentance.

Why?

Why is she demanding repentance from a man who has been declared innocent? Why is she forgiving a person who was not in control of the harm done towards her? Why did it take so long to reconcile with him? Why didn’t her anger direct outwards to those actually at fault? Like Ultear? 

See, all of this brings up contradictions.

It makes no sense for Erza to be forgiving Jellal and or urging him to repent when she herself has been told his name is cleared of it. Why is it she is telling him to seek repentance instead of giving him the missing piece for his logic?

That he is a victim too.

The reason I say Erza should tell him is because he’s the one looking at her for direction, yet she knowingly is telling him to repent, enforcing the idea he did sin and continuing the perpetual loop, but she knows what has truly happened. Like Ultear can tell him, but Erza is the one who’s judgement clearly means the most and guides him and he takes her word like law.

And whether she means to or not, what Erza is doing to Jellal by withholding this narrative for him is inherently cruel. To let him believe a lie for convenience rather than explaining the way things really were.

But of course, I am not villainising Erza for this. In fact I can understand where the avoidance of this conversation could come from. Because maybe she doesn’t want to open up that trauma again. She wants to close it off cleanly because revisiting it could mean facing other things she might not be ready for. 

And rather than her forgiveness being for Jellal, maybe it could be a form of closure for herself?

In the sense that even if he wasn’t in control, since he is the most resonant and reappearing figure in all of this, she has a place to point blame. A sound board basically. And telling him she forgives him, maybe that's her way of making amends of the past.

But as human as this mechanism is, it’s not only damaging to Erza, but deeply damaging to Jellal.

As he will be living convinced of a lie that shapes his own identity and beliefs, all for the convenience and comfort of another. For the sake of not having the difficult conversations, Jellal’s self worth is trapped in an unjust self-loathing spiral.

And this is just painful for the both of them.

The Emotional Stagnation Hurts Both of Them

So to summarise, when Jellal’s accountability is avoided in the story, both characters are robbed of meaningful and necessary growth.

Jellal remains trapped in guilt that he’s never allowed to own or resolve.

Erza remains trapped in forgiveness that’s never allowed to fully mean anything and possibly exists only to put a balm over the surface of haunting wounds.

They are both stuck in emotional purgatory; circling the same unresolved tension because the narrative refuses to let them confront the truth.

Then this is not a story of healing.

It’s a story of suppression.

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So… What Story Are We Telling?

If we truly believe Jellal is not accountable, then the canon needs to stop asking him to repent.

Because you cannot atone for what you didn’t do.

You can’t be redeemed if you were never condemned.

If Jellal was just a man of misfortune, then his arc should have focused on healing from victimhood:

With compassion, not punishment 

With clarity, not confusion.

Erza’s role would shift too:

No longer as the forgiver 

But the witness.

Someone who shares his pain, rather than carrying the emotional labor of absolution.

That would be a different story. A valid one.

But it’s not the story we were given.

Instead, canon keeps demanding atonement whilst denying sin. It keeps demanding forgiveness whilst denying harm. And for that, this contradiction sits at the heart of Jerza — unresolved and unspoken.

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The Fork in the Road 

The truth is simple:

If Jellal is not accountable, then we need to stop pretending forgiveness is the answer 

If Erza’s pain is real, then we need to give it a place to land.

If Jerza is meant to be a story of love overcoming the past, then that past has to be named.

Otherwise we’re not watching a redemption arc.

We’re watching two characters orbiting around a love they could have, but aren’t allowed to earn it.

Part 8 explored a difficult but necessary question: What if Jellal was never meant to be accountable? Not as a flaw, but as an intentional framing choice.

However before I get onto truly closing this section, there’s something more I would like to highlight, something I've noticed in regards to Jellal’s character despite his reality.

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Unforgiven By Design: The Inverse Cost of Compassion 

I’ll admit this one of the more personally resonant points in my whole meta, and I hold my hands up to if anything I say goes out of line and you can call me out on it, but still—I feel this must be said.

As the story stands, there is a clear effort to say Jellal is a victim of what happened to him (even if it does change this depending on the plot), but us as an audience are meant to at least believe ‘Jellal is innocent.’ and that he is a good guy.

But the thing is, even though the story went all this way to avoid his name from being slandered, it happened anyway. Narratively people may accept the fact Jellal was a victim, but emotionally? That’s not the case.

And this is an occurrence both in-verse and in fandom.

Let me go into what I mean.

Jellal is considered technically ‘redeemed’— he turned himself in, gave up power, never made excuses for what he did or even expressed anger for how he was treated (despite being probably the most valid out of all the villains). Yet emotionally, in both canon and fandom, he’s treated as if his redemption doesn’t matter/or like it didn’t happen in the first place.

His guilt becomes a punchline. His remorse is dismissed as excessive. His pain is mocked rather than mourned.

And it doesn’t make sense. 

Someone who has had their entire life destroyed beyond measure and is bearing the consequences every time he is on screen, why is he being humiliated like this or treated so disrespectfully?

And let’s be clear here: this sort of behavior isn’t just critique, but humiliation masked as humour.

Calling him a loser?

Laughing at his breakdowns?

Celebrating his failures with joy rather than critical thought?

That’s not emotional engagement. That’s bullying.

The hypocrisy becomes obvious when compared to how other characters are treated. 

Gray for example, has trauma rooted in loss and self-destruction. His overuse of Iced Shell may be teased, but his pain is handled with empathy. His suicidal moments are mourned, not memed.

But for Jellal?

He is mocked for being suicidal and was canonically struck for it.

Laughed at for the intensity of his devotion to Erza.

Reduced to a shell of a man just to preserve Erza’s pedestal.

His trauma — which is just as severe, just as valid, just as rooted in abuse— is treated like a joke.

And for the life of me I can’t understand why.

We can cry and hurt for characters like Lucy, Erza, Natsu, Gray for their pain. Even other villains like Zeref, Ultear, Irene, August etc. But Jellal? He is barely extended the same sentiment. 

It doesn’t make sense.

This discrepancy exposes a deeper fandom psychology: selective empathy. It’s not about what the character went through—it’s about how their pain makes us feel. Gray’s grief is familiar and digestible. Jellal’s guilt is uncomfortable and unresolved. 

So instead of facing it, the fandom simplifies him, flattens him, and mocks him.

There are terms that gets thrown about in regard to Jellal and his intense guilt/self loathing. 

(I won’t name them because the point of this message isn’t to name and shame but to reflect) 

They get thrown around and whilst it may be a joke in nature, the use of it seems reductive to his repentance and disrespecting of it.

Especially when these terms are the thing mainly used to describe his intense relationship with guilt, rather than to understand it, but to lowkey pigeonhole it or even ridicule it in some cases.

The joke doesn’t even fit here for Jellal in my opinion.

What more do you want from a redemption arc if not guilt?? Isn’t the fact someone feels bad about what they did the defining point of redemptions in Fairy Tail?

Jellal gave up his freedom, something he was intensely attached to from young. He sought no praise for it. He held himself accountable even when the narrative refused to let him heal. 

If remorse is the requirement for empathy, he fulfilled it over and over.

So then why is he still the target?

Because vulnerability without protection becomes easy to exploit.

The story doesn’t protect Jellal emotionally— so neither does the fandom.

If people truly saw him as a victim, they wouldn’t celebrate his suffering. They wouldn’t mock him for the very guilt and brokenness that, if showing in another character, would be treated as sacred.

To understand where I'm coming from: let me flip the lens.

Imagine if people laughed at Erza’s past as a slave or for losing her eye? Or mocked Lucy for crying over her controlling father when he died? Or ridiculed Wendy for begging to be stronger enough?

Or just to make it less female leaning. What if people mocked Natsu for looking for Igneel for years upon years? Or Gray for his survivors' guilt?  

There wouldn’t just be backlash.

There would be full on outrage.

So then why is it acceptable for Jellal, a man who lost his life and had it broken irreparably?

The answer is uncomfortable: because his suffering makes people uneasy. 

His story lacks resolution, and instead of confronting that narrative failure, people displace the discomfort onto him. They mock him because it’s easier than reconciling with what he represents— a character failed by both writing and reception.

This is why drawing the line between critique and cruelty matters.

Saying “Jellal frustrates me, I wish he did more” is valid.

Saying “He’s pathetic, a coward, does nothing for the story or for others, he’s dead weight and deserves to suffer” is not.

That is not discourse anymore. 

That’s degradation.

And let’s not pretend that kind of ridicule reflects any care. If you mock a character’s most vulnerable moments and call it love, that isn’t respect—it’s convenience.

Doesn’t matter if it was a one off or if it was multiple times, the impulse itself inherently cruel in nature. 

And the more it happens, the clearer it becomes: this isn't about Jellal anymore. It's about our own discomfort, our own need for someone to carry the weight of unresolved emotion. 

And cruelty, when repeated, starts to reflect more on the one inflicting it than the character enduring it.

If anyone wants to act like I'm reaching or thinking too deep into it.

Let me ask you this: imagine you were the one being talked about the way that Jellal is?

That you’re pathetic. A coward. A good for nothing. Does nothing for anyone etc.

Is that still a joke?

Put yourself in those shoes and tell me if that is not inherently cruel and even abusive in nature. 

And before anyone says “he’s just a character”, then why are there people hating him so hard then?

Exactly.

Though i’ll be honest, I don’t know if this treatment exists because the story didn’t commit to what it had set out for him, or that hate and cruelty just needs a place to land and he is the most convenient for it. 

Jellal being treated the way he is despite the story’s attempts to absolve his name, makes me wonder if the story was clear with him would he have been saved the degradation and given some respect, or was he always just going to be the victim of petty words and venom because it’s easy?

I guess we’ll never know.

As of now Jellal Fernandes exists in a paradox. He is spared narratively, but condemned emotionally. The arc suggests forgiveness, but the execution denies him healing or mercy. He is ‘forgiven’ on paper, but never embraced as human—in-verse or largely in fandom.

When we laugh at his pain while mourning others’, we have to ask ourselves:

Is this really about the character? Or is it about our discomfort with characters who are messy, remorseful, and emotionally unresolved? Or is it just anger at what’s unresolved that needs a place to land? Or just plain cruelty?

I’m not saying I’ve never laughed at a character unfairly. But when I look at Jellal and the unrelenting degradation and humiliation he receives just for existing, I see someone who deserves better — not just from the story, but from all of us.

If we say we care about redemption, we must extend compassion to those who seek it.

If we say we care about characters, we must stop turning their suffering into spectacle.

Otherwise, what we’re protecting isn’t the story—it’s our own comfort at the expense of someone else’s pain.

✦•

All of this—the mockery, the flattening, the selective empathy—stems from a deeper failure: the story never gives Jellal the emotional framework to truly exist. 

He’s not allowed to grow, only to grieve. And Erza? She’s not allowed to struggle, only to forgive. Together, their pain becomes background noise for a love that’s never fully allowed to live. They are both caught in roles written for audience comfort, not character truth.

