Webcomic / Erma

She's just like you and me, only Creepy Cute.

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

It can be found at Tapas Comics as well as Webtoons.

On Halloween 2017, Brandon revealed a special surprise for the fans: an animated short based on the comic. You can see it here.

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

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

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

He likewise revealed he was making an adventure game for the series. It's currently still in development; here's a preview of the opening cinematics.

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Tropes:

• 13 Is Unlucky: Erma was born on October 13th, with the comic showing this coming out Friday the 13th October 2017. As for why it's unlucky, well Erma is an Apocalypse Maiden.
• Absurd Phobia: Santa Claus of all things is one of the few things that frighten Erma.
• Adorable Abomination: Erma (who is half Yōkai on her mother's side) is a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl with various powers usually seen on much more evil characters (including Body Horror shapeshifting and Mind Control) and enjoys all kinds of things relating to horror. She's also incredibly cute and charming.
• Affectionate Parody: Of just about anything related to the horror genre.
• Animals Hate Him: Save for Siris, Erma doesn't seem to have much luck with animals since they're freaked out by her presence alone. Turns out, Siris is also undead.
  • Rats seem to like her though, as seen at the beginning of "Rats in the School Walls".
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Erma's human cousin, Emily Williams. She is a hyperactive Genki Girl who loves to play with Erma and messes with her things. Her boundless energy annoys Erma and finds her a handful. Erma still gets along with her though, because Emily is still genuinely a nice kid.
  • While it's unclear if they are younger than Erma or not, Erma's cousins from her mother's side of the family, on the other hand, are much worse. Mitsu and Momo Yureimoto are twin troublemaking brats who antagonize Erma upon thinking her to be just like any other normal human being. Furthermore, they have similar powers, but none of her positive traits.
• April Fools' Day: Multiple times:
  • The first is the only one that isn't a prank on the readers and features Erma getting more and more agitated with people telling her "April Fools!" until she accidentally snaps at Connor, who was only trying to give her flowers.
  • In the second, Brandon stated he was bored with making Erma cute and decided to change her character completely, making her a vicious monster out for blood. It is then revealed to be an April Fools gag, with Sam asking Brandon if they could get her out of the punk-inspired getup yet.
  • The third came after a hiatus and claimed Erma was undergoing an Age Lift and the comic would now be about her in high school.
  • The fourth is titled "She Speaks", and Erma does speak from behind a window. Once she realizes the reader can't hear her, she opens it... and is called away to dinner before she can repeat herself.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Sam is married to, and has a child who is, a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl with horrifying powers out the wazoo. But he can't believe her dog is undead.
• Arc Villain:
  • Wittle Wallace the dummy in the Secrets arc, who swaps bodies with Felicia, and wants to steal Erma's body.
  • Erma's old babysitter, who was put in the mental institution due to Erma's pranks, will star as one, as revealed at the end of the Secrets arc.
  • Spirit's Bloom introduces Emiko's father (Erma's Grandfather) and a mysterious invisible man in a top hat and cloak. Grandpa is really not happy about his daughter running off to the living world, and the man in the top hat wants to use Erma to destroy the world.
• Artistic License – Sports: In Super Bowl, the announcer declares the quarterback needs to make a long pass to win the game, and the screen does indeed show a player dropping back to pass, but his number is 78. NFL rules require quarterbacks to have numbers between 1 and 19.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Wallace was originally just used for a one-off comic and a slapstick gag in the Cousin Arc, In the Secrets Arc, however, he's the Big Bad, and plots to steal Erma's body to take over the world.
  • Remember Erma's old babysitter? The one Erma scared to the point of insanity? Well, she's going to be a future Big Bad given how she was released but shows sinister signs of obsession. Furthermore, she's Connor's (the boy who has a crush on Erma's) older sister!
• Ax-Crazy: Erma's old babysitter, as revealed at the end of the Secrets Arc.
• Back-to-Back Poster: The title image for "Close Calls" has Erma and Siris sitting back to back.
• Badass Normal: Erma's father, doctor, and current babysitter can handle anything Erma throws at them, unlike the majority of adults in Erma's life.
  • Special points to Erma's cousin Emily, whose excitable nature allows her to shrug off or not even be affected by what Erma does. When Erma attempted to spook her, Emily just laughed and imitated her.
  • Felicia (Erma's current babysitter) shrugs off Wittle Wallace pulling a Grand Theft Me on her rather quickly, even managing to pull the same trick Wittle Wallace used on her to get her body back.
  • Erma's dentist and dental assistants for dealing with her, doubly so since Erma fears going to the dentist (she is improving though.)
• Badly Battered Babysitter: The babysitter before her current one did not respond well to Erma's pranks and suffered a psychological breakdown to the point her parents were forced to pay for the damages. Possibly deconstructed soon. She has since been released from the asylum, but now has shown a dangerous obsession toward Erma.
• Bad Moon Rising: Well Bad Moon Glowing though. At Part 54 of the Night Parade, everybody started to notice red lighting from the moon... only to turn blood red right in front of them indicating something bad is happening to Erma.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The way Erma's dad first describes his family and friends, it sounds like he's referencing horror icons - his brother Freddy who used to be a nightmare, his friend Jason who he went to summer camp with, etc. - but when we get to meet them, they're as normal as he is.
  • The conclusion to the dodgeball strips starts with a fellow teacher asking about Coach Williams's injured face. Amy was the one that accidentally hit him in the face, not Erma.
  • When we are introduced to Warrior Unicorn Princess, we (along with Felicia and Wallace) expect it to be a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic-like show with elements of Steven Universe and Star vs. the Forces of Evil. When we finally have a chance to see the show itself, turns out it's a surprisingly dark show (or at least capable of being dark since it was one episode), even more so than MLP: FiM usually is, though it's capable of being just as dark. Needless to say, even Felicia was surprised.
    Felicia: (Looking from the tv to the cute WUP doll in her hand) Wow, talk about false advertising...
• Benevolent Monsters: Harmless mischief and odd tendencies aside, neither Erma nor her mother has a malicious spectral bone in their bodies. Averted for Wittle Wallace, as he's the Big Bad of the Secrets arc.
