Analysis of shipping: Teamwork and relationships

Sorry for taking too long, it was hard to put this together...

Some fandoms had a lot of hopes and expectations about chapter 82 of the Fairy Tail sequel. Even if those expectations weren't met, shallow shippers kept overhyping panels featuring the characters they ship, while ignoring that standing in the same frame is not something inherently romantic.

But, one element of that unwarranted hype stood out. An emphasis on "team," which leads to the question: why is that such a big deal?

Well, what was actually the key to the development of NaLu in-universe? This panel right here answers that question:

While it's somewhat implied that Natsu never thought of making an actual team until Lucy came along, most of their relationship's build-up started after they became a team.

What does "teamwork" have to do with romantic love? Well, specialists in the matter agree that teamwork actually helps to create long-lasting relationships and marriages as it helps in building up trust, loyalty, mutual support, a sense of commitment as well as making it easier for partners to let go of resentment. Teamwork strengthens and deepens relationships

It is after the birth of Team Natsu, and a few missions together, that we later see Natsu not only coming to understand Lucy's emotional needs level, but also starting to reassure her...

...so Lucy can understand she has a new home and an actual family there. And this is just after a few adventures. Their shared experiences would later strengthen their bonds even further.

This build-up not only affects Lucy. Just remember that after her leap of faith...

...Natsu abandoned his pursuit of revenge on their current foes in favor of gently taking Lucy back to the guild. This is one of the earlier showings of Lucy actually affecting Natsu and his decisions.

Moving on, we get to see a moment I highligthed multiple times before:

Enter the sense of commitment, the willingness to compromise and work to stay together. As we could see in some translations and other analyses made here, Lucy, by her own admission, prefers to go on missions with Natsu because she feels bount to him. 

So, in a way, Lucy is commiting to be Natsu's partner because being with him feels natural to her. That is how teamwork promotes unity and strengthens relationships.

There's another interesting bit; Lucy says she feels bored when not going with Natsu on adventures. Showing that not only she actually enjoys his presence, she also relishes in the excitement and fun Natsu brings to her life.

Teamwork also inspires loyalty, just think about how Lucy responded to Natsu's thoughtfulness in the omake "The Day of the Fateful Encounter"

Although it's no longer "canon" due to the messed chronology, it gives us a faithful portrayal of Natsu and Lucy's relationship. Let's break it down, one morning (after briefly discussing dating and boys) Cana predicted that particular day was a day of a fateful encounter for Lucy, hence the title.

She meets a good-looking guy in a library, and she thinks that's her fateful meeting. After spending most of the day with him, she ends up agreeing to a dinner for the evening, but finds out that Natsu and Happy had their own plans to go on a mission with her that same night, as part of special surprise for Lucy, which she mistakenly assumes it's for her birthday.

Lucy forsook her plans for a date to answer Natsu's thoughtful gesture anyway. But, it turns out the surprise was to celebrate Lucy's 1-year anniversary of joining Fairy Tail, which makes Lucy realize her fated encounter was with Natsu that day.

Take this little bit of context into consideration, Lucy chose to go with Natsu over dating a good-looking guy, with whom she had several things in common, even a shared interest in novels and writing. Instead of choosing a combination of physical appeal and commonalities, she ultimately went with the dorky and trouble-making dragon slayer. Says a lot about most shipping arguments and reasonings

The omake closes with a little bit of poetry fitting the events depicted there: "If you take time to notice, 'Fate' could be right next to you." We could say Natsu has been Lucy's fate all along. 

Fun fact: the guy Lucy met ends up falling for Cana instead

However, you may realized we only disucssed the effects of this concept, as in how teamwork may strengthen a relationship. How about scenes involving Natsu and Lucy working as team? There's one special highlight of huge narrative importance: Natsu and Lucy Vs. Jacob Lessio

They're so in-sync that they can even adapt and improvise, coming up with ideas and executing them perfectly, without any need for explaining the other their plan. As explained in previous analyses, this kind of teamwork reflects how close they are so well that even Mavis herself got inspired by seeing them in action. The most compatible team unknowingly got her to create a plan based on romantic love

So, there's indeed a correlation between a teamwork and deep relationships. And even the author hightlights this compatibility, not only with NaLu; another potent (currently canon) pairing has some of this too: Gruvia

During the GMG arc, the author uses this concept to accentuate the strength of the bond between Gray and Juvia...

...which ultimately gives them an edge over Lyon and Chelia, as they were so compatible their team combination not only allowed them to outmatch their opponents, but also entranced Chelia who could not help but marvel at the beauty of their "Unison Raid" 

So, the story sometimes uses teamwork to highlight compatibility, closeness, and love. Which is why teamwork is a huge deal when it comes to potent and canon relationships in Fairy Tail.

And that is why shippers expected something as huge as this kind of teamwork or a "unison raid." If we think about it, we can see NaLu has the inspiring teamwork, and Gruvia is the only romantic pairing with a Unison Raid feat. So, wanting something similar for something that contradicts these two pairings is like wanting a different premise to outmatch NaLu and become an equal to Gruvia.

Fortunately, the story unfolding so far supports relationships with actual chemistry and development. As we've seen in this post, "fate" always favours consistent bonding over physical appeal and commonalities; and teamwork in this story both nourishes and highlights strong companionships growing and evolving into something deeper.