Which brings us back to the heart of this critique—not just about guilt or redemption, but about what happens when characters are reduced to symbols.

When love becomes metaphor, and healing becomes performance.

When characters like Jellal and Erza stop being people, and start being projections.

That’s where we go onto Part 9 of this critique.

We saw how stripping him of agency turns Jerza into a story of mutual victimhood, not reconciliation.

It robs their relationship of emotional tension, makes their conflict feel hollow, and denies both characters the closure their arcs were built to deliver.

Without accountability, forgiveness becomes performative.

Love becomes a bandage, not a bridge.

Their bond stagnates — suspended in symbolism, never allowed to grow.

This isn’t a critique of Jellal or Erza as characters.

It’s a critique of a narrative that refuses to let them live beyond their assigned roles.

Which brings us to the heart of the matter:

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Part 9: Erza and Jellal Deserve Better Than Symbolism

“Jerza deserves to be more than an idea — they deserve the space to feel real, flawed, and fully alive.”

Earlier, we looked at what Jerza’s emotional arc could have been. But now we’ll explore why it wasn’t — why all the points dregged up in argument never were considered and for what reason.

Because the heart of the issue runs much deeper: Symbolism.

They were never treated as people. They became ideas — symbols of forgiveness and redemption — at the expense of their humanity.

In this next section, we’ll explore how symbolism — whilst powerful — flattened their humanity, and limited both characters rather than elevated them. 

We’ll also reinforce the core argument of how giving them back their agency would have made Jerza not weaker, but stronger.

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In canon, Jerza has been elevated into symbols:

Jellal as the fallen man seeking atonement.

Erza as the unwavering forgiver.

Together, a symbol of hope, redemption and grace.

But in the process, their humanity was flattened.

If we go back to the root of it, Jerza was never about “light and darkness.” 

It was about two broken people—survivors of shared trauma—trying to navigate the aftermath of what was done to them and what they did to each other. Yet, the story chose aesthetics over depth, reducing them to roles rather than people.

But in doing so, they became a performance of love and healing, instead of being participants in it.

Forgiveness Without Accountability Hollowed Their Bond

True forgiveness is not a gift given because someone is pitiful or tragic.                                                

It’s a choice made in response to remorse, responsibility, and change.

In Jerza’s case, forgiveness should have been about Erza choosing to forgive Jellal because he took ownership of his actions—not because she is the “perfect” partner who exists to redeem him. Without that foundation, as stated before, her forgiveness becomes emotional labor, not emotional  resolution.

And this doesn’t just diminish their arcs individually.

It also robs the audience of the emotional payoff we’re led to expect.

Jellal’s atonement feels shallow.

Erza’s growth is overshadowed by her role as “the forgiver.”

Their relationship becomes static, suspended in symbolism, never earning the depth it could have reached.

Fandom & Narrative Pressures: The Feedback Loop of Idealisation 

As explored in previous sections, some of this dynamic is born from fandom itself.

Jellal’s status as a tragic figure—damaged but redeemable—makes it emotionally easier for fans to frame him as a pure victim. The cleaner the tragedy, the easier it is to love him without discomfort. But of course, that same impulse erases his complexity.

When a character is only allowed to be saved, never challenged, their arc stagnates.

The writers, whether consciously or not, respond to these pressures.

Instead of confronting Jellal’s responsibility, they double down on guilt-as-redemption.

Instead of giving Erza space to process her own pain, they keep her in the role of moral compass.

What could have been a raw, painful and beautiful story of mutual healing, becomes a cycle of emotional avoidance.

The desire to protect beloved characters from moral complexity ends up diminishing them.

The Opportunity They Deserve 

Jerza could have been a love story that embraced the messiness of trauma, responsibility, and growth.

The set up was all there.

Imagine:

Jellal, acknowledging not just that he was manipulated, but that he made choices within that manipulation.

Erza, confronting the pain of loving someone who hurt her, not as a weakness, but as her right to feel and express.

Both of them allowed to speak the unsaid, to break free from their symbolic roles and meet as equals—not savior and sinner, but as two wounded people choosing to rebuild.

That is the Jerza that could have been.

A relationship grounded in honesty, not performance.

A story where love doesn’t erase the past, but helps carry it with clarity and consent.

Breaking Free from Symbolism: A New Paradigm 

This isn’t about tearing down Jerza.

It’s about liberating it.

“They deserve to be more than symbols of redemption and forgiveness. They deserve to be people.”

They deserve to be people who:

Hurt. 

Heal. 

Make mistakes. 

Take responsibility.

Forgive with clarity.

Grow with intention.

Jerza was poised to be that kind of story. But it was never given the narrative space to happen.

And that’s the tragedy in all of it—not Jellal’s fall, not Erza’s suffering—but the refusal to let them live beyond the roles assigned to them.

Why This Critique Matters

This isn’t an attack on fans who love Jerza.

It’s a call to imagine more for them.

“No one needs to be perfect. But they do need to be honest. And that includes the narrative itself.”

Jerza can still be beautiful. But not as a frozen image of guilt and grace.

They deserve a story that allows them to breathe—to hurt each other, to face it, to heal—not because it’s easy, but because it’s what they need to truly set foot on the road to recovery.

In giving them accountability, we give them freedom.

Freedom to grow.

Freedom to choose each other fully, not out of penance or obligation, but with open eyes.

Freedom to love beyond guilt, beyond symbolism, into something human.

They were turned into ideals: symbols of forgiveness and redemption. But Jerza was never meant to be untouchable. They were meant to be human. To stumble, to clash, to grow.

By letting them be people—not ideas—we give them the story they always deserved.

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Part 10: Closing Thoughts & Call to Discussion 

“This isn’t a call to destroy Jerza — it’s a call to set it free. To let it be messy, real, and earned.”

As I have said before, this post isn’t meant to tear Jerza down. It’s meant to hold space for what it could have been — and what it still could be, if we’re willing to look beyond idealisation and into emotional honesty.

Love doesn’t have to be perfect to be powerful.                                           But it does have to be truthful.

Jerza deserves a chance at that reality.                                                           One where both Jellal and Erza are allowed to be flawed, hurt and human. Where they can grow — not just individually, but together — by facing the past, not erasing it.

TLDR;

Since there has been so much that has been covered in depth throughout the course of this post, I'll end it here with a brief recap of the main points and a short summary of the most vital takeaways from the post to reflect on.

Main Points of ‘Why Accountability is the Missing Piece between Jerza’ summarised:

Jellal’s “Redemption” Lacks Weight

His “sins” are never clearly defined.

He’s stuck in guilt loops without ever processing why he’s guilty.

Atonement without ownership = hollow narrative.

Victimhood Replaces Accountability

Framing Jellal as only a victim flattens his arc.

Redemption isn’t about being pitiful—it’s about owning your past and growing from it.

Erza’s Emotional Agency is Undermined

She forgives, but never gets space to process her hurt.

Her strength becomes silent endurance, not active healing.

Without Jellal’s accountability, her forgiveness feels performative.

Jerza’s Dynamic Stagnates Without Truth

Their relationship becomes symbolic: guilt & grace on loop.

No real conversations. No reckoning. No mutual healing.

Love can’t fix what’s never confronted.

Accountability Would Strengthen Jerza, Not Destroy It

Owning his actions would give Jellal agency.

It would let Erza express her pain fully.

Their bond could evolve from shared trauma to genuine, earned connection.

Fandom & Narrative Both Avoid Complexity

Simplifying Jerza protects the fantasy but weakens the story.

Accountability isn’t punishment—it’s depth.

They don’t need to be “perfect.” They need to be human.

And now going on to what I hope are the vital takeaways::

1. Letting Them Be People, Not Symbols

At its heart, Jerza was never just about aesthetics.

It was about survival. Pain. Regret.

Two people shaped by shared trauma, trying to figure out what remains between them.

But the narrative elevated them into untouchable symbols:

Jellal, the tragic man to be forgiven.

Erza, the saintly woman whose love redeems.

In doing so, it stripped away their emotional truth.

To truly honour their bond, they need to be allowed to step down from the pedestal.

To sin. To break. To rebuild.

To choose each other with clear eyes, not as ideas, but as people.

2. Accountability Doesn’t Weaken Jerza — It Sets It Free

Accountability isn’t punishment.

It’s clarity.

Letting Jellal be accountable wouldn’t erase his humanity — it would restore it. 

It would give Erza’s forgiveness weight.

It would give their relationship depth.

Let him sin, then grow.

Let her break, then heal.

Let them speak the unsaid.

Let them step out of this emotional purgatory.

A love story where both can stand, not because their pain was ignored, but because it was faced — that would be the most powerful version of Jerza we’ve never seen.

3. This Isn’t About Blame — It’s About Potential

This isn’t a judgment of the fans who love Jerza.

It’s a critique of how the story chose to simplify what could have been so much richer.

Jellal isn’t less lovable because he’s flawed.

Erza isn’t weaker for expressing her pain.

Their love isn’t diminished by complexity.

In fact, it’s through that complexity that their relationship could truly resonate.

Jerza’s potential was always there.

The tragedy isn’t that they were broken.

It’s that the story never lets them heal properly.

4. Invitation to Reflect & Discuss

This isn’t the “final word” by any means.

It’s an invitation. 

To extend the conversation.

How do you think Jellal’s accountability could have shaped Jerza’s journey 

What would Erza’s arc have looked like if she’d been given space to confront her pain?

How could their reconciliation have been made more meaningful, and more human?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Let’s talk about what this ship could be — not to discard it, but to imagine it free from the limits that held it back.

Final Thought

The arguments made throughout the post were extensive and I apologise at points if I repeated myself at times when expanding on things or it just seemed like I was harping on. But I hope by the end of it some of the points do open new conversations and new perspectives on Jellal, Erza and Jerza as a whole and we begin to see things beyond binary lenses.

So thank you to each and every person who has taken the time to read all this, before I close off I will say my last pieces to really hone in the heart of this post.

Accountability isn’t about punishment—it’s about reclamation. 

For Jellal, it means reclaiming agency over his story, no longer defined solely by victimhood.

For Erza, it means reclaiming her right to confront, to feel, to heal on her own terms.

Only through this shared act of ownership, can their bond move beyond symbolism into something fully human.

That’s why I say: 

“Let Jellal be accountable. Not because he’s evil. Not to punish him. But because it’s the only way for them both to finally say the unsaid. To break the silence. To step out of this emotional purgatory.”

“They deserve a love built on truth — not silence.”

And so do we, as those who love them.

⟡ Thank you for taking your time to read this ⟡

-Yami ᢉ𐭩

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✦ End of Series Return to Masterpost ←

or

So far we have explored the repercussions that affect both Jellal and Erza all due to the fact the narrative refuses to assign clear accountability for what happened. And now we will be discussing the very issues that prop up from the role that the narrative gave Jellal in trying to ‘bypass’ the need for accountability for his arc.

