Characters / Food Wars! - Erina Nakiri

Food Wars! Main Character Index
Polaris Dormitory (Soma Yukihira) | 92nd Generation (Erina Nakiri) | 91st Generation | 90th Generation | Totsuki Academy | Other

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Erina Nakiri

Voiced by: Mai Nakahara (Vomic), Risa Taneda (Anime, 2015-16), and Hisako Kanemoto (Anime, 2017-present) (Japanese); Stephanie Wittels (English); Tamara Veppo (Anime Latin Spanish)

Possibly the most talented chef to ever enroll at Totsuki, Erina is the current heir of the main house of the wealthy Nakiri family, being the granddaughter of Dean Senzaemon as well as the daughter of Mana and Azami. From a young age, she's also worked as an official gourmet critic thanks to her incredibly refined palate, known to many as 'God's Tongue.' However, she's also something of an elitist and is offended that some common diner trash Soma cooked up managed to meet her incredibly high standards, which wasn't helped by his taunting of her as she tasted the dish during his entrance exam. Since she's also quite petty, she initially tries to reject his application and later tries a few times to have him expelled, eventually choosing to ignore him instead.

Though very popular at school for her talent, looks and pedigree, she has essentially no friends or interests beyond cooking. She's accompanied by her secretary and fellow 92nd generation student Hisako Arato, tends to squabble with her cousin Alice and ends up bumping heads with Soma much more than she'd like.

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A-F

• Academic Alpha Bitch: What sets her apart from most of the student body, aside of her family name and reputation, is also her talent level, and she is very aware of this. After her Character Development settles in, she becomes a Lovable Alpha Bitch.
• Aesop Amnesia: During the Central Arc, one of the primary plot points was Erina finally overcoming the trauma of Azami's influence on her, and realizing that she doesn't have to define herself as "the owner of God's Tongue", as Soma and his friends teach her about how fun cooking can be when you just try over and over to find a better taste in spite of previous failures. However, in the BLUE Tournament Arc, it's revealed she wants to win the tournament in order to save her mother, Mana, by cooking something that can satisfy her God's Tongue. When Asahi points out that someone who lost their ability to enjoy food because of the God's Tongue can't be saved by another God's Tongue, she despairs, seemingly forgetting that her friends in the Polaris Dormitory already showed her it's possible to make delicious food without listening to the instructions of her refined palate.
• Almighty Janitor: It's implied that Erina's much better than her rank would imply, only having the tenth seat because she didn't bother aiming any higher. When her ability is finally put to the test, she beats master patissiere and fourth seat Momo Akanegakubo on her home turf with a spur of the moment dish built around proving a point rather than being the absolute pinnacle of her ability. She then proceeds to stomp Tsukasa and Rindou when she develops her own specialty with a dish she threw together in ten minutes. Afterwards she doesn't even rejoin the Council of Ten but instead is promoted directly to Dean to fill the void.
• Always Someone Better: Whenever the story praises the other first years, it usually does it in a way like 'they might be the best in their year... after Erina Nakiri' or 'they might have talent that could come close to Erina Nakiri eventually.' How the other characters react to that really says a lot about them. Hayama sees her as a major rival while Alice gets frustrated at being unable to match up, but lacks the passion to really improve herself. Her aide Hisako doesn't even want to compete with her. Soma, for his part, seems to view her as a stepping stone on the way to his actual goal and doesn't even give her the same kind of acknowledgement that Hayama does.
• Angry Chef: While all the characters are chefs, Erina in particular starts out a haughty, bad-tempered perfectionist. In fact, during her Stagiare, she actually takes over command of the kitchen by outmatching the head chef at this.
• Anti-Hero: Erina is an egotist, holding dogmatic ideals on absolute culinary perfection. Due to her haughty personality, she cannot make friends easily, as she is disdainful of vritually everyone and she lacks knowledge on some social conventions. Through Character Development, she gets better but is still Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Badass Boast:
  • In chapter 204, she gives one to Azami when she resigns from the Tenth Seat of the Council of Ten.
  • She does it again in chapter 244, before her bout against Momo:
  Erina: You seem to be in an awfully sour mood. But you should be thankful. Because I, Nakiri Erina, am about to grace you with a lesson.
• Bad Liar: When she bumps into Soma during training camp, she’s humming and cheerful, which she finds embarrassing. She futilely tries to deny it, but not only does he not believe her, she can't even distract him. She also tells Soma his entrance exam dish was bad, despite her internal monologue and reaction making it clear she enjoyed the dish.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game:
  • As part of her Academic Alpha Bitch personality, she took on Chan RS (a club specialized in chanko nabe, a traditional pot dish most frequently associated with sumo wrestlers) in their own specialty, crushing them with ease to make room for another one of her food labs. To avenge Megumi, she goes against Momo Akanegakubo, the best patissier at Totsuki, head-on in a battle of pastries, adapting her own version of Megumi's dorayaki in her "Soufflé Léger de Grâce", to beat Momo 3-0 during the Regiment de Cuisine.
  • Soma invokes and outright weaponizes this during the final round of the Regiment de Cuisine. After producing an appetizer that's too powerful to be anything except a main dish, which, given the format of the competition, would automatically result in a loss for them, Soma turns it around and uses his own dish to challenge Erina, forcing her to produce a main dish that can stand up to, match with, and surpass his appetizer, essentially forcing her to beat Soma at his own game in order to effectively win. The resulting dish succeeds by virtue of Erina drawing upon many of Soma's off-the-wall improvisations and creative tricks to perfect its flavor.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Erina's decision to help the residents of the Polaris dorm with the Promotion Exams stems from her desire to repay them for the kindness they've shown her since taking her in. She is willing to do anything to make sure they become second years — including challenging her father and giving up her seat on the Council of Ten.
• Berserk Button: After their encounter at the admission test, she loses it whenever Soma Yukihira is mentioned... at first. This changes after she is taken in by the Polaris dorm. Her attitude regarding Soma gradually begins to soften, and after Soma cooks for her and reminds her why she wanted to learn how to cook in the first place, her hostility disappears completely. Now, she all but demands that he become a second year alongside her.
• Big Good: Her Character Development has her becoming this throughout the Central arc. She acts as the Rebels' main guide against her father's regime to make sure they don't get expelled. She finally becomes the new Dean of Totsuki Academy, officially cementing her as this.