• Berserk Button: Erma has a couple, although you have to push her buttons really hard for her to get truly angry:
  • DON'T make fun of her if you find out she's a fan of the (actually surprisingly dark) stereotypically-girly looking show Warrior Unicorn Princess. Along with that, don't say that her friends won't think she's scary anymore because of that. She nearly killed Wittle Wallace in Felicia's body because he kept saying this to hurt her. It worked.
  • Do not harm her friends. She fought through the Rat Men army nearly untouched until the principal showed that her friends were unharmed to calm her down.
  • Cutting her hair without permission seems to be on the list. Three yokai find this out the hard way during the search for Rin. Though that may have just been the last straw in this case.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Sure, Erma's pretty tame compared to the source material, but god help you if you're her opponent in dodgeball or snowball/water balloon wars where it'll most likely become a Curb-Stomp Battle, or harassing her past the breaking point, causing her to freak out and attack you.
• Big Blackout: Erma may or may not cause a nation-wide blackout all over Japan during the Blood Moon.
• Big Brother Bully: Downplayed. Connor, the buck-toothed boy who's crushing on Erma, has an older sister who refuses to loan him her walkie-talkies when he asks to borrow them and tells him off in a rather caustic way, only to change her mind moments later. Oh, yeah; she's also Erma's former babysitter who returned from being institutionalized.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Erma is good friends with Bigfoot, as shown by them playing and taking pictures together.
• Black Comedy: Inevitable, given the comic's premise.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Subverted with Erma, as mostly she enjoys some harmless mischief. She will lash out when pushed too far, granted she didn't happen to have good memories with the one who did it.
  • Her maternal aunts (save Mayumi) all have similar eyes but like Erma are not necessarily malevolent (at worst, Rin is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and Fumiko is rather standoffish and aloof).
• Blade Below the Shoulder: In "Unicorn Aftermath", we see that one of Warrior Unicorn Princess' allies has two of these, one on each arm.
• Bookends: The beginning and end of "The Rats in the School Walls" begins with a rat stealing Terry's lunch.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The prequel comic Spirit's Bloom actually features a body count thanks to the strange invisible man visiting a newborn Erma at the hospital and nonchalantly killing three bystanders (a nurse he disintegrated, then two doctors he exploded in an elevator only leaving their bloody skeletons splattered against the walls) while the regular series mostly feature Non-Malicious Monsters and resolve its conflicts in a family-friendly way.
• Boy Meets Ghoul: Multiple:
  • The budding romance between Erma's parents in Spirit's Bloom, though her father doesn't realize it until much later.
  • Connor and Erma's interactions have shades of this as well.
• Bullying the Dragon:
  • Wittle Wallace in Felicia's body realizes too late that bullying Erma is an incredibly stupid idea.
  "Okay, in hindsight I probably shouldn't have been fooling around."
  • Let's just say that it wasn't wise for the yokai trio to kidnap Erma and feeding her to the Jubokko.
• Bullet Dodges You: Erma pulls this off with nerf darts.
• The Cameo:
  • Single-panel strips on the artist's Tumblr involve Erma interacting with horror characters such as Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Billy the Puppet, Pyramid Head, and The Babadook. There's also a strip where Erma and her father go to a dance attended by Frankenstein's Monster and his Bride, Chucky and Tiffany, Jack Skellington and Sally, Victor and Emily, and Dracula. Another features her meeting various comic strip icons like Charlie Brown and Calvin (and Hobbes), another has her meet Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and yet another has her meet the original Ghostbusters (who don't bust her, but Egon does study her).
  • In the Sunday strips, she also interacts with Casper, meets Ash Williams, and joins forces with Slimer. In some basic sketches, she also meets the animatronics and in another Mabel is gushing at how adorable she is while Dipper looks in his journal curiously.
  • One color panel has Erma rocking out with a bunch of familiar demons, with a confused Doom Guy in the background.
  • Speaking of the dance, the band appears to consist of a reanimated Elvis, Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong, and Jimi Hendrix.
  • Erma was on the same bus as Dipper and Mabel after the two returned home from their summer vacation.
  • The first Halloween comics also have their share of cameos: Dr. Loomis and Michael Myers, Mrs. Voorhees, William Gaines, and Samhain, as well as a mention of the "Craven House" and some background graffiti reading "Carpenter".
  • In Down to Clown, Pennywise and Georgie Denbrough make an appearance. Pennywise ask Erma if she wants a balloon while under the mistaken assumption she is just another helpless child victim only to learn she is anything but helpless when she appears behind him in the sewer drain and uses her hair tentacles to drag him into the darkness as he screams. In the final panel, it is revealed that Erma is friends with Georgie who she waves hello to while walking down the street, holding one of Pennywise's balloons.
  • On the official Twitter, we get to see Baldi get a taste of his own medicine from Erma.◊
  • One of the yokai◊ Sam speaks to (and is nearly attacked by) when searching for Rin is quite clearly King Ghidorah.
• Cardiovascular Love: In the Valentine's Day Episode of "Heart to Heart", there's the regular Heart Symbol Valentines' card, and then there's Erma pulling out her heart, which looks like a human heart.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Erma started out as a weekly gag comic following the daily life of a Cute Ghost Girl and her friends. Many of the earlier strips where standalone jokes with minimal continuity. Over time though, Erma started having increasingly fleshed out story arcs, with more serious moments mixed in here and there. The biggest turning point is The Reunion Arc, a lengthy storyline that's primarily focused on the family drama of the Yureimoto clan, and ends with the Yokai Thug Trio kidnapping Erma, then attempting to kill her by feeding her to a Jubokko, only for to break free with a Traumatic Superpower Awakening and lash out at both her captors and a large portion of the nearby town. In the aftermath Erma is left traumatized and seems to have captured the attention of all the supernatural world's major players
• Children Are Innocent: played with. Erma enjoys the dark and macabre and also scaring people for fun, but she's mostly a sweet, well-behaved girl who wants to make friends with the other kids and will use her powers to help them out. She also loves a My Little Pony-type show. The latter is Subverted, however as the show is surprisingly dark and pretty violent at times.
  • Meanwhile, other children tend to accept Erma as just another kid like them — it's the adults around her who are usually terrified of or mean to her. The children are also quick to accept the Rat Children who join the school in a step to have humans and Rat Men accept one another at the end of the "Rats in the School Walls" arc.
