User blog comment:IamJakuhoRaikoben/Chapter 418: Challenger, Review./@comment-24546844-20150202172212

This chapter was great. Everyone went their way and that's cool. As I said before, it was a chance for Mashima to explore characters individually. If you called Lucy working as a reporter/editor congratualations. I hope this arc will be about Lucy and Natsu travelling the world trying to gather everyone back. If you look that panel closelly you'll notice that Gray was near Juvia (well, of course, but was it wilingly or did she just stalked him around?), and looks like Levy wasn't with with Gajeel... Is she with Raijin Shun? Lucy put them together for some reason. Also the Strauss siblings are not together nor is Elfman with Evergreen. And no sign of Makarov on the board, at least to me.

So none of the main guilds are participating in the GMG huh? Saberthoot has a reason, they're no longer interested in showing their power to everyone like how Jienma wanted, and I guess Lamia Scale didn't feel the need to enter as their main rivals, Saberthoot and FT, woudn't be there either. Or Mashima just didn't want to introduce their changes early.

Natsu is the challenger? I sort of thought so when i saw the GMG happening, he looks damn cool but it seems he got even more OP, like Gildarts OP. I can't say I liked that much. Burning everything like that, maybe Mashima exagerated a bit. I'm afraid his level will be too far above from the rest of the cast as I don't think Hiro is that good in the power balancing thing. But we can't say anything for now, let's see how he does against the first pos-timeskip boss.

All in all that was a great way to return, hope Mashima takes some time working around the disbanded guild issue instead of rushing the plot. "The flames's mensage", that sort of fit my "put the guild together theory". Anyway, can't wait for the next chapter.