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Erma
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Erma (Webcomic)
She's just like you and me, only she's a Creepy Cute half-ghost.

Erma is an online comic by Brandon Santiago about a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl trying to live in a mundane society. It takes a lot of inspiration and aspects from horror movies and adds a humorous and cute twist to them.

It can be found at DeviantArt, Tapas Comics, and Webtoons, though none of them are completenote .

On Halloween 2017, Brandon revealed a special surprise for the fans: an animated short based on the comic. You can see it here. This is followed by more animated episodes on Outcast Studio's Youtube channel, viewable here.

Since graduating from art school, Brandon has formed his comic brand, Outcast Comics, of which Erma is a part, and has exclusive digital-only stories and spin-offs of various other characters from the series under the title "Tales of Outcast", some of which are drawn by other artists.

  • Comic Exclusive Stories
    • Spirits Bloom: Tells the story of how Erma's parents, Sam and Emiko, met and fell in love. In July 2021, Brandon announced a sequel to this was in development.
    • The Labyrinth: A Tales of Outcast story (#1–4) in which Terry unwittingly buys a cursed video game and ends up getting himself and his friends sucked into it. Erma, arriving late to the party, has to go in to save them.

  • Spin-Offs
    • Siris: Focuses on Erma's pet dog, Siris, his backstory, and misadventures.
    • Warrior Unicorn Princess: Comic about the Show Within a Show that Erma is a fan of. Was eventually ported as a webcomic online and can be found on Tapas or Webtoon.
    • Night Detective: Comic about the Paranormal Detective's investigations, battling against various creatures and villains
    • Yokai: A comic in which Sam studies the various yokai of Emiko's family.
    • Wallace: Comic about the possessed doll from the "Secrets" arc.
    • Mitsu & Momo: Focuses on Erma's mischievous twin cousins.

Brandon likewise revealed he was making an adventure game for the series around 2021. The game was finished in 2025 and released in January 2026 on PC via Steam for only $5.

Not to be confused with Erma Felna, the main protagonist of Albedo: Erma Felna EDF.

Tropes:

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    A–C 
  • 13 Is Unlucky: Erma was born on October 13th, with the comic showing this coming out Friday the 13th October 2017. As for why it's unlucky: Erma is an Apocalypse Maiden.
  • Absurd Phobia: Santa Claus of all things is one of the few things that frightens Erma.
  • Accidental Kiss: Connor is watching the classic maze Jump Scare video, except that the scary ghost image that shows up at the end is Erma, and neither of them freak out. Then Erma tries to push her way out of the screen and pops out right in Connor's face, causing their lips to touch... and that's when they both freak out.
  • Adorable Abomination: Erma (who is half Yōkai on her mother's side) is a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl with various powers usually seen on much more evil characters (including Body Horror shapeshifting and Mind Control) and enjoys all kinds of things relating to horror. She's also incredibly cute and charming.
  • Affection-Hating Kid: In the web short episode "Smile", Emiko gives Sam a proud smooch when she sees his newest book on sale in the mall bookstore, causing Erma to shove them along in annoyance.
  • Affectionate Parody: Of just about anything related to the horror genre.
  • Animals Hate Him: Save for Siris, Erma doesn't seem to have much luck with animals since they're freaked out by her presence alone. Turns out, Siris is also undead. Rats seem to like her though, as seen at the beginning of "Rats in the School Walls".
  • Annoying Younger Sibling:
    • Erma's human cousin, Emily Williams. She is a hyperactive Genki Girl who loves to play with Erma and messes with her things. Her boundless energy annoys Erma and finds her a handful. Erma still gets along with her though, because Emily is still genuinely a nice kid.
    • While it's unclear if they are younger than Erma or not, Erma's cousins from her mother's side of the family, on the other hand, are much worse. Mitsu and Momo Yureimoto are twin troublemaking brats who antagonize Erma upon thinking her to be just like any other normal human being. Furthermore, they have similar powers, but none of her positive traits.
  • Apple for Teacher:
    • In Strip #46, Erma gives her teacher an apple...one with eyes and a mouth stitched on;
      Ms. Bierly: Huh. This apple looks a bit...odd.
      Apple: Well you're not looking any better yourself! (Teacher faints) Hmph. How rude.
    • The first Erma animated cartoon shows how she and Ms. Bierly first met, at a before-school-start "Meet Your Teacher" night. The poor lady finds this mysterious, silent ghost-girl to be frankly terrifying, and spends much of the cartoon running through empty school corridors with Erma in pursuit. At the end, it turns out that all Erma wanted to do was give her new teacher an apple.
  • April Fools' Day: There's been an April Fool's strip once a year starting with 2019:
    • The first features Erma getting more and more agitated with people telling her "April Fools!" until she accidentally snaps at Connor, who was only trying to give her flowers.
    • In the second, Brandon stated he was bored with making Erma cute and decided to change her character completely, making her a vicious monster out for blood. It is then revealed to be an April Fools gag, with Sam asking Brandon if they could get her out of the punk-inspired getup yet.
    • The third came after a hiatus and claimed Erma was undergoing an Age Lift and the comic would now be about her in high school.
    • The fourth is titled "She Speaks", and Erma does speak from behind a window. Once she realizes the reader can't hear her, she opens it... and is called away to dinner before she can repeat herself.
    • April Fool's Day 2024 is an aversion; just several panels of Erma sleeping and a couple of her yawning.
    • The one for 2025 is titled "Baby Erma Gets Attacked", which showed a baby Erma lying down on a red floor, before looking at someone attempting to put their clawed hands on her, causing her to apparently become a bit scared... only to show it's actually her mother, Emiko, giving her a snuggle, much to the little Erma's delight.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: Sam is married to, and has a child who is, a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl with horrifying powers out the wazoo. But he can't believe her dog is undead.
  • Arc Villain: Wittle Wallace the dummy, the villain of the Secrets arc, who swaps bodies with Felicia and wants to steal Erma's body. He's also the comic's first nontrivial villain.
  • Artistic License – Sports: In "Super Bowl," the announcer declares the quarterback needs to make a long pass to win the game, and the screen does indeed show a player dropping back to pass, but his number is 78. NFL rules require quarterbacks to have numbers between 1 and 19.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • Wallace was originally just used for a one-off comic and a slapstick gag in the Cousin Arc. In the Secrets Arc, however, he's the Arc Villain, and he plots to steal Erma's body to take over the world.
    • Remember Erma's old babysitter? The one Erma scared to the point of insanity? Well, she's going to be a future Arc Villain given how she was released but shows sinister signs of obsession. Furthermore, she's Connor's (the boy who has a crush on Erma's) older sister!
  • As You Know:
  • Babysitter Friendship: Erma gets along very well with Felicia, her current babysitter.
  • Back-to-Back Poster: The title image for "Close Calls" has Erma and Siris sitting back to back.
  • Badly Battered Babysitter:
    • The babysitter before her current one did not respond well to Erma's pranks and suffered a psychological breakdown to the point her parents were forced to pay for the damages. Possibly deconstructed soon. She has since been released from the asylum, but now has shown a dangerous obsession toward Erma.
    • Felicia normally averts this when taking care of Erma, but when the Williams family gets back from their weeklong Japan holiday, she is visibly at the end of her rope from pet-sitting Siris.
  • Bad Moon Rising: Well, Bad Moon Glowing. In Part 54 of the Night Parade, the moon turns blood red. This turns out to be because Erma snapped after getting imprisoned in a tree with countless tortured human souls. It is later revealed that the whole world saw this happen.
  • Bait-and-Switch:
    • The way Erma's dad first describes his family and friends, it sounds like he's referencing horror icons — his brother Freddy who used to be a nightmare, his friend Jason who he went to summer camp with, etc. — but when we get to meet them, they're as normal as he is.
      • In a similar vein, when Sam opens the door to a visitor, he initially looks horrified, exclaims "No! Not you!" and then the last panel shows him and his visiting brother Michael engaged in typical brotherly roughhousing.
    • The conclusion to the dodgeball strips starts with a fellow teacher asking about Coach Williams's injured face. Amy was the one that accidentally hit him in the face, not Erma.
    • When we are introduced to Warrior Unicorn Princess, we (along with Felicia and Wallace) expect it to be a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic–like show with elements of Steven Universe and Star vs. the Forces of Evil. When we finally have a chance to see the show itself, turns out it's a surprisingly dark show (or at least capable of being dark since it was one episode), even more so than MLP: FiM usually is, though it's capable of being just as dark. Needless to say, even Felicia was surprised.
      Felicia: [Looking from the TV to the cute WUP doll in her hand] Wow, talk about false advertising...
    • A comic (that takes place after the Darker and Edgier Reunion arc) has Emiko solemnly telling Erma that she loves her and that means she has to do unpleasant things to Erma that are ultimately for her own good, while her hair creeps up behind her daughter to restrain her and drag her to... the bath.
  • Benevolent Monsters: Harmless mischief and odd tendencies aside, neither Erma nor her mother have a malicious spectral bone in their bodies. The vast majority of other monsters that appear in the comic are essentially harmless as well. Averted for Wittle Wallace, as he's the Arc Villain of the Secrets arc, and for a number of yokai in the Family Reunion arc.
  • Berserk Button: Erma has a couple, although you have to push her buttons really hard for her to get truly angry:
    • DON'T make fun of her if you find out she's a fan of the (actually surprisingly dark) stereotypically-girly looking show Warrior Unicorn Princess. Along with that, don't say that her friends won't think she's scary anymore because of that. She nearly killed Wittle Wallace in Felicia's body because he kept saying this to hurt her.
    • Do not harm her friends. She fought through the Rat Men army nearly untouched until the principal showed that her friends were unharmed to calm her down.
    • Cutting her hair without permission seems to be on the list. Three yokai find this out the hard way during the search for Rin. (Though that may have just been the last straw in that case.)
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Sure, Erma's pretty tame compared to the source material, but god help you if you're her opponent in dodgeball or snowball/water balloon wars where it'll most likely become a Curb-Stomp Battle, or if you harass her past the breaking point, in which case she will freak out and attack you.
  • Big Blackout: Erma may or may not have caused a nation-wide blackout all over Japan during the Blood Moon at the end of the Family Reunion arc.
  • Big Brother Bully: Downplayed. Connor, the buck-toothed boy who's crushing on Erma, has an older sister who refuses to loan him her walkie-talkies when he asks to borrow them and tells him off in a rather caustic way, only to change her mind moments later.
  • Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: One strip shows Erma and Bigfoot playing and taking pictures together.
  • Black Comedy: Inevitable, given the comic's premise.
  • Black Eyes of Evil:
    • Subverted with Erma, as despite her inverted-color eyes, she mostly enjoys harmless mischief.
    • Her maternal aunts (save Mayumi) all have similar eyes but like Erma are not necessarily malevolent (at worst, Rin is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and Fumiko is rather standoffish and aloof).
  • Blade Below the Shoulder: In "Unicorn Aftermath", we see that one of Warrior Unicorn Princess' allies has two of these, one on each arm.
  • Bookends: The beginning and end of "The Rats in the School Walls" begin with a rat stealing Terry's lunch.
  • Bloodier and Gorier:
    • The prequel comic Spirit's Bloom actually features a body count thanks to the strange invisible man visiting a newborn Erma at the hospital and nonchalantly killing three bystanders (a nurse he disintegrated, then two doctors he exploded in an elevator only leaving their bloody skeletons splattered against the walls) while the regular series mostly feature Benevolent Monsters and resolve its conflicts in a family-friendly way.
    • The Family Reunion arc shows multiple people being killed on several occasions, whereas it's hard to definitively say the comic had ever had a body count before.
  • Born Undead: Erma and her mother Emiko are both yokai, specifically onryō. This would normally mean a vengeful spirit, but both of them were born this way, with Erma being half-human through her dad. Emiko’s own mother also appears to be a ghost of some sort, with the rest of the maternal family being various other yokai.
  • Boy Meets Ghoul: Multiple:
    • Spirit's Bloom depicts the budding romance between Erma's onryō mother and her human father.
    • Erma and her human friend Connor clearly have crushes on each other.
  • Bullying the Dragon:
  • Bullet Dodges You: Erma telekinetically stops a volley of nerf darts fired by some pranksters and then sends them right back.
  • The Cameo:
  • Cardiovascular Love: In the Valentine's Day Episode "Heart to Heart", there's the regular Heart Symbol Valentines' card, and then there's Erma pulling out her heart, which looks like a human heart.
