Fanservice Reveals Lazy Storywriting
Fanservice is highly used in anime for reasons unknown. Sometimes, a series is defined in fanservice as the core while others seem to show it at random times. The series that is in question is Fairy Tail with its recent episode of the last season. Fairy Tail Guild is currently facing a neighboring nation of Alvarez Empire. Fiore has it hands full with the empire, Spriggan 12, and Acnologia in the outgoing war of the final arc. In the current episode, Lucy and Natsu face Jacob Nessio, who is one of the Spriggan 12, in the looming war with the empire. Jacob uses magic to conceal his presence and is a foe to not take lightly. The surpring weakness is his ulimate techique which he forces the character to face their inner reactions towards fanservice. The techique serves as a double edge sword for the user and majority of the time the opponent. Natsu is unfazed seeing Lucy's clothes disappearing and starts to scheme while the enemy is distracted by Lucy. The situation gets weirder when the scheming involes tricking the enemy and launching a surprize attack towards Jacob. The random fanservice in the episode is only meant to please the audience with non-storyline content. Realistically, fanservice is a gimick by the creators to pull ratings and be used for selfish human desires. Remember fanservice is a way to appeal to an audience in a different light of using nudity and sexual innuendo even in mainstream anime. The link below explains the situation and how it all unfolds in the episode.
https://comicbook.com/anime/2019/03/12/fairy-tail-natsu-lucy-nude-fight-jacob-anime/