• Cliffhanger: The Secrets arc was chock-full of them, but one stand-out example occurs at the very end of the arc: We see a future Big Bad exit the mental asylum, Erma's old babysitter, now Ax-Crazy and plotting to do.... SOMETHING to our favorite little half-ghost girl.
• Closet Geek: Erma, being a walking horror movie villain, is terrified of anyone finding out she's a Warrior Unicorn Princess fan.
• Comic-Book Time: The Family Reunion Arc took five and a half years to finish even though the entire arc lasted only a week.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Having grown used to the various horrifying things that Erma either does or attracts, many of the characters present (her classmates, her neighbors, her babysitter, etc.) usually shrug off the many unnatural things that occur without incident. This is even used as a plot point when the existence of rat-people is revealed to the school, everyone having been inoculated to the weirdness of the situation. In the case of her father, he is so unfazed by the weirdness in his life that he doesn't even flinch when the various yokai in "The Search" arc threaten to kill and/or eat him.
• Cooldown Hug: Emiko,Samuel and Momo reach a vicious powered Erma and calm her down until she's back to normal
• Costume-Test Montage: In "Trying Out Costumes", Erma is trying out Halloween costumes, a witch with Flying Broomstick-reference broomstick and Robe and Wizard Hat, Little Red Riding Hood, Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th, Winged Humanoid Fairy, Godzilla, Ash of Evil Dead, with chainsaw arm, Superman with Dynamic Akimbo, and ends up with For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself when someone finds it " really creepy".
• Cranial Eruption: In "Heading Back", Sam and his brother Michael have head bumps with Instant Bandages after Siris spits out the bullets he got from getting shot by them (implied to be due to their wives bonking them for shooting the dog.
• Crazy-Prepared: The dentist Erma goes to. On the first visit, they got a really bad taste of Erma's powers when trying to clean her teeth. The next time she visits, they're more than ready for her by having her strapped down and having a priest on hand to ward off the supernatural attacks.
• Creepy Child: Erma is this to her teachers, though her classmates generally aren't fazed by Erma and (most) of her ghostly antics. Though they DO draw the line at stunts like Erma pulling her heart out of her chest on Valentine's Day or snapping her head 180°
• Creepy Doll: Erma's room is full of them, some missing their heads. And one of them is even possessed by an evil spirit, though Erma likely didn't know about it considering it stole her babysitter's body and planned to steal Erma's next.
• Crossover: The annual Erma-Ween pictures feature Erma and her family crossing paths with other famous sci-fi or horror characters. The first year alone featured Foxy, Chica, Bonnie, Cupcake and Freddy, Circus Baby, Cthulhu, Leatherface, Jeff the Killer, Smile Dog, among others.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: When Erma's playing dodgeball, Erma's team is guaranteed the win. Even if it's just her vs. the rest of the gym students (and even the teacher) as one team, Erma will always wipe the floor with them. Hell, the Dodgeball arc ends its second part with Erma joining the other team captain and abandoning everyone who chose to be on her side just to make things fair. This also applies to water balloons and snowball fights.
  • In fact, ANY sport Erma tries also qualifies: being able to instantly get home runs (albeit losing the ball in space) and being able to shoot baskets perfectly 'dozens of times in a row.
  • If Erma gets pushed too far, and you're the cause of it and don't have a good past with her, let's just say you might want to run.
• Cute Ghost Girl: Erma as well as her mother.
• Darker and Edgier: Though the series has been dabbling in drama for a while, Spirit's Bloom is quite a bit darker than the rest. Most notably, three innocent extras die very gruesomely toward the end, and Erma is revealed to be a key piece of a plot to destroy the world.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Erma and her mother are creepy as hell, but they're genuinely nice, ordinary people.
• A Day in the Limelight: Some arcs focus on specific characters:
  • The Cousin arc focuses on Emily, Erma's cousin.
    • Its accompanying arc, the Hunting arc, focuses on Erma's dad, Emily's dad, and Siris.
  • The Secrets arc, outside of Erma's secret and Erma's reaction to being pushed too far, mainly focuses on Felicia and Wittle Wallace.
  • A future arc will focus on Erma's old babysitter, who was confirmed to be a Big Bad.
  • The Spirit's Bloom comic focuses on how Erma's parents met.
• Defanged Horrors: This comic plays a lot of common horror movie themes for laughs.
• Disability Immunity: The children use an invisibility spell to sneak inside the school but the blind principal, of course, isn't fooled and pretends not to notice until he reveals their location to the Rat Men as part of his plan to begin the acclimation of Rat Men and humans.
• Dodgeball Is Hell: One short arc has Erma's P.E. class play dodgeball. When Erma is picked as a captain, almost everyone instantly tries to be on her team, only for her to join the other captain's team in a sense of "fairness". Cue Curb-Stomp Battle.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Emiko and Sam's relationship, and how Emiko's family takes it, smacks of your standard "interracial marriage" tropes. Add that to the fact that Sam's a foreigner (Sam's American while Emiko is, of course, Japanese), which alienates him further from his wife's side of the family...
• "Double, Double" Title: Noise! Noise! Noise!.
• Dragged Off to Hell: Or rather, dropped into a hole dug into Hell, but yes this was Wittle Wallace's fate at the end of the Secrets arc.
• Dramatic Irony: "Rats in the School Walls" has Connor asks his older sister for some help. He has no idea that his sister was once Erma's former baby sitter. Likewise she herself has no idea her little brother has a crush on Erma.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Erma, her mother, and her aunts all have the same pale complexion.
• Enemy Rising Behind: Erma attempted this on her father once early on in the comic, but he's more than familiar with her tricks that he doesn't even turn to know she's there.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Emiko, Erma's mother, is first shown climbing out of television which scares the crap out of a man. However, just when he thinks she's about to get him, she instead runs right past him to give Erma her forgotten lunch. It sums up Emiko nicely - a creepy as hell woman with similarly creepy power, but is very nice and sweet.
  • Sam, Erma's father, is first shown when Erma attempts to spook him, but he only barely says that if she does that, he won't take her to the toy store, which also sums up Sam nicely - a Badass Normal who has seen it all and isn't scared of anything.