  • Casual Self-Dismemberment: Being the Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl main character of a Horror Comedy webcomic, Erma is a big fan of this.
  • Catapult Nightmare: Both of Erma's nightmares after the Night Parade end with her sitting bolt upright.
  • Cerebus Syndrome: Erma starts out as a weekly gag comic following the daily life of a Cute Ghost Girl and her friends. Many of the earlier strips are standalone jokes with minimal continuity. Over time, though, Erma starts having increasingly fleshed out story arcs, with real conflict and legitimately serious moments. The most obvious shift is the Family Reunion arc, a lengthy storyline (when it finished, it'd lasted over half the comic's lifespan) that primarily focuses on the family drama of her maternal family, the Yureimoto clan. It thus naturally ties into the Spirit's Bloom prequel, and it also works with Spirit's Bloom to lay the groundwork for a Myth Arc about dark forces trying to use Erma's incredible power to end the world.
  • Children Are Innocent: Played with.
    • Erma enjoys the dark and macabre and also scaring people for fun, but she's mostly a sweet, well-behaved girl who wants to make friends with the other kids and will use her powers to help them out. She also loves a My Little Pony–type show. The latter is Subverted, however as the show is surprisingly dark and pretty violent at times.
    • Meanwhile, other children tend to accept Erma as just another kid like them — it's the adults around her who are usually terrified of or mean to her. The children are also quick to accept the Rat Children who join the school in a step to have humans and Rat Men accept one another at the end of the "Rats in the School Walls" arc.
  • Chores Without Powers: A positive version overlapping with Cathartic Chores. When Erma uses her Mind Over Matter powers to bake, she has a traumatic flashback to her Superpowered Evil Side's rampage and trashes the kitchen, so her parents calm her down, help her clean the room, and bake the cookies with her.
  • Chubby Mama, Skinny Papa: Connor's mother is quite on the chubby side while his father is comparatively thin.
  • Cliffhanger: The Secrets arc was chock-full of them, but one stand-out example occurs at the very end of the arc: We see a future Big Bad exit the mental asylum, Erma's old babysitter, now Ax-Crazy and plotting to do... something to our favorite little half-ghost girl.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: None of the Rat-children other than Sidney show up in school after the end of the "Rats in the School Walls" arc. The entire Rat Men civilization only shows up once, as one of the many groups of people hearing about the Moon turning red in "Reunion's End, Part 1".
  • Closet Geek: Erma, being a walking horror movie villain, is terrified of anyone finding out she's a Warrior Unicorn Princess fan.
  • Conditioned to Accept Horror: Having grown used to the various horrifying things that Erma either does or attracts, many of the characters present (her classmates, her neighbors, her babysitter, etc.) usually shrug off the many unnatural things that occur without incident. This is even used as a plot point when the existence of rat-people is revealed to the school, everyone having been inoculated to the weirdness of the situation. In the case of her father, he is so unfazed by the weirdness in his life that he doesn't even flinch when the various yokai in "The Search" arc threaten to kill and/or eat him.
  • Cooldown Hug: Emiko, Sam and Momo reach a vicious powered Erma who has unleashed a Superpowered Evil Side and hug her until she's calmed down and back to normal.
  • Costume-Test Montage: In "Trying Out Costumes", Erma is trying out Halloween costumes: a witch with broomstick and Robe and Wizard Hat, Little Red Riding Hood, Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th, a Winged Humanoid fairy, Godzilla, Ash of Evil Dead (with chainsaw arm), and Superman with Dynamic Akimbo. She ends up with For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself when someone finds her normal appearance "really creepy".
  • Covered in Kisses: Emiko trying out some black lipstick leaves her husband and daughter covered in black kiss marks (and a love bite on Sam's neck). In a later comic where the parents are going out for a date night, Emiko asks Erma for a kiss, whereupon her daughter brings out the black lipstick, turns around with a satanic look on her face, and messily returns the favor.
  • Cranial Eruption: In "Heading Back", Sam and his brother Michael have head bumps with Instant Bandages after Siris spits out the bullets he got from getting shot by them (implied to be due to their wives bonking them for shooting the dog.
  • Crazy-Prepared: The dentist Erma goes to. On the first visit, they got a really bad taste of Erma's powers when trying to clean her teeth. The next time she visits, they're more than ready for her by having her strapped down and having a priest on hand to ward off the supernatural attacks.
  • Creepy Child: Erma's teachers find her extremely creepy, though her classmates generally aren't fazed by (most of) her ghostly antics. (They do draw the line at stunts like pulling her heart out of her chest on Valentine's Day or snapping her head 180°.)
  • Creepy Doll: Erma's room is full of them, some missing their heads. One of them is even possessed by an evil spirit, though Erma likely didn't know about it considering it stole her babysitter's body and planned to steal Erma's next.
  • Crossover:
    • The annual Erma-Ween pictures feature Erma and her family crossing paths with other famous sci-fi or horror characters. The first year alone featured Foxy, Chica, Bonnie, Cupcake and Freddy, Circus Baby, Cthulhu, Leatherface, Jeff the Killer, and Smile Dog, among others.
    • Other comics feature Erma running into various characters from comic strips or horror franchises, such as Charlie Brown and Pennywise.
    • One of the Christmas specials had Erma go to the North Pole to get a gift for one of her friend and causing (unintentional) havoc while running from Santa. At one point she escapes into a video game world and meets Chloe, a character from her self-titled series about a girl with robotic arms and legs that explores her world. Notably it's the only section of the comic done in color.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle:
    • When Erma's playing dodgeball, Erma's team is guaranteed the win. Even if it's just her vs. the rest of the gym students (and even the teacher) as one team, Erma will always wipe the floor with them. The Dodgeball arc ends its second part with Erma joining the other team captain and abandoning everyone who chose to be on her side, just to make things remotely fair. This also applies to water balloons and snowball fights.
    • In fact, any sport Erma tries also qualifies, as she's able to instantly get home runs (albeit losing the ball in space) and being able to shoot baskets perfectly dozens of times in a row. At least when she's using her powers; when Coach Williams tells her to shoot a basket without her powers, she doesn't aim so well.
    • If Erma gets pushed too far, and you're the cause of it and don't have a good past with her, let's just say you might want to run.
  • Cute Ghost Girl: Erma is a friendly young Cute Mute who happens to be a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl. Her mother Emiko is similarly friendly. (Arguably subverted, though, as neither is actually undead.)
  • Cute Mute: Erma is for all intents and purposes mute, and in the whole series run has never voiced a word; as an onryō, however, she can shriek when she is really angry. Taking the form of a very cute child of around eight years old, she has no difficulty in understanding and making herself understood. She isn't truly mute, as there are several points in the story where she tries to or does speak to other characters, but this always happens offscreen, in some situation where we can't "hear" her, or just before another character cuts her off.
  • Cuteness Equals Forgiveness: The title character is a perfectly cute and adorable little girl, which means she can get away with a lot of mischief. Her two cousins in Japan, Mitsu and Momo, can also switch on "cute and adorable little girls" when it suits them to, but at least some of the adults around them (especially their mother) realise this is a complete façade. What saves Erma is that there's genuinely no malice in her and the adults around her are all aware of this.
    D–K 
  • Dangerous Super-Powered Patient: The mini-arc titled "The Dentist" shows us what happens when you combine a child's dislike for the titular dentist with the supernatural powers of a half-yokai.
    Dr. Craven: Well, she levitated equipment all around, knocked out the priest, eventually broke through her straps, spun throughout the offices, and even bit my hand. Overall, a much bigger improvement from last time.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • Though the series has been dabbling in drama for a while, Spirit's Bloom is quite a bit darker than the rest. Most notably, toward the end, three innocent extras die very gruesomely, and Erma is revealed to be a key piece of a plot to destroy the world.
    • The Family Reunion arc is similarly notable for having a sizeable body count and Erma's Traumatic Superpower Awakening near the end.
    • Some stories in "Tales of Outcast" are a lot more serious than Erma's usual fare, from the Night Detective confronting the denizens of the supernatural world or Osamu telling Yori's missing husband, who he's keeping locked up in a dungeon, about his twin daughters just to taunt him.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Erma and her mother are creepy as hell, but they're genuinely nice, ordinary people. The same goes for most of the monsters in the comic.
  • A Day in the Limelight: Some arcs focus on specific characters:
    • The Cousin arc focuses on Emily, Erma's cousin. Its accompanying arc, the Hunting arc, focuses on Erma's dad, Emily's dad, and Siris.
    • The Secrets arc, outside of Erma's secret and Erma's reaction to being pushed too far, mainly focuses on Felicia and Wittle Wallace.
    • A future arc will focus on Erma's old babysitter, who was confirmed to be a Big Bad.
    • The Spirit's Bloom comic focuses on how Erma's parents met.
  • Death Glare: When Siris coughs up some bullets after the hunting trip, Regan is not happy with Michael, who'd claimed not to know anything about Siris being undead.
  • Defanged Horrors: This comic plays a lot of common horror movie themes for laughs.
  • Desperate Nail Dragging:
    • In "The Inevitable", Erma digs her fingers into the floor as she's trying to avoid getting a bath.
    • In "Down to Clown", Pennywise is peeking out from his storm drain and picks Erma as his next target, and offers her a balloon. He quickly discovers that he's made a bad mistake, and tries to crawl out of the drain. Her Prehensile Hair promptly wraps around him and drags him back in, with him scratching and clawing desperately at the ground to resist.
    • During Erma's first fight with the Yōkai thug trio, Mei does a variant: she tries to resist Erma's telekinetic gale by sinking her Absurdly Sharp Claws into the planks of a wooden bridge. Erma merely increases the wind until the entire plank is torn loose and goes flying with Mei still attached.
  • Disability Immunity: The children use an Invisibility spell to sneak inside the school, but the blind principal, of course, isn't fooled and pretends not to notice until he reveals their location to the Rat Men as part of his plan to begin the acclimation of Rat Men and humans.
  • Divergent Character Evolution: Mitsu and Momo are initially presented as The Dividual, but over time, Momo proves to have more of a heart, to the point of going with Sam and Emiko to try and calm Erma down and the end of the Night Parade sub-arc.
