Characters / Albedo Erma Felna EDF Erma Felna

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Tropes about the main titular heroine of the comic.

Squadron Commander Erma Kammati Felna

Age: 25 (at the beginning of the story), 30 (at SD 201), 45 (Distant Finale's flashback), 60 (Distant Finale's current time period)
Affiliation: Extraplanetary Defense Force
Ranks held: Flight Officer -> Squadron Commander
Birthplace: Annahport, Planet Dornthant II
Date of Birth: SD 171-01-22
Species: Feline (unknown breed/subspecies)

The titular heroine of the series. Erma Felna is the eldest daughter of Kanoc Felna, a former veteran of the First Lepine War, which suffered of brain damage after being tortured at the hands of the ILR, and Eda Felna, a school teacher. She originally was a military pilot during the battle of Derzon, but, after her aerodyne was shot down, she was forced to lead a team whose leader had just died hours before. After several skirmishes against the ILR forces, Erma and the rest of the EDF managed to expel the ILR from Derzon, but during a clean-up operation, she is wounded by an enemy soldier during an ambush. Her bulletproof vest prevented her from suffering major internal injuries, but the shots broke several ribs. Due to her heroism (and the fact that the EDF wanted to prevent a woman from becoming an example within the organization) she is sent to the planet Ekosiak, a world situated at the confines of the ConFed, as a combat instructor in order to train pilots and also to send her as far away as possible.

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Tropes about her:

• '80s Hair: One of her many haircuts includes this.
• Action Mom: Overlapping with Action Heroine. In the battlefield, she's a fearsome opponent for everyone who stands in her way. In her private life, she's the kindest and cutest mom a child can ever had.
• Almighty Janitor: She's basically the futuristic equivalent of piloting a military cargo plane, hardly the most glorious job for someone like her, not that stops her anyways. She later averts this when she has the chance of using military aerodynes instead.
• Author Avatar: According with Word of God, Erma is a gender-bended, action-oriented, and somewhat semi-autobiographic version of her author, albeit only background-wise.^note Gallacci in Real Life was a Desk Jockey, hardly a glorious job for someone in the armed forces, in the same way Erma is a cargo pilot in-universe.
• Accidental Hero: The entire premise of the comic begins with this. Erma becomes a heroic figure inside the EDF after being the first woman on going into the battlefield during the Battle of Derzon, but that's because she has to do it after her aerodyne was shot down by ILR anti-aircraft fire, forcing her to fight back in the ground along with a EDF squadron who happens to had lost their leader during the battle. It also happens again during the Ekosiak uprising, snowballing her fame to legendary levels and becoming a pain in the EDF's rear due of her sex.
  • Dreaming of Things to Come: Most of her dreams tends to foreshadows lots of events that happens during the story, including having sex with someone else other than Tavas, later to be revealed being Alfon Voga and many of her exploits she does in her military career. Being a Talent also means she is also vulnerable to being mind-raped by other Talents, causing her to even foreshadow the death of Alfon, but by using a past event that involved her father in the past instead.
• Bathtub Scene: Erma could give Shizuka Minamoto a run for her money regarding how many times she takes a bath, especially during the whole first Story Arc. These dont' explain what the reaction is.
• Berserk Button: She has four of them:
  • Being pitied; for some reason, Erma really hates recieving pity from anyone, regardless their status. This is very likely due to the fact being her a female in a rather misoginist setting, and her backstory regarding her father, who was tortured by the ILR, the last thing she wants is showing weakness in front of their enemies. In fact, this very trope was the reason Erma broke with Tavas at the beginning of the story.
  • In the Distant Finale, being addressed as Honorable Felna.^note The in-universe equivalent of being addressed as Felna-dono in Japanese. By the time she reached that point, Erma is already retired from the military, her biological family is very likely gone, she was exiled from Dornthant, very likely for life and she likely lost all her propieties, money and status regarding her standing as the last member of the Felna family, and she only wants to live her last years as a civilian with the cloned members of her family, including Teka Ardehad.