• Bitch Slap: She slaps her father Azami after discovering that he had unwittingly sired Asahi Saiba.
• Blessed with Suck: Her greatest skill is her hypersensitive palate; while on the surface this seems like an incredible gift for a chef to have, in practice it leads her to actually dislike cooking because she can taste flaws in almost every dish. Therefore, alongside her strict upbringing by her father, she's never been able to just enjoy food for what it is.
• Book Ends: In her first appearance, she sampled Soma's "transforming furikake" which was so named for its use of gelatinized chicken broth as a final touch, and despite her obvious enjoyment of it, she couldn't bring herself to say it was good. It's revealed much later that her reluctance was due to psychological conditioning by her father, and in the final match of the Regiment de Cuisine, she uses the very same chicken broth as her final touch, as a sign of her Character Development and implicit acknowledgement of Soma's cooking style. As could be expected, Azami, who is a judge, refuses to acknowledge the dish, but it's also obvious he likes it as his foodgasm manifests in the disrobing of almost everyone on the cooking floor.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Uses Soma's "Happy to Serve" one-liner after she beats Momo, albeit in a much more polite fashion to fit her ojou image. Soma is very quick to point this out and tease her about it, which she vehemently denies naturally. After the duo won the final match, he urges her to say it again for both of them, and this time she quotes the original line.
• Broken Ace: Erina belongs to the elite Nakiri family, is an incredible cook with a godly palate that can detect almost any imperfection in a dish, is the youngest member and only freshman of the Council of Ten, and is predicted by culinary experts to be on the route to becoming the greatest chef of her generation. However, she's also socially isolated and was psychologically and physically abused as a child, leading to lasting effects on her personality. Also, the talents she was naturally born with actually make her dislike cooking to an extent because it means everything she eats tastes flawed to her.
• Broken Tears: She starts shedding tears during her fateful match against Soma at the BLUE finals. This is because she is convinced she can never fulfil her mother's wish and that she too will eventually succumb to the same fate her mother is suffering. Soma reproves her lack of resolve and calls her food boring.
• Brutal Honesty: She is very direct when sampling food and in pointing out flaws, even to her closest friends. The only occasion shown in which she outright lies about food quality is during Soma's entrance exam, at which her lie was caused by Soma's perceived arrogant behavior and lack of respect (which in turn was partially driven by Erina's attitude).
• Buxom Beauty Standard: She has a well-endowed figure, which is a frequent target of Male Gaze shots and also triggers Yuuki's A-Cup Angst when Alice and Irina bathe with her, leading Yuuki to wonder if buxom figures run are a Nakiri family gene. Notably, when Alice and Irina do go to the pool, guys do seem to get attracted to them because of their breasts.
• Calling the Old Man Out:
  • She finally calls out Azami when the latter attempts to convince her to turn to Central to the point that she resigns from the Council of Ten by saying that she will never betray her friends.
  • In Chapter 300, she angrily blasts Mana when she realizes that the latter has been setting up the BLUE matches to try and oust her daughter.
• Character Development:
  • Initially, she was presented as an entirely antagonistic character bent on exacting revenge on Soma (by trying to have him expelled from the school) for his perceived slight on her reputation. However, as the series progresses and her character arc is fleshed out, she stops focusing on the revenge/expulsion angle and instead avoids him as much as possible and gets irritated when she can't. As a temporary Polaris tenant, she also gradually realizes that she still has a lot to learn after seeing Soma, Megumi and their friends brainstorm culinary ideas together, finding new and creative ways to make dishes work rather than stick to one single way like Erina is used to doing or having people do to try to please her.
  • After Soma's cooking reminds her of her lost passion for cooking, she decides to rally La Résistance against Azami's regime and effectively becomes its leader. She even stands up to her father right in his face by resigning from the Council of Ten and defeats Momo in a manner very inspired by Soma's usual tactics, right down to borrowing his catchphrase at the end (not that she'd admit to the inspiration).
• Chaste Heroine: Erina initially does not understand the appeal of romance. When Alice teases her about it, Erina talks about her admiration for Joichiro instead (which turns out to be more of a form of hero-worship). However, she later is seen blushing and engrossed in a romance manga which Alice gives her.
• The Chosen One: As the Nakiri family heiress, she's been groomed to eventually take over the family when her grandfather eventually retires and is considered by many to be potentially the greatest chef that will come out of Totsuki. Her father even explicitly calls her the "key" that will lead a new generation of chefs because of her abnormal sense of taste that lets her breakdown and understand almost every dish she comes in contact with.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Pseudo-Romantic Friendship version. Humorously, seeing Hisako and Soma casually chat with one another makes Erina a little jealous of Soma, as she perceives Hisako's friendship bond with Soma after the Stagiaire arc to be stronger than the bond she has with her.
• The Comically Serious: She decides to give special lectures to Soma and the Polaris Dorm. How? By dressing like a Hot Teacher (complete with glasses, tight skirt and heels). Although she doesn't seem to mind, the others quickly note the risqué getup and if it was really necessary for study sessions.
• Comically Small Bribe: She typically requires an exorbitant consultation fee to test anyone's food and provide feedback. However, when Soma makes an off-hand remark that someone in the dorm has all of the volumes of the shojo manga she's reading, she agrees to taste his food if he lends her the remaining volumes since she doesn’t know where to get them by herself.
• Conflicting Loyalty: By the second half of the Central arc, Erina has to choose between being loyal to Azami and Central or side with Soma and her friends to retake Totsuki Academy. During this decision-making process, she picks the latter.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: As a giant middle finger to her father's philosophy, her main dish in the finale of the Regiment de Cuisine incorporates aspects of two of Soma's most infamous dishes: Soma's disgusting peanut butter-squid combo (which she managed to make delicious) before adding the Transforming Furikake of the dish Soma served her as part of his entrance exam as the finishing touch, blowing even Azami away with how ridiculously well the flavors came together.
• Covert Pervert: Although her first reaction to finally seeing Isshiki in his Naked Apron is to exclaim that it's vulgar, she kept looking while Hisako tried telling her to not do it.
• Dark and Troubled Past: After Alice left for Denmark, Azami began "training" her to be intolerant of "imperfect" dishes by locking her in a dark room, forcing her to judge dishes and having her throw any dish that was less than perfect. If she would disobey, he would hurt her. This continued until she was completely brainwashed to behave like him. She barely started to recover after Senzaemon's intervention (which resulted in Azami's expulsion from the family), Alice's return and Hisako's support, but the trauma still haunts her and she is still very picky about the food she judges. In fact, Azami's abuse was so bad that it made her forget why she wanted to cook in the first place, admitting that she has never really enjoyed cooking.
