User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail 536: The Flame of the Dragon's Roar, Review/@comment-4933386-20170520145118/@comment-7418318-20170522084903

I think it's not knowing how it's going to end and whether someone might die that made the Acno bit more interesting... or at least that's part of it.

We all knew for sure that Natsu isn't going to die to Zeref (we already had two death fake-outs this arc for Natsu... ) and Zeref survived being freakin' disintegrated. No way those two won't survive the battle.

But between Jellal, Anna and the Blue Pegasus mages there were plenty of potential death candidates present, especially Anna (F-Lucy vibes anyone? Also mentors are prime candidates to die off in shounen series anyway.). And it ended in quite the surprise. Yeah many of us predicted that Anna would sacrifice herself in some way or the other, but Ichiya? We might have been joking about Ichiya taking down Acnologia, but who seriously believed it would happen? Certainly not me.