  • Making fun or her Dornthantii origin is another button for her, albeit this is Played for Laughs between her and Toki during the Ish-tako sub-arc. Justified for her, as Erma is very proud of her origins and she had problems to adjust herself to other settings, especially when she was sent to Ekosiak after the events of the Battle of Derzon.
• Blessed with Suck: Erma cannot control or use her Talent powers in any significant way and her powers makes her an easy prey for other Talents with similar powers. Faster-Than-Light Travel can also screw with her powers to the grade to temporally cripple her, especially during the second arc, possibly augmented due to her actual emotional state. On the other hand, she is also able to Mind Rape other people unintentionally as well. It's later explained extra-officially her powers depend of her being "connected" to her current universe, and "jumping" to another universe during FLT force her body to "reconnect" again, with serious drawbacks.
• Born in an Elevator: Or more exactly, born in a middle of a freakin' terrorist attack!
• The Captain: Becomes one in the middle of the first Story Arc and also during the remaining of the second one.
• Catapult Nightmare: Has one when after Erma was accidentally mind-raped by Alliusiz causing her to gave birth prematurely to Rojigo.
• Cats Hate Water: While all Feline characters in the story don't have any problem with water at all, Erma is very notable on this, since she loves water, and she will take any opportunity to take a good bath when she feels dirty, especially during the first arc.
• Color-Coded Eyes: Justified on the grounds she's a feline and female, not to mention having psychic powers. It also works as a plot point in the Distant Finale since Teka is a clone of her, who also shares the same color.
• The Chosen One: She was chosen by The Net due of her skills and her latent psychic Talents.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: In a retroactive example, possibly due to her author's Art Evolution, she's supposedly inspired by Word of God in both Helena Bonham Carter (looks) and Claudia Christian (in her role as Susan Ivanova).
• Cute Little Fangs: Only notable in some angles during a few scenes in the comic, and even yet, her fangs are a bit small, compared with her non-sentient ancestors.
• Daddy's Girl: She was this in her younger days, much for Tasak's chagrin.
• Dark and Troubled Past: While not as exaggerated as other examples, many parts of Erma's younger years sucked ass for her: As having her father traumatized wasn't enough for her, according with Gallacci himself in some statements from his homepage, Erma's romantic previously to meet both Tavas and Alfon was next to terrible in many aspects, due partly of her own upbringing and partly of her own sexual biology as a part of being a Feline (see below for details)
• The Dead Have Names: Erma invokes this trope after the battle of Derzon when she is reading a casualty list of all people under her command who died on that battle, while recovering from her wounds she received there.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not as exaggerated as other cases, but she can be extremely snarky at times, especially regarding topics that annoys her.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: In the first arc. Reverts back to point zero at the second Story Arc after her homeworld was bombed and losing her family.
• Dented Iron: The whole story makes painfuly clear that Erma is not invincible, much less Made of Iron, and many of her injuries came to haunt her later in the worst way possible, like how her previous injury when she was shot in the gut by ILR soldiers in Derzon in an ambush damaged her reproductive system, preventing her from having more children without risking her life. And by the end of her life, she ends as a frail and sick woman.
• Despair Event Horizon: As already mentioned before, Erma crosses this line when she loses everything she holds dear thanks to both Tavas and the ILR.
• Disease Bleach: Her hair became slowly grey due to continuous exposition to space radiation during FTL travels. This is mentioned at the beginning of the second arc when Erma's ship failed to jump into hyperspace, causing Erma to be knocked out from the accident due of her Talent powers, and finding out about her hair after she recovers. In the in the flashback of the Distant Finale, we see Erma with part of her hair already grey and by the time she's an old woman, her hair is now completely white.
• Do-Anything Soldier: A quite ridiculous example happens with her: Technically speaking, Erma is a qualified pilot, but she is forced to take a soldier role when her aerodyne was destroyed by enemy fire during the Battle of Derzon. Then, when transfered to Ekosiak, she also takes a commanding role there and finally,when she was exiled after the attack on Dornthant, she became a battleship captain.
• The Dreaded: She later becomes this for the ILR, according with the Distant Finale.