To begin with understanding why Jellal’s arc feels so fragmented in the first place, we need to examine the role of victimhood — how it’s framed, how it’s weaponised, and how it ultimately limits his character.

Let me first be clear with something.

It’s not inherently wrong to portray Jellal as a victim. He was manipulated. He was used. Infact I wish that story would give importance to this more than his guilt. But that being said, though the problem isn’t with him being portrayed as a victim, it becomes one when victimhood becomes the final answer. 

Rather than the starting point for deeper exploration of his agency and choices, the story positions victimhood as if it’s the final destination of his journey.

This is deeply damaging to his character and psyche.

The narrative’s reluctance to move beyond “he was a victim” traps Jellal in a static role — one where his actions are excused, his guilt loops endlessly, and his growth is stalled. More importantly, it strips him of complexity. He becomes less of  a man grappling with what he’s done, and more of a passive figure overshadowed by his circumstances.

This isn’t about denying his suffering. It’s about acknowledging that victimhood and accountability can — and must — coexist for meaningful redemption.

In this section we’ll explore how the story’s framing of Jellal as a perpetual victim not only undermines his own arc, but weakens the themes of redemption, agency and healing that Jerza was meant to represent.

Victimhood Undermines Emotional Tension 

In the current narrative, Jellal is positioned in limbo: villain by action, victim by narrative. This unresolved paradox erases friction, making his redemption less about growth and more about passive suffering.

But like we have already gone over in Part 1 — redemption is not passive. 

It is a conscious, and present choice.

When Jellal’s actions are framed as entirely beyond his control, the heart of his redemption arc is hollowed out. Because of this there is no real conflict. No internal fight. No space for growth either.

One character — Erza — is left narrating the pain, while the other — Jellal — quietly accepts guilt he’s never required to truly own. His remorse becomes externalised, disconnected from his personal evolution. 

The guilt is there—overwhelmingly so.

But the growth is stagnant.

For Erza, this framing creates an emotional purgatory.

She is never given the opportunity to confront the full weight of his betrayal.

The story avoids the hard conversations  — the ones about trust, hurt, accountability — replacing them with symbolic scenes and motifs, that whilst beautiful and moving in the moment — robs their dynamic of true emotional tension.

I want to clarify that I’m not saying Jerza’s symbolic scenes and motifs are meaningless, no. They are held in the heart of many and are absolutely complimentary and beautiful to the ship. 

However, they shouldn’t be the only things their relationship is defined by.

Jerza needs the hard conversations too.

Without these necessary confrontations, neither of them are allowed to evolve.

The relationship then just circles the same unresolved wounds, never moving forward, because the narrative itself refuses to face them.

Some might argue that conflict and tension aren’t necessary or are flaws in relational dynamics. But without conflict, how are we meant to know our heart is still in it? When push comes to shove, who is still holding on?

Conflict and tension aren’t flaws to avoid—they’re the engines of character growth both in reality, and in narration. But by erasing Jellal’s agency, the story sacrifices meaningful tension for safety.

But this tension is precisely what Jerza needed: a space where pain, choice and consequence collide to create growth. 

Without it, their dynamic becomes ornamental, not alive.

Victimhood may have explained why Jellal fell.

But it should never have been used as a shield to prevent his rise.

Because redemption is not built on victimhood alone. 

But it’s built on what comes after.

Jellal’s arc had the potential to be a powerful story of reclaiming agency — of someone who was once manipulated, standing up and saying: “I made choices. I hurt people. And I will own that.”

That is where redemption finds its emotional power. Not in erasing his victimhood, but in showing how he rises from it.

By refusing to take him past that starting point, the story traps Jellal in a passive role. What is a significant part of understanding and humanising his character, now becomes a plot device—a permanent status as a shield against deeper accountability. Instead of a foundation of growth, it becomes a narrative ceiling that he is never allowed to break through.

And because of this his growth stalls, his psyche is fractured and his dynamic with Erza stalls too. What could have been a profound exploration of trauma, agency, and healing becomes a cycle of safe, surface-level redemption.

And this is just 1 of the reasons why the perpetual victim role hurts not just Jellal, but Jerza too. (I go more into how this hurts Jerza later on in this section and also in the next designated part to come.)

Just 1 of the reasons why conversation shouldn’t have ended with victimhood for him, it should have begun with it.

But let’s go deeper shall we?

Trapped in Perpetual Victimhood 

By denying Jellal meaningful accountability, the story locks him into a cycle of endless guilt without direction. His emotional arc revolves around what was done to him — not what he did to others. Not in the way it should give him clarity. 

This framing keeps him reactive, not proactive. He mourns his fall but never truly interrogates it.

A compelling redemption requires more than guilt. 

It requires internal reckoning.

Jellal needs to actively confront his past, understand the factors that led to his descent, and — most importantly — make the conscious choice to change. Without this core, this agency, his redemption falls hollow. His guilt loops, but there is no pivot. 

No transformation.

As long as the story clings to his victimhood, Jellal’s character remains stagnant.

And because of that, his relationship with Erza suffers alongside.

She becomes trapped in the repetitive dynamic — as said before: always the emotional savior, always the giver — while Jellal remains suspended in self-loathing, never truly meeting her as an equal.

So not only is he trapped in the perpetual self loathing spiral, but Jerza is also trapped in a perpetual emotional imbalance until this is resolved.

But it’s not just with him and her and what they have— it also becomes a problem with what he has with others too.

Namely Oración Seis.

The Oración Seis Example: Narrative Hypocrisy

I have already touched on this point in my previous post, and a bit here but now I’ll go deep into this narrative flaw.

One of the clearest contradictions in Jellal’s arc is his recruitment of the Oracion Seis. 

Which is wild because if the story insists on framing him as a mere pawn — a victim manipulated into villainy without true agency — then why does he believe he holds the right to guide other villains toward redemption?

Under the current lens, this feels hollow.

At worst, hypocritical.

A man who was “never at fault” preaching accountability to others who made their own choices?

It doesn’t add up.

And honestly, it does feel like a slap on the face by some holier than thou rhetoric.

But this is a common theme with Fairy Tail and general shounen, which is a whole other conversation I won’t start now.

But in regards to Jellal, the problem doesn’t lie with the intention. 

It lies with the narrative’s refusal to fully explore his agency.

Had his fall been portrayed with genuine ownership — had the story allowed him to consciously make terrible choices, even under the weight of trauma — his recruitment of Oracion Seis would shift from hypocrisy to poetic growth.

It wouldn’t be a man on a pedestal preaching down to others.

It would be a man walking the same path.

Guiding them through something he knows firsthand.

Being one who understands—intimately—how far someone can fall.

One who knows the brutal, humiliating climb of choosing to rise again.

I know I sound like a broken record harping on about accountability, but like LOOK at how much is broken in the narrative without it? 

Accountability is what would give his actions weight. Without it, his arc collapses under it’s own contradictions — trying to teach lessons he’s never been allowed to learn himself.

And that isn’t the end of what is narratively broken, it goes much much deeper than that. 

And the next point explains this  just on the basis of what his redemption is being defined by.

Redemption is NOT About Innocence or Victimhood

The idea that Jellal’s redemption is a representation of innocence and victimhood is a problematic stance in itself, because redemption isn’t about being innocent nor excused for bad actions—it’s about acknowledging flaws and changing. In Jellal’s case, if his redemption is only framed as a victim’s journey, it undermines the message of personal responsibility and growth that comes with redemption.

It’s about actively changing through self-awareness and acceptance of past actions—not just waiting for the love of others or time to heal the wounds of trauma.

The narrative of not just Jellal’s arc but Jerza as well could have been so much stronger if it showed Jellal actively and knowingly working on his redemption, instead of having it hinge on Erza’s forgiveness alone. His relationship with her is important, but his personal healing and growth needs to come first because this would then flourish in all the other areas of his life.

For that to happen, that means he would have had to truly own his mistakes to earn that forgiveness, rather than having it handed to him because he’s a victim or suffocating in guilt.

For all the plot and emotional inconsistencies created due to the resistance in allowing Jellal to truly own the narrative, I want to next go into why the current narrative choice not only hurts his character and his present, but also what is to come too.

Erasing Accountability Doesn’t Protect Him—It Sabotages His Future

When the story refuses to commit to Jellal’s responsibility—by framing him solely as a victim of manipulation without any real reckoning—it doesn’t just muddle the past, it actively undermines every arc that follows.

Why?

Because the weight of Jellal’s choices is what gives future moments their impact. His guilt, his restraint, his decisions not to act, his emotional repression, his leadership—these all only matter if he’s reckoning with things he truly did. If not then they all become gestures without substance.

Because if those sins aren’t his, then what is he healing from? What is he trying to prevent? What is he resisting?

What’s the actual cost of redemption, if the fall was never real in the first place?

Letting Jellal own his actions would make his growth earned. It would give him a foundation for him to rise from, instead of floating in vague guilt. Critical scenes—like his confrontation with the Magic Council, his dynamic with Crime Sorcière, his distance from Fairy Tail, even his hesitation around Erza—would hit harder if we knew the emotional stakes were grounded in real responsibility, and not just a performance in pain.

Without that foundation, these moments fall flat. He’s just sad. He’s just guilty. But we’re never actually sure why. Because the story is so secretive about what is going on in Jellal, that leads us as the audience having to fill in the gap with our own assumptions rather than the story defining a clear mental process. 

But a good character dynamic shouldn’t be solely built on interpretation from others, especially not when they had been defined clearly enough before. Interpretation should be a consideration, not the consolidation.

Because of this ambiguity in these moments, when characters spiral without clear reason, it becomes less powerful and more performative. In trying to “protect” Jellal from being the bad guy, the story actually robs him of the emotional richness that comes from choosing to change.

-

A lot of this section has been focusing on the repercussions of the narrative making Jellal only a victim—how this not only taints his character potential, but possibly everything surrounding him.

Before we go onto the next part I briefly mentioned, I want to quickly go into the damage done when Jerza itself is reinforcing the cycle.

“A Beautiful Prison” : How Jerza is Reinforcing The Cycle 

Because Jellal is written as someone who committed horrific acts under manipulation and not full agency, he exists in a limbo space. Like I said before: treated like a villain, but narratively framed as a victim. And instead of that contradiction being explored in a meaningful way, it’s smoothed over with romantic language—like forgiveness, redemption and love.

But here’s the problem (and personally it’s one of the biggest confusions and inconsistencies for the narrative and Jerza as a whole) : You cannot seek forgiveness for sins you were not responsible for. 

Trying to do so creates an emotional black hole, which we see is the case with Jellal—he keeps vying for closure that doesn’t exist, because the premise is flawed.

He is incessantly chasing punishment, guilt and self-loathing not only for something he doesn’t understand, but for something he never consciously chose.

That is not healing.

That is torment.

And Erza—whether she means to or not—reinforces it.

“You’re atoning and I forgive you.”

