@Silverblade:
Valid points. But look at the scene from another angle: a father, who only today has received news he had a lovechild 20 something years ago, dies in front of his newly found daughter. That's the kind of cheese Mashima deals in. Besides, with Gildarts gone, Mashima will have no official obstacle left for Natsu to be the strongest and for the non existant balance to become even more non existant. It's a win-win situation.
I agree, that sort of predictable writing is Mashima's brand of cheese. But again, character death. He doesn't have it in him to do something so game-changing and risky. It really shows how bad a writer Mashima is when he fumbles with cookie-cutter writing.
@Hinscher:
lets ignore all gear 2, 3 and haki for the moment. cause i sure as heck wouldn't want to compare coating your punch with haki to coating your elbow with fire now would i. or pumping blood in your body to move faster to shooting fire out your legs to move faster.
but lets take luffy before cp9. whats so special about his bullet or pistol? are they not just him punching someone with his fist? what about his bazooka, is that not just an open palm strike? what about whip. is that not just a roundhouse kick to an extent. what baout scythe, is that not just clotheslining your enemy. what about stomp? is that not just kicking someone with both feet? what about spear, same thing but with toes pointed.
why can luffy name each plain physical attack? he could do all those attacks without being made of rubber, just like natsu could do most his attacks without having use of fire.
this si a shonen, they name their pisses. to be complaining about attack names you are being the biggest bitch ever. you have stooped to a new low. you guys have fun bitching about hiro all you want i'm out of here, probably due to being disrespectful to you and thus getting a ban but i don't care. you being a sad pathetic little person for complaining about natsu naming an elbow attack and thinking luffy or any other shonen hero is better for naming their random attacks. hell by your standards bleach should be godly, i mean ichigo only names like one of his attacks and meanwhile fights like a normal swordsmna. why the hell is that pathetic zoro calling our every swing he does with his sword. its stupid. go ichigo, you rule.
Oh wow…where do I begin?
First of, I'm pretty sure No Maam's complaint is that Natsu hasn't evolved from his basic move set not that Natsu names his punches and kicks.
Second of, do not even begin to compare Luffy and Natsu. Let's disregard the Gears and Haki (even though there's no good reason to as they're a part of his ability which he developed himself). Let's look at Luffy's range of attacks. We have pistol, rifle, bullet (and to answer your question, Luffy doesn't do a wind up for bullet, it's a thrust attack though admittedly Oda hasn't been consistent with this), bazooka, gatling, balloon, net, bell, axe, stomp, fireworks, stomp gatling, storm, rain, snake gun and then the one shot ones like idiot, octopus and substitute. A huge range of physical attacks. Natsu...just punches and kicks. You can whine all you want about different names, there's absolutely nothing distinguishable about them, he just throws a punch and releases fire. Yeah, big whoop. You can whine about Luffy just punching and kicking too but no one is gonna take you seriously because a) that's simply not true and b) the rules of the two characters are different. Luffy only has his fruit and it's pretty clear that he has taken full advantage of his rubber properties. Natsu is a fucking mage, he lives in a magic world with tons of potential techniques to learn, a plethora of magic even just fire-related magic to draw from and all he does is throw flaming punches and kicks. And that's not even counting how they fight whereas Luffy actually analyzes his surroundings at times and uses his ability accordingly (yes, most of the time, he rushes head straight as well, but there are many times where he fought more with his head and even avoids fights!) Natsu just rushes head in and just punches. Like when Luffy fought Crocodile using blood or when he fought Enel and beat him using the rebound of his attacks or when he fought Moria by stomping him from his blind spot under the gangway of the freezer or when...I could go on. The only time Natsu has used any innovation is when he sucked away the oxygen from that anti-firemage way back in the beginning. That's it. In 200+ chapters. And again, that's not counting the gears and haki which have given him incredible sensory and vulcanization abilities and the ability to knock fodder out. Again, the main difference is how the two characters take advantage of their world. Luffy has made use of all the prospective abilities the rules of his world have given him, Natsu...hasn't. Simple as that.