• Declaration of Personal Independence: Her father, Azami, browbeat obedience into her when she was a child, and so even years later she has panic attacks at the idea of disobeying him. Even after deciding to support the Polaris Dorm rebels, she still feared facing him directly. It wasn't until the arrangement of the Regiment de Cuisine, when he ordered her to come to his side, that she finally told him off and declared that she wasn't going to listen to him anymore. It took a lot out of her.
• Defector from Decadence: She leaves the Council of Ten to side with her friends once she decides she's had enough of Azami's abuse.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Erina loathes showing any emotion besides anger or disdain, yet quietly expresses jealousy to Alice for her ability to freely cry after losing to Soma, and only in Megumi's presence was she able to show her distress over Hisako's sudden absence. When people make an effort to get to know her, she actually warms up quickly and turns out to be pretty nice, if a little socially awkward and sheltered. She also ends up becoming particularly close to Soma after finally making the effort to get to know and understand him, though she doesn't like for people to notice and they still tend to bicker. But even so she can openly admit that she cares about him and doesn't want him to get expelled. Then, her defrosting gets completely undone during the BLUE arc when Erina regresses into someone even worse than she originally was. Megumi believes it is being caused by her issues with her mother and Asahi's creepy propensity.
• Delinquents: To sass her father, she refers to herself as one because she ran away from home and then skipped classes to hide from him. The dish she serves him even has "Deliquent Daughter style" in its name.
• Deuteragonist: Promoted to this role after the Moon Banquet festival when her father takes over the school. From that point, her Character Development takes center stage alongside Soma's conflict against Central. To the point where she, not Soma, is the one poised to serve the main dish of the final battle against Central's Council of Ten.
• Dislikes the New Guy: At first, Erina makes no secret of hiding how she resents Soma to the point that it becomes a temporary Berserk Button. Eventually, she drops her haughty attitude and becomes one of Soma's close friends.
• Dramatic Irony: She looks up to Joichiro as the ideal chef and denounces Soma's trial-and-error approach, completely unaware that Joichiro raised him to be like that in the first place. Her face when she does finds out their connection is priceless.
• The Dreaded: Dozens of aspiring Totsuki transferees would rather quit than take her cooking test, because being branded as someone without talent by her would be tantamount to a culinary death sentence.
• Dude Magnet: Her looks and status make her popular, but her fearsome reputation, bad temper and abuse of authority keep her isolated from those who may admire her.
• Endearingly Dorky: In contrast to her public persona, she reverts to this pretty much any time where she tries to act her age or when she's around the few people she's actually comfortable with. These behaviors include being overly excited by normal activities like card games, an inability to operate basic machinery (such as a washing machine) or failing to understand where to buy a volume of manga. At one point she gives a series of lectures to the Polaris dorm members and shows up to them dressed in a risqué teacher's cosplay outfit with tight hair-bun and glasses (despite her not actually needing glasses). The dorm members comment on how unusual the getup is, but she doesn't seem to notice. She also had an unusually cute look of concern for Soma after finishing her task for the third Promotion Exam and rushes to see how he fared.
• Establishing Character Moment: Erina's first shot in the series is her tossing away a plate of food in disgust, effectively encapsulating her personality as a chef.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Nao is creepily obsessed with her and wants Erina to "scold her," and early on Hisako is also shown to be enthralled by her (although these elements are toned down to a normal friendship later on).
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • She steadily grows more disgusted by Azami's brutality and views towards cooking when he takes over Totsuki, leading to her sheer refusal to join Central and resigning from the Council of Ten to side with Soma and her friends.
  • She's also very upset that Mana is willing to oust her as dean of Totsuki by sabotaging the BLUE competition.
• Evil Is Petty: While not necessarily evil, her attitude at the start of the series (at least until her Dark and Troubled Past is explored in full) doesn't give her a very good reputation: She's haughty, overly-critical, and tried to keep Soma from getting into the school solely because he made a common dish instead of trying to be fancy like all of the other applicants. Her multiple efforts to get him expelled after he still manages to get in also help with this, and she makes a habit of beating down clubs that she finds unnecessary in order to make food labs. She has at least five.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Her hair in the page image above is somewhat longer than when she's little. When she becomes Totsuki's dean and competes in Blue, she lets it grow past her knees, as seen in this image. In her third year, she cuts it into a short bob, and she cuts it shorter in her adult years.
• Fangirl: She sees Joichiro as her role model because he inspired her to start cooking. She becomes uncharacteristically enthusisatic when she gets to speak to him in person, lacking her usual prickliness.
• Fish out of Water: Because of her sheltered background, Erina has difficulty in living the life outside a prestigious family, not even knowing how to operate a washing machine. An extra shows Megumi teaching her how to operate the machine.
• Foil: To three characters.
  • Soma — As one of his most prominent rivals, Erina embodies the complete opposite of everything he stands for. Where he values experimentation and culinary diversity, she values only perfection and gourmet food. Their contrast becomes more prominent following Stagiaire Month: where Erina expands her influence by strong-arming Research Societies she thinks aren't useful into challenging her to losing shokugekis, Soma does so through hard work and attracting enough attention from his peers and upperclassmen, enough to earn shokugekis. This also extends to both their upbringing and relationship with their fathers: where Soma naturally cultivated his talent through observing, emulating and challenging Joichiro, which nevertheless developed a genuine bond between them, Erina was forced by Azami to develop her God's Tongue in a way that, while made her one of the best (if not the best) chefs of her generation, left her psychologically scarred and her relationship with her father being built on fear and control.
  • Megumi — A subdued example compared to that with Soma (more so after they became amicable following their Stagiaire Week pairing), but the contrast still exists. In terms of cooking, Erina specializes in technical and elegant Western dishes with powerful impact, whereas Megumi does so with down-to-earth and homely Japanese dishes with a soothing effect. And when it comes to Soma himself, Megumi practically idolizes him while Erina considers him to be low class and borderline trashy despite acknowledging his talents.