That’s what she tells him. And that’s exactly what locks him in. She never once tells him he didn’t need to be forgiven in the first place. Of course at first she didn’t know he was being controlled, but what about after? It’s never “you weren’t at fault.” or even “you were a victim too”, but instead validating his guilt.

And in doing so she confirms his internal narrative of sin whilst calling it love.

This is going to sound harsh but her doing this is not compassion—it is emotional purgatory. 

And objectively it is inadvertently cruel.

Given the current narrative, what Jellal needed wasn’t forgiveness—it was clarity. A chance to understand his trauma. To say “I was manipulated, and I’m not evil—but I still carry the weight of what happened.”

He needed healing, not punishment. But the story gave him neither. Instead it gave him someone he loves, offering him grace for a crime he didn’t fully commit.

And not just Erza but all spheres of his life reiterate the same rhetoric, ‘to be grateful for the grace he’s receiving’, but never to actually question if that is what he actually needs or not.

That’s why the narrative feels so painful for some of us. Because Jellal isn’t healing—he’s stuck in a loop. And Erza, instead of breaking it, unintentionally cements it by never challenging the terms of his guilt.

It makes their dynamic feel less like mutual growth, and more like a beautiful prison.

But of course even this choice isn’t lossless because look at how the narrative affects them in ripples.

Jellal is stuck between never ceasing, never defined guilt, punishment and penance. Whilst Erza's emotions: her heartbreak, hesitation, healing, all become stifled and her forgiveness loses weight because Jellal is ‘not’ responsible for what she’s forgiving him for.

The whole dynamic becomes foggy and everyone loses out.

✦•

Ending Part 3, we have explored what the cost of avoiding accountability entails—not just for Jellal but also everything around him. Everytime his agency has been erased, the story has sacrificed tension for safety, but in doing so has created multiple emotional/plot and characteral holes with everything related to Jellal.

Of course there is another side of the argument, that what if victimhood framing wasn’t a narrative oversight, but an intentional choice, which I will be going into in Part 8:’ What If Jellal’s wasn’t accountable’, where I will be exploring the consequences of that choice and what the story becomes if this was all the original plan.

But for now, since we have explored how the narrative mishandled Jellal victimhood and we delved into Jerza last, we move forward to examine how this directly impacts Jerza as a relationship.

In Part 4, we’ll be looking at different angles: the emotional, thematic and relational consequences of this avoidance—and how Jerza's potential as a story of mutual healing is compromised when accountability is left off the table.

✦ ━━━━━━━━ ❖ ⨂ ❖ ━━━━━━━━ ✦

Part 4: The Lack Of Accountability Hurts Jerza More Than Helping It 

“You can’t build love on silence. And Jerza, as it stands, is two people haunted by things they never said.”

“Jerza’s love isn’t the problem. The story’s refusal to let them confront it is.”

Jerza is a relationship built on shared wounds. Trauma, love and regret form the foundation of their bond. But for a relationship carrying that much emotional weight, it demands an equal measure of emotional honesty to truly resonate.

Without accountability, that honesty never comes.

When Jellal’s actions are left unaddressed, and Erza is denied the space to process her pain, their dynamic becomes imbalanced. What could have been a story of mutual healing and growth becomes stuck— a relationship where one side carries the emotional labour, while the other remains trapped in guilt.

I would like to clarify though: this isn’t a question of whether Jerza’s love is real or not.

But it’s a question of whether the narrative allows that love to be fully realised — with clarity, agency and growth on both sides.

In this section, we’ll explore the different ways this avoidance hurts their dynamic: from emotional stagnation, to the illusion of resolution, to why their “romantic payoff” feels more symbolic than earned.

Because even the strongest and most timeless bonds need space to heal.

And without that space, love struggles to evolve.

A Relationship Built on Silence, Not Growth

One of the biggest narrative flaws in Jerza is how it rarely engages in real vulnerability. Meaning, their emotional connection often feels more symbolic rather than lived — a bond rooted in memory, in what they were, rather than what they are.

Instead of growing together, they orbit around unresolved pain.

Like we’ve established before — Erza forgives, Jellal feels guilty.

But neither of them truly confronts the heart of what happened.

It has been said in the previous parts, but I'll reiterate again given the build up for this section.

When Jellal isn’t allowed to take responsibility for the harm he caused, it leaves Erza in a suspended emotional state — always forgiving, never processing. 

This tension remains beneath the surface, untouched, leaving their dynamic and growth stagnant.

Ironically, many fans fear that holding Jellal accountable would somehow make Jerza “toxic”,  but the truth could not be more contrary. It’s the lack of accountability that is creating the imbalance, not the recognition of it.

Refusing to address the emotional wounds between them does not protect their relationship — rather it keeps it from evolving, and buries down the reality until it mutates into something away from the truth: ignorance and delusion that will only hurt both of them in the end.

Growth is the only thing that would stop this inevitability.

But growth is not born from silence.

It’s born from understanding and communication.

It is born from truth.

Something that is being kept from Jerza in favour of them looking whole rather than feeling whole.

Forgiveness ≠ Healing  / The Illusion of Resolution

Another fundamental issue in Jerza’s dynamic is the way forgiveness is mistaken for healing. 

Erza can — and does — forgive Jellal. But here’s the thing, forgiveness, on it’s own, is not a substitute for growth.

If Jellal never fully understands the weight of what he did, her forgiveness becomes hollow. It floats above unresolved hurt, disconnected from genuine resolution.

Also in regards to forgiveness, it only resonates when there’s a definite harm to forgive. Which in Jellal/Jerza’s case, this is not defined for them. And because of this missing explanation, Jerza becomes a relationship of emotional fog — gestures of love floating above wounds left unnamed and untold. 

Without accountability, they’re not reconciling, instead they are pretending the fracture was never real.

And doing this holds them both back in ways I cannot emphasise enough.

If Jerza is meant to represent healing, healing requires self-awareness.

It demands that both parties confront the harm clearly, understand it and choose to grow beyond it.

But this conversation hasn’t even been a choice for Jerza. Not really. So how can we expect healing and growth to truly happen?

Without Jellal’s accountability, neither he nor Erza move forward.

Erza is left endlessly offering grace.

And Jellal remains trapped in guilt that he doesn’t know how to resolve.

Gestures of forgiveness may soothe the surface and smooth the narrative outwardly.

But without accountability, it never reaches the root. 

Also one more thing I want to mention about the problem of forgiveness being used to bypass the emotional weight for Jerza’s history. By making Erza the automatic forgiver without her ever confronting her own hurt, she is reduced to a shortcut —an escapism — a convenient device to ‘resolve’ Jellal’s arc without the narrative engaging in the emotional work required.

Because it’s Erza, kind and beloved, we think this is a testament of her strength and character. But when you begin to tally up on how much Erza suffers for this and what she loses out on in her own emotional arc, it reads less as grace and more as a narrative bypass that undermines her emotional reality.

And for Erza, someone who has gone through so much pain already, she deserved this closure at least.

But it’s not being given to her in favour of keeping the story and their love neat and having it from explaining it’s complexity, rather than giving her own emotions clarity.

The “Romantic” Resolution Feels Forced 

Now I am going to be a bit heavy with my words and directness here, but it’s because I want to give clarity to the perspective.

All these narrative choices that have been made, in some way, were done with the belief Jerza would benefit from it. That they would look cleaner, that Erza or Jellal would be saved from the scrutiny of loving each other despite their complex and tangled pasts. 

Yet despite all this being done, something feels incomplete.

Forced.

As of now where the story stands, Jellal tells Erza in 100YQ he can love people freely now (i.e her)

— as if this statement alone completes his redemption. As if this was the arriving point.

But how did he get there?

The narrative takes him from suicidal despair and intense self-flagellation to offering affection, without showing the reckoning, growth or honest conversations that should bridge that gap. His inner journey is skipped, left to be almost entirely interpreted whilst Erza’s emotional needs are sidelined.

The story ‘tries’ to define what Jellal is sorry for based off our own understanding of him and his arc/descent but never give a clear answer of it. And to add to that, Jellal never defined what he is sorry for either. 

We are told he is grieving for killing Simon, but then the story says he was never in control.

Jellal says he remembers everything he did, yet the story is telling us it wasn’t him.

He acts like he was the sole perpetrator or had a conscious part in his villainy, but the story agrees or denies that whenever convenient.

It’s always changing, it’s never clear.

And because of this, not just him but Erza also never gets the space to express her own feelings.

Her own needs.

The tension between them is being said to be resolved by a hug and a promise — but no clarity. 

No actual resolution of all the emotional weight and battles they both have been carrying for years.

This isn’t catharsis.

It’s a shortcut.

The moment was designed to feel like healing, but instead feels hollowed out by the absence of emotional work. The story leans on their history and audience anticipation to create the illusion of closure, without actually earning it.

That’s something I want to make clear:

The problem here isn't that Jerza is finding peace.

It’s that the narrative is skipping the very process that would make the peace believable.

They deserve peace. Completely and truthfully.

But that is why the current narrative is being such a disservice to them.

Instead of giving them something concrete and real, it builds their bond up on illusion. 

Inference.

Their bond isn’t really theirs anymore but what others and the world around them dictate it to be.

And because of this, both Jellal and Erza’s emotional journeys are overlooked.

Beyond Jellal’s guilt, nothing is meaningfully explored.

The impact of his actions? Erza’s internal conflict? Their shared trauma?

All left untouched.

And when that emotional groundwork is missing, their “romantic resolution” feels less like a culmination — and more like a box being ticked.

We’ll be revisiting the larger trope of ‘Love as a Cure-All’ later in Part 7: The Dangers of “Love Fixes Everything”. 

But for now, this is all about how it’s hurting Jerza.

Love Without Agency Is Not Love at All…

This is when my words will get a bit cutting again, and I apologise for the discomfort that may follow because of them.

Most (if not all) the narrative direction has been done in the name of love. But, because of how the narrative has straddled the truth, emotional growth and understanding between them, it risks mutating the very base into something else.

A debt.

Why? 

When accountability is removed from the equation, Jellal’s love for Erza — as true as it has been — risks becoming little more than apology. 

And Erza’s love, in turn, becomes a mission to save him — rather than a shared emotional journey.

What started as genuine affection and selflessly, turns into an expected condition (i.e. debt) when guilt and emotional responsibility is the driving force and not truth and clarity. Love becomes a labor, not that it stops being true, but the surrounding reality overtakes and begins to define it over what it was born from.

But the thing with Jerza, love rooted in guilt and obligation was not what made them resonate.

Their bond has always had the potential to be about choice — two people choosing to face their pain and choosing to heal together.

Letting Jellal take ownership of his actions would not just give back his agency, but Erza’s too.

They would no longer be clinging to each other out of shared tragedy.

They would be choosing each other — fully, consciously, with the weight of their past acknowledged and addressed.

Because let’s be real—

If Jellal did nothing wrong, what is Erza even forgiving?