  • Dodgeball Is Hell: One short arc has Erma's P.E. class play dodgeball. When Erma is picked as a captain, almost everyone instantly tries to be on her team, only for her to join the other captain's team in a sense of "fairness". Cue Curb-Stomp Battle. The P.E. teacher explicitly says that he makes the kids play dodgeball because he likes watching Erma curb-stomp the other team.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Emiko and Sam's relationship, and how Emiko's family takes it, smacks of your standard "interracial marriage" tropes. Add that to the fact that Sam's a foreigner (Sam's American while Emiko is, of course, Japanese), which alienates him further from his wife's side of the family...
  • "Double, Double" Title: Noise! Noise! Noise!.
  • Double Tap: When Michael accidentally shoots Siris, but he doesn't die, he shoots him again. While Sam is trying to wrest the gun from him, it fires again, this time on accident.
  • Dragged Off to Hell: Or rather, dropped into a hole dug into Hell, but yes, this was Wittle Wallace's fate at the end of the Secrets arc.
  • Dramatic Irony:
    • The Secrets arc has Wittle Wallace in Felicia's body insult Erma for liking Warrior Princess Unicorn. Poor Erma thinks her babysitter has turned on her.
    • "Rats in the School Walls" has Connor asks his older sister for some help. He has no idea that his sister, who just got back from the insane asylum, was once Erma's former babysitter and is obsessed with her. Likewise, she herself has no idea her little brother has a crush on Erma.
    • At the end of the Search sub-arc, Emiko, Ena, Fumiko, and Yori return to the Yureimoto home expecting to find Erma and the twins; when they don't find them, Emiko immediately assumes the worst. The reader knows perfectly well where Erma is and that she's coming back home with Rin.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: In the trees in the backgrounds of "Pathetic" and "Revelation"… is that the invisible man from Spirit's Bloom‽
  • Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Erma, her mother, and her aunts all have the same pale complexion.
  • Enemy Rising Behind: Erma attempted this on her father once early on in the comic, but he's more than familiar with her tricks that he doesn't even turn to know she's there.
  • Epic Fail: All of Terry's attempts to prank Erma by splashing her with water or hitting her with a snowball end terribly. Even when Erma actually lets him do it, he still messes it up.
  • Establishing Character Moment:
    • Emiko, Erma's mother, is first shown climbing out of television, which scares the crap out of a man. However, just when he thinks she's about to get him, she instead runs right past him to give Erma her forgotten lunch. It sums up Emiko nicely: a creepy-as-hell woman with similarly creepy power, but a very nice and sweet mother.
    • Sam, Erma's father, is first shown when Erma attempts to spook him from behind, but he only says that if she does that, he won't take her to the toy store, which also sums up Sam nicely as a man who has Seen It All, isn't scared of anything, and will not be fazed by his daughter's supernatural shenanigans.
  • Everybody Hates Mathematics:
    • One comic had Erma have to do homework on division. She becomes frustrated when she can't seem to get it and her kitchen winds up suffering for it until the answer finally comes to her.
    • Shown again when she violently confronts◊ notable killer math teacher Baldi.
  • Evolving Credits: The web episode credits are displayed over Erma strolling through her neighborhood to her house, and as more characters appear in the episodes, they are added to the credits, from Connor and Siris to the Night Detective and the Invisible Man.
  • Expy:
  • Exact Words: Erma gets interested with the kids playing not-Pokémon GO and catching monsters with their phones, but they wonder how Erma intends to play since she doesn't have a phone. Cue Erma dragging a bunch of wild animals she lassoed with a land phone cord.
  • Extended Disarming: In the "Night Parade Part 30", Erma's cousins are planning to pull a lot of pranks that night. Their mother immediately orders them to empty their pockets. The girls then proceed to unload a massive pile of fireworks and explosives that is several times bigger than they are, including a dragon-shaped cannon.
  • Extreme Omnivore: Rocks, live cats... Pretty much anything can be consumed by Erma.
  • Eyes Out of Sight: Several of the Yōkai characters have this trait, as it's a key aspect of the Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl look.
    • Erma is generally seen with one or both eyes obscured by her long hair flopping in front of her face; she has only very rarely been seen (in her human form) with both eyes exposed.
    • Erma's mother Emiko almost always has both eyes concealed by her long hair.
    • Mitsu and Momo, Erma's bratty cousins, have both eyes covered by their bangs most of the time. When they're really upset about something they will show one eye. Neither has ever been shown with both eyes exposed.
  • Failed Attempt at Scaring: As a half-ghost, Erma enjoys using her various powers to spook people, but it doesn't always work out.
    • When she gets a new babysitter, Felicia, she of course tries to spook her too. Unfortunately for Erma, Felicia is a horror fan, so despite numerous attempts to scare her Felicia remains completely unfazed.
    • Erma has a cousin Emily. Emily is such a Genki Girl that all Erma's attempts to scare her horribly backfire. Erma is visibly scared of Emily after she laughs it all off.
  • Family Theme Naming: Sam's side of the family, the Williams, are all named after various horror icons:
    • There's Sam's brothers, Freddy and Michael, named after Freddy Kreuger and Michael Myers respectively. Michael appears to be the younger and thus Freddy maybe the older one.
    • There's Michael's wife, Regan, named after Regan MacNeil.
    • There's their child and Erma's cousin, Emily, named after Emily Rose.
    • Sam, Freddy and Michael's mother and Erma's grandmother, Pamela, is named after Pamela Voorhees.
    • Speaking of which, Sam's best friend Jason (who can't swim) is close enough to the Williams to be invited to Thanksgiving, and he's named after Jason Voorhees.
    • Sam himself may be named after the horror character of the same name from Trick 'r Treat (who was named after the pagan holiday Samhain, which Halloween was based on).
    • Their family name, Williams, could potentially be a reference to Ashley J. "Ash" Williams.
  • Fan Community Nicknames: In-Universe; fans of Warrior Unicorn Princess are known as "WUPers".
  • Foreshadowing:
    • During the Hunting arc, Siris getting shot three times and ran over without dying foreshadows the twist that Siris is undead. On a much earlier note for the same plot twist, you can tell something's different about Siris when he's the only one to be attracted to a child who is half ghost.
    • The Cousin arc episode "Snoop" has Wittle Wallace attempt to make Erma's cousin Emily "his plaything" and later attack her. Emily also discovers that Erma has Warrior Unicorn Princess dolls. Both of these events later play a part in the Secrets arc, the former when Wallace pulls a Grand Theft Me on Felicia, and the latter being what Erma's trying to hide.
    • Terry questions how Mr. Phibes couldn't hear them while they were sneaking around invisible. Answer: he could, but he pretended not to.
    • Mitsu and Momo are revealed as zashiki warashi shortly after one of them is seen beating up some youkai kids and shaking them down for money... An action that seems wildly out of character for what we now know they are, a variety of youkai that rarely get up to worse than childish mischief unless provoked. Sure enough, it turns out those kids are bullies and they started it.
  • For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: One strip has Erma deciding to just go as the Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl she is after a woman compliments her "costume".
  • Four-Fingered Hands: All humanoid characters have three main fingers and a thumb. This can look somewhat odd under certain circumstances, such as when they Pinky Swear.
  • Freaky Is Cool: When he first started dating Emiko, Sam noticed she didn't have much interest in the normal sights around town but was drawn towards a model of a local monster myth. So he started taking her to haunted and other horror movie–esque locations around town like the abandoned asylum and the swamp, which she loved.
  • Friendship Moment: In the climax of the "Rats in the (School) Walls" arc, Sidney reveals that she is only half human, with the other half being Rat Man, and her true form is a Cute Monster Girl. She is terrified that Erma and her friends will be repulsed by this discovery. Instead, Erma smiles warmly and then gives Sidney a huge rib-crushing hug, after which Amy, Terry, and Connor readily accept her as well.
  • Frivolous Summoning: In this strip, Amy performs a Bloody Mary-like ritual to summon Erma... so she could ask to borrow Erma's class notes.
  • Funny Background Event: While the class is squabbling amongst each other to decide who is going to be the one kid to join Amy's dodgeball team against Erma, they don't notice Erma going up to the coach to ask if she can join Amy's dodgeball team.
  • Gashadokuro: Emiko is famous in her Youkai hometown for multiple reasons, but children are especially impressed by the story that she overpowered a gashadokuro for fun.
  • Gave Up Too Soon: If Erma hadn't been so angry at her inability to style her hair without it growing back instantly, she would have found out that her mom has special scissors that let her do just that with her hair.
  • Genki Girl: Erma's cousin Emily is extremely friendly and hyper. It makes Erma nervous.
  • Glass Smack and Slide: Variation; in Episode 4 of the web videos where the Williams family goes to the mall, Erma sees a Warrior Unicorn Princess toy in the toy store window and presses her face up against the glass to stare at it, followed by the squeaking sound effect as her parents pull her away.
  • Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Before having her body stolen by Wittle Wallace the dummy, Felicia's eyes are normal and human with filled-in pupils. After the Grand Theft Me, however, her (body's) eyes are suddenly less filled-in and seem more demonic, even appearing drunk on occasion.
  • Grand Theft Me: In the Secrets arc, Wittle Wallace, the creepy dummy in Erma's room somehow casts a spell to swap bodies with Felicia, Erma's current babysitter; he then goes and prepares the spell again to use to gain Erma's body. Felicia in the puppet body gets the same spell on her hands and manages to use it on him.
  • Greater-Scope Villain:The invisible man only shows up in one scene of Spirit's Bloom and cameos elsewhere, but he appears to have plans to use Erma to end the world.
  • Grotesque Cute: Most of the time, Erma is a cute and appealing little girl of about eight or nine. But she's also an 'onryō' and when annoyed or frightened, can turn into a shrieking demonic entity. The webcomic gradually shifts its emphasis from "comic" manifestations of the onryō, to the "Night Parade" arc, where she becomes something completely threatening and capable of exerting great destructive potential.
  • Hair Reboot: Erma's hair seems determined to stay in its Eyes Out of Sight position. She has to resort to using a bear trap for a hairpin to pin it back for a Halloween costume.
  • Half-Human Hybrid:
    • Erma's father, Sam Williams, is a human, while her mother, Emiko Williams (née Yureimoto) is a Yōkai.
    • "Rats in the School Walls" arc reveals that Sidney the Hall Monitor, is a half human/half rat person. This allows them to control small, non-sapient rats and shift between a human guise and their natural form.
  • Halloween Episode: The appropriately named "Thirteen Days of Erma-ween," with the first several years having Erma and/or her friends/family hanging out with various horror creations such as Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, Luigi's Mansion and Scary Godmother. The 2023 and 2024 ones had Erma and her friends trying on different Halloween costumes.
  • Happily Married: Erma's parents, Sam and Emiko, are shown to have a very loving and supportive relationship with one another, and in turn are supportive and kind parents to Erma.
  • Hates Baths: As seen in "The Inevitable", Erma hates baths. And considering her ghostly powers, getting her in the tub is a battle.