• Everybody Hates Mathematics: One comic had Erma have to do homework on division. She becomes frustrated when she can't seem to get it and her kitchen winds up suffering for it until the answer finally comes to her.
  • Shown again when she violently confronts◊ notable killer math teacher Baldi.
• Expy: Erma's mother is based heavily on Kayako Saeki and Sadako Yamamura.
  • The librarian is a dead ringer for Ms. Bitters.
  • "Erma" just happens to rhyme with "Alma".
  • One of Erma's favorite programs is a My Little Pony type show crossed with Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, with a dash of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and a little Star vs. the Forces of Evil thrown in for flavor.
  • The old hag in Trick acts like a certain mean old farmer if he was disguised as his mother.
  • Wittle Wallace resembles a certain demonic dummy.
  • The Catchimals mobile game looks to be basically Pokémon GO.
• Exact Words: The kids playing not-Pokemon Go wonder how Erma intends to play since she doesn't have a phone. Cue Erma dragging a bunch of wild animals she lassoed with a land phone cord.
• Extended Disarming: In the "Night Parade Part 30", Erma's cousins are planning to pull a lot of pranks that night. Their mother immediately orders them to empty their pockets. The girls then proceed to unload a massive pile of fireworks and explosives that is several times bigger than they are, including a dragon-shaped cannon.
• Extreme Omnivore: Rocks, live cats... Pretty much anything can be consumed by Erma.
• Failed Attempt at Scaring:
  • As a half ghost Erma enjoys using her various powers to spook people. When she gets a new babysitter, Felicia, she of course tries to spook her too. Unfortunately for Erma, Felicia is a horror fan, so despite numerous attempts to scare her Felicia remains completely unfazed.
  • Erma has a cousin Emily. Emily is such a Genki Girl that all Erma's attempts to scare her horribly backfired: Erma is visibly scared of Emily after she laughs it all.
• Family Theme Naming: Sam's side of the family, the Williams, are all named after various horror icons, humorously enough:
  • There's Sam's brothers:
    • Freddy and Michael, named after Freddy Kreuger and Michael Myers respectively. Micheal appears to be the younger and thus Freddy maybe the older one.
  • There's Micheal's wife, Regan, named after Regan MacNeil.
  • There's their child and Erma's cousin, Emily, named after Emily Rose.
  • Sam, Freddy and Micheal's mother and Erma's grandmother, Pamela, after Pamela Voorhees.
  • Speaking of which, Sam's best friend Jason (who can't swim) is named after Jason Voorhees (who's close enough to the Williams to be invited to Thanksgiving.)
  • Sam himself may be named after the horror character of the same name from Trick 'r Treat (who was named after the pagan holiday Samhain, what Halloween was based on.)
  • Their family name, Williams, could potentially be a reference to Ashley J. "Ash" Williams.
• Fan Community Nicknames: invoked In-universe; fans of Warrior Unicorn Princess are known as "WUPers".
• Foreshadowing:
  • During the Hunting arc, Siris getting shot three times and ran over without dying foreshadows the twist that Siris is undead.
    • On a much earlier note for the same plot twist, you can tell something's different about Siris when he's the only one to be attracted to a child who is half ghost.
  • The Cousin arc episode Snoop has Wittle Wallace attempt to make Erma's cousin Emily "his plaything" and later attack her. Emily also discovers that Erma has Warrior Unicorn Princess dolls. Both of these events later play a part in the Secrets arc, the former when Wallace pulls a Grand Theft Me on Felicia, and the latter being what Erma's trying to hide.
  • Terry questions how Mr. Phibes couldn't hear them while they were sneaking around invisible. He could.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: One strip has Erma deciding to just go as the Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl she is after a woman compliments her "costume".
• Freaky Is Cool: When he first started dating Emiko Sam noticed she didn't have much interest in the normal sights around town but was drawn towards a model of a local monster myth. So he started taking her to haunted and other horror movie-esque locations around town like the abandoned asylum and the swamp. Which she loved.
• Frivolous Summoning: In this strip, Amy performs a Bloody Mary-like ritual to summon Erma...so she could ask to borrow Erma's class notes.
• Gashadokuro: Emiko is famous in her Youkai hometown for multiple reasons, but children are especially impressed by the story that she overpowered a gashadokuro for fun.
• Gave Up Too Soon: If Erma hadn't been so angry at her inability to style her hair without it growing back instantly, she would have found out that her mom has special scissors that let her do just that with her hair.
• Genki Girl: Erma's cousin Emily. It makes Erma nervous.
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Before having her body stolen by Wittle Wallace the dummy, Felicia's eyes are normal and human with filled-in pupils. After the Grand Theft Me, however, her (body's) eyes are suddenly less filled-in and seem more demonic, even appearing drunk on occasion.
• Grand Theft Me: Felicia, Erma's current babysitter, has this pulled on her by Wittle Wallace, the creepy dummy in Erma's room in the Secrets arc.
• Grand Parental Favouritism: Both Yureimoto grandparents take sides when they first meet Erma; Osamu swoons over her and completely ignores the Twins, while Amaya says that while Erma's got potential, she likes the Twins more for their ability to cause mischief.
• Hair Reboot: Erma's hair seems determined to stay in its Eyes Out of Sight position. She has to resort to using a bear trap for a hairpin to pin it back for a Halloween costume.
• Half-Human Hybrid:
  • Erma, as her father, Sam Williams is a human while her mother, Emiko Williams is a yokai.
  • Sidney the Hall Monitor, who is half human and a half rat person, which allows her to control small, non-sapient rats and shift between a human guise and her natural form.
• Halloween Episode: The appropriately named "Thirteen Days of Erma-ween" with most years having Erma and/or her friends/family hanging out with various horror creations such as Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, Luigi's Mansion and Scary Godmother. The 2023 one was Erma trying on different Halloween costumes.
• Happily Married: Erma's parents, Sam and Emiko, are shown to have a very loving and supportive relationship with one another, and in turn are supportive and kind parents to Erma.
• Hates Baths: As seen in The Inevitable, Erma hates baths. And considering her ghostly powers, getting her in the tub is a battle.
