User blog comment:IamJakuhoRaikoben/Chapter 295: Sting and Lector, Review./@comment-5113042-20120817221059/@comment-2106167-20120817223700

Friendsip is a great thing which certainly deserves its worthy place in manga. Point is, friendship isn't some sort of power up you can use to best opponents out of your league. You might want to protect your friends and stuff like it is right to, but this shouldn't prevent you from being trashed by a villain way more powerful than you. If you and the friends you want to protect joined forces and maybe resolved to use brains instead of braws, then I could understand it. But if yelling out "Nakama" loudly grants you victory through the use of rays of light and similar stuff, then something's wrong with the author's idea of "Friendship in the manga".

It's not "for almost every single battle". We'd like him to lose a SINGLE, GODDAMN BATTLE, ONCE. You can't have a character always emerge victorious if such character spends its time fighting. If Natsu kept losing all the battles he underwent, then we'd be probably cheering him up. However, since that's not the case, this could be the occasion for a main character to receive some healthy beating.