  • Asahi, her half-brother. Both are extremely good cooks with supernatural abilities, and because of them, they have zero specialities in regards to a dish. However, Asahi's overreliance on his Cross Knives fails him against Soma, while Erina is tentative in using her God's Tongue too much in fear of ending up like her mother, which also causes a momentary Heroic BSoD in her final match against Soma until he snaps her out of it, after which she wins. Both are in leadership positions, but Asahi is (outwardly) charming and smooth-talking, forcibly gathering allies by defeating them like in a video game, while she's terse and leads solely on her cooking strength before her Character Development, after which people follows her willingly out of genuine respect. Their appearance are also complete opposites of each other: Asahi's Tall, Dark, and Handsome, while she's rather petite, blonde, and buxom.
• Freak Out: Has a bit of a minor one when she discovers that Soma is the son of her idol, Joichiro, and is unable to do anything but reminisce all the harsh things she said to Soma and realize that she has been insulting the ideals of someone she admired before passing out.
• Freudian Excuse: While part of it has to do with her genuine desire to emulate and please her idol, Joichiro, much of Erina's obsession with culinary perfection is the result of Azami's abusive parenting and training.
• Friendless Background: There are two reasons for this. One, Erina's father isolated her to prevent her from getting too close to anyone but him. Two, people intentionally kept their distance, viewing Erina as superior. The latter is the reason why Hisako always stood behind Erina, and why Alice left for Denmark to close the gap between their culinary skills.
• Friendly Address Privileges: She wants a closer/less formal relationship with Hisako and so asks that Hisako address her as "Erina-chan" instead of "Erina-sama". (See Japanese Honorifics) When Hisako actually does so, it flusters both of them so much that Hisako goes back to using "sama".

H-L

• Hair Flip: Tends to do this when she gets on her high horse.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: While she can be stern and condescending, she's genuinely kind towards those closest to her, particularly Hisako, her best friend.
• Has a Type: Her ideal man is one that reminds her of her idol Joichiro; passionate about cooking and capable of making dishes that surpass her expectations. Coincidentally, Joichiro's son Soma fits that description perfectly.
• Having a Blast: Her Nakiri pulse manifests that way if she ever eats anything delicious. The only time this happens in the manga is when she tastes Soma's eggs benedict tempura dish. Her pulse blasts an entire wall and causes the building to rumble, an unprecedented event within the Nakiri family.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Once Azami returns and announces his intent to return her to her "training," she flees to the Polaris dorm. While she gets along with everyone in the dorm, she also is shown to lose most of her defining personality characteristics and is often shown looking sad or even sitting alone in dark rooms. Eventually, Soma snaps her out of it by trying to replicate Joichiro's inventive cooking style.
  • A more comical one occurs when she finds out Soma is Joichiro's son. She instantly remembers how badly she treated Soma and she goes blank for a few moments.
  • Similarly goes blank faced and passes out when she hears Joichiro's adopted son Asahi declaring Erina will be his wife, and Joichiro's blood-related son Soma shooting back that Erina is his.
  • She suffers a darker one bordering on Despair Event Horizon during the BLUE arc. She had recklessly agreed to marry Asahi if she loses to him. Reality dawns on her when she sees Asahi effortlessly trouncing chefs in the tournament. To further complicate the issue, the Bookmaster is revealed to be her estranged mother, unravelling the bitter emotions. Erina loses her will to win and believes that marrying Asahi would resolve her mother's issues. She also tells Soma she wants to see him lose to Asahi because Soma lacks a superhuman ability. Obviously, Soma is irked with her depressing attitude and storms off. The next day, Soma defeats Asahi.
  • After Soma is all set to clash against her in the finals, Erina is still in despair, given the impossible task. Her mother, Mana covets a dish of other-worldy standards which she herself has failed to accomplish for several years. Even other chefs have deemed this task to be hopelessly impossible. And in the finals, Erina has to craft such a dish in a span of three hours. The poor girl starts crying in the middle of the match, convinced that she would eventually be doomed to her mother's pitiful existence. Soma tries to snap her out of it.
• Hero's Muse: Even as early as the start of the first season, Soma declared that he will create a dish that she will admit is perfect. Albeit back then it was more of a rivalry-challenge thing. The final chapter of Le Dessert implies she's become a more conventional example.
• The High Queen: She has a recipe called the "Queen of Breakfast/Egg's Benedict" which causes those who eat it to Imagine Spot her as a classical queen on a throne and then kneel before her. Outside of this, she certainly commands the respect and awe of Totsuki's students, aside from Alice, her fellow-royal, so to speak. Ultimately, she becomes the "queen" of Totsuki by replacing her grandfather as its Dean.
• Honor Thy Abuser: At the conclusion of the Central arc, Erina quietly thanks her father for everything he did for her sake and she apparently doesn't hold grudges against him for how he brainwashed her in her childhood.
• Honorary True Companion: After taking shelter at the Polaris Dorm and getting to know all of them, even to appreciate Soma, Erina vows to make all of them pass the promotion exams and preserve the freedom in their cooking styles. She even makes the Aldini brothers and Ikumi join her lectures. The residents immediately embraced her with open arms once they were told about how her father treated her.
• Hot Teacher: She dresses in a provocative teacher costume when she trains the Rebels for the promotion exams. Yuuki points out she chose a rather sexy get-up.
• Humanizing Tears: The usually haughty Erina tears up in despair after Azami declines to rescind all his expulsions (especially Hisako and Alice), before Soma steps in her defense and outright challenges Azami and his loyalist Council of Ten into a team Shokugeki.
• Hypocrite:
  • Erina rejects Soma's cooking partly because she deems his commoner-grade skills unbecoming of such an elite institution as Totsuki. However, despite its fierce reputation, it seems as though instruction and competition with "normal" dishes is actually quite common at Totsuki. However, she is either unaware of or refuses to admit the fact that the origins of many of the dishes used throughout the story can be traced back to similar roots. At one point, she criticizes Soma for being unaware that the bento is becoming more popular worldwide, ignoring its origins as a simple low-class lunchbox. Such foods are actually something of a theme throughout the tournament assignments, which makes her specific criticism come off as either pettiness or ignorance.
  • She finds the idea of romance beneath her, but enjoys reading Shoujo Manga.
• I Never Got Any Letters: Alice was asked to write letters to Erina to stay in touch, but Erina was never able to read any of the letters and write back to Alice, as Azami tore them apart before Erina was able to read them.
• Implausible Deniability: In the final chapter, she tastes Soma's dish and calls it disgusting... even though the dish activated her Nakiri pulse for the first time and blasted an entire wall, an undeniable proof that she found it extremely delicious. This is a historic event even for the Nakiri family.