  • Heroic BSoD: Emiko ends up sitting in her room in shock after her talk with Osamu, where he reveals he knew where she was the whole time and could have taken her and Erma back whenever he wanted (but chose not to). Given her shadow's progression, she spends the better part of a day sitting there, staring straight ahead despite Erma trying to reach out to her.
  • Hide Your Otherness:
    • Aggressively averted by Erma. Like her mother she is an onryo (well, half), with an impressive set of ghostly powers: telekinesis, teleportation, levitation, Prehensile Hair, and more. However, she never even tries to hide her true nature — quite the opposite, she dresses the part every day, and uses her powers freely whether there are others around or not.
    • Downplayed with Erma's mother Emiko. She is a full-blood onryō with the same powers as her daughter. She usually appears as a human woman and hides her true nature; however, she also doesn't hesitate to use her powers when necessary.
    • Sidney is introduced as a normal girl, one of Erma's schoolmates. However, the climax of the "Rats in the (School) Walls" arc reveals that she's actually a Half-Human Hybrid — her mother was a human and her father is the leader of the hidden underground village of Rat Men who live below Blairwood Elementary School. Her human form is a disguise she uses to appear normal while in school, but maintaining it takes a lot of effort. Her natural form is a Cute Monster Girl: basically human-looking, but with ratlike ears and tail, clawlike fingernails, and a noticeable snout.
  • Hint Dropping: Amy in Rat Trap states that a rat is causing a lot of havoc and it would be nice if somebody could stop it. Erma smiles and nods, then returns to eating her lunch. The next scene has Amy pushing her to the area saying, "that means you".
  • Hollywood Heart Attack: Erma accidentally causes a rude old lady to keel over one Halloween, when Erma's babysitter suggests she try asking for candy again after the woman is extremely rude to her and her friends the first time.
  • Hollywood Voodoo: Unsurprisingly, Erma has voodoo dolls and it's implied she can make them. Why she made one of Connor, though, raises some eyebrows...
  • Horrifying the Horror:
    • Monsters under the bed are scared of Erma, and Freddy Krueger has nightmares about her. On the other hand, Jason doesn't seem to have a problem getting a hug, and The Babadook enjoys reading his book with her.
    • A Mall Santa manages to scare Erma herself, resulting in her cocooning him in cloth from fear. She also appears to have gotten a fear of Santa in general from the incident as she grabbed a knife when she thought she heard him.
    • Erma is freaked out by the aggressive outbursts her parents make when they're watching an American football game.
    • Erma's cousin Emily notably makes her nervous with her hyperactive behavior.
    • Just before they leave to go back to America, Emiko whispers something into Osamu's ear that causes his Smug Snake demeanor to snap and sends him toppling back in his throne in catatonic shock.
  • Hotter and Sexier: "Tales of Outcast" can present comics that are a little spicier than the base comic's usual fare (though nothing explicit), such as the Williamses enjoying a Candlelit Bath together (after the usual horror Bait-and-Switch), and Miko's parents Dolores and Lilith getting into the mood but being interrupted by their daughter. There's even one comic titled, "The Honeymoon", which shows Sam and Emiko having (presumably) Their First Time, but it's quickly cut away with the two sleeping together, after having wrecked their room.
  • Humanoid Abomination:
    • Erma generally looks basically normal aside from her inverted-color eyes (which are often hidden by her hair), but she has a number of increasingly freakish abilities, including Mind Control and several forms of Body Horror (like tearing off her own skin). In "Check Up", she appears to have Black Speech for a heartbeat and a gateway to Hell in her ears.
    • Her mother is much the same, though she's better at functioning in society than her daughter.
  • Idea Bulb: A variant; in "Going Blank", the lightbulb in the fixture above Erma's head turns on when she solves a math problem.
  • Inelegant Blubbering:
    • In The Night Parade Pt. 30, Emiko seeing Erma dressed in her childhood kimono causes her to break down into this while declaring "[her] baby's so beautiful!"
    • The new school year has Erma and Amy separated into different classrooms, and the two of them spend lunch and recess of the first day hugging and bawling their eyes out, much to the awkwardness of their other friends and Terry's growing exasperation.
  • Informed Location: Tales of Outcast #1 reveals that Blairwood is in central Illinois. Previously, there were no positive clues as to its location except for "SHARK!!!" and "The Water's Fine" implying there was a beach nearby.
  • Intangibility: Erma (and presumably her mother as well) can become intangible to go through walls or allow things to go through them.
  • Irony: Erma can manage to freak out a lot of people 24/7 without really trying most of the time. But when she goes in "costume" (really just a normal dress with her hair done in a ponytail) on one Halloween and tries to scare people, no one takes her seriously.
  • Jump Scare: Erma is pretty fond of scaring people by popping out of walls or showing up behind them when they don't expect it.
  • Karma Houdini: No one ever brings up the fact that one of the rats literally ate Principal Phibes's pet hamster beyond the one strip.
  • Kid Hero All Grown Up: "She Has Returned" shows what Erma would look like as a high school teenager.
  • Killer Rabbit: The puppy Erma's family finds in "The Vet" seems adorable at first (especially compared to the other "pets"). That is, until it's revealed that it's going through a "teething phase", showing a massive pile of bones from various creatures behind it.
  • Kirin: The In-Universe manga Warrior Unicorn Princess appears to make more sense as a concept if the central character is viewed as a Kirin and not as a Western-visualised unicorn.
  • Klaatu Barada Nikto: Take a look at the security guard's crossword puzzle.
  • The Krampus: Erma likes to make sure he gets cookies.
    L–R 
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
    • In the final chapter of the Dodgeball arc, after Erma faces off against the entire gym, minus one teammate, we see that Coach greatly enjoys watching kids get violently pummeled with dodgeballs (even eating popcorn as it's happening, somehow). Cue Erma's teammate accidentally causing the dodgeball to bounce around the gym and eventually hit the Coach in the head.
    • The old hag in the Halloween arc aggressively screams at children and hides the candy from them because she wants it all to herself. Shortly afterward, Erma scares her so much that she has a heart attack, allowing Erma's group to steal all of the old hag's candy.
    • Felicia in Wittle Wallace's body pulls the very same trick Wittle Wallace himself used on her that kicked off the tense parts of the arc.
    • The Yokai thug trio and the bullied Yokai children kidnap Erma and throw her inside a Jubokko with the intention that the tree will kill. A few pages later, they find out they've unleashed Erma's Superpowered Evil Side.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The final part of the Family Reunion Arc (taking place five and a half years after the beginning in real time) has Felicia exclaiming that the Williams are finally back. Emiko also notes how that whole week felt like forever.
  • Light Is Good: When Momo has a change of heart, she temporarily takes on a glowing white form.
  • Lightmare Fuel: One of the comic's core elements is Affectionately Parodying various Horror tropes.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Erma nearly always wears a white gown, or sometimes skull-dotted pajamas (especially baby Erma). Emiko always wears a similar white gown except on special occasions in the modern day, though she has a few different outfits in Spirit's Bloom.
  • Losing Your Head: Erma sometimes decapitates herself to do things like sick breakdancing tricks or holding it through a wall to see what's on the other side. She can then reattach it just fine.
  • Mall Santa: One comic has Erma in line to talk to Santa at the mall. He's grumpy and pushy to the point that he manages to scare her, which appears to instill a lasting fear of Santa in her.
  • Mass "Oh, Crap!":
    • With Erma and Amy assigned as dodgeball team captains and all of the kids wanting to be on Erma's team, Coach insists that at least one kid needs to be on Amy's team to at least try to make it fair. The kids immediately start bickering over who will be the sacrificial schlub, only to all have this reaction when they see who had joined Amy's team against all of them: Erma.
    • The entire village goes into a panic when they confirm Osamu Yureimoto is coming to the village. Then again when they see Erma trip and gently slide into Osamu. And then a third time when Osamu picks Erma up and Emiko becomes enraged and they try to hold her back.
    • Everybody panics again upon seeing the Moon turning red and the black hair of an out-of-control Erma covering all the city.
  • Meaningful Background Event: "Sprinkles" has an argument between Terry and Amy about how to help Sprinkles get down from a hanging lamp, while Erma climbs up a wall in the background to help the cat.
  • Mind Over Matter: Erma and her mother have telekinesis and mind control as part of their ghostly powers. Erma in particular rarely carries anything in her hands as opposed to telekinetically.
  • Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: "The Rats in the School Walls" arc has an infestation of unusually brave rats end up revealing a secret community of Rat Men living under the school.
  • Misaimed Merchandising: In-Universe, Warrior Unicorn Princess is often portrayed as a fun action fantasy show similar to My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (complete with an adult male Periphery Demographic). In reality, however, it's extremely dark and violent.
  • Mood Whiplash:
    • "The Search Part 28" seemingly ends on a heartwarming note, with some mother-daughter bonding between Erma and Emiko and their relationship with Rin improving greatly. Cut to a forest where Emiko's father Osamu slaughters a whole bunch of youkai.
    • When Osamu finally shows up for the family gathering, multiple strips build up a bunch of tension and dread from his intimidating presence... until he meets Erma and becomes incredibly affectionate towards her, with everyone else's expressions going from fearful and angry to hilariously dumbfounded.
  • Mundane Utility:
    • A lot ofthe comic's gags come from Erma using one of her various stock horror abilities for everyday purposes. Examples include taking a ghost bus to get to school on time or using her poltergeist telekinesis to hurl dozens of dodgeballs around.
    • In an early comic, Amy sets up candles and invokes a ritual to summon her so she can… get her notes from class.
    • An early strip shows Emiko crawling out of a man's TV screen like something out of The Ring… so she can get to Erma with her lunch before the school bus leaves.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Erma has this reaction when she hears what her Superpowered Evil Side did during its rampage.
  • My Little Phony: The Show Within a Show Warrior Unicorn Princess definitely takes some cues from the franchise.
  • My Significance Sense Is Tingling: When Erma is born, a lot of those attuned to the supernatural around the world and beyond it stop what they're doing and turn to look in the direction of Blairwood.
  • New Year, Same Class: Averted; when the new school year starts, Erma and her Best Friend Amy end up in different homerooms (with their friend group also split between the classes). The two girls are incredibly distraught for the entire day (with their friends growing a little tired of their Inelegant Blubbering) until their mothers have a talk with them.