• Heroic BSoD: Emiko ends up sitting in her room in shock after her talk with Osamu, where he reveals he knew where she was the whole time and could have taken her and Erma back whenever he wanted (but chose not to). Given her shadow's progression, she spends the better part of a day sitting there, staring straight ahead despite Erma trying to reach out to her.
• Hint Dropping: Amy in Rat Trap states that a rat is causing a lot of havoc and it would be nice if somebody could stop it. Erma smiles and nods then return to eating her lunch. The next scene has Amy pushing her to the area saying "that means you".
• Hollywood Heart Attack: Erma accidentally causes this to a rude old lady on Halloween after Erma's babysitter suggests she try asking for candy again after the woman is extremely rude to her and her friends the first time.
• Hollywood Voodoo: Unsurprisingly, Erma has voodoo dolls and it's implied she can make them. Why she made one of Connor though raises some eyebrows...
• Horrifying the Horror: Monsters under the bed are scared of Erma, and Freddy Krueger has nightmares about her. Jason doesn't seem to have a problem getting a hug and The Babadook enjoys reading his book with her though.
  • A Mall Santa does this to Erma herself, resulting in her cocooning him in cloth from fear. She also appears to have gotten a fear of Santa in general from the incident as she grabbed a knife when she thought she heard him.
  • Erma is freaked out by the aggressive outbursts her parents make when they're watching an American Football game.
  • Erma's cousin Emily notably makes her nervous with her hyperactive behavior.
  • The Big Bad in Felicia's body is also fond of doing this to poor Erma, and it backfires HARD.
  • Just before they leave to go back to America, Emiko whispers something into Osamu's ear that causes his Smug Snake demeanor to snap and sends him toppling back in his throne in catatonic shock.
• Humanoid Abomination: Given her increasingly freakish abilities, some of which include Body Horror, it isn't a stretch to say Erma is this.
  • Her mother as well, though she's better at functioning in society than her daughter.
• Idea Bulb: How Erma solves her problem, in Going Blank.
• Implacable Man: Erma's undead dog Siris pretty much ignores being shot in the head three times and then run over.
• Inelegant Blubbering: In The Night Parade Pt. 30, Emiko seeing Erma dressed in her childhood kimono causes her to break down into this while declaring "how beautiful her baby" is.
• Intangibility: Erma (and presumably her mother as well) can become intangible to go through walls or allow things to go through them.
• Irony: Erma can manage to freak out a lot of people 24/7 without really trying most of the time. But when she goes in "costume" (really just a normal dress with her hair done in a ponytail) on one Halloween and tries to scare people, no one takes her seriously.
• Jump Scare: Erma is pretty fond of these, but never goes any further beyond that.
• Karma Houdini: No one ever brings up the fact that one of the rats literally ate Principal Phibes's pet hamster beyond the one strip.
• Kid Hero All Grown-Up: Shes Back shows what Erma would look like as a High School Teenager.
• Killer Rabbit: The puppy Erma's family finds in The Vet seems adorable at first (especially compared to the other "pets"). That is, until it's revealed that it's going through a "teething phase", showing a massive pile of bones from various creatures behind it.
• Klaatu Barada Nikto: Take a look at the security guard's crossword puzzle.
• Klatchian Coffee: In “Weekly Grind”, Erma sneaks in a sip of her babysitter’s coffee. Cut to her telekinetically stirring up a storm in the kitchen.
  Felicia: Aaand there goes my allowance for the week…
• The Krampus: Erma likes to make sure he gets cookies.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: The 2023 version of "Thirteen Days of Erma-ween" is Erma trying on various costumes.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • In the final chapter of the Dodgeball arc, after Erma faces off against the entire gym, minus one teammate, we see that Coach greatly enjoys watching kids get violently pummeled with dodgeballs (even eating popcorn as it's happening, somehow). Cue Erma's teammate accidentally causing the dodgeball to bounce around the gym and eventually hit the Coach in the head.
  • The old hag in the Halloween arc aggressively screams at children and hides the candy from them because she wants it all to herself. Shortly afterward, Erma scares her so much that she has a heart attack, allowing Erma's group to steal all of the old hag's candy.
  • The Big Bad of the Secrets arc ( Wittle Wallace, now in Felicia's body) spends around 2 pages harassing poor Erma about her secret. Cue Erma going from a cute little ghost girl to a hot-blooded being of pure, unadulterated rage, grabbing the possessed babysitter with her hair and ready to tear him/her to pieces.
    • Also, after Wittle Wallace (in Felica's body) realizes that the powder he planned to use to pull a Grand Theft Me on Erma has washed away after she dropped the possessed babysitter in the lake, Felica (in Wittle Wallace's body) pulls the very same trick Wittle Wallace used on her that kicked off the tense parts of the arc.
    • Remember how Wallace was bullying Erma for being a WUPer. Guess what kills him: WUP dolls controlled by Erma's telekinesis, who dogpile him, chain him to a rock, and throw him into a hole so deep it lands him in hell.
    • The Yokai thug trio and the bullied Yokai children kidnap Erma and throw her inside a Jubokko with the intention that the tree will kill. Right after Erma escapes, she turns the tables around and subjects the trio to being destroyed and the Yokai kids to be scarred for life.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The final part of the Family Reunion Arc (read: taking place five and a half years later in real time) has Felicia exclaiming that the Williams are finally back. Emiko also notes how that whole week felt like forever.
• Lightmare Fuel: One of the comic's core elements.
• Mall Santa: Erma visits one in one comic. Considering her fear of Santa Claus, it doesn't go well.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": The entire village goes into a panic when they confirm Osamu is coming.
  • Then again when they see Erma trip and gently slide into Osamu.
    • And then a third time when Osamu picks Erma up and Emiko becomes enraged and they try to hold her back.
    • A fourth time happens upon seeing the black hair of a rampageous Erma covering all the city and fleeing from her.
• Meaningful Background Event: "Sprinkles" has an argument between Terry and Amy about how to help Sprinkles get down from a hanging lamp, while Erma climbs up a wall in the background to help the cat.
• Mind over Matter: Erma and her mother have telekinesis and mind control as part of their ghostly powers. Erma in particular rarely carries anything in her hands as opposed to telekinetically. Something the fans even caught onto.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: "The Rats in the Walls" arc has an infestation of unusually brave rats end up revealing a secret community of Rat Men living under the school.