• Implied Love Interest: Erina's relationship with Soma is very emphasized throughout the manga as it plays a big part in their motivations and they greatly influence each other as chefs starting from the Central arc. Quite a few moments they share can be considered romantic, mostly on Erina's side. However, whether they are or will be in love with each other is not fully confirmed, not even in the final chapter of the manga. In the last fanbook, it’s revealed that Tsukuda wanted Soma and Erina to be married by the end of the series but didn’t have enough room in the storyboard so he decided that it was still too soon for them.
• Improbable Age: She's paid enormous consultation fees just to test new dishes by various restaurants, something she's been doing for years. She's also already a culinary celebrity at age fifteen. Taken even further later on when after her father has been removed from his position, she succeeds him as the dean of the School.
• Informed Ability: She is rarely shown to actually cook anything. The vast majority of her characterization focuses on her supernatural sense of taste and not her actual ability to cook. However, she's a member of the Council of Ten and the few times her cooking is shown, people tend to gush over it. She proves her pedigree when she crushes Momo Akanegakubo, the best patissier at Totsuki, 3-0 in a Shokugeki of sweets after being inspired by Megumi's dorayaki in the latter's battle against Momo in the previous round.
  • Twice during the training camp; she's shown to have beaten Soma to 50 plates (and long before him if she is just getting out of the bath just before he enters), and having the highest tally of buffet plates at over 400 (with a goal of 200).
  • She utterly crushes Eishi's and Rindō's dishes and surpasses Sōma's own dish on the final round of the Regiment dé Cuisine. While Azami vainly rejects Erina's dish, it triggers Azami's bestowal on a far greater scale than that of Eishi and Sōma.
  • Taken to its logical extreme in the epilogue. The first chapter reveals she won at the BLUE, but not what kind of dish she made to beat Soma.
• Insufferable Genius: Erina really is a great cook. She's just completely obnoxious to people she considers below her. Right after Soma gets done teasing her, he realizes that not only did she beat him to serving fifty meals, but she beat him by such a wide margin that she was completely finished cleaning up and leaving the bath by the time he was just getting to it. She is also able to tell you how long you overcooked your food to the second before going on a tirade on just how to make the food better while she is tearing down your shop for another one of her food labs!
• Invincible Hero: Throughout the series Erina remains undefeated, because she has the God Tongue. She can easily defeat Eishi, Rindo and Momo. In spite her despair in the BLUE finals, she defeats Soma and wins BLUE.
• Irony:
  • Initially, Erina kept looking down on Soma for his humble background and had a sadistic desire to expel him from Totsuki. After the events of the Regiment de Cuisine, Erina appoints him as the First Seat of the Council of Ten. Later, when Soma leaves Totsuki to travel the world, Erina not only refuses to expel him, she is actually furious that he is ignoring her emails. She revised Totsuki's policies to welcome promising candidates from humble backgrounds and also incorporated culinary themes geared towards diners.
  • She looked down on Soma, calling his dish at the entrance exam disgusting. She disapproves of his Cordon Bleugh Chef tendencies. Later, during the finale of the Team Shokugeki, Erina takes one of Soma's disgusting dishes and adds the aspic he used in the entrance exam to create her winning dish. She uses Soma's catchphrase and wins the match.
• It Runs in the Family: Azami, Erina and Senzaemon all seem to hold Joichiro in especially high regard.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Erina's criticism of dishes she's served almost always comes off in a jerkass way, complete with absurd metaphors such as comparing a flawed dish's flavor as being similar to being in a mixed bath with a Western Lowland Gorilla. However, while she doesn't pull punches, she's completely accurate and only trying to help in her own way. For example, even when she's actively being antagonistic and telling Soma the various reasons he's going to fail out, she's actually making astute observations about some of the flaws of his cooking. For example, in the buffet challenge, she notes that he chose the worst possible dish — which turns out to be true because it couldn't be left on the buffet but had to be served immediately. Later on, during the runoff to the Autumn Election semifinals, Soma gets Erina to try his dish and give him a critique. She says very little about the dish other than saying Soma completely failed to understand the point of the assignment. While Mitsuru thinks Erina's just being a jerk, Soma interprets her vague comment as a clue that there's a fundamental flaw in his approach.
• Jerkass Realization: Several times.
  • Early on, Soma explains that he benefited from the experience of failing. To her, it sounded like he wasn't taking things seriously enough when in reality he absolutely hates to lose. When she sees him combine two of his failures into a dish that scores him 93 points, she realizes that his previous failures only made him more determined to fix his prior mistakes, so he worked on them until they became a completed dish worthy of being served on a grand stage.
  • A more dramatic moment occurs when Erina learns that Soma's father is none other than Jouichiro Saiba, the only chef she ever admired. The realization of how disdainful she had acted towards her idol's son, who has the exact same cooking method, sends her into a (comical) daze for days.
  • To a lesser extent, she has a moment with Ikumi, to whom she apologizes for her previous You Have Failed Me moment when she lost her culinary battle against Soma.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: At first, Erina is openly hostile to Soma (although he fails to recognize it) and is initially shown hoping he will be expelled or even actively trying to get him expelled. Erina is also shown to be completely merciless to those she deems unworthy of Totsuki or anyone who serves her a dish that's below her ridiculously high standards. On the other hand, once she warms up to people, she's very caring and mostly friendly, even if she is still stern and brutally honest about their cooking. She also won't tolerate abuse of power like Azami becoming the Dean of Totsuki and expelling her friends.
• The Leader: To La Résistance formed by the Polaris Dorm. She even gets compared to Joan of Arc, an inspiring leader who will retake control of the academy from Central.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: The princess of Totsuki academy has hair that goes past her waist, befiting her Ojou status. It gets even longer after the one-year Time Skip. In the epilogue, however, she cuts off her hair, barely reaching her shoulders.
• Lonely at the Top: All but stated to be the case. She's the best chef in the school, comes from a rich family and has pretty much everything she could want... but virtually nobody to share all of that. Says a lot how bored and/or depressed she gets when Hisako isn't around.
• Lonely Rich Kid: She doesn't have many friends, so when Hisako leaves her side out of shame after losing to Akira, she gets really depressed. It didn't help that Azami blocked off all communication between her and Alice when they were kids while he was brainwashing/abusing her.
• Long-Lost Relative: Erina discovers that Asahi Saiba is her elder brother.