  • Night Parade of One Hundred Demons: Erma's family are invited to Japan by her maternal relatives the Yureimotos to take part in the Night Parade. It is implied that while it is a fun party to be involved in, the sheer anarchy of it can be dangerous, hence why Fumiko objects to her father's idea to involve the servants for fear of their lives.
    Emiko: Well around this time of year, yokai come together for the one-night parade throughout Japan. A parade with singing and dancing.
  • Nightmare Face: Erma and Emiko are capable of making some very scary faces. One chapter even has Emiko tell Erma not to do them in school while expressing them.
  • Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Erma's drawings are often quite nightmarish, though they don't have anything to do with the plot. In "Draw!", she "competes" with her cousin Emily as she tries to draw nightmarish things on the same paper as Emily is drawing normal small child drawings.
  • Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Erma scares people on accident about as often as on purpose, doing things like decapitating herself while breakdancing and then being confused as to why everybody else suddenly scrammed.
  • Noodle Incident:
    • Terry keeps a list of pranks he's tried on Erma. One of the entries says "firecrackers" and notes that it "definitely FAILED".
    • To get Mitsu and Momo to leave Erma alone during the Night Parade, their mother Yuri threatens to tell Erma about "our time in Hokkaido". Momo protests that "that's blackmail!", but after that both twins obey their mother's orders and agree to play nice for the night.
  • Not Afraid of You Anymore: Downplayed, but the sheer fact that Emiko wasn't going to bow to her father until Fumiko forced her to, then shocked her siblings by sassing him when everybody else around him dropped to their knees in terror of the old man certainly makes it appear that she no longer fears Osamu. It stops being downplayed by the very next page when Osamu picks Erma up and Emiko has to be restrained by her siblings to stop her attacking her father.
  • Not Me This Time: In this comic, a shark's dorsal fin appearing in a swimming pool is initially thought to be one of Erma's pranks... then Erma shows up behind her friends with a confused look on her face.
  • Not So Above It All: "Colorful Imagination" has Amy and Erma putting markers in their mouth and pretending they're fangs, before Felicia startles them by hanging up her phone and glaring at them. Once the pizza she was ordering is delivered later, she joins in with them and they pretend to be a three-headed shadow monster to scare off the pizza man... with markers in their mouths. Cue a free pizza.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: The blind principal who was a one-off gag on how anyone would accept Erma into the school is one of the few individuals responsible for keeping the school's underground Rat Men civilization a secret. He also pretends not to notice Erma and her friends following him down to said civilization while invisible.
  • Off with His Head!: Erma likes to rip the heads off all her dolls (aside from the Warrior Unicorn Princess ones).
  • Offscreen Teleportation: Erma occasionally will do this, though she's usually more fond of through-screen teleportation.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • Any time some "supernatural prank" is revealed to not be caused by Erma.
    • Erma's father and paternal uncle's entire hunting trip becomes this upon finding out Siris is undead. When Erma does find out by way of Contrived Coincidence caused by Tempting Fate, the men are understandably worried about their wives' reaction.
    • Erma has this reaction after her babysitter Felicia reveals she knows that Erma is a WUPer, a fan of Warrior Unicorn Princess, something Erma doesn't want anyone but her mom and dad to know.
    • In "Pathetic", Wittle Wallace in Felicia's body has this realization after his taunting of Erma causes her to go from mortification to pure rage.
    • Erma's mother, Emiko, has one when she goes to get a gift during Erma's birthday and sees one from someone with a tag in Japanese. She burns the gift before grabbing another one and heading back. The tag is revealed to say "grandfather", indicating that Emiko's family is not only aware of Erma's existence, but where they live. Considering they kidnapped Emiko after her marriage with Sam, Emiko is understandably frightened at her family, especially her father, coming for her and her family.
    • Toru, the Big Guy of the yokai thug trio, gives a great example when he sees his fellow thug, Kiko the yuki-onna, falling toward the pool of water that he's standing in. Kiko is an ice demon who can't always control her power, and Toru knows exactly what will happen when she hits the water. A moment later he's proven right, as the splash freezes instantly and encases him in ice.
    • Everybody in the mansion grounds, from Erma's family to the townsfolk, looks like their blood turned to ice when Erma accidentally bumps into Osamu.
    • In an impressive feat of artwork, the Jubokko tree manages this expression just before Erma breaks free of her bonds and escapes from it, killing it in the process.
  • One-Man Army:
    • When it comes to snowball fights, water-balloon fights, dodgeball, and even regular fights, Erma's in a league all her own.
    • Erma is nothing compared to her grandfather, Osamu, a powerful daitengu who crushes nearly anyone in his way and is feared by nearly every single one of his kind.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: Subverted. Erma and her mother Emiko are introduced as Stringy Haired Ghost Girls with an array of ghostly powers: shape-shifting, levitation, telekinesis, phasing through walls, using televisions and wells as portals to other places, Mind Control, and able to remove various body parts. However, it soon becomes clear that they're no kind of ghost at all. Erma eats, drinks, brushes her teeth, gets tired, and has to go to bed at a regular hour - all very normal for an ordinary child her age. Emiko clearly isn't a ghost either, since the baby pictures on her family's walls show that Erma was born the same way as an ordinary human child. The "Family Reunion" arc makes it clear that Emiko is a Yōkai, and that in Erma's world, youkai are living creatures, not spirits.
  • Parental Favouritism: Both Yureimoto grandparents pick favorite grandchildren when they first meet Erma; Osamu swoons over her and completely ignores the twins, while Amaya says that while Erma's got potential, she likes the twins' ability to cause mischief better.
  • Periphery Demographic: In-Universe; Erma is a big fan of Warrior Unicorn Princess and initially tries to keep it a secret. Downplayed by the fact that the show is actually rather darker than what advertisements portray it as.
  • Pest Controller: Sidney can control ordinary rats mentally.
  • Photo-Booth Montage: In "Photo Booth Buddies", Erma, her friend Amy, and babysitter/chaperone Felicia are at the mall and come across a photo booth. They exchange conspiratorial looks, and spend the next few minutes taking a couple of dozen silly pictures of them making different awful faces at the camera.
  • Pint-Sized Kid: All the kids in the comic are extremely short compared to the adults. Erma seems to be in second or possibly third grade, which makes her eight or nine years old. By age nine an average girl should be four and a half feet tall, but Erma is at least a foot shorter than that. So are her friends from school. It's implied that Mitsu and Momo are the same age, and they are about as tall as Erma is.
  • Portal Picture: Erma can warp with comic books. Also works with Japanese artwork: Emiko's sister quickly makes one to their van ride in the hope that she, Sam, and Erma will leave before their grandfather arrives.
  • Portal Pool:
    • Erma and her mom can warp with sinks/water. Sam doesn't like it when they track water on the floor, though.
    • In the Christmas special, Erma uses a well to travel to the North Pole.
  • Post-Nightmare Comfort: The second time Erma has a nightmare about the events of the Reunion's End arc, her parents show up to comfort her. (The first time wasn't as bad, so they didn't hear.)
  • Power Nullifier: At the end of the Night Parade sub-arc, the yokai kids trap Erma in a set of chains with talismans attached to prevent her powers from working.
  • Prehensile Hair:
    • Erma and her mother can control their long, stringy black hair to ensnare and squeeze people or items like an anaconda. Emiko can also condense her hair, like compressing the tips into deadly spikes.
    • Emiko's elder sister, Fumiko, is a Hari Onago youkai that uses her spike-tipped hair to paint and restrain others.
  • Prompting Nudge: In "The Craving" strip, Erma is staring hungrily into the tubs of the local ice cream store, and one of the workers, Lilith, gets a nudge from her colleague to be the one to help the ice cream-crazed gremlin with an unsettling smile on her face.
  • Puppy Love: There's a good bit of Ship Tease between Erma and her buck-toothed classmate Connor, with a fair amount of gifts, cheek-kisses, and protective instincts exchanged.
  • Putting the "Pal" in Principal: While the Creepy Cute Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl title character unnerves most of the teachers, Principle Phibes is blind, and thus "Everyone is the same in [his] eyes". Turns out, he means it—he's a Secret-Keeper for a society of Rat Men living underneath the school, and Erma is not the only Half-Human Hybrid to attend his school.
  • Random Species Offspring: There doesn't seem to be much cohesion in what type of Yōkai Emiko's family members are. Emiko herself and Erma are onryō, her sister is a rokurokubi, which her twin daughters didn't inherit (being Zashiki-Warashi with an unidentified satyr-like youkai for a father), and their other siblings are a collection of different youkai including a nukekubi, a hari onago, a nure-onna, a noppera-bō, and an Oni. Their father is a daitengu, and their mother seems to be some kind of ghost as well.
  • Rat Men: Turns out there's a civilization of facultatively quadrupedal anthropomorphic rats living underneath the school. They have plans to move due to the noise from above, but decide to send their children to the school to begin the acclimation of humans to Rat Men.
  • Reaction Shot: The chapter where Erma finally meets her grandfather Osamu by bumping into him has two of these in succession. The first one depicts the onlookers' expressions of nerves and fear as Osamu picks her up and asks if she's Erma, and then the second depicts expressions of shock and disbelief as Osamu is all smiles and welcoming to his granddaughter.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Emiko, pissed that Osamu is trying to act like a kind person and that the past never happened, attempts to give one of these by going down the long list of all the ways he was horribly abusive not only to Emiko and the rest of her siblings, but also to her husband Sam. As soon as she's done speaking, he gives a response, reminding her how overwhelmingly powerful he is, revealing that he'd always known where she and Sam were, saying he doesn't care if she forgives him, and bidding her a good night.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Erma's Superpowered Evil Side has glowing red eyes, which in fact are the only non-black part of her body while in that state. This is in a comic that's normally plain black-and-white. She's also extremely destructive in said state.
  • Reverse Supernatural Creature: Some Yōkai tend to invert the traditional traits of their species. Most notably, Erma and her mother Emiko are Onryō, which are often angry and vengeful spirits, but these two are shown as otherwise good, even-tempered people with malevolent powers. Likewise, Erma's uncle Kentaro is an Oni, which are traditionally violent brutes, but Kentaro himself is a friendly, fun-loving guy.
  • Right Behind Me: The strip "While No One's Looking" has Erma fly up and sneak some cookies from the jar on top of the fridge, only for her mother to appear behind her just as she is about to take a bite.
    S–Y 