If there is no real fracture, then there’s nothing to rebuild from.

And that makes their entire history —their entire journey — feel hollow.

To love truly and truthfully, it requires agency.

Not convenience, not erasure.

Spotlighting Erza’s Pain Doesn’t Fix It 

We’ve spoken about the flaws highlighted in Jerza’s dynamic and both Jellal and Erza’s respective emotional arcs caused by the lack of clarity between them. And of course the question comes up, how would this all be fixed?

There was an argument I came across, that the way to fix this would be to spotlight Erza’s pain more: to give her more screen time, more emotional breakdowns, more space to grieve openly and dramatic moments to somehow “balance” the dynamic. More of her perspective  — as if this alone somehow would make Jellal’s redemption, and Jerza as a whole, feel more complete.

But pain alone does not equal depth.

I agree that Erza’s emotional journey is incomplete and sidelined, but injecting her pain into the narrative does not fix anything nor the core problem.

I will explain why.

I went over this point a bit at the end of Part 2, but here I'll really get into it.

If Jellal still lacks a defined sin, if he is never allowed to take true ownership or gain clarity over his actions, then spotlighting Erza’s suffering does nothing to address the root issue.

Her pain then becomes martyrdom, not growth.

A spectacle rather than a step towards healing.

Because what exactly is Jellal meant to respond to?

If he doesn’t understand what he’s apologising for, how can he meet Erza’s pain with anything other than vague guilt?

There’s no reckoning. No resolution. Just two characters circling the same wound  — one expressing it, the other drowning in undefined remorse.

His redemption stays symbolic.

Her hurt stays unresolved.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth:

What are more dramatic scenes going to accomplish if the one who hurt her isn’t even being allowed to understand he played a part in it? How can Erza’s pain have a place in his doing if the narrative itself exempts his name from it?

All it does is push him further into a guilt spiral  — without direction, without agency.

Her emotions are put on display, glorified in their pain, whilst his remain a narrative mystery.

This isn’t creating balance.

It’s just avoidance, repackaged as emotional weight.

This is why I say this:

They don’t need theatre.

They need clarity.

They need a conversation.

Anything else would just add to the noise already existing between them.

✦✦✦ ⨂ ✦✦✦

As we reach the end of this section, the message I am trying to hone in on is that Jerza’s emotional imbalance isn’t really romantic — it’s unresolved.

Without accountability between them, their love becomes a cycle of guilt and silence, not a foundation for healing or growth. And the result is a relationship that looks meaningful on the surface, but lacks the emotional groundwork to sustain it.

True love requires honesty.

Without it, Jellal can’t grow.

Erza can’t heal.

And their bond remains a fragile illusion of what it could have been.

They do not need forgiveness without truth.

They need accountability, agency and a chance to speak.

Having now explored the rooted damage that the lack of accountability causes, we will be shifting focus — to what could have been. Part 5 will be detailing the ‘Missed Opportunity’ the narrative passed over: how Jerza’s dynamic, Jellal’s redemption and Erza’s healing could have grown organically through the simple, necessary act and inclusion of accountability.

Though before we move on, it’s worth addressing a potential counterpoint:  

If the story is so broken by the lack of accountability, wouldn’t it make more sense to rewrite it entirely — to make it cleaner, less problematic, or less messy?

And in some ways, that’s exactly what the story does — both in-universe and in how it’s often received.

For example:

Rewriting Jellal’s past to make him less culpable (e.g., “he wasn’t in control,” “he didn’t choose any of it,” etc.)  

Softening or omitting the darker parts of their history, so the relationship becomes easier to romanticize 

Avoiding accountability altogether by reframing the narrative to skip over emotional consequences  

We see these approaches especially in the story after the Tower of Heaven arc — and, frankly, in fandom discourse as well.  

This is where I believe the shift begins to fracture the narrative’s logic — introducing emotional disruption, character dilution, and thematic undermining. The cracks begin to show, not just in plot but in emotional continuity, leading to the extreme polarity we now see around the ship and its characters.

These narrative shortcuts that are bulletpointed above may have made the story more palatable, but in doing so,  they strip away the very foundation that gave Jerza its emotional weight in the first place.

And that’s what brings us to the next subsection.

Jerza Requires A Continuity, Not A Reset 

“Jerza’s emotional journey doesn’t need to be rewritten. It needs to be continued—with honesty, not amnesia.”

“They are not broken, they are miswritten.”

Emotional continuity matters 

Changing the story might avoid the current problem, but then it loses the essence of what Jerza was built on and what Jellal and Erza have carried. 

Another bypass in a way. 

But in the case that Jellal is given clear accountability, then everything Erza feels and has felt — her anger, betrayal, protectiveness, hesitation, trauma— makes sense. Those emotions have a direct cause. Their relationship has a real rupture that can be repaired and explored, not replaced by a vague “reset” where everyone is relearning who they are.

This is not bias.

This is narrative integrity.

Starting from zero is narratively weaker 

When a story tries to force healing by ‘wiping the slate clean’ (i.e in Jellal’s case “he wasn’t in control, it wasn’t his fault”), it erases the emotional stakes that were already in place. It also creates a weird dissonance here—Erza remembers everything, feels everything, and yet the story tries to absolve Jellal completely, which undercuts the emotional payoff.

If he is accountable, then their emotional journey continues organically from where it left off. You’re not saying “start over.” You’re saying: let them move forward from what actually happened, not from a rewritten version of it.

It allows trust to be rebuilt through earned steps 

Not through “forgive and forget,” but through confrontation, growth, and emotional honesty. That is what makes reconciliation meaningful. That is how maturity is shown within relationships and how it should be portrayed.

Sentiments like “forgive and forget” only resonate when closure has truly been reached internally and understandably, otherwise it impacts like avoidance.

It might sound like a biased take on everything I've been saying, but really this whole post is a call for stronger writing, stronger character work. And a more emotionally satisfying arc.

All things that accountability solves.

✦•

Rather than rewriting the story from the ground up to smooth out these kinks or trying to sanitise or reset them, adding this truth allows their past to be heard, their future to continue and their emotions to remain valid. The eventual connection would be built on earned understanding not forced absolution.

Letting them work through their past— no matter how messy, twisted and hurtful it was — will not weaken their bond. 

But avoiding it will make that inevitable.

It’s the hard conversations that will truly heal both of them, and give them the closure they deserve despite how bitter they can be. Sweet words and gestures can only absorb within when the core is healed, otherwise they just float on the surface, accepted in the moment, rejected in mind. 

With all that being said, now we go into Part 5.  

The missed opportunity.

✦ Continue on to Part III: (End of Section I) → The Lost Arc – What Could Have Been

I’ll be honest, I thought a lot about if I should keep this section in my post given how it doesn’t just point the lens at the characters or the story, but at us as the audience. And it really is not my intention to upset or hurt anyone with these words, for which I am truly sorry if my words do seem too direct.

But after mulling it over, I feel the inclusion of this part is necessary for understanding the scope of the problem and where this whole conversation stems from.

So with grace, I start Part 6.

My sincerest apologies if I ever go too far.

✦•

Going into the argument:

By now we have gone thoroughly in depth how damaging the lack of accountability is to Jellal’s character, Erza’s and the whole narrative in general. How it stifles and strangulates characteral and narrative progression and introduces so many problems that never needed to exist in the first place. 

But if the lack of accountability breaks the story so much, why isn’t this changed? What’s keeping the story from fixing this blunder? This mistake?

Ah.

But it is not a mistake.

Not when it has been repeated and preserved rather than challenged or explained.

Why do I say so?

Because the avoidance of Jellal’s accountability isn’t an accident. 

It exists in both canon and fandom because it preserves emotional comfort. Holding Jellal responsible complicates his image as a tragic victim and forces Erza’s forgiveness to confront deeper, messier truths. From a writing perspective, this was a narrative shortcut. From a fandom perspective, it’s emotional self-protection.

Understanding why this happens is essential to moving past it.

I’ll break it all down beneath.

✦•

Why the Narrative Avoids It (Authorial Intent)

a) Mashima Prioritizes Emotional Beats Over Psychological Depth

Fairy Tail thrives on big emotions:

Tears > Trauma

Forgiveness > Conflict Resolution

Redemption > Introspection

Jellal’s arc reflects this:

He’s sad.

He regrets.

He gets beaten up.

He’s forgiven

There is no room for moral contradictions, deep accountability, or meaningful conversations about memory, manipulation, and choice. His redemption becomes symbolic, not personal.

But something I will also say is, this narrative style isn’t singular to Jellal, it makes up most of the villain redemptions in Fairy Tail. So really it’s a critique that revolves around the writing in general. 

I get it — Mashima does not want the story to drag or be pulled down by keeping it from his intended resolutions, he wants it to be ‘happy’. Perhaps he doesn’t want to linger on psychological depth in fear that will change what the story is, or that it will open up the story for more criticism since certain moments are being given more weight than others.

Whatever the case is,  damage is done more by bypassing these steps between conflict and resolution so frequently — it reads narratively cheap, emotionally manipulative and in a way almost infantilising of the audience.

b) Fairy Tail Struggles With Trauma Realism

In Fairy Tail, trauma is often framed as:

“You were hurt. But look! You’re strong now. You have friends. That’s what matters.”

Like before, I get that this is the kind of story Mashima wants, emotional/high impact with low consequences, however in doing this he cheapens the narrative weight as nothing really is changing and becomes predictable/formulaic when you know any damage done will more often than not be retconned or reversed in the near future.

Lightheartedness isn’t inherently bad but it becomes willfully ignorant and tone deaf when serious matters that demanded emotional investment/resonance just don’t pay off in relation to that.

In Jellal and Erza’s case, this meant their trauma was overwritten by ‘nakama logic’ and redemption tropes. Their pain was symbolised, not explored. And in that, accountability became “unnecessary baggage” rather than a necessary conversation.

c) The Story Needed a Quick “Fix” for a Villain-Turned-Lover 

Jerza was a desired outcome — tragic love, redemption through connection, Erza’s capacity for forgiveness. To get there without alienating fans and making the conversation too complicated, Jellal was:

Possessed.

Guilt-ridden.

Redeemable via love.

Despite the narrative never fully committing to this retcon narrative, this setup allowed the story to reap the emotional rewards of a villain backstory without doing the hard narrative of reckoning with it. A satisfying shortcut — even if it made no psychological sense.

Though now that I have gone through authorial intent, now the lens will be turned on us as an audience and why his accountability is something shunned on.

Why Fandom Resists Jellal’s Accountability 

Aside from the fact the matter isn’t explicitly confirmed in the narrative, there are a few more underlying reasons as to why some parts of the fandom are uncomfortable/resist or even detest the idea of Jellal being accountable.

a) It Makes Jerza Emotionally Complicated

This goes hand and hand with the authorial intent. Mashima knows that if Jellal is held accountable — if he made real choices, even under manipulation — then Jerza becomes morally grey. 