• Dude Magnet: Not at Toki's levels but in-universe she's considered as a very beautiful woman and many men desires her. She dates with Tavas Ikalik and when she brokes out with him, she ends with Alfon Voga, and she has a child with him.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Inverted: She utterly dislike being the center of attention, especially during the Ekosiak sub-arc, partly due to political reasons, since she didn't want the people to know the EDF was meddling with the planet's politics and partly because she had a very modest personality. At the end of the story, she become a legendary figure at universal scale. This is later subverted, as the EDF doesn't like her newly adquired fame, due of her sex and they try to ruin her life by making her partly responsible of the events behind the attack of her homeworld by exiling her. It didn't work.
• Emotionless Girl: Subverted: Erma is very emotional when she allows it, but she has to repress her emotions after what happened with her father Kanoc in other to enter to the EDF, and after all the crap she endures in the second arc when Tavas and the EDF exiles her from her homeland. Also overlaps this with Emotion Suppression.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: By time the Distant Finale kicks in, she's possibly the only surviving member of the Felna family and very possibly, the only surviving member of the entire cast of the Erma Felna EDF saga, with the sole exceptions of clone daughter Teka and her cloned offspring.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Being one of the few characters with human-like hair, Gallacci loves to draw Erma with different haircuts, albeit her most known haircut is her 80's one. Even as a kid, Erma sported many haircuts as well.
• Expy: Design-wise, she resembles a lot like Lieutenant M'Ress from Star Trek: The Animated Series. According with Gallacci, she takes inspiration from the titular Omaha the Cat Dancer.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Discussed: According with Word of God, haven't Kanoc being captured and tortured by the ILR, Erma would probably ended working as a model like her mother was when she was young.
• Failure Heroine: The loss of her family and Alfon, along with the treachery done by both Tavas and the EDF turns her into a very sour woman, probably for the rest of her life.
• Fallen Princess: Well, not exactly a princess per se, but she is technically a military socialité, and happens to her twice. The first one was done by her own choice, when she refused to be the heir of the Felna family in order to enlist to the EDF and avenge his father from the torture done by the ILR, and the second one, was done when Dornthant was bombed, and she was separated from her family after being exiled by Tavas and his cronies.
• Fanservice: As much as Erma is treated as a serious soldier and leader, there is no shortage of her in buff on her personal time, such as in bed or in the shower, and looking gorgeous.
• Fatal Flaw: By Word of God, her biggest flaw is naivety, as she seems to be unable to read and something outright ignore the ill intentions the people could had against her, even when she had the culprit of the problem right in her face and being warned beforehand, especially when the Net warned her her younger brother Tasak could be involved with Tavas in his conspiracy and she and her family pays dearly for it.
  • Another flaw is having a rather mercurial temper in stressful situations, like those outside military fields, or when someone press her buttons, albeit this was an improvement when she was a kid, when she was worse, especially with Tasak, her younger brother, and that ended up biting her in the rear years later.
• Fiery Redhead: Technically speaking, it's reddish brown by Word of God, due of the author being color-blind, but she shares many of the points of this trope.
• Fish out of Water: Happens a lot her during the series, since she's forced to travel to many different planets and deal with people with different mindsets and species:
  • The very first one, chronologically speaking, is when she meets Toki in First Impressions, as Erma is basically an alien furry Japanese girl being sent to study abroad to basically space Netherlands to study in the EDF academy in Toki's Danet. The Danettis' mindset gives Erma a really impressive shock to her.
  • When she's sent to Ekosiak by the EDF and trying to get along with the mindset of the Ekosiaki people.
  • Ironically this happens to her again, albeit not as exaggerated, when Erma returns to Dornthant with her new boyfriend Alfon and her son Rojigo, since the things are not the same anymore now that Erma is a celebrity inside the EDF.
• Five Stages of Grief: Erma went to the 2nd and 4th stages during the second arc after the ILR attack on Dornthant when she lost Alfon and her family went missing and she only went to the 5th at the later stages of her life when she gets a new family created by her clones.
