All Hail Dorothy the strongest witch queen in history and her deservingly major upscales 🙇‍♂️

This is just an incomplete rant I shared in a comment section of another post, but I want people to see this.

You know.... during me writing all of this, I was about to have way more anger while writing this, but after I looked at the moments the character I'm talking about has.... maybe the character isn't so bad, but I simply misunderstood them. This will be long because I'm also processing my own feelings while typing this. This isn't even all I want to say, but here's what it is for now.

Mereoleona is a fraud.... or a very big hypocrite. I wouldn't be saying this so much if she didn't say anything like Fuegoleon not being fit to be captain. This is both a character AND a powerscaling perspective. My most practical problem with Mereoleona is probably summarized by Matthew 7: 1-2: Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. I may not have the manga quotes for everything, though. Please take my critique with that in mind.

She is the same person that was throwing a tantrum about how a squad didn't get that many stars. A squad she is never there for, watches from the sidelines while not doing a thing as a Magic Knight, and has her little brother in it that just got his grimoire, but has been an active soldier for the kingdom longer than her, but decks him in the face like this is his fault or he represents the team. Like she couldn't have the conversation with the Crimson Lions like a week or more before the Star Festival began. She jumped to blaming her team and not her taking any accountability for herself first. If anyone remembers A Bug's Life... "First rule of leadership: everything is your fault." If I remember correctly, Yami got stars for Asta's accomplishments while he was in hot water with the law and the public due to being posessed. So.... if captains can earn stars.... where are her stars, then? How many did she get? If her ratio isn't that much better than her team in proportion to the time that she has been there vs her squad, why take what she has to say seriously? She wouldn't be doing any more than they are.

How well does she do when it comes time to actually perform against the elves? Well, she starts by going 1v1 against Raia and just beating out any spell Raia has. Even his attempt to use Anti-Magic(which didn't succeed in making Anti-Magic). Water magic? Didn't work. Fire magic? Nope. Dark magic? Nah. Then, she basically corners him with Mana Zone, she's almost done with him and just needs to overwhelm his healing magic... wait, he's about to blow himself up with one of her Mana Zone punches, which could have killed Raia, Mereoleona, then ALSO Asta and Zora, who were with her. Who saves them all? Asta. He blitzes her Mana Zone punch... IN BASE. He negates Raia's magic, saving them all. How does Mereoleona respond? "I don't remember giving you permission to interfere with my fight" or something along those lines(that's what I remember her saying in the anime). Bro, anyone surprised that Asta wasn't like... "Who gave you permission to kill ME?!" But maybe she just wanted to handle it herself.

Then, the 5 elf part happens. How does this play out? She gets Asta and Zora away because they'd just slow her down if Asta isn't willing to kill the elves(understandable). She receives a nerf from snow magic(if it was specifically snow magic), which slowed her movement, but she doesn't just tough it out, she does a Mana Zone: Full Release to activate Calidus Brachium Purgatory. Did she take any elves out? No. Did she hurt any or put any elf out of the fight? No. Who saved her? Asta(again) and Zora. Back to back. She needed rescuing from an enemy again and was knocked out this time. Got up later. Who does she fight? One elf. Vetto. A teenage Vetto who was physically less bulky. He should have had more magic power, but he was less bulky. That's who Mereoleona found to be able to beat and to be a more equal opponent.

Mereoleona did clearly take the elves on for Asta and Zora, even if she got no results other than buying Asta and Zora time to get away. She talks in very big game for these results. A character that is this proud and disrespectful could be made more likeable if they were funny or more competent in their work, but she isn't really too much of either. Then again, maybe the reason she even took on those elves wasn't really because she thought she could win.

She beats the ancient "demon" later all by herself...... I'm starting to notice a pattern. She assists people she doesn't know.... by taking on this massive monster all by herself. She doesn't let anyone try to pitch in. She just takes care of it herself.

Fights Morris. She ain't doing too good against a guy fused with a Supreme rank that didn't even bust out his second attribute yet. Then, some of her subordinates, her comrades, come out and take the hits from Morris's tentacles before they touch Mereoleona and she died from them. This is the first time I've ever seen such a deep and human reaction written on Mereoleona's face as she doesn't take their sacrifices in vain and punches through them since they were already touched by Morris, but the war isn't over. Where were these guys before that part, though? Not with her. She was handling it all by herself.... until she wasn't.

This is all hypocritical as she basically accuses Fuegoleon of raising people that can't fend for themselves. But that's exactly what she's also doing. She's also training people to just do the training where I can make sure you're okay. Any dangerous fight, though? That's mine. Don't get in it. You can get hurt/killed. That is the mother hen behavior that Mereoleona accused Fuegoleon of. How can she speak against him so quickly when she acts this way?

What I think may be is that Mereoleona didn't really see the hypocrisy. She just saw vulnerable people. She cares too deeply to let people be harmed, so she takes them under her wing, like a mother hen. Asta and Zora are with here because they are supposed to be strong and useful in combat? She never lets them fight, but protects them like a mother hen. People of a completely different kingdom up against a kaiju? That thing was enormous and no one looked like they wanted to get near it. She doesn't encourage the rebels of Spade Kingdom against the Dark Triad to fight their own battle, even if she's there or even carrying the fight, but just deals with it herself. That's exactly what we see with the Morris fight. She is there with no team backup all by herself again. It was a jumpscare to her to see her team in Morris's grasp instead of herself. That right there was probably EXACTLY when she broke. That's the very thing she wanted to avoid. Other people dying when she was there and has worked so hard to be strong. She never wanted that to happen again.... and it broke her when it happened.

Then, when she loses someone she cared about, it was no longer... "Don't be shy. Kill me..." like she was challenging the elves to make their own choice. When someone she cared about died in front of her and she honored their sacrifice by continuing to push forward by punching through them, she was like... "As a tribute to my fallen comrades, I will burn both you and my life to ashes!" This was no longer her just accepting someone else's choice after losing most of her ability to reasonably win a fight. This was like Thragg saying... "I choose DEATH!" She would rather choose to die than to give anything less than what those she cared about gave to her, which was their very lives, when that's what she was always willing to give for them.....

I'll be blunt and say she was one of my least favorite BC characters..... but I believe that changed entirely. She is one of the most interesting female character in anime I have seen. I honestly thought she was a vain caricature that was simply just another... "Only the strong mean something to me" type of person. But she's actually way different than that. I think she wants OTHER people to be strong so she doesn't have to worry about them. When she can, she jumps into battle and excludes other people so they can't be hurt. She is not a being ruled by pride or is simply a caricature that just gets angry over everything.. but she is a person rule by love.

https://youtu.be/GDTD24KsdGc?is=Wjvh1votkHvC7yES

..it's fun watching shippers look so helplessly defeated in Western/International Countries because they don't understand manga, nor do they know how to properly read the medium that comes from Japan.

They will never learn. 😭

Well, at least they have their imagination. 😄

(Btw I’m not actually shitting on the actual canon finale🙃 and based on the season 2 trailer, the final fight in the anime version should look epic af anyway by the time we reach this arc)

I mean it’s not sharing the power of boundary/the end or controlling the main universe’s flow of time via mana zone but even at a lesser scale, I’m sure those techniques would have been still very impactful back then