It no longer stays a simple tale of tragic love.

Erza becomes a victim of someone she loves.

Their bond becomes a story of messy reconciliation, not just longing and forgiveness.

Fans are forced to grapple with pain, not just romantic tragedy.

This complexity makes the ship harder to idealize. Many prefer the cleaner fantasy:

“Good man with a tragic past.”

“Strong woman whose love saves him.”

“Easy emotional resolution.”

Accountability challenges that comfort, so it’s subconsciously resisted.

a) Accountability Feels Like Condemnation 

Usually in shounen spaces, fandom often struggles to separate accountability from condemnation, 

The fear is simple:

“If Jellal is responsible, he must be bad.”

“If he’s bad, it’s wrong for Erza to love him.”

To protect the ship, fans erase his agency, reframing him as a pawn and powerless. It avoids discomfort but flattens the story’s emotional depth and their characteral depth too.

c) Erza’s Image Becomes the Shield 

In truth, the fandom is more protective of Erza than Jellal, which makes sense because she is the one introduced to us alongside the heroes. The story is being told with her perspective in focus and she is a fan favourite.

But in order to maintain her image of strength and morality:

Her trauma is downplayed.

Jellal’s agency is erased.

The narrative is bent to make her forgiveness seem “strong” rather than complex.

In doing so, Jellal’s accountability isn’t ignored to protect him — it’s ignored to protect the image of Erza as untouchable.

d) So Erza isn’t questioned 

This point ties into both authorial and fandom intent, but Erza — the one Fairy Tail prides as the morally sound, just, and enemy of evil. Her character is known to do the right things, to be the one everyone should root for, not just because she is strong, but because of what her strength does for others.

In how much Fairy Tail and fandom uphold her, she has become a paradigm rather than a person. 

Erza can do no wrong.

However her history and relationship with Jellal threatens that. Because everyone knows the extent of Jellal’s crimes. The entire trajectory of his future and what revolves around him is affected by them.

Even if he was manipulated or brainwashed, tortured and driven to his wits end, he still enslaved others. He still caused trauma for years. He still worked towards a world threatening evil.

It doesn’t matter what the circumstances were that trapped him in that reality, the only part of the conversation that would matter to most is “he still did that”. 

That’s all that would be heard.

His context is discarded. Her contradictions are erased. The complexity dies so the ideal can live.

Maybe it is due to the binary nature of the narrative in most shounen, or the fact that Jellal and Erza were introduced on practically opposite sides of the spectrum and things are usually simplified for enjoyment rather than introspection, it made their reconciliation and feelings for each other seem like whiplash.

Erza’s especially.

Because we are taught — or choose to believe — Erza is the pinnacle of Fairy Tail’s strength and righteousness.

She is the moral compass. 

But then her affection for Jellal comes and disrupts that belief for others. 

It introduces contradictions. 

Because how can she love a man who did all this? How can someone who is meant to be so righteous and so perfect, be okay with a man who hurt her? Who hurt her friends? Who killed someone she knew and laughed about it?

Of course all these circumstances are tangled with complex emotional undertones and history transcending the moment. It’s not just black and white and neither are Jellal and Erza. But people can’t reconcile with that fact. To protect her image, Jellal’s agency is erased and her pain simplified. She becomes the perfect forgiver, not a complex woman healing from trauma.

In wanting to preserve the clean image of Erza, they ignore her reality and complexity. And the author benefits from that because he knows this part is probably what resonates with others the most about her. 

She’s strong, she lends strength to others, she stands up for what’s ‘right’ and is loved for it.

She is never questioned.

Because Fairy Tail leans so heavily on emotional storytelling, discussions rarely make space for subjectivity versus objectivity. Instead, we’re led by feelings — and only the ones that fit the narrative.

And before anyone tries to twist this.

Where this was all said from wasn’t anti-Erza.

It was anti-pedestal. 

✦•

Forgive me, I went on a bit of a tangent with the last point. Let me circle back to the argument this section is actually meant to tackle.

The Inherent Problem : Emotional Bypassing Dressed as Redemption 

By avoiding Jellal’s accountability, the story (and parts of the fandom) send a message:

“If you feel guilty enough, you’re redeemed.”

“If someone loves you anyway, you’re forgiven.”

But guilt alone isn’t healing. It’s just proof that it needs to begin.

Forgiveness without reckoning isn’t growth. It’s emotional bypassing.

This dynamic:

Romanticises avoidance, not recovery.

Makes Erza the caretaker of Jellal’s guilt, not an autonomous character with her own healing.

Turns their love into a transaction — “I suffered for you, now I get you.”

Frames victimhood as redemption, where suffering is the currency for absolution.

None of this is malicious. It’s just the result of emotional shorthand — simplifying pain for narrative ease.

But all in all it’s still a flawed framework.

✦•

Why Critiquing This Matters ?

This isn’t meant to be an attack on the ship or the fans, I am deeply sorry if it comes off like that.

It is about recognising that flattening characters to protect a fantasy does them a disservice. Emotional depth, accountability and mutual healing would make Jerza stronger, not weaker.

By naming these patterns, we’re not vilifying Jerza. We’re freeing it from a cycle of emotional bypassing. Jellal doesn’t need to be perfect to be loveable and Erza’s strength isn’t defined by how quickly she forgives.

Both deserve more.

Also one more thing I would like to say.

It is important to distinguish critique from attack. Holding Jellal accountable isn’t anti-Jellal. Wanting Erza to confront her pain isn’t anti-Jerza. 

It’s respect. 

Respect for their complexity, their humanity, their potential. 

Simplifying or sanitising them to preserve an ideal or fantasy hurts the both of them.

Loving a character should be wanting their whole story, not just the comfortable version of it.

✦•

By now, it’s clear that the avoidance of accountability in Jerza’s story isn’t just about poor writing choices or defensive fans. It’s part of a broader tendency — in media and fandom alike — to simplify pain for the sake of emotional comfort.

But in doing so, we lose something vital.

Jerza had all the pieces for a story of mutual healing, agency, and earned connection.

Instead, those pieces were rearranged into a cleaner, safer narrative:

Guilt becomes redemption.

Forgiveness replaces growth.

Love is framed as the ultimate fix.

But love by itself doesn’t heal wounds that are never acknowledged. This isn’t just a Fairy Tail problem. In countless stories, we’re told that love redeems, that guilt is enough, and that forgiveness happens without confrontation. That message shapes how we understand growth — in fiction, and sometimes in real life too.

This brings us to the next part of the conversation:

The dangers of believing that “love fixes everything.”

Because without emotional closure, without mutual growth, without accountability, even the deepest love struggles to become what it’s meant to be.

✦ ━━━━━━━━ ❖✶⧨✶❖ ━━━━━━━━ ✦

Part 7: The Dangers of “Love Fixes Everything”

“Love is powerful — but it can’t replace the work of healing.”

“Nor can it replace the value of needed truth.”

One of the most persistent flaws in Jerza’s narrative is the idea that Erza’s love alone should be enough to fix everything Jellal has done — to himself, to her, and to others.

Albeit it’s a comforting notion.

But a misleading one.

As mentioned before, forgiveness is often mistaken/conflated for healing in Jerza’s arc. But this isn’t just a Jerza issue — it reflects a larger narrative habit of using love as a shortcut to avoid emotional reckoning.

Let me be clear and say: Love can absolutely be part of the healing process.

But it cannot replace the work of self-awareness, accountability, and genuine change.

When a story leans on love as a shortcut to redemption, it reduces something as layered as trauma into a symbolic gesture.

Then it is not healing anymore.

But it turns into avoidance.

While we’ve discussed how this dynamic hurts Jerza specifically, this section looks at the broader storytelling flaw — the assumption that love alone can resolve deep emotional wounds.

But alongside that, we’ll also be exploring why this “love fixes everything” trope is not only narratively unsatisfying, but how it actively robbed from  Jerza’s emotional resonance — starting with a fundamental truth:

Affection does not erase affliction.

The Problem with “Love Fixes Everything”

When love is portrayed as a magic cure-all, it creates a damaging — and deeply limiting — narrative.

‘Pain doesn’t need to be addressed. It only needs to be endured’

‘Accountability is unnecessary. Love will absolve everything.’

‘The past doesn’t require reckoning. It can simply be erased through affection.’

This isn’t singular to Jerza at all, it’s consistent throughout the series as Fairy Tail hinges on the feel good rather than focus on what can be worked out. It affects not just ships (And yes in the big 4 too) but also just character dynamics and interactions in general. 

But in Jerza’s case specifically? This kind of romantic idealism reduced them to a shallow fantasy.

Erza’s capacity to forgive is mistaken for resolution.

Jellal’s guilt is portrayed as atonement in itself.

Even though what is happening between them isn’t a unique occurrence, because of the characters they are and the extremes they represent, the dichotomy is amplified to the point that this begins to overshadow all the other parts of their bond since this is the bit that is the loudest and most narratively emphasised.

But that’s the thing:

Real love doesn’t erase the past.

Real love confronts it.

Because if it doesn’t? It’s a problem building up, waiting to explode all over when limits are reached.

For any relationship to feel emotionally satisfying, it needs to be grounded in clarity, mutual understanding, and active growth.

Not passive longing.

Nor bypassed trauma.

And these points are imperative for Jerza just based on how much weight they hold between  each other. 

I’m not saying love can’t be transformative.

It well can be and it can be a beautiful experience in healing.

But it cannot replace the actual ground work of healing.

And when a story leans on “love fixes everything” as it’s only answer, it robs characters — and the audience too — of the far more meaningful journey of seeing love survive the confrontation with pain, not avoid it.

Mutual Growth Is Non-Negotiable

A relationship that is built on one-sided emotional labor is not growth — it’s imbalance.

Don’t get me wrong, Erza’s forgiveness is powerful, but it cannot carry the weight of both their traumas. Jellal must also take responsibility for his actions — not just as a victim of manipulation, but as someone who made choices, however flawed, in his own right.

If Jerza’s dynamic continues to hinge on the idea that Erza’s love alone redeems Jellal, then:

Jellal remains a passive recipient of grace.

Erza becomes emotionally overburdened (even if the story is not showing it)

Both characters are trapped, unable to evolve.

Mutual growth requires both of them to face the past — not gloss over it. Their shared history of pain should be the foundation of their healing, not an obstacle to be ignored or avoided.

Only through that reckoning can their bond transform from one of guilt and emotional caretaking into a true partnership.

Missing Emotional Closure 

Throughout their interactions, Erza is denied the opportunity to fully process her pain. She never gets to confront Jellal with the simplest, most human truth: “You hurt me.”

Even if she would bring up his sins, it would never be in relation to herself. But we’ve already inferred the reasons as to why she isn’t given this space in the previous sections of the post. The most prominent being : Jellal’s own writing absolves him of taking any responsibility regardless of the history.

And of course because of that, she is being confined to the role of the forgiver — endlessly offering grace, but never being allowed to express her own hurt, anger, or grief.