• Foil: Zig-zagged and discussed by Gallacci in his 2016 soft Retcon about the differences between Erma and Toki: Gallacci heavily implies Erma is as horny as Toki is, but unlike Toki, who wants to sleep with whatever men she can find, regardless of any other physical consideration, Erma on the other hand prefers to stick not only with people of her own species, but also with men of very high moral standing. The fact Erma hails from a very conservative background and her biology doesn't help her at the slightest.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Erma is more responsable and mature compared with Tasak, who is very gullible and envy-driven compared with his elder sister.
• Friendless Background: Downplayed, but by Word of God, Erma hails from a somewhat strict background and, before studying in the EDF academy in Danet, she has very few friends outside the ones from her family and she struggled a lot with trying to act like any other girl of her own age, until she met the resident Genki Girl Toki.
• Furry Female Mane: She's one of the few females, along her mother and many female relatives, with one.
• Furry Reminder: She and Alfon bathes their baby son Rojigo with their tongues. Oddly enough, she and Alfon are the only characters who show this kind of behaviour and even both of them prefer to do it the old-fashioned way sometimes.
  • Erma, being a Feline, is very "cyclic",^note In-universe term of "being in heat" meaning that she only has short windows of opportunity a few times a year, and when she is outside those periods, she lacks the interest and sometimes, the humor to keep an steady relationship. Unlike other examples of this trope, this is played for really painful drama for her.
  • At few times, she is seen with a choker in her neck that looks like a cat's rattle, albeit without the bell.
• G-Rated Sex: Erma does this with Alfon Voga in the beaches of Ish-tako during the eponymous sub-arc, when we see both of them very close, before switching scenes, and weeks later we see Erma being pregnant. This is very unusual, because in the second issue after the battle of Derzon, we do see Erma had a dream of herself having explicit sex, through we only see their silhouettes without any naughty details, with another Feline, which it wasn't Tavas as she had a fallout previously, and also because other erotic scenes involving implied sex with other characters than Erma are less subtle than this.
• Good-Looking Privates: When Erma puts on her dress uniform, a tight backless single piece of material with slippers and a cape to frame it, she becomes a knockout who can stun any male. It was illustrated by the author in a pin-up right here.
• Game-Breaking Injury: Remember when she received a gunshot in the gut during the Battle of Derzon? That injury came to haunt her later when Erma gave birth to Rojigo, since it was one of the causes for which she gave birth prematurely to him, along with Alliusiz' Mind Rape. According with a doctor, she will not be able to gave birth ever again without risking her life. This became a plot point later in her life when she cloned herself just to avoid this in the Distant Finale.
• Hair Color Dissonance: Originally Erma had darker brown hair in the first color issues and images the author designed, but due to both Art Evolution and the fact Gallacci is color-blind, her hair switched from redhead to sometimes reddish brown. Most recent pinups has definitely set her hair to reddish brown. The same goes with her fur. Originally her entire fur was entirely darker brown but in recent color pinups she switched to lighter brown and adding more realistic feline fur color as now her neck and belly are now completely white.
• Her Heart Will Go On: By Word of God, Erma never went to stay with any other man after Alfon's death and remained single for the rest of her life.
• The Hero's Journey: Erma is a very unusual example of this trope, as many of the stages of her evolution to heroine is in many points heavily deconstructed in various ways:
  • Miraculous or unusual circumstances around the Hero's conception or birth: Desconstructed, as she was born prematurely in the middle of a terrorist attack to her hometown, but it doesn't bring any significance to the plot.
  • The Herald brings a Call to Adventure:: In this case, the Herald is The Net, which it doesn't reveal as one until the zenith of the first arc, and Erma's Talent powers cause the Net to take an interest on her.
• Heroic BSoD: Erma suffers one hell of this after the ILR bombed her homeworld, her boyfriend dies when Tavas disable The Net's control over his aerodyne, plunging him to his death, losing all contact with her family and son (and thinking they're all dead) and after Tavas arrested her and made fun of her.
• Ice Queen: Especially before meeting Toki, and before staying with Alfon for good, just to return to this again after Alfon died and losing her family.