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: Erma is not shy about using her powers to "cheat" at games or sports such as dodgeball or Jenga. Her friend Amy is usually the one to call her out on it.
  • Secretly Wealthy: Multiple:
    • Sam is a famous horror novelist with at least one award, four published works, and is currently working on another. It's assumed by fans that this has (or should have) made him well off, yet his family lives in a comfortably modest suburban home. Others point out that being wealthy would be the only way they can pay for Erma's more destructive episodes; a wealthy lifestyle would mean replacing things would be much more expensive. It would also explain why such expenses haven't put the Williams in the poor house and reinforced by a comment made by Erma's aunt Yori about it.
    • Emiko's family has plenty of prestige and servants with them, something Sam did not know too much about based on his surprise about learning it. However, it's unlikely Emiko gets any money from them seeing how she wants little to do with her family (or at least, her dad). According to Erma's uncle, the giant mansion they have on Earth is nothing compared to the one they have in the spirit world, which he describes as the estate 'times ten'.
  • Seen It All: Multiple:
    • Sam's Establishing Character Moment is an attempt by Erma to spook him; he stops it cold with no effort, and it's clear he thinks of it as just another childish shenanigan.
    • Erma's doctor only comments that she "Seems healthy" after finding that she can drastically expand her mouth for the throat check, has Black Speech for a heartbeat, and has a gateway to Hell in her ear.
    • Erma's schoolmates have gotten used to her antics, to the point that when she causes an avalanche, Amy's reaction is an indignant "I said no powers when we snowball fight!"
    • Felicia, Erma's current babysitter, isn't fazed by Erma's attempts to scare her and takes swapping bodies with an evil dummy surprisingly well.
    • Yori recognizes Sam as Emiko's husband just by the fact that he doesn't seem fazed by the supernatural things going on at the airport.
    • Japan in general also seems to be less easily fazed by the supernatural than much of the rest of the world, if Yori's comments are correct.
  • Shadowed Face, Glowing Eyes:
  • Shadow of Impending Doom: The third act of the "Family Reunion" arc begins with Osamu Yureimoto, The Patriarch of Erma's maternal family, arriving at the yokai village by casting a gigantic horned shadow over the land. Once the inhabitants see it, all activity is brought to a screeching halt, and the lookout heralds his arrival via ringing a bell to warn the villagers. Osamu isn't even in a gigantic form, he just naturally casts an oversized shadow.
  • Shadow Walker: Erma's grandmother Amaya makes her entrance by materializing out of the shadow of a nervous servant who has come to wait on Osamu and Erma.
  • Shark Fin of Doom: In "SHARK!!!", Erma's friends are just getting into the water at the beach when they notice a shark's dorsal fin swimming around, even going straight for them just as they get into water too shallow for it. As they're catching their breath on the beach, Terry realizes it's probably just Erma playing a prank. He calls out to Erma that the jig is up… only for a confused Erma to show up behind them while the shark continues swimming.
  • Shout-Out: Has its own page.
  • Shown Their Work:Copiously. Examples include:
    • The numerous amount of Yōkai in the Family Reunion Arc is nothing short of astounding, to the point that there's even a book that details every single youkai mentioned so far!
    • The screens and wall-art decorating the Yureimoto mansion, which appear as background detail and depict war and battle (samurai storming a castle; or else a human village fighting a desperate, and doomed, defence against waves of ferocious youkai) appear to be line-for-line copies of actual mediaeval Japanese artwork, to be found in scrolls and screen-prints, now preserved in museum collections in Japan. (An incidental detail is that these are in the personal collection of Lord Osamu, who seems to delight in ruin and chaos — another pointer to the Yureimoto patriarch's true nature).
  • Show Within a Show: Erma's favorite TV show is Warrior Unicorn Princess, a Shout-Out to My Little Pony.
  • Shut Up, Kirk!: As soon as Emiko finishes her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Osamu, he not only reminds her just how overwhelmingly powerful he still is but also drops the bombshell that she and Sam never actually escaped him all those years ago. He discovered where they were and where they were going the day after they escaped, and he could have easily destroyed their happy little suburban life with their daughter Erma at any point in the past decade. He doesn't care if she (or any of his children, for that matter) forgives him or not because he's still their father regardless (which could be taken to mean that he's doing this out of love, not for forgiveness, or that he doesn't care what they think of him because they are and will always be his children). He happily bids her a good night, while she spends both the immediate aftermath and most of the following day in a Thousand-Yard Stare.
  • Silence Is Golden: The comic is happy to go for long stretches without any written dialogue. It helps that Erma is The Voiceless.
    • A large number of strips, such as "Kart Rider", tell an entire story without a single line of dialogue.
    • The Night Parade sub-arc goes eight pages, from Part 37 to Part 44, with no written dialogue and only one written sound effect.
    • Almost the entirety of the Aftermath arc is without written dialogue, with the exception of a rebus in part 3/6. It makes the two lines in part 6/6 stand out that much more:
      Felicia: We're here for you.
      Felicia: We're all here for you.
  • Sliding Scale of Undead Regeneration: Siris takes three gunshots to the face without any noticeable wounds and heals off a VERY noticeable divot from being run over just by eating.
  • The Speechless: Erma's aunt Mayumi has never uttered a word as far as we can tell. Justified since she's a noppera-bo Yōkai with no facial features. At the end of the Family Reunion arc, this is Subverted when she does in fact speak to get Erma's attention.
  • Spell Book: The Williamses have one, and Erma knows how to use it.
    • Early in the "Rats in the (School) Walls" arc, she uses a spell from the book to turn herself and her friends invisible.
    • In "Noise! Noise! Noise!", she uses another spell from the book to make the television come to life.
  • Spit Take: When the new teacher Ms. Ali mentions that she has Erma in her homeroom, one of the older teachers chokes on her drink.
  • Splash of Color:
    • The animated shorts are Deliberately Monochrome except for certain objects being bright red, such as the apple Erma hands her teacher in the first short or Erma's hat and mittens in the "Blairwood Holidays" episode.
    • The comic is also Deliberately Monochrome save for the crossover strips (all of which are non-canon with the possible exception of the Christmas Special)... until "The Night Parade Part 53", when in a moment of fear, Erma unlocks a power that causes her eyes to glow red. In Part 54, the moon also turns red, along with the light it casts, which temporarily turns the whole comic from black-and-white to black-and-white-and-red. Erma's later nightmares and flashbacks about the event also tend to be red-tinged or have red elements.
    • The Valentine's Day Tales of Outcast comic has a single pink flower.
    • One collection of sketches has Sam wearing a purple shirt in the first couple panels. Later panels have a pink-dotted background, some of which also give Sam and Emiko red Luminescent Blush.
    • "Green Torture" has green broccoli and asparagus.
  • Split-Screen Reaction: Osamu's first interaction with Erma has individual panels for all the core cast's reactionsnote  to Osamu's first line and to Erma hugging him. It then has another setnote  of extremely cartoonish reactions to Erma hugging Osamu.
  • Spooky Photographs: Episode 4 of the web shorts, "Smile", is all about Erma and her parents going to the mall to take a family photograph, but when the photograph is developed, Erma and Emiko's smiling faces are replaced with ghostly black-and-white Nightmare Faces, just like every other family photograph. Note that this is different from the webcomic, where photos and videos of Erma show up normally.
  • Starter Villain: The comic never has any real antagonists (certainly not beyond a single strip) until the Secrets arc, where Wittle Wallace turns out to have a sinister plan to steal Erma's body. He's a bit of an odd example in that most later arcs continue to lack true Arc Villains (instead having them as secondary sources of conflict or as Greater Scope Villains), but he still heralds the appearance of real conflict and nontrivial antagonists in the comic.
  • Stating the Simple Solution: "Um... Erma? Why don't you just levitate the rat?"
  • Strong Family Resemblance: Erma looks like a smaller version of her mom Emiko, from their looks to the way they dress. This is lampshaded a lot by her maternal relatives, especially her aunts Yori and Ena. Flashbacks and pictures of Emiko when she was Erma's age make the resemblance even more clear, as they are fully identical when compared.
    Amaya: Are you sure you didn't just shrink our daughter, Osamu?
  • String Theory: In the epilogue to The Rats In The School Walls story arc, Erma's first babysitter (a girl made deranged by Erma's supernatural pranks) is seen in her room, where she has obsessively decorated an entire wall with photographs of Erma and linked them together using classic String Theory. Given the dark and macabre undercurrents of the comic strip, it is possible to see that the lines of string on the wall are one or two strands away from completing magickal sigils used by Aleister Crowley and others. Seen from one angle, one arrangement is almost a pentagram. And Crowley used a "unicursal hexagram" in his magick-note . One of her arrangements on the wall suggests that once she makes that final connection about Erma and completes the sigil, big things might happen in Blairwood!
  • Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Erma and her mother. Considering what they're based on, it's to be expected.
  • Superpowered Evil Side: In the Reunion's End sub-arc, Erma gets betrayed, kidnapped, and thrown into a haunted tree seemingly to be Mind Raped to death. In response, she snaps, showing an unprecedented level of Unstoppable Rage. It isn't exactly an "evil side," per se, but she's so blinded by rage and pain that she attacks the entire world around her indiscriminately.
  • Super-Toughness: Erma's undead dog Siris pretty much ignores being shot in the head three times and then run over.
  • Surprisingly Shared Secret: Erma is very scared of people learning that she likes Warrior Unicorn Princess. Over the course of the comic, she happens to learn that two of her friends and her uncle are all fans as well. It's Downplayed in the cases of her friends, where it seems to just be something she didn't know about them, but played straight in that of her uncle, who seems to have been actively trying to keep it secret.
  • Switch to English: All of Erma's yokai relatives are fully bilingual in English. Once it is understood who Erma is (their half-yokai American relative), they confirm her identity with her in English and then stick with English around her.
  • Take a Third Option: During the Dodgeball arc, Erma is picked as one of the captains, which results in all of the class trying to be on her side since, thanks to her powers, she's virtually impossible to play against. Of course, that leaves the opposing side without any players and someone at least needs to be on the other captain's side to have a game. While the kids argue over who's going to do it, Erma decides to join the other team so there can be a proper match. Great for the other captain, hilarious for the coach, not so much for the other team.
  • Television Portal: A favorite method of transport for Erma and her mom, though something as small as a portable console works too. They mostly use it for transport and the occasional prank, although Yori states that Emiko can also bring others with her.
