[Krono]

Originally Posted by Kafriel

According to Erza, her flame pants had no benefit. Its use only inferred that Erza switched to all-out offense...but she still shouldn't be able to see Ikaruga's blade coming; she had always been destroyed in every previous clash. Strength is one thing, but her perception should have remained the same, so their final exchange does not make sense IMO. I'll just chalk it up to nakama power with all the "distance between hearts" talk.

"Erza couldn't see Ikaruga's sword" isn't nearly an established fact as you think. For starters, it was something suggested by Ikaruga while she was mocking Erza, after Erza thought she could rid of Ikaruga simply by telling her she had no business with her. It's not something Erza ever confirmed, or agreed with, or thought to herself. The only thing making it potentially anything more than an insult is Erza's surprise at her armor breaking.

Those few panels of surprise aren't enough to make it a fact that Erza couldn't see the strikes. That could easily be surprise that the armor she'd relied upon to tank some of the strikes had been damaged to that extent, just as easily as it could be that there were strikes she didn't see. Certainly the whole point of the fight was that Erza had been relying on armor to protect her, that was failing, so she stopped relying on the protection of armor to win the fight. So Erza letting some strikes hit her armor expecting it to absorb them undamaged, would not be strange. Not having to parry everything is part of the point of wearing armor after all.

Even if she couldn't see the strikes, Ikaruga herself offers an explanation shortly after the insult. Namely that Erza was so absorbed in needing to find Jellal, that she failed to see the strikes, and was generally underestimating Ikaruga. Erza's demeanor changes to a serious one after that and it's noted she's now taking Ikaruga seriously. "Erza can't see Ikaruga's sword" never comes up again after that.

And that's mainly just the dialogue. Events themselves show Erza parrying Ikaruga's strikes while she's in the card, and using the distortions they create to cut her own way out of the card. Erza then exchanges blows with Ikaruga while using the Heaven's Wheel armor. Erza clearly dodges and blocks several strikes from Ikaruga before attempting to counter attack with a bigger skill and Ikaruga cuts through the attack and the armor. Before the pieces of it have hit the ground, Ikaruga uses a fire based skill, and Erza switches to her fire based armor to defend. Though the armor gets destroyed, Ikaruga's impressed that Erza switched to it fast enough to defend. She then goads Erza into using her strongest armor, and Erza switches and has barely finished boasting how powerful the Purgatory armor is when Ikaruga dashes in to destroy it. It's unclear here whether Erza couldn't react in time to dodge the strike, or if Erza intentionally tanked the attack expecting her "strongest" armor at least to hold up against Ikaruga. Though the general theme of the fight suggests the second one.

At which point of course Erza switches to dual wielding in the first appearance of the flame pants outfit. After a short speech we get a classic samurai flick showdown. Two swordsmen rush at each other to exchange blows. The more skilled swordsman is shown wounded making it look like they lost the exchange, then their less skilled opponent falls slain.

All throughout the encounter, we never really see Erza unable to see Ikaruga's sword. We just see her relying on armor to tank when she shouldn't, and her possibly having trouble reacting while encumbered by armor. To the contrary, not only does Erza never think that she was unable to see Ikaruga's attacks, throughout the encounter we see Erza dodging, parrying, and blocking Ikaruga's strikes.

So to say "Erza couldn't see Ikaruga's sword strikes and therefore should have lost the fight" is to not only take the insult of an enemy as an accurate statement of fact, but to ignore the evidence of the rest of the encounter. Even assuming the insult was accurate, you not only have to ignore the rest of the fight, but also ignore the explanation the enemy offered as to why that was the case, and the indications that Erza was correcting the problem her enemy cited as the cause of the inability.

Even if she felt magic, demons don't use magic, they use curses, which have been establishes as something completely different in essence...but even if she could sense THAT, let's go through Kyouka's curse: she took away Erza's eyesight with 100% certainty (as said by Erza herself later). Next page, she took her hands too, which means Erza would have no sense of touch. How could she know where she's standing, hitting, etc.? She couldn't, so from that point on, that fight makes absolutely no sense.

Them feeling magic is a given. It happens throughout the series so often I'm surprised more people don't realize they can do that. Their ability to sense curse power is a bit more up in the air. Offhand I don't recall anything indicating one way or another, aside from an anime original bit in the Tartaros arc. Erza and Mirajane knowing the Tartaros minions were about to attack is one possible proof, but we don't have a guarantee they're demons, not demon worshipers, and there are other ways they could know the attack was coming. Still, them being able to sense curse power in spite of the differences between it and magic isn't a big stretch.

Yes, Kyouka took away Erza's sense of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. However she also left Erza's sense of pain intact, and greatly amplified the sensitivity, to the point that there's little reason she couldn't use it as a substitute for her sense of touch. Simply standing it fairly obvious, the part of her in contact with ground will hurt more than the rest of her, so just attempt to stand until she feels she's upright, and the bottoms of her feet hurt the worse, and she knows she's upright. We even get panels to indicate her hands and feet flaring in pain when she punches or kicks Kyouka, so she should have a pretty good idea of when she hits Kyouka. So all she has to do is stand up, assume that Kyouka didn't move much (if she doesn't sense her power) from where she was last seen, and she gets to land a punch. A jumping kick in the same direction as she thinks she went, to get another hit, and a attempt to running punch in the same direction for another hit. At which point Kyouka stands up, and starts striking Erza repeatedly, making it easy to estimate where she is, and for Erza to try throwing herself underneath Kyouka's attack for another kick. When that connects, bring out some sword for a strike in the direction she thinks Kyouka went to fall just short of finishing Kyouka off. In other words, Kyouka did jack **** to take advantage of Erza's senses being gone. She didn't run around the room, she didn't try and throw completely undetectable columns at Erza, she just kind of stood in place, or where Erza knocked her to, and attacked directly. If Erza can't sense Kyouka, it requires luck and skill, and if she can sense her it becomes child's play to target Kyouka.

As long as her sense of pain is on, especially so amped up, Erza effectively still has her sense of touch, which is most of what she needs to fight, most of the rest being sight. It's not like she was using her sense of smell or taste against Kyouka, and hearing, while it can be useful, isn't usually critical. So the pain gives her a sense of touch, and if she get sense Kyouka, she has a serviceable replacement for her sight.



So all told, while it's understandable you might find those fights dodgy, they really aren't a problematic as people like to think. Erza beat Ikaruga because once she started taking Ikaruga seriously, and stopped trying to tank Ikaruga's attacks with her armor, Ikaruga's advantage vanished, and Erza won because she was the better swordsman. Having two swords to Ikaruga's one probably helped as well as she could parry with one sword and strike with the other, or just strike with both for increased chances of getting through Ikaruga's guard. It would be nice if Erza's fight with Kyouka was better explained, but the panels of Kyouka striking Erza's side, and a figurative version of Erza being shown with a gaping hole there to indicate that Erza felt immense pain in her side where Kyouka struck, should really tell you all you needed to know about how Erza got by without a sense of touch. Sense of sight is a bigger problem, but not without a couple different possible explanations. If you want to complain about the fight, you really should be complaining about how stupid Kyouka started fighting once she had the upper hand.