• Loving a Shadow: A non-romantic example towards Joichiro Saiba. She genuinely admires him as a chef, but somehow has made herself an image of him being someone who does not admit nor allow failure, when that couldn't be further from the truth.

M-Y

• Ms. Fanservice: She is beautiful and has many panels of her most intense foodgasms showing her in the nude, with some shadows or objects to cover her modesty. She is also once shown in her underwear, a bikini that flaunts her figure as well as wearing a sports bra.
• Neutral Female: Once Azami takes over Totsuki, she's pretty much relegated to a sad wreck, which is justified because of her father's stranglehold on her psyche. She is completely unable to oppose him and it took Alice, Ryou and Hisako to remove her from her residence and get her to run away with them and, even then, she was on the verge of going back until she was taken in at the Polaris Dorm. Since then, she's more or less lingered in the background and Forced to Watch. After being called out on this trope by Alice, and Soma's cooking reminding her of her lost passion for cooking, she starts actively helping the Polaris dorm take a stand against Central. She later gets better to the point that she flat-out tells him that she'll relinquish her seat.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: While she's not actually a villain, she was still antagonistic to Soma when the latter asks her for some critique about his beef stew for his upcoming match against Mimasaka. While all she does is pointing out the flaws and doesn't say anything as to how to improve it, it does give Soma enough of a clue to start working. Later, before the Full Moon Banquet, she tells Soma what his Mapo Doufu lacks compared to Kuga's, and upon realizing this (a bit too late), she frantically demands that he forgets everything she said.
• No Hero to His Valet: Played with. Early on, Hisako does worship Erina and somehow convinces herself that Erina being an immature sore loser is a mark of greatness, but Soma convinces her to relax and just be Erina's friend.
• No Social Skills: At one point, while complaining to Soma about his narrow-minded view of cooking, he completely ignores everything she has to say just to point out that she is really hard to talk to despite his own ability to get along with others. She doesn't have any friends, only an assistant that worships her and a cousin that likes making fun of her. Her poor social skills are a result of Azami intentionally isolating her as a child to have more control over her, including destroying letters to and from Alice, the closest thing she had to a friend.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: She wears black stockings, while most girls use white socks.
• Not Afraid of You Anymore: In Chapter 204, when Azami threatens her one too many times, she leaves the Council of Ten, and thus overcoming her fear of him (or taking an important step towards doing so). She more fully conquers her fear later in the arc by giving him sass, saying that "(his) little Erina has become a delinquent" and is not going to listen to him anymore.
• Not So Above It All: Despite being a prodigy in the Culinary World, Erina is far from being mature herself, as she loses her composure whenever Soma is mentioned, pouting, refusing to talk to him or even apply basic manners around him. She's also not above doing something as childish as playing Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide a serious outcome.
• Odd Friendship: Develops this with the entirety of the Polaris Dorm, she is even capable of having a completely civil and friendly conversation with Yukihira when she wants to. She gets particularly close to Megumi who even lampshades never thinking they could be friends before.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • This is her reaction at the end of Chapter 131 when Azami barges in on her stall at the final day of the Full Moon Banquet. Also, a comical one 20 chapters later when she learns that Joichiro is Soma's dad.
  • She's utterly shocked out of her mind when Asahi Saiba defeats Eishi Tsukasa in BLUE. Soma immediately notices it.
• Ojou: "Erina-sama" is beautiful, rich, arrogant, and worshiped by pretty much everyone (other than Soma and Alice).
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: It should tell you something about her father when she's visibly terrified and submissive towards him.
• Opt Out: She leaves the Council of Ten to side with Soma and his friends in the Regiment de Cuisine.
• Orcus On Her Throne: At the start of the series, she relies on conniving and throwing well-known students loyal to her at Soma to try and get him expelled even though she probably could have simply challenged him to a Shokugeki and won herself. She lampshades this trope during her battle with Momo, saying that she wasn't going to be the kind of queen who sits pretty on her throne after shedding her previously close-minded culinary ideology.
• Out of Focus: For most of the first half of the series, she doesn't get much screen time despite being set up as a main character. Even her assistant Hisako gets more focused on than her for a while. Lampshaded in an omake during the Fall Classic arc where she's dismayed to learn she's not going to appear very much due to her duties on the Council of Ten (although she ends up showing up roughly as much as she did before and after). This changes once her father appears, which causes her backstory to come to light and sets her Character Development in motion.
• Parental Abandonment: Erina is still haunted about the reality that her mother abandoned her and the Nakiri family. She grieves over the truth that deep down, her mother never loved her.
• The Perfectionist: She considers the idea of any kind of failure or struggle abhorrent. The idea that Soma actually learns from failure even if he doesn't like it repulses her. To her, a true master can never fail. However, it's rather telling that she seems to look up to Joichiro because she believes him to be similarly obsessed with victory, unaware of how different he is in real life.
• Pet the Dog:
  • When she has free-time between the announcement of the 43rd Autumn Elections and the start of them, what does she decide to do with it? Help Hisako prepare for the preliminaries, offering to fetch snacks and such.
  • At the end of their Stagiaire together, she gives Tadokoro a ride home, during which they have a relatively normal conversation. Although Tadokoro (who has an extreme fear of authority figures) is concerned that Erina will look down on her, it's shown that Erina respects Tadokoro's abilities and expresses confusion that someone of Tadokoro's talent had previously achieved so little in the academy. During the same conversation she's also shown to be quite lonely without Hisako due to the latter's departure after losing to Akira. Erina apparently doesn't mind that her friend lost, contrary to her normal perfectionist attitude.
• Picky Eater: Erina's defining characteristic and her ultimate "weapon" in the cooking world, to the point she is famous even as a young child. Indeed, her first words when she was an infant were to criticize her mother's breast milk.^* The anime changed this to a random wetnurse Comes with a Red Baron nickname, the "Divine Tongue." She is so demanding that potential Totsuki applicants will skip the entrance exam rather than have her criticize them because of the risk her criticism will follow them. This becomes a source of despair because her sense of taste is so discerning that, as a young child, she began to realize that every dish she tried, even those labeled as "gourmet" were seriously flawed.
