I agree with pretty much everything you've said. For me, even though I think the quality fell hard after chapter 280 with King's power-up, the chapters between that and 300 were still pretty enjoyable. Not only we still had the whole Camelot battle against the Masters and Zeldris to look forward, but also DK Mel, an element that kept us really interested up until that point. I don't know if I was the only one, but I thought that Nakaba giving the Sins such ridiculous powers ups would serve for a really great final struggle against their Captain possessed by the DK and not being him one-sidedly beating the crap out of them. I thought that maybe that was the reason. You can imagine my disappointment the moment Ban started to fight evenly with him alone. Even at that point, I still had my hopes up, I was thinking to myself: "Well, maybe the DK is holding back or is still unused to his new vessel. Once he fights seriously, everyone will start sweating blood" but sadly that moment never came. In fact, the moment Emo Mel came and elbowed the DK's face to the ground, I knew that the chances of that battle being a great one to be remembered were zero.
Elizabeth, the deuteragonist of this series and the one that should have been more involved in all of this (since she was one of the main reasons for this war to happen in the first place) did absolutely nothing besides being a cheerleader (this also happened with the second battle against the DK, to add more salt into the injury). She could have tried the Grace absorption or done something else besides cheering, everything would have been fine. The AA did nothing either, despite being among the strongest characters of the series and despite the fact that much weaker characters like Diane were doing something. The DK's motives (besides destruction just for the sake of it) were never really fleshed out and there was great potential here for the DK to have had great motivations and for him to have been a great villain. For example, Nakaba could have had the DK being a humble, flexible and good ruler at first but at some point, something would have happened to him which made him realize that ruling like that won't give him any good result, resulting in his reign to be formed in the base of fear and overwhelming power. We could have had a great clash of ideologies between him and his son about that too.
No matter how you look at it, the amount of potential wasted here is enormous. This battle done right could have very well been one of the best to come out in shonen and a classic that could have been remembered for ages. I don't really know what happened to Nakaba with that massive drop in writing quality, but this ended up as a complete mess and it's such a shame.
Yeah, I'm not sure how much I can add to that. The thing is I actually liked the concept behind King's power up, his versatility and flexibility in his magic manipulation felt very well developed. It was all very consistent with how King's powers were previously used. He always had a weakness in lack of flexibility but really overcame it. I wasn't really too upset about him overpowering Mael, since Mael couldn't really control his own powers much anywyays. Due to PL logic i guess it would've been good if he had helped Diane get involved so the power levels were slightly less out of whack, like by launching mael towards the ground so she can join the fight. I had an idea earlier on that Diane probably should have gotten her own power up against Mael as well so that the two of them were more equal and had relevance. It could have been dolor dance related and maybe also foresight related like Dolor's abilities.
Yeah, I thought so too, that the seeming asspulls like with King were a needed step to set up for the big epic final battle. I assumed that Nakaba was setting up for later and making sure Demon King level Meliodas was defeatable by the Sins, and to an extent he was, but he sorta dropped all tension and made his own setup moot as far as i can tell. And yeah i was pretty sad with the dk battle the moment ban showed up too and rekt him.
I would have been fine with it if she had not used Graces or if she had. Nakaba's idea of making her AA tier or beyond was not bad in and of itself, and it would've worked if she'd just consistently fought at AA level in the DK Meliodas battle. She of all people had more business being a central antagonist to Meliodas than Ban did. It's understandable if her power set makes her unsuited for melee, but in that case, she should've still been one of the key players in defeating DK Meliodas. Negating Hellblaze to protect Ban, using Ark like she did against DK-Zeldris, making barriers, there is a lot of stuff she could've done. The Elizabeth that fought Hendrickson was much more in line with what should be expected from someone as central to the series as her, but modern Elizabeth is underwhelming compared to her old self even with these new Goddess powers.
I am actually fine with totally evil and irredeemable villains when done right. To me, Cell's motivations in DBZ were fine, as were Frieza's, since Frieza was just consistently pure evil and psychopathic, and that just made him an obstacle readers would definitely want to see defeated. Evil can make an antagonist interesting if it is done convincingly. But Nakaba went back and forth and couldn't make up his mind whether DK was pure evil or morally complex, so it made the DK seem embarassing. Like, one moment he seems like a ruthless bad guy, then he says he did everything out of love for Meliodas while he is losing, even though he just possessed Meliodas the day before and acted as if he just saw him as a pawn in his schemes at the time. In fact I would even be fine with a cowardly villain or one who gets afraid too as long as the character portrayal is persistent. For example, if his hateful personality contradicted the nature of the Love Commandment or something he could make a joke about it, or if he was too afraid despite being the creator of the piety commandment, it could just be said that he is a hypocrite who doesn't care about his own rules, and someone could point that out IC. But none of it really felt meaningful. Meliodas the sin of Wrath seems to have felt no wrath against the DK despite everything he had done to him and elizabeth. It felt like the ending starting at chapter 302 was all happy go lucky easy times where nothing is serious. Meliodas judged DK for his role as the DK in being a tyrant who brings fear as his 'very duty and very existence' rather than him specifically ruining the life of Elizabeth and him for 3000 years...that was just a terrible moment imo.
What I am saying is that villain motivations can be good writing and flesh out a character for sure. There were many options. Nakaba could have explored just why it is that the SD seems to be eternally youthful as far as we know while the DK looks old and bald. Maybe the DK was eventually going to die of old age due to the different nature of his powers despite his godhood,and this could have influenced his motivations for the Holy War in the past, and wanting to make Meliodas his vessel. Maybe the SD is responsible in some way for this, or Chaos cursed the DK after some offense he committed in the past and made it so he would either eventually die of old age, or just look and feel old forever. Perhaps there was even a conflict between the Goddess Clan and the Demon Clan before the Holy War that we know about, and it influenced the motivations of both sides.
If i wanted to make the demons more morally ambiguous i would not have included the edgy soul eating thing, that just makes them all seem pretty irredeemable. Or i would have said they do eat souls, but the souls still go onto an afterlife either once the demon who ate them dies, or immediately. And that soul eating would just be done for energy efficiency purposes. Other ideas abound like making Zeldris's Piety turn him into a mind controlled slave when he disobeys the DK if Nakaba is so sure he wants Zeldris redeemed at the end. But I would really be fine with it whether or not the DK is pure evil or convincingly morally ambiguous, as long as the action was good, and the individual good guy characters react to everything how they should.
It's kinda sad since Nakaba has done a lot of things with magic using characters that I have not seen done so well in other shonens, and there was a lot interesting going on. At least it was good most of the way through.