• In the Blood: Her father was a soldier and he also holded the rank of Squadron Commander, just like her. Also, she descends from a very well-known family of soldiers and politics dating from the very beginnings of the EDF.
• Improbable Age: At 25, she reach the rank of Commander and later became a battleship captain a 27 years old.
• Informed Flaw: By Word of God, she's supposed to be average-looking by the standards of her own species, compared with her own mother, who is really beautiful. She's a certified Dude Magnet, second only behind to Toki, the resident Lovable Sex Maniac.
• Interclass Friendship: Between she and Toki: Erma comes from an aristocratic family, while Toki is from a middle-class family, although Erma rarely mentions her family or her origins at that point in-story. It helps a lot that by then, Erma had already become a little more humble, compared to when she was a child.
• Irony: Erma joins the EDF partly to avenge her father, who was tortured to madness by the ILR. While she was able to do this, she ends losing not only her father, both also her mother, son, boyfriend, the rest of her family and, in the Distant Finale, she ends almost exactly like her father was at the beginning of the story, except at least she didn't end senile like him.
• Ironic Echo: The Battle of Derzon was her greatest achievement in her life at the beginning of the first arc, putting her in the spotlight of the entire EDF. At the end of it, another the ILR attack on her homeworld not only almost kills her military career, she lose every she holds dear for her, including her family and loved ones, and also marks her fall from grace from the EDF.
• The Kirk
• Knight in Sour Armor: Especially during the second Story Arc.
• Lady of War: Albeit of the Martial Pacifist kind.
• Lamarck Was Right: A very odd example here: All her direct descendants, either biological or cloned, like Rojigo, Teka and, in Albedo: Birthright, Kala, inherited her Talent powers in some ways or other. What makes her example stand along others from the same franchise, or even from similar works from the either the same genre or others is the fact that with the sole exception of Rojigo, no one of her future offspring inherited her same powers, or even her same weaknesses, like the ones related with Faster-Than-Light Travel. Even more stranger is the fact that none of her parents (or their respective ancestors, as far as we know about them) has any Talent powers to speak of.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: A rather contrived example of this: As far as we know about her, Erma didn't seem to be interested on having children at first, but she doesn't seem to have problems on having a child with Alfon when he impregnates her, but, as a result of her injuries she suffered during the Battle of Derzon years ago, she is unable to bear any more children without risking her own life, and she has to rely on cloning in order to have more children.
• Left Hanging: There are many mysteries around her that have not yet been fully explained, among them are the origins of her psychic powers, the final fate of her family, what happened between the last issue and the Distant Finale, and even what breed she belongs to.^note It should be noted that, by Word of God, while we know she is is a Feline (and the same goes for her family), Gallacci has refused to say the name of her breed she is derived to, outside saying none of the options given by the fans are correct, and Erma and her family doesn't belong to any particular known breed, in his own words.
• Living Legend: By the time she resolves the Ekosiak terrorist incident, she becomes into a legendary figure inside the EDF, and according with the Distant Finale, her legend spreads across the entire known universe.
• The Maiden Name Debate: An odd subvertion that doesn't involve the husband because she didn't get officially married, as her boyfriend died as her full name revealed in Birthright is Erma Kammati Felna, being Kammati her mother Eda's maiden name.
• Married to the Job: At first, she's a soldier first and a woman later due to her military upbringing. She later gets better of this after lots of painful trials, only to revert back from zero after her home planet was bombed by the ILR and losing everything that mattered to her, including her family, boyfriend and son.
• Martial Pacifist: Contrary of what people thinks of her both in-universe and out-universe, Erma is definitively NOT a Military Maverick kind of person, and despite her hate against the ILR, she has killed by her own hand about only three people (so far and on-screen): Two of them were ILR soldiers who attacked her in Derzon and another one was a spy in Ekosiak, and in all three cases she acted in self-defense, and there's an ILR ship who self-destructed when Erma and her crew tried to face them directly at the beginning of the second Story Arc, but Erma didn't even bothered to open fire. She normally prefers to deal with any situation with the less of violence possible and she only will resort to it when her life or other people's lives are in danger.