  • Tempting Fate:
    • Wittle Wallace brags that people have tried to destroy or otherwise get rid of him in various ways and it's never worked, so he'll just come back no matter what Erma does. Cue his being chained to a rock and prepared to be dropped into a seemingly bottomless pit, which he admits has never happened before. On top of that, the pit turns out to be so deep it leads to Hell. Yeah, he's probably not coming back.
    • Subverted in "Tempting Faith". When Terry catches Erma peacefully sleeping under a tree, he's about to use a water balloon when he notices The Grim Reaper watching them while holding a list, implying that Erma's startled reaction would result in unintentionally lethal consequences for Terry. He wisely puts the balloon down, and the Reaper heads off to his next appointment.
    • In their fight with Erma and the twins, the yokai thug trio repeatedly demand "is this all you got?" or other words to that effect. They soon learn that at least in Erma's case, it definitely isn't all she's got.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: Terry spends a lot of time trying to pull various pranks on Erma — snowballs, water balloons, Nerf-dart ambushes, and more. To date, all his efforts have failednote . In the strip "Terry's Gift", Erma presents Terry with a snowball (complete with ribbon-bow on top) and gives him a free shot at her.
  • Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Osamu's not small by any means, but his wife Amaya towers over him.
  • Total Eclipse of the Plot: The night of the Night Parade is marked by a red moon, which normally happens only during a lunar eclipse. But eclipses follow a rigid schedule according to the orbits of the Moon and Earth, and no eclipse was supposed to happen that night — showing clearly that something other than nature was responsible. And indeed, something else was: The red moon occurs when Erma loses control, breaks out of the Jubokko tree, and transforms into a rampaging Eldritch Abomination.
  • The Trees Have Faces: The Christmas tree in "Tree Decorating". The Jubokko tree also has a face, or at least an eye.
  • Translation Punctuation: Dialog in Japanese is noted with angle quotes.
  • Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Lampooned like crazy! Being a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl, Erma is prone to the typical self-dismemberment and demonic possession, she keeps a knife in case Santa Claus ever visits, she tears the heads off of all of her dolls, she is prone to the occasional horror movie marathon, and she is still in grade-school. This has generally been accepted as normal, and she is still just a normal girl at heart.
  • Unabashed B-Movie Fan: Erma watches a lot of horror movies, though she finds them hilarious (presumably because she's innately scarier than any of them). She considers it embarrassing to be caught watching Warrior Unicorn Princess and switches to a slasher film when her babysitter walks in. Most of them are made up, though one of the color strips shows her watching Maniac! (1980).
  • Under the Mistletoe: In "Erma X-mas Special #2" between Erma and Connor, where he kisses her on the cheek.
  • Unnamed Parent: Erma's parents weren't named until the release of the special Spirit's Bloom book. Their names are revealed to be Sam and Emiko, with the family name being Williams. The names would later be used within the main comic itself, especially with the focus on Emiko's side of the family.
  • The Un-Reveal: Erma is watching an intense fight on Warrior Unicorn Princess when the Big Bad is about to reveal his identity. Just before Erma can see it, her mother comes out of the TV and scrambles the channel, leaving her completely shocked that she missed it.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In Part 5 of The Family Reunion, when Erma and Mitsu and Momo started fighting, many people were completely unfazed by the supernatural stuff happening during their fight, reacting to it as if it's a regular disturbance, especially when Yori is strecting her neck in-front of everybody(except for the guy with glasses who has the appropriate reaction to this). Justified since according to Yori, while they may get faces and stares from people when walking around in public, the locals are less easily fazed by the supernatural than much of the rest of the world.
  • Vile Villain, Saccharine Show:
    • The first true villain of the series, Wittle Wallace, is noticeably more cruel and antagonistic than minor villains like the old hag, who are just petty jerks, especially since he steals Felicia's body and uses it as a vessel to bully Erma and attempt to take her body.
    • Likewise are Erma's Grandfather Osamu Yureimoto, who tried to imprison her mother when she fell in love with Erma's human father, and who makes his entrance into the comic proper by slaughtering a party of Yokai on the outskirts of their village; and her Uncle, an Invisible Man who wants to use Erma to end the world and casually slaughters three nurses when visiting Erma after she's born, disintegrating one from the waist up and flaying two others down to the bone.
  • The Voiceless: Erma doesn't talk at all onscreen. She whispers to her friends a couple of times offscreen, and she will absolutely screech to wake the dead, but we've never seen her speak normally. Whenever she tries, something happens to keep her from talking.
  • Voodoo Doll: Erma has a few voodoo dolls, including one of Connor. Unfortunately for Erma (and later Connor), Erma's female friends find it and immediately start having fun with it. It gets brought back up in a later Valentine's Day strip where Erma, seeing Connor shivering as he walks outside in the cold, finds and hugs her voodoo doll of him to warm him up.
  • Wacky Homeroom: The hapless Miss Bierly now presides over a classroom that not only has Erma Williams in it (half-human, half-Yōkai spirit) but also Sydney (half-human, half rat-girl, from the subterranean tribe of sentient rats). There are also other representatives of the Rat People, who are now sending their children to the surface to be educated there and to learn about human society.
  • Wall Crawl: Erma likes to crawl on the walls and ceiling to sneak around and spook people. At one point she uses it to escape her Genki Girl cousin Emily, who attempts to follow but can't. She ends up feeling bad, though, and ends up giving Emily a piggyback ride on the wall.
  • Webcomic Time: Erma's visit to Japan took place over the course of a week in the story, but began in January of 2018 and only ended in August of 2023. It's lampshaded in the final strip, where Erma and her parents crash on the couch as soon as they get home and her mother comments that the vacation felt like it took forever.
  • Wham Episode:
    • "Invasion of Privacy" houses the aforementioned Grand Theft Me scene with Felicia and reveals Wittle Wallace (the creepy dummy) as the Arc Villain of the Secrets arc. The rest of the arc's comics are less comical and more dramatic and tense, and it opens the way for other dramatic arcs in the future.
    • The end of the Family Reunion arc features the bullied yokai kids turning on Erma, kidnapping her, and turning out to be in cahoots with the thugs she'd fought earlier; Erma's Superpowered Evil Side being unleashed; the whole world noticing the Moon turning red; and, ominously, Osamu declaring the whole thing a "Good show!" when it's over. Erma still has flashbacks to it over a year later (in real time).
  • Wham Line: There's one from "The Rats in the School Walls" arc. For the record, it's being said by an apparently human girl to a huge anthropomorphic rat.
    Sidney: I know... I just... I don't think it's right, Dad!
  • Wham Shot:
    • A mid-story one during "The Rats in the School Walls" arc. Connor, Erma's friend with a huge crush on her, has an older sister… who happens to be Erma's former babysitter.
    • After a long and cliffhanger-filled buildup, the inevitable meeting between Osamu Yureimoto and his granddaughter happens. The dark shadow tones he's always cast in, the ever-present tension as everyone around him, his children included, feel the dread that he could kill them at any moment, and once he finally meets Erma he picks her up, asks if she is Erma, and in the very next comic... the Tengu lord is all smiles as he warmly greets his beloved granddaughter.
  • What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: In-Universe, Warrior Unicorn Princess turns out to be surprisingly dark and violent for a show aimed at prepubescent children.
  • What the Hell, Hero?:
    • In "Gotta Have It", Felicia gets angry with Erma for mind-controlling her boyfriend to buy a new toy she saw on TV.
    • Amy often calls Erma out for abusing her powers in games, such as when she wins a snowball fight by causing an avalanche in "The Incoming Storm".
  • When Trees Attack: Erma is briefly imprisoned inside a jubokko, a youkai spirit that takes the form of a tree with an abiding hatred for all humans. Fear and trauma give way to anger, which triggers her true potential as a Youkai in her own right.
  • Whisper Reaction: Shortly before the Williamses leave Japan after the family reunion, Emiko whispers something in Osamu's ear that makes him rapidly go from smugly satisfied to speechless with shock. Especially confusing given that his reveal that he'd always known where she was living did the same thing to her just a couple days earlier—just what could possibly turn the tables so easily?
  • Why Didn't I Think of That?: Erma, trying to catch a rat in "For My Sandwich", gets frustrated and sends everything she can at it with her Psychic Powers, but it keeps dodging. Then one of her classmates wonders why she doesn't just psychically grab the rat directly. Cue all of the things floating in the air to come crashing back down and her grabbing it with her powers (and it still gets away in the end).
  • Wild Take: This is Michael's expression in "Spirit's Bloom" when he sees that his brother's late wife Emiko, who was thought dead in a car wreck, has been alive this whole time.
  • Win to Exit: Tales of Outcast #1 has Erma and her friends getting sucked into a video game. The only way forward is towards the final boss… which the beginning of the issue implies has never been beaten.
  • The Worf Effect: In the main comic, there is no force or character that Erma isn't able to overcome. In Tales of Outcast #3, however, Erma puts everything she has into saving Jordan from a Blob Monster and still fails, confirming her and the reader's sense from #2 that she wouldn't be able to beat these things.
  • Write What You Know: In-Universe, Sam is an award-winning horror novelist by profession, and it's implied a lot of his horror stories are inspired by his wife and daughter.
  • Yank the Dog's Chain: A winter strip in 2017 had Erma give Terry the gift of a snowball and allowing him to actually hit her in the face with it. He goes to do so… only to slip on the ice he was standing on while winding up, fall flat on his back, and have the snowball fall on his face.
  • You Are Grounded!: When Erma goes Prime Time on her dad and his friends for cheering too loudly during a football game, the latter two are terrified by the evil TV apparition holding them with metal claws. Her dad, however...
    Sam: You are SO grounded, young lady!
  • Yōkai: Emiko's family (and by extension Erma) are this, confirmed by Emiko herself in the Family Reunion arc. Each of her siblings is a different type of youkai.

 
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Erma [Meets Teacher (02)]

Scene from the "Erma" web short based on the comic. A teacher is set to get a new student in her class named Erma. She doesn't seem to think much of it at first... until said student comes to greet her personally.

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Erma [Meets Teacher (02)]

Scene from the "Erma" web short based on the comic. A teacher is set to get a new student in her class named Erma. She doesn't seem to think much of it at first... until said student comes to greet her personally.

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