Not because Jellal isn’t allowing her to.

It’s because the story stripped that from the both of them.

And in doing so, her forgiveness becomes a performance of strength, rather than a product of genuine closure.

This isn’t justice.

Not to him.

Not to her.

Not to what’s between them.

It’s emotional limbo: where both her and Jellal are being indefinitely suspended.

In her case, Erza is being burdened with forgiveness, yet denied space for healing.

Expected to forgive because that’s who she is, but prohibited to process.

How does that make sense? How is that fair?

And this is thing that is so breaking about Jellal’s lack of accountability:

Without it, her catharsis becomes impossible — because there’s no one to confront, no space to rage, no emotional reckoning to meet her where she stands.

Jellal is the constant figure appearing in her pain, not by his own circumstances, but she’s not even being allowed to point a finger at him and tell her truth. Irrelevant if he was manipulated, brainwashed or what is in between — her mind will remember what she associated with him even if she doesn’t want to, and until she gets it off her chest, she won’t get the release she needs.

And that’s what’s so damaging about her being the perpetual forgiver.

Because forgiveness without acknowledgement of harm would inevitably trap her in emotional labor — always giving, never receiving.

But of course.

It’s not just her being denied the closure.

Like I said before: Jellal is denied his closure too.

He is suspended in that emotional limbo just as much as her.

When his redemption hinges entirely on Erza’s love, he’s never allowed to answer the questions that haunt him:

Why did I fall? What do I need to actually do to make it right? What am I even apologising for?

He never gets the satisfaction of self understanding.

No real answers.

No conclusion to the guilt that literally defines him.

Only vague absolution through love — a hollow victory that leaves him adrift.

Neither of them gets what they need.

Erza is silenced in her pain.

Jellal is stranded in his guilt.

Their emotional closure shouldn’t have been love alone.

It should have been accountability, understanding, and mutual healing.

Because at the end of all this, love would have come through anyway.

That’s why Erza should have been allowed to scream.

Jellal should have been allowed to reflect.

They should have been allowed to speak.

They should be allowed to properly heal.

As Jerza deserves nothing less for all they’ve been through.

✦•

I think as we end this section, the takeaway is clear:

That love cannot fix what has not been faced.

Jerza’s true potential was never about erasing their past — it was about confronting it, together.

For their relationship to conclude it’s emotional weight, Jellal must be allowed to take responsibility for his actions.

Equally, Erza must be given the space to fully process her own pain.

Love should follow accountability.

Not replace it.

Only then can their story move from a cycle of endurance and symbolic forgiveness to one of genuine and mutual healing.

However, with all that we have focused on about what is taken away from the story of Jellal not being accountable, let’s flip the question on it’s head and look through another lens.

What if Jellal was never meant to be accountable? 

Not as a flaw in writing, but by design.

What does it mean for his character, for Erza, and for Jerza as a whole, if the story truly sees him as nothing more than a pawn, forever excused by victimhood?

In Part 8, we’ll examine this possibility — not to justify it, but to understand its implications, and why it ultimately undermines both characters and the emotional core of their relationship.

✦ Continue on to Part V: (Ending of Section II) → Possibility, Reflection & The Path Not Taken

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?

❖ ━━━━━━━━ ✦⚖︎⚔︎⚚⨂✿❖ ━━━━━━━━ ✦

✦ End of Section I – Foundations & Fallout

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

Undefined Sin, Hollow Repentance 

One of the most significant flaws in Jellal’s arc — and by extension Jerza — is the lack of true accountability for what happened at the Tower of Heaven. While it acknowledged that Jellal was manipulated, the story fails to give him meaningful ownership of his choices.

Instead of presenting a clear answer, the narrative constantly shifts:

Was he brainwashed? Was he manipulated entirely? Was he a mindless puppet? Or was his descent inevitable? 

These contradictions muddy one of the most crucial turning points in his life. Ambiguity can be an interesting narrative device, but when the story itself refuses to define what went wrong, it can be harmful — preventing any meaningful amends.

This is the fundamental problem: Jellal’s “sin” is never clearly defined.

Is it the destruction caused by the Tower of Heaven? His actions under Ultear’s influence? Or is it simply the vague trauma of his past? There is no clear narrative commitment. And because of this, his repentance becomes a symbolic gesture rather than a substantial reckoning.

Atonement without a named wrongdoing is hollow.

It’s difficult — if not impossible — to atone for a sin the story itself refuses to name.

As a result, Jellal’s arc often feels like a repetitive motif of guilt: cycling through self-punishment without catharsis. His post-Tower story strives for redemption, but lacks the defining factor that would make it solid: accountability.

Without knowing what to be better for, how is Jellal meant to know how to be better?

If the expectation is that he should have “resisted manipulation,” that’s an unfair critique — it places blame on his victimhood rather than his choices.

Yet the narrative never fully absolves him either.

Jellal himself clings to the idea of redemption, while the reactions of those around him — and his own guilt — suggest some level of personal responsibility.

This tension is never solved.

I want to say though, the problem isn’t that Jellal became a villain under tragic and unjust circumstances — that part is understandable, even human in its flaw. 

But it lies in the fact that the story fears letting him own that descent — as if doing so would stain him irreparably.

But here’s the thing:

If Jellal had been allowed to confront and accept that he did make choices — no matter how tragic, twisted or influenced they were — his redemption would carry real weight. His journey wouldn’t be reduced to passive guilt or an endless loop of forgiveness, but rather would transform into a path of active self understanding and meaningful healing.

His behaviours —  his struggles with guilt, his reluctance to join Fairy Tail, his leadership of Crime Sorcière — would all feel more valid, more resonant, if framed through the lens of someone fighting to reclaim his agency after choosing wrong.

Though if there is still doubt as to why Jellal’s redemption isn’t truly valid and why the narrative is hurting him, I continue explaining this in the next subsections of part 1.

Redemption Without Ownership Falls Flat 

To understand why his redemption arc struggles to resonate, we need to examine what true redemption demands — and what’s missing in Jellal’s case.

The word ‘redemption’ by meaning, refers to being saved from afflicted error, sin or evil. But evil or sin here does not exist as a passive entity — it implies an active choice. Hence, redemption is the absolution of evil born from personal choice, no matter the extent.

That being said, since redemption means to amend for a sin committed by oneself, it’s self-explanatory what a redemption arc is meant to be:

An arc to absolve of the evil committed from one’s person.

An active, accountable decision.

It’s the very defining point of the arc.

The defining point of the act.

So, if a redemption arc is missing this very core — missing ownership and accountability — it inevitably lacks substance.

This is precisely the narrative issue with Jellal.

His story currently positions him as someone who was manipulated, yet still expects his effort to redeem others (e.g. recruiting Oración Seis) to be taken seriously.

This disconnect not only weakens his arc, but also feels tone-deaf.

Had the story depicted him taking responsibility for his own past, these actions would resonate as genuine attempts to atone. His leadership wouldn’t feel hypocritical — it would be rooted in self-awareness and personal growth.

Jellal’s desire to change would no longer be merely symbolic, but practical — based on an understanding of what he did wrong, and why it matters.

The Lost Potential of Jellal’s Redemption Arc 

As it stands, the current narrative of Jellal’s redemption stifles his emotional growth, leaving you to wonder just how much potential was lost in the process.

By sidestepping accountability, the story denies both Jellal—and the audience—a more complex and rewarding arc. Had he been given the space to truly reckon with his past—through honest self-reflection, meaningful conversation with Erza, or confronting his choices with others—his growth would feel earned rather than assumed.

This lack of reckoning also undermines his leadership within Crime Sorcière. A Jellal who openly admits his failures would be far more compelling as a guide for others seeking redemption, creating a powerful parallel between his journey and theirs. Instead, we’re left with a passive redemption arc: forgiveness comes easily, but self-realisation never fully lands.

That said, this issue isn’t unique to Jellal. It reflects a broader flaw in Fairy Tail’s treatment of redemption arcs—where instead of showing the emotional journey and inner transformation, we’re given a few symbolic phrases, repeated motifs, maybe some tears… and are told they’ve changed.

Healing Requires Accountability 

At its heart, both Jellal’s future and the essence of Jerza are meant to embody healing — not just forgiveness, but true emotional restoration. Yet the story itself keeps Jellal from fully committing to that path.

Healing is impossible without self-awareness. Jellal cannot truly heal if he doesn’t understand what he is healing from. A redemption built solely on external forgiveness — being loved by Erza, being pities or excused by allies — traps him in a stagnant loop. It soothes the surface, but leaves the root untouched.

To break free, Jellal would need to confront the reality that his actions, however manipulated, inflicted real harm. Owning that does not erase his suffering — it gives it purpose. Only through accountability can he process his guilt and move forward in a way that feels meaningful, both to himself and the audience.

On that note, I’ve always questioned the need to assign binary roles to people—as either villains or victims. You can be both and to be frank—most people are. People are dimensional, no choice is flat or usually existing due to a sole alignment. Just because you are hurt does not mean you can’t hurt others, and just because you have hurt others does not mean you can’t be hurting yourself. Usually one is the product of the other, they don’t exist isolatedly.

Why must one part of the narrative be erased for the other to be considered valid? They are not contradictory, they are complimentary.

Whilst it is an unfavorable narrative, to heal yourself from these wounds and tendencies and many other underlying issues, it’s about recognising the full picture:

‘That because I hurt, I hurt others.’ Or ‘because others are hurting, it does not mean that my pain doesn’t exist’. 

Healing is not about boxing someone into a ‘villain or victim’ role, it’s about understanding what happened— understanding the truth — so you can grow from it.

But Jellal is suspended from that.

Had the narrative allowed him this reckoning, his healing arc would’ve carried emotional weight. Instead of circling the same passive guilt, we would see a journey of active self-repair — one that mirrors the very themes Jerza is meant to stand for: growth, endurance, and the hard, unglamorous work of healing.

What Accountability Would Change (Accountability ≠ Condemnation)

I will be clear so all I’ve said so far isn’t misconstrued: 

I'm not saying that Jellal should be condemned. 

I am not advocating for him to suffer further or spiral deeper into self flagellation. 

I am saying he should’ve been allowed to own his actions.

Even if he was manipulated, he still made choices. 

And those choices would have been the foundation of:

A more powerful redemption arc, grounded in growth, not just guilt 

A more complex portrayal of trauma, where his pain doesn’t erase his responsibility 

A clearer emotional journey for Erza, where her forgiveness isn’t blind—it’s conscious, earned and layered. (Will go more into this in Part 2 and onwards)

A more believable relationship, built not on romantic absolution, but emotional truth. (Will go into this more further in the post)

Really Jellal didn’t need to be punished to the extent he has been, because what is punishment meant to mean when there is no understanding? 

It is not noble, it is martyrdom. It is narrative sadism.

He did not need pain. 

He needed clarity.