• Misaimed Merchandising: In-Universe, Warrior Unicorn Princess is often portrayed as a fun, action fantasy show similar to My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (it's even confirmed that men are WUPers). When in reality, however, it's extremely dark and violent.
• Mood Whiplash: "The Search Part 28" seemingly ends on a heartwarming note, with some mother-daughter bonding between Erma and Emiko and their relationship with Rin improving greatly. Cut to a forest where Emiko's father Osamu slaughters a whole bunch of youkai.
  • When Osamu finally shows up for the family gathering, multiple strips are building up a bunch of tension and dread from his intimidating presence... until he meets Erma and becomes incredibly affectionate towards her, with everyone else's expressions going from fearful and angry to hilariously dumbfounded.
• Mundane Utility: Erma uses her powers to terrify a football player so her dad's team can win. And that's just one of her many (ab)uses of her powers, like taking a ghost bus to get to school on time or using her poltergeist to hurl dozens of dodgeballs around.
  • Other characters invoke this with Erma's powers too. In an early comic, a classmate sets up a candles and invokes a ritual to summon her so he can get her notes from class.
• My Little Phony: Warrior Unicorn Princess definitely takes some cues from the franchise.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: When Erma is born a lot of those attuned to the supernatural around the world and beyond it stop what they're doing and turn to look in the direction of Blair Wood.
• Night Parade of One Hundred Demons: Erma's family are invited to Japan by her maternal relatives the Yureimotos to take part in the Night Parade. It is implied that while it is a fun party to be involved in, the sheer anarchy of it can be dangerous, hence why Fumiko objects to her father's idea to involve the servants for fear of their lives.
  Emiko: Well around this time of year, yokai come together for the one-night parade throughout Japan. A parade with singing and dancing.
• Nightmare Face: Erma and Emiko are capable of making some very scary faces. One chapter even has Emiko tell Erma not to do them in school while expressing them.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Erma is this for normal people. She enjoys scaring people for fun, although she's not malicious about it.
• Not Afraid of You Anymore: Downplayed, but the sheer fact that Emiko wasn't going to bow to her father until Fumiko forced her to, then shocked her siblings by sassing him when everybody else around him dropped to their knees in terror of the old man certainly makes it appear that she no longer fears Osamu.
  • It stops being downplayed by the very next page when Osamu picked Erma up and Emiko had to be restrained by her siblings to stop her attacking her father.
• Not Me This Time: In this comic, a shark's dorsal fin appearing in a swimming pool is initially thought to be one of Erma's pranks... then Erma shows up with a confused look on her face.
• Obfuscating Disability: Erma's school's principal is blind, but he's got quite a perceptive awareness, to the point of realizing Erma and her friends were following him to the underground Rat Men civilization beneath the school while under an invisibility spell.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: The blind principal who was a one-off gag on how anyone would accept Erma into the school is one of the few individuals responsible for keeping the school's underground Rat Men civilization a secret.
• Off with His Head!: Erma likes to rip the heads off all her dolls. She also did this to herself while dancing, although the crowd was less than enthused by it.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Erma occasionally will do this, though she's usually more fond of through-screen teleportation.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Anytime some "supernatural prank" is revealed to not be caused by Erma.
  • Erma's father and paternal uncle's entire trip becomes this upon finding out Siris is undead. When Erma does find out by way of Contrived Coincidence caused by Tempting Fate, the men are understandably worried.
  • Erma has this reaction after her babysitter Felicia reveals she knows that Erma is a WUPer, a fan of Warrior Unicorn Princess, something Erma doesn't want anyone but her mom and dad to know.
  • In "Pathetic", Wittle Wallace in Felicia's body has this realization after his taunting of Erma causes her to go from mortification to pure rage.
  • Erma's mother, Emiko, has one when she goes to get a gift during Erma's birthday and sees one from someone with a tag in Japanese. She burns the gift before grabbing another one and heading back. The tag is revealed to say "grandfather", indicating that Emiko's family is not only aware of Erma's existence, but where they live. Considering they kidnapped Emiko after her marriage with Sam, Emiko is understandably frightened at her family, especially her father, coming for her and her family.
  • Everybody in the mansion grounds. Her family and the family servants look like their blood turned to ice as Erma accidentally bumps into Osamu.
• One-Man Army: When it comes to snow fights, water-balloon fights, dodgeball, and even regular fights, Erma's in a league all her own.
  • Though she has nothing compared to her grandfather. A powerful tengu who crushes nearly anyone in his way and is feared by nearly every single one of his kind.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Erma and her mom have various ghostly powers, such as shape-shifting, levitation, telekinesis, phasing through walls, using televisions as portals to other places, mind control, and removing their body parts. They also have some physical elements - Erma requires sleep, both eat, and given the baby pictures on her family's walls, Erma was born the same way as an ordinary human child.
• Periphery Demographic: In-Universe; Erma is a big fan of Warrior Unicorn Princess and initially tries to keep it a secret. Kinda mitigated by the fact that the show is actually rather darker than what advertisements portray it as.
• Pest Controller: Sidney can control small, non-sapient rats mentally.
• Portal Picture: Erma can warp with comic books. Also works with Japanese artwork: Emiko's sister quickly makes one to their van ride in the hope that she, Sam, and Erma will leave before their grandfather arrives.
• Portal Pool: Erma and her mom can warp with sinks/water.
• Prehensile Hair: Erma and her mother can control their long, stringy black hair to ensnare and squeeze people or items like an anaconda. Emiko can also condense her hair, like compressing the tips into deadly spikes.
• Puppy Love: There's a good bit of Ship Tease between Erma and her buck-toothed classmate named Connor. To date, he's given her a flower (and she kissed him on the cheek to cheer him up when she made it wilt accidentally), comforted her when she was worried she wasn't scary during Halloween, in "Erma X-mas Special #2", kissed her on the cheek Under the Mistletoe (she ends up fully blushing and slightly spazzing) and tends to turn to Erma when he's scared, such as when he leaped into her arms when he got spooked or holding her hand for reassurance. Erma hasn't quite shown how much she likes him back, but she does tend to smile whenever these happen (minus when he kissed her since she was too shocked to process it), so she's fond of Connor in return.
