To be honest, this felt more like Soul Eater than the real chapters have for a while now.

I've always thought it an entertaining, if quite cheap, dramatic method to have some fresh newbie view the older main characters as advanced fighters. Since we have seen those people from the beginning when they weren't much more than these people, it will have some impact. Well... Maybe they weren't this noob ever. They had quite extraordinary circumstances, I suppose. Most of them.