• Meaningful Name: She is named after Erma Werke, the German acronym for Erfurter Maschinenfabrik, who was a German weapons manufacturer during World War II, who went bankrupt in 1997 and famously known for designing the MP-40 submachine gun. Ironically enough, most of the weapons they designed were rifles and machine guns, while Erma uses handguns and revolvers instead.
  • In a more technical sense, Erma derivates from the Germanic root for whole or universal. Taking into account she's also a spaceship captain and the heroine of the story, this is also fitting.
• Mind Rape: Alliusiz, a member of Enchawah Corp. accidentally does this twice to Erma when she was pregnant, the last one caused her to gave birth prematurely.
• My Country, Right or Wrong - Despite being treated like crap by the EDF, she will still fight for them.
• Nerves of Steel: Erma never let her emotions cloud her judgment. She lets a Oh, Crap! expresion in her face when her planet is bombed by the ILR and she's denied access to the Net to prevent a bigger tragedy, but she regains her cool until the end of the first Story Arc, in a very heart-wrenching way.
• Never a Self-Made Woman: Played a bit. While Erma could get enlisted easily to the EDF on the grounds she is the daughter of Kanoc Felna, a famous war veteran, and her social standing, all her achievements are her own's and not thanks to her father or any other man. It does help her family are against with her about joining the EDF.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Basically, almost everything she did for the EDF ends backfiring against her sooner or later:
  • Her award for helping the EDF to liberate Derzon from the ILR? Being sent to basically the far reaches of the EDF as a training instructor just to prevent to become an example on the EDF just because she is a woman.
  • Her award for prevent the ILR from destroying Dornthant, her homeworld, even after she basically sacrificed her family?: Being arrested, mocked by her former boyfriend, who was the ringleader of a coup against her homeland just to being able to punish her, along with corrupt members of the EDF and being sent to a Suicide Mission against the ILR, so she can could die as an heroine, while keeping her away from the EDF's nefarious plans.
• Noodle Incident: During the Distant Finale, an old Erma says she is considered both a heroine for some or a war criminal, heavily implying she did something terrible during the Second Lepine War. This is never elaborated in either the finale nor in the second arc, very probably because the Distant Finale was written between the first and second arcs, giving Gallacci the opportunity to avoid to derail her character and when the second arc began, it's heavily implied it was the ILR who invented that part by blaming her of their own war crimes.
• Not So Stoic: Losing contact with your son, parents and getting your boyfriend killed at the same time will make anyone lose whatever resemblance of composture they could have.
• Offscreen Breakup: With Tavas at the beginning of the first Story Arc.
• Ojou: She came from a distinctive military family, but she never brags (or likes to talk) about the topic, albeit she was somewhat meaner with everyone else (especially Tasak) besides her parents.
• Older Than They Look: At the beginning of the story, she's about 25 years old, at the end of the last published issue she's about 30, but she barely aged at all. In the Distant Finale she actually about 60 years old, and even in that age the only notable difference is both her head hair has turned white and her fur has becoming from brown to borderline lighter orange, while during the recapitulation of the events about how she befriends Teka she was about in her forties with some lines of gray hair, but she dyes it out due to her job as a spy in another planet, complete with an afro to boot. This is justified, as being an anthropomorphic means she ages in a very different way compared how humans do, allowing her to age more gracefuly.
• Out-of-Character Moment: During the Ish-tako sub-arc, she gropes Toki after the latter did the mistake of making fun of the culture from her native Dornthant, much for Toki's shock.
• Parental Favoritism: Her parents treated her much better than they treated her younger brother. While she doesn't hate Tasak, both siblings went into many lenghty heated discussions, causing Tasak to deeply resenting her and trying to join the EDF with the help of Tavas, after manipulating The Net just to be like her.