• Putting the "Pal" in Principal: While the Creepy Cute Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl/Half-Human Hybrid title character unnerves most of the teachers, Principle Phibes is blind, and thus "Everyone is the same in [his] eyes". He means it- He's a Secret-Keeper for a society of Rat Men living underneath the school, and Erma is not the only Half-Human Hybrid to attend his school.
• Random Species Offspring: There doesn't seem to be much cohesion in what type of Youkai Emiko's family members are. Emiko herself, and Erma by default are onryo, her sister is a Rokurokubi, which her twin daughters didn't inherit (being Zashiki-Warashi with an unidentified satyr-like youkai for a father), their other siblings are a collection of different youkai including a Nukekubi, a Hari Onago, a Nure-onna, a Noppera-bō, and an Oni. Their father is a daitengu and their mother seems to be some kind of ghost as well.
• Rat Men: Turns out there's a civilization of these living underneath the school. They have plans to move due to the noise from above, but decide to send their children to the school to begin the acclimation of humans to Rat Men.
• Retcon: The earliest glimpses shown of Warrior Unicorn Princess hinted that it was as girly as it looked, complete with And Knowing Is Half the Battle, not the dark and gritty show it turned out to be.
• Secretly Wealthy: Multiple:
  • Sam is a famous horror novelist with at least four published works, and working on another. It's assumed by fans that this has (or should have) made him well off, yet his family lives in a comfortably modest suburban home. Others point out that being wealthy would be the only way they can pay for Erma's more destructive episodes; a wealthy lifestyle would mean replacing things would be much more expensive. It would also explain why such expenses haven't put the Williams in the poor house and reinforced by a comment made by Erma's aunt Yori about it.
  • Turns out Emiko herself is this. Her family has plenty of prestige and servants with them, something Sam did not know too much about based on his surprise about learning it. However, it's unlikely Emiko gets any money from them seeing how she wants little to do with her family (or at least, her dad.) And according to Erma's uncle, the giant mansion they have on Earth is nothing compared to the one they have in the Spirit world, which he describes as the estate 'times ten'.
• Seen It All: Multiple:
  • Erma's doctor. Likewise, Felicia, Erma's latest babysitter, isn't fazed by Erma's attempts to scare her and takes swapping bodies with an evil dummy surprisingly well.
  • Yori can recognize Sam as Emiko's husband by the sheer fact that he doesn't seem fazed by the supernatural going on at the airport. Japan in general also seems to be less easily phased by the supernatural than much of the rest of the world, if Yori's comments are correct.
• Shadow of Impending Doom: The third act of the "Family Reunion" arc begins with Osamu Yureimoto, the patriarch of Erma's maternal family, arriving at the yokai village by casting a gigantic shadow over the land. Once the inhabitants see it, all activity is brought to a screeching halt, and the lookout heralds his arrival via ringing a bell to warn the villagers. What's more frightening, Osamu isn't even in a gigantic form, his shadow is just that huge, showcasing how imposing he truly is.
  • His wife gets in on the action too, hijacking a terrified servant's shadow to make her entrance into the throne room.
• Shadow Walker: Erma's grandmother Amaya makes her entrance by materializing out of the shadow of a nervous servant who had come to wait on Osamu and Erma.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page
• Shown Their Work: The numerous amount of youkai in the Family Reunion Arc is nothing short of astounding, to the point that there's even a book that details every single youkai mentioned so far!
• Show Within a Show: Warrior Unicorn Princess.
• Sliding Scale of Undead Regeneration: Siris is revealed to be a Type IV, considering he's healed three gunshot wounds to the face and is healing from having been run over, which left a VERY noticeable divot through him horizontally, and it was only these wounds that revealed him to be undead in the first place.
• The Speechless:
  • Erma doesn't talk at all. Well, she whispers to her friends a couple of times offscreen, but we've never seen her speak normally. Whenever she tries, something happens to keep her from talking.
  • Her aunt Mayumi also has never uttered a word, but this is justified since she's a Noppera-bo Youkai with no facial features.
• Splash of Color: The animated short is Deliberately Monochrome… except the apple Erma hands her teacher, which is bright red.
  • The comic is also Deliberately Monochrome save for the crossover strips (all of which are non-canon with the possible exception of the Christmas Special)...until The Night Parade Part 53, when in a moment of fear, Erma unlocks a power that causes her eyes to glow red. In Part 54, the moon also turns red. Judging by Emiko's reaction, this is a very bad sign.
• Stating the Simple Solution: "Um... Erma? Why don't you just levitate the rat?"
• Strong Family Resemblance: Erma looks nothing like her dad Sam, but is a smaller version of her mom Emiko, from their looks to the way they dress. This is lampshaded a lot by her maternal relatives, especially her aunts - Yori and Ena. Flashbacks and pictures of Emiko when she was Erma's age make the resemblance even more clear, as they are fully identical when compared.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Erma and her mother. Considering what they're based on, it's to be expected.
• Switch to English: All of Erma's yokai relatives are fully bilingual in English. Once it is understood who Erma is (their half-yokai American relative) they will confirm her identity with her in English, and then stick with English around her.
• Take a Third Option: During the Dodgeball arc, Erma is picked as one of the captains, which results in all of the class trying to be on her side since, thanks to her powers, she's virtually impossible to play against. Of course, that leaves the opposing side without any players and someone at least needs to be on the other captain's side to have a game. While the kids argue over who's going to do it, Erma decides to join the other team so there can be a proper match. Great for the other captain, not so much for the other team.
• Television Portal: A favorite method of transport for Erma and her mom, though something as small as a portable console works too. They mostly use it for transport and the occasional prank, although Yori states that Emiko can also bring others with her.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Wittle Wallace brags that people have tried to destroy or otherwise get rid of him in various ways and it's never worked, so he'll just come back no matter what Erma does. Cue his being chained to a rock and prepared to be dropped into a seemingly bottomless pit, which he admits has never happened before. On top of that, the pit turns out to be so deep it leads to Hell. Yeah, he's probably not coming back.
