Favourite heroines: Erza Scarlet

[q99]

Shounen fight manga is a genre not know for giving female characters good roles. In most series, they're either barely there, on the sidelines, or playing second fiddle to the male lead whenever a major fight rolls around.

Fairy Tail is not one of those series!



Where our story begins, the magic guild Fairy Tail has hit rough times. Most of it's most powerful members went missing for 7 years, including our main characters, Erza Scarlet, 'Titania' Erza, who's magic power 'the Knight' allows her to magically swap a variety of magical weapons and armor, and the other leads.

Upon their return, they decide they need to restore the guild's reputation for those who stayed behind, and joined the Grand Magic Games, where magic users compete.

Erza gets selected for an event called Pandemonium, where the contestants would take turns fighting groups of Monster-Golems of a variety of powers, started with oversized stone-crushing lizard-wolves and moving upwards in there into the truly scary stuff.

(Read panels right-to-left)





As Jura, the bald guy, is one of said Wizard Saints, and a character we've seen be extremely badass working alongside our heroes before, not something to take lightly! (and that's Erza's two teammates, including the male lead, reacting with worry on the sidelines)

The contestants discuss strategy- Everyone calls out the number of monsters they fight each turn. They discuss how you want to pick multiple, since whether strong or weak they're worth the same number of points, but you don't want to get too many strong ones at once and since they come out randomly in the different strengths, it's risky. Everyone'll go around in a cycle, picking the number they want, until either everyone's eliminated or all 100 monsters are gone.


So, they draw lots to see who goes first!





Hrm? What are you talking about, Erza? Sure, it's lucky you got first, but...







Dude, Erza, we're not even set up for that level of badass, and we came expecting the Wizard Saint!


You can't possibly....!



(When Erza's armor is damaged, she is known to simply go into this mode and focus all of her magical energy into her swords for maximum power)













Everyone reacts with shock. Officials drop their jaws, enemies are stunned, teammates laugh, friends cry.


This is Erza Scarlet!



.... then they have to come up with another, lamer last-minute event to figure out who's 2nd-through-eighth this round, because there are no more monster to fight!


8 pages from the manga Fairy Tail by Hiro Mashima

Comments

[big_daddy_d]

...Is it weird that I'm turned on by her and her badassness?

[venatosapiens]

Not at all. There's just something about a woman standing triumphant, dripping with the blood of her enemies.

As the saying goes, I'll be in my bunk.

[nefrekeptah]

Well, that and her clothes are in tatters. When they were already on the skimpy side to begin with.

...but yeah, the badass-ness helps immensely with the hotness.

[q99]

Considering how many people in the audience are blushing, I don't think you're alone ^^

[kevinroc]

I love Erza. I also love how the series often has to bend over backwards so that Erza doesn't take care of all the threats by herself. And usually does so in a manner that doesn't make Erza look like less of a badass like certain other shounen manga are guilty of.

[q99]

One thing I like is how sure, often it gives her some non-foe threat to occupy her... but pretty often, Mashima's like, "Naaah, that's not enough to stop Erza!" and gives her a real fight too ^^

Fairy Tail~ ♥

[marco]

Okay, so I love Fairy Tail. A lot. But I did drop it a while back after being consistently annoyed with how, Erza's fights - of all the lady characters! - kept getting weird angles (it felt like crotch shots and random focus on everything but her as a fighter).

But I did always appreciate that the series (and Mashima) wasn't worried about having female characters that were awesome, and varying levels of strength (personality-wise and magically). I think it also has a hint of the One Piece syndrome (where the female leads are treated more awesome than usual by shounen manga, but sometimes don't get the most serious fights anyway), but it does a great job at a lot of stuff.

Erza will always be such a badass too. This made me want to pick the series back up~.

Re: Fairy Tail~ ♥

[md84]

It says a lot about how much I like Erza as a character that I'm actually annoyed by her fanservice scenes. Actually, I like all of the characters enough that I'm annoyed by the fanservice.