• Patriotic Fervor: Erma is very proud of her Dornthantii origin and during the Ekosiaki Uprising she even invokes the No True Scotsman trope regarding the whole situation, albeit luckily she later mellows out from this. This later gets her into trouble with the Ekosiaki top brass and later with the EDF. Toki even mocks her out of this at few times, much for her disgust.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: What she pretends to do with with the ILR after they attacked her homeworld, albeit, at least so far, doesn't fulfill that threat. Oddly enough, this is alluded in the Distant Finale, as Erma says the people describe her as both an heroine or a psychotic war criminal, but this is never explained in a significant way. Taking into account what happened recently in the second arc, it's very possible the ILR's Special Branch spread rumors about her to pin the blame to her on their own actions.
• Plucky Girl: Nothing can stop this girl from doing her job, and even in the few cases she faints, she gets back on her feet as quickly as she can.
• The Presents Were Never from Santa: A contrived example of this: While Erma rised on the ranks of the EDF by her own merits, it was The Net who helped her since the day she joined the army, mostly to help her because the somewhat sexist society she lives in, and also because to prevent Erma's personality flaws to ruin her career as well. Erma doesn't seem to mind on this, but the real reasons why the Net is doing is aren't completely clear as well.
• Proper Lady: While not having a Yamato Nadeshiko-like personality like her mother, she's extremely polite and very educated with people she doesn't know at first, albeit her personality becomes more blunt later and, while she is still polite, she also drops that masquerade by the beginning of the second Story Arc when her homeworld is bombed by the ILR thanks to Tavas.
• Protagonist Title: Albedo: Erma Felna EDF.
• Psychic Powers: She is a Talent, basically a mix between a Newtype and a Esper, including similar skills like spatial awareness. Unlike Gundam ones, Erma cannot control her Talent skills and her powers hinder her at the end, especially when doing FTL travels.
• Rank Up: She begins her military career as a flight officer and later she's promoted to Squadron Commander (the in-universe equivalent of OF-4 in NATO rank scale, making her also Lieutenant Commander in the USAF rank system and Wing Commander in the British RAF counterpart).
• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Averted in one story where Erma finds out, with Toki's coaxing, that she finds that occasionally indulging her feminine side, like buying and wearing a sexy dress and attracting the appreciative stares of males, is fun. However, she still is no less a soldier on this kind of off-time such as she spots a possible terrorist with a gun and she and Toki have him covered with their own side arms instantly. It turns out to be only a camera with a pistol grip, but everyone assures Erma that it was a reasonable call.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: After the Battle of Derzon, higher-ups attempt to reassign her to a desk job to keep her out of combat and not cause as much of a stir, being one of the first female soldiers in the EDF to fight on-site.
• Red Baron: She's nicknamed as "The Protector of the Rim", albeit we don't hear that nickname until Birthright when Kala Tanaia reveals herself as Erma's descendant.
• Renaissance Woman: Sort of. Erma enroled herself in the EDF as a flight officer, but due to being basically Reassigned to Antarctica many times in-universe, she was forced to take other roles beyond her original expertise, including diplomacy, military commander, battleship captain, poetry, espionage, construction worker, and finally, being a mother. Granted, Erma is for all practical effects an aristocrat in her native homeworld, and Erma never expected to take all those roles, but she was forced to take them all as a part of her job.
• Retired Badass: In the Distant Finale, she's now an elderly woman whose better years are now behind, but she becomes a legendary figure in the whole setting
• Revenge: The reason why she enlist to the EDF is because she wants to take revenge against the ILR for torturing and crippling her father, albeit this is not very notable at first, due to her stoic personality, but when she decides to make it clear how much she depise the ILR, she will say it in a very creepy way.
  • This goes into the personal territory when The ILR bombed her home planet and losing contact to her family, possibly for good.
• Revision: Many parts of Erma's backstory are recently expanded by Word of God in the 2016 Retcon fo the story, including many tidbits from her teenage years before entering into the EDF and how many aspects of her Feline biology induce her into acting into a very awkward way. This was already explained in previous additional data regarding her family in earlier issues of the comic in the afterwords in the 80s, but until 2016 this was explained in a more concisely way than before.
• Royal Brat: As a kid, especially with Tasak and in less degree with everybody else besides her parents, befitting her status as an Ojou.