  • After the Secrets arc Felicia hopes to not get another night like that again, only to be followed by a strip of Erma's first babysitter getting released from the mental hospital, still obsessed with Erma and with a creepy smile while drawing her.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Defied. Emiko, pissed that Osamu is trying to act like a kind person and that the past never happened, attempts to give one of these by going down the long list of all the ways he was not only horribly abusive to Emiko and the rest of her siblings, but also her husband Sam. As soon as she's done speaking, he not only reminds her just how overwhelmingly powerful he still is, but drops the bombshell that her and Sam never actually defeated him all those years ago. He discovered where they were and where they were going the day after they escaped, and could have easily destroyed their happy little suburban life with their daughter Erma at any point in the past decade. He doesn't care if she (or the rest of siblings, for that matter) forgives him or not because, frankly, he's still their father regardless. He happily bids her a good night, while she spends both the immediate aftermath and most of the following day in a Thousand-Yard Stare.
• Thermal Dissonance: Being half-youkai, Erma seems to be completely immune to cold temperatures, as seen Strip #26, on a swing in winter where everyone else is shivering and "The Water's Fine Part 2", swimming in a river in winter.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Osamu's not small by any means, but his wife Amaya towers over him.
• The Trees Have Faces: The Christmas tree in "Tree Decorating".
• Translation Punctuation: Dialog in Japanese is noted with angle quotes.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Lampooned like crazy! Being a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl, Erma is prone to the typical self-dismemberment and demonic possession, she keeps a knife in case Santa Claus ever visits, she tears the heads off of all of her dolls, she is prone to the occasional Horror movie marathon, and she is still in grade-school. This has generally been accepted as normal and she is still just a normal girl at heart.
• Unabashed B-Movie Fan: Erma watches a lot of horror movies, though she finds them hilarious (presumably because she's innately scarier than any of them). She considers it embarrassing to be caught watching "Warrior Unicorn Princess" and switches to a slasher film when her babysitter walks in. Most of them are made up, though one of the color strips shows her watching Maniac! (1980).
• Under the Mistletoe: In "Erma X-mas Special #2" between Erma and Connor, where he kisses her on the cheek.
• Unnamed Parent: Erma's parents weren't named until the release of the special Spirit's Bloom Oneshot. Their names are revealed to be Sam and Emiko, with the family name being Williams. The names would later be used within the main comic itself, especially with the focus on Emiko's side of the family.
• The Un-Reveal: Erma is watching an intense fight on Warrior Unicorn Princess when the Big Bad is about to reveal his identity. Just before Erma can see it, her mother comes out of the TV and scrambles the channel, leaving her completely shocked that she missed it.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In Part 5 of The Family Reunion, when Erma and Mitsu and Momo started fighting, many people were completely unfazed of the supernatural stuff happening during their fight, especially when Yori is strecting her neck infront of everybody(except for the guy with glasses who has the appropriate reaction to this). Justified since according to Yori, that while they may get faces and stared from people when walking around in public, the locals are less easily phased by the supernatural than much of the rest of the world.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show:
  • The first true villain of the series, Wittle Wallace is noticeably more cruel and antagonistic than minor villains like the old hag, who are just petty jerks, especially since he steals Felicia's body and uses it as a vessel to bully Erma and attempt to take her body.
  • Likewise are Erma's Grandfather Osamu Yureimoto, who tried to imprison her mother when she fell in love with Erma's human father, and who makes his entrance into the comic proper by slaughtering a party of Yokai on the outskirts of their village; and her Uncle, an Invisible Man who wants to use Erma to end the world and casually slaughters three nurses when visiting Erma after she's born, disintegrating one from the waist up and flaying two others down to the bone.
• Voodoo Doll: Erma has a few voodoo dolls, including one of Connor. Unfortunately for Erma (and later Connor), Erma's female friends find it and immediately start having fun with it.
• Wall Crawl: Erma has this as one of her abilities.
• Webcomic Time: Erma's visit to Japan took place over the course of a week in the story, but began in January of 2018 and only ended in August of 2023. It's lampshaded in the final strip, where Erma and her parents crash on the couch as soon as they get home and her mother comments that the vacation felt like it took forever.
• Wham Episode:
  • Invasion of Privacy houses the aforementioned Grand Theft Me scene with Felicia, and reveals Wittle Wallace (the creepy dummy) as the Big Bad of the Secrets arc. The rest of the arc's comics are less comical and more dramatic and tense.
  • At the end of the Secrets arc, it's revealed Erma's old babysitter, now somehow even creepier-looking than possessed Felicia, and drawing disturbing pictures of Erma, has been released from the mental hospital.
  • Erma's birthday between "Rats in the School Walls" and "Family Reunion"; at first, everything seems to be going fine and Emiko goes to get more presents from Erma, when she spots one she doesn't recognize. Upon reading the tag, she immediately panics and incinerates it, grabbing another present as the panel focuses on the name tag- the kanji for "Grandfather".
• Wham Line: There's one from "The Rats in the School Walls" arc. For the record, it's being said by an apparently human girl to a huge anthropomorphic rat.
  Sidney: I know... I just... I don't think it's right, Dad!
• Wham Shot: A mid-story one during "The Rats in the School Walls" arc. Connor, Erma's friend with a huge crush on her, has an older sister and said sister was Erma's former babysitter.
  • After a long and cliffhanger-filled buildup towards the inevitable meeting between Osamu and his granddaughter. The dark shadows tones he's always cast in, the ever-present tension as everyone around him, his children included feel the dread that he could kill them at any moment, and once he finally meets Erma he picks her up, asks if she is Erma, and the very next comic The Tengu lord is all smiling as he warmly greets his beloved grandaughter.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: invoked In-universe, Warrior Unicorn Princess turns out to be surprisingly dark and violent for a show aimed at prepubescent children.
• Why Didn't I Think of That?: Erma, trying to catch a rat in For My Sandwich, gets frustrated and sends everything she can at it with her psychic powers but it keeps dodging. Then one of her classmates wonders why she doesn't just use her psychic on the rat directly. Que all of the things floating in the air to come crashing back down and her grabbing it with her powers.
• You Are Grounded!: When Erma goes Prime Time on her dad and his friends, the latter two are terrified by the evil TV apparition holding them with metal claws. Her dad, however...
  You are SO grounded, young lady!
• Youkai: Emiko's family (and by extension Erma) are this, confirmed by Emiko herself in the 'Family Reunion' arc. Each of her siblings is a different type of youkai.

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