Re: Fairy Tail~ ♥

[akodo_rokku]

Agreed, though a lot of Erza's fanservice bits also make me laugh. Girl's badass, but also... slightly weird. The Fairy Hills cat outfit scene is probably the most notable moment of Derpy Erza.

Re: Fairy Tail~ ♥

[q99]

-I think it also has a hint of the One Piece syndrome (where the female leads are treated more awesome than usual by shounen manga, but sometimes don't get the most serious fights anyway)-

What I note is when there's a group of foes, Natsu tends to get the most *personal* fight, but Erza often gets the *strongest* of the group (Phantom Lord, she got the one who was kicking Natsu's butt. Grimoire Heart, she got the one going after the tree! Oracion Seis, she got handed the most hax and dangerous). And she gets way more than Grey ^^

Re: Fairy Tail~ ♥

[md84]

What I liked best about the Oracion Seis fight is that she was the one best suited to bring that otherwise hax opponent. The guy's powers revolved around reflecting magic and bending light to create illusions. Erza's magic is just changing outfits and weapons really fast and she has an artificial eye that's immune to illusions. The other guy never had a chance.

[akodo_rokku]

This is made even more impressive by the most recent chapter. It's still the grand magic games and they're now in an all teams battle royale -- and we find out that Erza has been *holding back* a reserve of super power this whole time.

So yeah, when she beat those 100 monsters? That was Erza at roughly 50%.

[md84]

The best part is that the opponent she's using that reserve of power against has really, really, earned a beatdown by this point.

[q99]

We don't know how big the reserve is yet, it might not be that much, but yea, she still had an ace up her sleeve ^^

[md84]

One thing that makes Erza especially badass is the nature of her magic. It basically amounts to a hyperspace arsenal of weapons and armor. The magic of other characters is more flashy, but Erza's fights are FIGHTS. Her battle with her alternate dimension counterpart started out with fancy magical weapons and devolved into a straight up knuckle down brawl. And it was awesome.

She's like a female version of Gilgamesh from Fate/Stay Night. Only without the massive egotism that keeps Gil from ever being the victor.

[janegray]

Oh, wow, she looks really cool!

Now I regret that I never got into Fairy Tail.

[q99]

Never too late to start! Though it does take a few stories before she shows and starts kicking butt.

[damar148]

My favourite panel is her friends Grey and Natsu laughing, as they likely would have done the same, as the only ones while everyone else look completly shocked.

[q99]

I'd say it's more they're the only ones that believe it's happening, but being not quite as strong I don't think they'd have gone quite as far in their picking ^^

They'd certainly pick a lot, though :)

[big_daddy_d]

So what is this series about anyway? Heard of it but never read it. Is it connected to any actual fairy tales or is the name more..ironic?

[q99]

It's a series that takes place in a world where there are a bunch of magic guilds, and when there's problems- a monster rampaging, something needs to be retrieved from a difficult place, or what have you- a request with a listed reward is sent to one of the guilds, of which Fairy Tail is one of the most prominent, and then they send a mage or a team to take care of it.

The name Fairy Tail is meant to evoke an endless quest for adventure- "Do Fairies have tails?" There aren't real fairies in the setting, so there's no way to find out for sure, but it's fun to look. That's the in-universe rational behind it.


It's a shounen fight series, so the plot is largely based on the main characters- Natsu (a fire mage), Lucy (summoner), Erza (Swords!), and Grey (Ice) facing a variety of foes, be they on missions or because some organization attacked the guild or so on. It's action-based with a lot of fights.

[big_daddy_d]

Fight series? Sold!

[nefrekeptah]

I have to say, I'm a little disappointed. When I saw a post about how awesome Erza was, I was hoping the pages in question would be her origin story. You know, where she was a nameless slave who had known nothing but slavery her whole life, and one day was horribly tortured up to getting one of her eyes put out. After which she went "enough of this shit" and single-handedly led a rebellion that overthrew their captors.

Oh, and I did I mention that she was eleven at the time? And didn't have her magic yet? And had just lost her goddamned eye? Yeah, that's when I realized her awesomeness.

[q99]

Hey, if you want to post that, I'm not going to stop you ^^