• Scars Are Forever: According with the Distant Finale, Erma holds lots of scars in her body, mainly in her back. Those scars became more visible when Erma dyes her hair and fur to a darker tone when going incognito as a spy during the flashback scene about how Erma meet Teka.
• Sibling Rivalry : Towards her younger brother Tasak. It doesn't end well for both of them.
• Someone to Remember Him By: This is exactly what happens to her after having a child, as her boyfriend died during the ILR attack to Dornthant, albeit this is subverted as she lose contact with her son thanks to Tavas.
• Socially Awkward Heroine: Subverted: While not being at Sousuke Sagara's levels, Erma came from the alien equivalent of being raised in a very traditional Japanese family and she received her military training in basically the alien version of modern-era Amsterdam, while having a nymphomaniac for a friend. While she can function perfectly in her job, she struggles a lot when trying to do civilian stuff and part from her Character Development is trying to improve that image.
• The Stoic: Erma rarely let her emotions interfere with her job, even when the lives of many can be at stake. That doesn't mean she's cold or distant, since that's part of her job as a soldier.
  • Not So Stoic: When Toki and her family are involved, and she ends in a sobbing wreck in the last part of the first Story Arc after losing her family, her boyfriend, her home planet in ruins and after Tavas ruined her life.
• Spoiled Brat: Only with her brother when she was a kid.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Normally a very stoic person in her job, but outside of it she's more passionate and kind, especially with her friends and family.
• Superdickery: On the cover◊ of the very first issue published by Shanda Fantasy Arts we see an ILR space station being destroyed, while a image of Erma with a very evil grin is shown. While the scene does happen in the comic, the context is very different: Erma and her crew raid many ILR stations in a attempt to cut their supplies. The scene when the station is "destroyed" what really happens there is Erma and company destroys the flywheel of that station, but without destroying the station itself. Ironically enough, that space station is destroyed by the ILR's Special Branch in a attempt to both pin out the blame on Erma and the EDF and also eliminating any sign of dissidence.
• Surprise Pregnancy: Erma finds out after she's starting to have weird dreams and after a medical checkout. Her friend Toki is not amused after she finds out.
• Transplant: Believe it or not, Erma is the only character who was not created especifically for the story: She was a character from a previous Gallacci's comic strip named Astro Duck, who was published when the author was in the USAF, and Erma was a secondary character who was the victim of the mischief caused by the titular Astro Duck, something in the same style like Daria Morgendorfer in Beavis And Butthead.
• Tranquil Fury: Played for Laughs in Toki's side-story, when Erma got angry with her due to Toki using her bunk for having sex, while Erma was below her bed. She starts to lecturing Toki in a very corny way by describing all her faults in a very ridiculous way.
• Unknown Rival: Despite her deep-seated hate against the ILR's armed forces, on the other hand the ILR itself doesn't seem to be aware of her existence, at least at first until the second story arc, despite she has faced many of their armed forces countless times and even after the fact she had become into a Living Legend inside the EDF, something the ILR's intelligence apparatus should had been aware of since day one, especially after the Battle of Derzon. To be fair, Erma had only faced nameless mooks so far, and she had never had the chance to personally deal with an ILR's high-ranking officer, other than space station administrators during the second arc, and the ILR seems to be more interested in stealing info from the EDF and causing mayhem along the rest of the ConFed rather than targeting a single, very famous woman.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Inverted: She was incredibly arrogant and haughty with her brother Tasak and they were continuously arguing for everything to each other. Only the whole tragedy involving their father Kanoc caused Erma to mellow out from this, and even as an adult she needs some extra help to improve her personality.
• Warrior Poet: One of her hobbies, according with Toki, is writing poetry in her free time, a hobby inherited from her father.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Both Tavas and possibly the EDF sends her to pursue Capt. Barlahan's ILR fleet who attacked Dornthant, albeit it's implied it's a Suicide Mission just to being able to get rid of her while Erma could die as an heroine in an attempt to keep her quiet about what really happened about Tavas's False Flag Operation on her homeworld.
• Zen Survivor: In the Distant Finale.