• Pride: She lives by pride and refuses to admit that she's wrong or ever back down from an opinion she arrived at without thinking. It's hinted that she doesn't really like being this way sometimes, envying Alice for her ability to openly express her frustration after losing to Soma at the Autumn Election quarterfinals. She can also be a bit of a sore loser and doesn't like to be seen getting worked up or upset. This eventually becomes a flaw when she recklessly accepted Asahi Saiba's challenge to a duel for her hand in marriage. She has a moment of utter shock when Asahi effortless curb-stomps Eishi.
• The Proud Elite: Erina looks down on everyone she considers to have lower social status or cooking talent, which makes Soma the main target of her disdain. This is because of her family's name and her status as a member of the Council, which also gives her a reputation as unapproachable. Unknown to most, she secretly wants real friends (at the start of the series Hisako is her only friend, but the relationship is on less equal terms than Erina would actually like) and also does recognize talented people without being condescending (like giving proper praise to Tadokoro, ignoring her past bad grades).
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: Many of her interactions with Hisako (particularly early in the series) can be seen like this, as Hisako gets excited with the prospect of tasting her cooking or worships everything Erina does. As the characters develop, its later shown to be a more traditional friendship, despite Hisako's continued hero worship of Erina and her family.
• Raised by Grandparents: Erina's father Azami has been absent for ten years and her mother abandoned her because of health problems. During that time, her grandfather Senzaemon was her only legal guardian.
• Rank Inflation: Not only is she the best student of Tootsuki, even managing to defeat seniors, She is appointed the new Dean by Soma, who ranks up as the 1st seat and gets the power to choose who is in charge. This means that Erina, despite being a 1st year student, ends up in charge of the entire school, even above the Council of Ten.
• Rank Up: Becomes the Dean of the school at the behest of Soma and her grandfather after she's finally free of her father's influence.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Erina tries to give one to Soma after he makes his Badass Boast at the opening ceremony. It turns into an Insult Backfire when Soma counters her claim that most applicants received gifted middle-school education by the fact that he essentially grew up in a kitchen. She tries to give him these speeches several more times, but they never have their intended effect.
  • She also gives a minor one to Azami after she announces that she's leaving the Council of Ten.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Even after she took over the management in Excellent, she makes the head chef, who had a prejudice against students, listen to Megumi's suggestion, which turns to be a needed work improvement.
• Red Baron: Her nickname is the "Divine Tongue," due to her exceptionally refined palate.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: During the Beach Episode, Erina's wearing a hoodie to cover the bikini Alice makes her wear to the pool. Outside of the "orgasmic eating" panels, Erina dresses properly in her school uniform. After she leaves the family manor, she wears a simple, demure dress. Goes from "reluctant" to "Innocent Fanservice Girl" once she gives a lecture to the Polaris students dressed in a Hot Teacher's cosplay (for no real reason, as it's an informal study session).
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: She is very new to lower-class amenities like public pools or "casual dating" and doesn't even know how to shop for shoujo mangas by herself, leaving the "mundane" duties (like operating a standard household washing machine) to Hisako to do for her.
  Erina: Hisako, do you know how to operate a washing machine?
  Hisako: A washing machine? Well... Yes. Of course.
  Erina: Oh... That's amazing.
• The Rival: Soma is determined to have a competition with her one day as well as make her admit that he makes good food. In turn, Erina is initially determined to crush Soma due to his perceived lack of respect (ironically, while he really did treat her with disrespect at their first meeting due in part to Erina's haughtiness, it's readily apparent that once he learns more about her he respects her abilities quite a bit). However, due to his affable nature, Soma isn't entirely aware of the degree to which Erina claims to dislike him and simply attributes her Jerkass behavior to Erina being hard to get along with. Even after she mellows out towards him, she still won't tell him anything he makes is good (which just makes him try harder).
  Soma: Wait for it. I'll make you clearly say "It's good" with that mouth of yours! I'll exhaust my cooking to its limits!
• Rousing Speech: She officially makes her stand against her father's principles after tasting Soma's classic Yukihira food, inspiring the Polaris Dorm students to give the Promotion Exams their all, reminding them that their biggest quality is how free their cooking is.
• Rubber Face: Afer winning the Regiment de Cuisine, Erina pulls Soma's cheeks too hard to punish him for throwing away all her strategy at the last minute. She forgives him though.
• The Runaway: In Chapter 137, Alice managed to convince her to run away from her father.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Despite her talent, Erina has little in the way of social skills. Having never taken the time to enjoy her youth (Alice had to coax her to go to a public pool, a place she's never set foot in; case in point, she complains it doesn't have hair dryers), she also finds the concept of romance beneath her, which Alice calls her out on, considering she's now in high school.
• School Idol: She has the biggest following over most of the school and has many admirers, both male and female (despite the fact they are all too intimidated to act on it) and she's currently the most talented of the freshmen.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: When Azami attempts to persuade her to join him in fighting against Soma, she objects and tells him that she's resigning from the Council of Ten.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: A heroic example. In chapter 204, Azami attempts to convince Erina to join his side against her friends. But Erina flat-out tells her father that, after enduring enough of his abuse, she's ditching the Council of Ten to side with her friends.
• Sheltered Aristocrat: She doesn't know how to shop for shoujo manga on her own, so she exchanges a consulting gig (worth a lot of money) with Soma for some volumes. She also finds the washing machine mysterious and amazing. This is also lampshaded by Alice several times, which comes off as comically hypocritical due to the fact the trope applies to Alice just as much as Erina, but Alice is oblivious of it.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: In chapter 204, she flat-out tells Azami that she'll relinquish the Tenth Seat when the latter threatens her one too many times.
• Sore Loser: Her pride keeps her from admitting that food of humble origins could possibly meet her high standards, having lived off the most expensive and elegant foods in the world her entire life. During Soma's entrance examination, she stated multiple times that his food was beneath her and could in no way satisfy her palate. When it does, she gives out an obvious lie rather than admit that she was wrong. Soma taunting her the entire time probably didn't help her mood either.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: From the arrival of her father Azami onwards, Erina becomes the new central character of the series since the drama with her father and later mother and half-brother take over the plot. The progress as chefs of the other students quickly loses relevance in favor of Erina's Character Development. Even the eponymous Soma becomes overshadowed by Erina to the point the epilogue of the manga is much more about Erina solving the issues of her family and improving Totsuki while Soma is overseas and doesn't return until the very end of the final chapter.
• The Starscream: A heroic example. She does this to Azami when she resigns from the Council of Ten and helps the Rebels win the Regiment de Cuisine.