✦✦✦⚖︎✦✦✦

Though much of this discussion has centered on Jellal, it's important to return to what was stated at the very beginning: this conversation is just as much about Erza. Her emotional agency, her catharsis, and her rightful space to heal are all directly impacted by how the narrative handles — or avoids — Jellal’s accountability.

Jellal’s incomplete redemption isn’t an isolated flaw. His lack of accountability creates ripple effects that directly shape Erza’s arc. What should have been a story of shared healing becomes imbalanced, shifting her from an equal partner to an emotional caretaker.

Jerza was never meant to be a story of one-sided redemption. Both characters carry deep wounds from their past, and their relationship holds the potential for mutual restoration. But healing demands truth. Without it, Erza’s forgiveness risks becoming hollow, her strength misrepresented, and their bond reduced to mere symbolism.

In short, the narrative’s refusal to let Jellal fully own his sins doesn’t just weaken his arc — it actively diminishes hers.

This is where we turn our focus next.

Exploring how Jellal’s lack of accountability undermines Erza’s emotional agency, deprives her of catharsis and disrupts the integrity of Jerza’s bond.

✦ ━━━━━━━━ ❖ ✦⚔︎✧ ❖ ━━━━━━━━ ✦

Part 2: How The Lack of His Accountability Hurts Erza Too 

“This isn’t just about Jellal — it’s about what this avoidance does to Erza as well.”

The choice to take away Jellal’s accountability from his crimes may seem beneficial to his relationship and history with Erza on the surface but it actually creates many deeper underlying issues, not just for him but also for her, which I’ll explain below in detail.

First off let’s begin with the most obvious one:

Denying Erza’s Emotional Agency 

Erza is known for her strength — not just physical, but emotional. Her resilience, her independence, her capacity to endure have always been central to who she is. But when it comes to Jellal, the narrative quietly strips her of that very agency.

I’ll go into why I say this.

Jellal’s lack of accountability doesn’t just limit his own arc — it confines Erza’s too. Without him ever fully naming or owning what he did, Erza is forced into a passive emotional role. She is left to shoulder the burden of forgiveness without the space to confront, process or speak of her pain.

Some people may argue that is not the case as she brings up his sins in regards to how he hurt others — the most notable being the death of Simon — however this is not about her. It’s always about others before herself.

Others were wronged, but she was wronged too no matter what the specifics are of what happened.

Yet this is never addressed.

The story offers her no moment of reckoning. No space to breakdown (and I do not mean in private).

Erza is expected to forgive without clarity, to move forward without truth — as though emotional restraint is a sign of strength and boundless forgiveness is an honour.

But strength is not silence.

And forgiveness without voice is not healing.

By never letting Erza express the full scope of what Jellal’s actions meant to her, the narrative reduces her emotional journey to quiet endurance. She becomes a vessel for someone else’s redemption — not an emotionally autonomous person, but an emotional caretaker.

She forgives but never processes.

She endures but never speaks.

Not on her behalf.

Not on her healing.

That is not resilience.

That is erasure.

Shifting the Burden of Healing onto Erza 

When the story refuses to hold Jellal accountable, it quietly shifts the weight of his healing onto Erza’s forgiveness. Even if unintentional, the unspoken implication becomes clear:

“If Erza forgives him, he will heal.”

But healing isn’t something one person can give to another through affection alone.

And yet, this is the dynamic the narrative creates — turning Erza’s love into a tool, a means of fixing Jellal, rather than allowing their bond to be a shared emotional journey.

This imbalance diminishes the both of them.

For Jellal, it reduces redemption to external validation — a point I have argued before — that makes it seem being forgiven is the same as growing. 

In Erza’s case, it forces her into a role where her love becomes transactional: a balm for his guilt, a stepping stone for his recovery, while her own pain remains untouched.

It paints a relationship where Erza is expected to carry his emotional weight, to give endlessly, while receiving none of the emotional honesty or reckoning she deserves in return.

This then isn’t a story of mutual healing.

It’s a cycle — where Erza’s strength is mistaken for infinite emotional labour.

And that dynamic is not only unhealthy — it contradicts the very heart of what Jerza could have been.

Forgiveness Without Accountability is Performative

Forgiveness without accountability isn’t healing — it’s performance.

I know this is a rather loaded statement, but let me explain myself and why I align myself with this view.

When Erza forgives Jellal without him ever truly naming his wrongdoings, her forgiveness becomes symbolic rather than sincere. It reads less like a personal act of closure and more like a narrative shortcut — a gesture meant to resolve tension without ever engaging with it.

True forgiveness isn’t passive.

It is built on recognition of harm, the courage to confront it, and a mutual understanding of what needs to change. Without those elements, forgiveness floats — untethered from emotional truth, detached from consequence.

This is the problem at the heart of Jerza’s dynamic.

Erza forgives, but nothing changes. Jellal doesn’t grow. 

The pain isn’t processed. The pain isn’t discussed.

Their relationship stalls because it cannot evolve without that essential reckoning.

In current form, Jellal’s redemption remains surface-level, and Erza’s forgiveness lacks emotional depth — not because she is weak, but because the narrative refuses to give her the full story she deserves to respond to.

Of course some may argue that the act isn’t performative/lacking depth, but rather born from mercy. Because yes you can forgive someone even if they don’t ask for it or give you closure the way you deserve/need. 

The act is mature, which I will agree to a degree. But when mercy becomes a blockage to emotional growth and does not end with completion but confusion, it reads more like an attempt to close the wound prematurely rather than closing it with intention.

Which is what it seems like in Erza’s case.

She forgives and she says is past it, but nothing has been processed. Nothing has been understood or brought to conclusion.

Maybe this is due to the fact she may not be ready to face that which she has spent so long burying, which is fully understandable, but then what does that mean for her internally? Has she truly gotten over, or is she hoping the longer she doesn’t speak about it, the quicker she can forget the pain and hope this dark chapter stays closed once and for all?

Also, the thing with choosing mercy over confrontation means you have already accepted things as they are—you have accepted this as the truth so there is no need to reach for the one that actually defined reality. 

It is closure in a way, but it’s one sided. 

Imbalanced. 

Erza may not want the truth, or be ready for it, but it will do more good for her and Jellal rather than avoidance.

Because forgiveness cannot mean anything when it is given in silence. It cannot mean anything when it is born from suppression.

It has to come with truth. It has to come with understanding.

Erza as a “Moral Guide” — But Never a Survivor

Within the story, Erza is often framed as Jellal’s moral compass — the one who reminds him of right and wrong, who urges him to atone, who pulls him back towards the light. But this role, whilst noble on the surface, comes at a quiet and personal cost.

Erza guides him. She forgives him. She believes in his potential for redemption.

But the story never gives her the same space to confront what his actions did to her.

Her pain — the betrayal, the loss, the scars left behind — is rarely voiced.

It remains implied, unspoken, left for the audience to fill in.

Even more so the narrative never allows her to acknowledge that Jellal too, was a victim. That his descent wasn’t born of malice alone, but manipulation and vulnerability. She feels guilt for not being there in time, but that is not the same as seeing how things turned the way they did.

This omission robs their dynamic of nuance.

It flattens Erza’s role into that of a caretaker — the strong one, the guide, the giver — while her own wounds stay unexplored.

She is never given the space to ask herself:

What does my forgiveness mean for me? What does it cost?

She is just expected to have mercy because that’s what her name demands. Righteousness and nobility she may not even understand is at the extent of herself. Because it’s not about her, but what she is meant to represent.

This imbalance stifles Erza’s emotional arc.

Rather than being portrayed as a survivor working through her own trauma, she becomes a facilitator for Jellal’s redemption — giving endlessly, but receiving no emotional clarity in return.

In reducing her to a moral guide, the story forgets that Erza is not just a symbol of strength. 

She is a person who was hurt. A survivor whose story deserves to be told on her own terms, not suppressed for another’s to progress.

Without Accountability, Erza is Robbed of Catharsis 

When the story frames Jellal as a pure victim, Erza is left with no one to confront. No one to rage at. No space to process her pain. Instead of healing she suppresses. Instead of reckoning, she endures.

But this is not Jellal’s fault as a character.

This is a failing of the narrative itself  — a refusal to let the story follow through on the emotional weight it created.

By shielding Jellal from accountability, the writing inadvertently denies Erza the emotional catharsis her arc demands. She is never given the chance to express the full spectrum of her emotions  — to cry, to yell, to grieve, to forgive on her own terms. 

The moments where she should have been allowed to reclaim her voice are instead softened, skipped or silenced.

But in the same breath, injecting in Erza’s emotional process does not actually do anything for Jellal’s redemption arc or their story, because the very narrative denies her that right to begin with.

Meaning:

Her pain cannot be tethered to his redemption if his arc erases responsibility for it. 

You can’t heal what isn’t named. You can’t accuse or forgive what has already been excused.

Giving Jellal accountability, even partially, would not diminish him.

It would give Erza someone to speak to, to push against, to find her own closure with.

It would let her forgiveness be an active choice, not a quiet inevitability.

Because as of now the story treats Erza’s strength as silent endurance. 

But real strength is found in voicing pain, not burying it.

This wouldn’t make her weaker. It would make her human. 

It would enrich her arc, giving depth to her strength  — not reducing it, but redefining it as something felt, not just performed.

In short:

Giving Jellal accountability allows Erza to speak. To rebuild. To become stronger  — not colder.

And that is what the story has never allowed her to do.

✦✦✦ ⚔︎ ✦✦✦

I guess the takeaway I am trying to give from this section is that Jerza’s imbalance is not about Jellal’s villainy nor Erza being weak. 

It’s about the failure of the narrative to let them face it.

I think it’s clear now by this section that accountability doesn’t actually divide Jerza — but it’s the bridge to mutual growth. 

By allowing Jellal to own his actions, Erza’s voice is given back and their bond can evolve from one of imbalance to understanding, resolution and genuine partnership. 

Because then they will be able to truly meet each other instead of having to keep guessing in the dark.

✦•

So over the course of Part 2, we’ve explored how Jellal’s missing accountability isn’t just his flaw to bear — it has a direct and damaging impact on Erza’s emotional journey as well.

By refusing to let Jellal truly own his actions, the narrative denies Erza the space to process, confront and heal from her own wounds. What could have been a story of shared healing becomes a lopsided dynamic, where Erza’s role is reduced to caretaker, her forgiveness becomes performative, and her pain remains unheard.

Let me reiterate once again, this isn’t a failing of Erza as a character — it’s a failing of the writing, which consistently sidelines her emotional autonomy in service of a redemption arc that never quite delivers.

True and complete healing requires accountability on both sides.

Until Jellal is allowed to face his sins with honesty, Erza’s journey will remain incomplete.

Having now covered how the lack of accountability weakens both Jellal and Erza’s arcs, we bring the focus back onto Jellal and move onto the next piece of the puzzle:

The Problem with “Jellal as a Victim”.

✦ Continue on to Part II: → Victimhood, Idealization & Jerza’s Fracture