• Stern Teacher: When preparing the Rebels for the promotion exams, she subjects them to a Training from Hell so bad that they still freak out when they remember it.
• The Strategist: After fully defecting to the side of the Polaris Dorm, she lays out the battle plans for the Regiment de Cuisine in order to maximize the heroes' chance of success against Central, giving everyone extra classes on the fine points of cooking in order to capitalize on their strengths and cover their weaknesses.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Erina and her mother look almost identical to each other, though she inherits some of her father's younger self's softer features, compared to Mana's much sharper appearance.
• Supreme Chef: Even by those standards, Erina is on a league of her own. She is easily the most gifted chef of her generation.
• Take This Job and Shove It: She decides to leave the Council of Ten to side with the heroes during the Regiment de Cuisine.
• Talks Like a Simile: Her judging of food tends to skew towards very abstract and colorful comparisons.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Technically, obeying Azami is the "lawful" choice, but not the "good" one. Being a elite but moral student, Erina faces this dilemma when Azami returns. She chooses the side of "good" when Azami goes too far.
• Took a Level in Kindness: When Soma manages to convince her that her way of thinking about cooking is too narrow and that greatness doesn't have to come from obsessive perfectionism, she mellows out a great deal, stands up, takes charge and spends a week tutoring the Polaris students so that they won't fail out during the Promotion Exams. She even drags Soma into her lessons and states that she doesn't want him to fail out despite his taunts about her changed attitude. She also apologizes to Ikumi for having dumped her, and is quite surprised to find out the latter doesn't hold any hard feelings towards her for it.
• Training from Hell:
  • She underwent training as a child by her father Azami to cultivate her already incredibly refined palate. It is so severe and strict that her grandfather said it was not training at all but brainwashing. This is played for drama, as it is why she grow up to be so prickly and harsh, and also the source of trauma for her during the Central arc.
  • She subjects Polaris dorm to an intensive seminar to prepare them for the Advancement Exam. Learning absolutely everything about every kind of potato grown in the Hokkaido region was just one part of it. This is played for laughs, such as Ikumi writing "help" in red sauce while Erina sports Scary Shiny Glasses, and Soma boasts that it was 100x worse than Central's cheating.
• Trauma Button: Her PTSD is triggered the moment she sees her Abusive Dad Azami returning to Totsuki.
• Trophy Wife: Erina has the looks, the top talent, finest pedigree, wealth and a lofty status. Pretty much all the reasons why Asahi is interested in marrying her. Erina herself objects to it.
• True Art Is Incomprehensible: Early on, her criticism of dishes is coached in bizarre metaphor:
  Erina: It tasted as if I were trying to enjoy a hot spring bath while a western lowland gorilla stared at me!
  One cook: Her sense of taste is completely different from us common mortals.
  Another: What does that even mean?!
• Tsundere: Harsh type. She has a lot of pride in general, which keeps her openly expressing a lot of her emotions apart from disdain or anger. The only person she openly admits she likes is her assistant Hisako. As for other people, she butt heads frequently with her cousin Alice despite her being possibly the closest person to her after Hisako. It's also obvious that she loves Soma's cooking and later, becomes attached and attracted to Soma himself, but her stubborn pride will never let her admit it in anything other than inner monologue. Lampshaded in the final chapter by Soma, who believes she will remain like that for years.
• Tyke-Bomb: Trained from an early age to cultivate her obvious gifts in taste sense. This takes a darker turn later on when it's shown that much of this training by her father was a forcible attempt to brainwash her into parroting his elitist culinary philosophy.
• Unwitting Pawn: For Asahi when he tries to win the BLUE competition in hopes of winning her over.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: While Erina is still compassionate and willing to help others, she showed it more often when she was younger. During the Autumn Election, Hisako has a flashback of her joyously dancing in a grove of sakura trees. After Alice left for Denmark and Azami took over her education, she was shaped into becoming more elitist. It took her a long time to return to her original self, which starts with Joichiro inspiring her by showing her how fun cooking can be, and later supported by her grandfather and Hisako's friendship. It's not until she takes shelter at Polaris, befriends its tenants, realizes that Alice always loved her the whole time and Soma reminded her of Joichiro's cooking that she decides to actively oppose her father and fight to free Totsuki from him.
• Valley Girl: The English dub sometimes makes her sound like one.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Alice is one of her best friends, but they usually squabble, bicker and taunt each other when they're together because neither one wants to admit that they actually like each other. They seem to have been friendlier when they were children, but still fought quite a bit.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl:
  • Erina has always admired Soma's father, Joichiro Saiba, ever since he cooked for her delicious and original meals she had never seen before. He's the role model that she continues trying to impress, in contrast to the chilly relationship she has with her biological father.
  • Ever since she was a child, Erina wanted her mother Mana to say her food is delicious. In the present, Mana is very cold and uncaring to her because of the health problems caused by her own God's Tongue. Erina hopes that if she can make her mother a dish that she can eat, Mana will accept her. However, she believes it's impossible for her to satisfy Mana's God's Tongue.
• Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: Soma and Erina's dynamic; as a princess of the culinary world, Erina expects to intimidate Soma and treats him like a "commoner," but he never notices her disdain or even returns fire with taunts of his own. As a result, their typical interaction is Erina giving him "The Reason You Suck" Speech and Soma failing to notice her contempt and retorting with a boast of his own about how he plans to beat her.
• When She Smiles:
  • When she opens the door of her house thinking Hisako has returned, she attends with a wide and cheerful smile, only to discover it was her arch-nemesis Soma and Mitsuru, who quickly gets a picture of her face, much to her embarrassment.
  • During the judging of the red-white battles, Erina tries to deny a compliment, only to become flustered when Soma and co. reassure her that she did a good job, noting how happy she looked while cooking.
  • In Chapter 278, she and Soma have a night chat at a balcony, and after trading some usual barbs, she lets out some giggles. Soma then remarks she looks very pretty when smiling, flustering her.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: In the last chapter of the Manga, all of Soma's friends are loudly cheering for him, expecting Erina to finally acknowledge his cooking, only for her to call it disgusting. Even her mom is surprised. Erina wins BLUE, much to Soma's dismay.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: A non-fatal example occurs at the end of the Regiment de Cuisine when Erina succeeds Azami as Dean of Totsuki Academy after she and the rebels defeat Central.
• Young and in Charge: Erina was appointed as the new Dean of Tōtsuki by Senzaemon and Soma. She was sixteen at that time.

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