Death Battle Predictions: Zoro VS Erza

Background

Zoro

“There is someone I must meet again. And until that day… not even Death himself can take my life away!”

The exact details Roronoa Zoro’s origin remain a mystery, but what we do know is that he decided to become the greatest swordsman in the world at a young age and “left his life behind.”  He started training at the Isshin Dojo in the East Blue under Master Koshiro, where he met his daughter Kuina.  A fierce rivalry sparked between Zoro and Kuina, but to Zoro’s dismay he could never defeat Kuina in a duel, even though he could beat adults and even while he was using two kendo sticks.  After his 2000th consecutive loss (not a typo!), Zoro challenged Kuina to a moonlit duel using real katanas, but it ended in another crushing defeat.  It was in this moment that Kuina confided to Zoro her hidden worries: that she could never become the strongest swordsman in the world because she's a girl, and that Zoro will eventually surpass her once they hit puberty.  Angered by her lack of confidence in her abilities, Zoro made Kuina promise him that one of them will eventually become the best swordsman in the world, to which Kuina agreed.  

However, the new friendship would end in tragedy.  The following morning, Kuina passed away after accidentally falling down stairs (which, to be honest, is a preeeeeetty stupid way to to go in the One Piece world).  Heartbroken, Zoro begged Koshiro pass Kuina’s sword, one of the 21 O Wazamono grade legendary swords named Wado Ichimonji, to him.  With Kuina’s sword in his mouth and his own two swords in each hand, Zoro began to develop his unique style of swordfighting, Santoryu.  Some time later, Zoro left the dojo to begin his journey towards gaining the title of world’s greatest swordsmen and fulfill his promise to his friend.

Over the years, Zoro searched the sea for Dracule Mihawk, the world’s current top swordsman, to challenge him to a duel.  He took up bounty hunting as a living during this time, eventually gaining notoriety in the East Blue as the “Pirate Hunter.” So great was his reputation that the criminal organization Baroque Works even offered him a position amongst their ranks, though Zoro would turn it down.  

One day, Helmeppo, son of Marine Captain Axe-Hand Morgan, released his pet wolf into town.  Zoro killed it before it could hurt a young girl, but this earned him the punishment of being tied to a pole for a month.  It was in this predicament where Zoro met the man who would alter the course of his life forever: the rookie pirate Monkey D. Luffy.  Luffy asked Zoro to become the first member of his crew, to which Zoro, being a bounty hunter, refused.  It wasn't until Luffy saved him from a firing squad and returned his swords to him that Zoro accepted his offer, thus beginning Zoro’s real adventure.

Along with Luffy, Zoro faced many challenges across the East Blue and eventually the Grand Line.  They would be joined by more future Strawhat Pirates and the crew forged an unbreakable bond of friendship and trust.  Zoro even managed to find Dracule Mihawk, though their duel showed Zoro just how far he needed to go to become the best.  As the crew hopped from one island to the next, Zoro would continually train and improve his skills as a swordsman, defeating a variety of powerful along the way.  

However, this wasn't to last forever, as a fateful encounter with the Warlord of the Sea, Bartholomew Kuma, ended in the Straw Hat Pirates’ complete and utter defeat.  Kuma sent each crew member to a different island in the world.  Zoro wound up in the ruined Muggy Kingdom, home to Mihawk.  After learning of the death of Luffy’s adopted brother Ace and seeing Luffy’s secret message to train for two years, Zoro begged Mihawk to train him, with the hope of one day surpassing him.  Mihawk eventually agreed, and after 2 grueling years, Zoro regrouped with the crew as a far superior swordsman.  

Now Zoro’s journey continues in the most dangerous sea in the world, the second half of the Grand Line known as the New World.

Erza

“If you truly desire greatness, you must first know what makes you weak!”

Born into the village of Rosemary as just "Erza", Erza Scarlet lived a happy life with her family, along with her friend Simon and his little sister Kagura. Unfortunately, when Erza was ten-years-old, child slavers invaded her hometown, kidnapping her and Simon (Erza hid Kagura) amongst many other kids, setting the town on fire and murdering all the adults.

Erza and Simon were brought out to the sea and forced to build the Tower of Heaven, a structure designed to resurrect Zeref, the Black Mage. Erza became good friends with some of the other slaves there, especially one Jellal Fernandes. Also, Simon from Gurren Lagann was there. While sharing their names, Erza said that she was just "Erza." So Jellal gave her the surname "Scarlet," after her scarlet hair so they'd never forget. Erza also became good friends with an old mage named Rob, who was a member of Fairy Tail and taught Erza about magic and his guild.

One day in x776, finally done with this torment, Erza led a revolution against the slavers for their freedom. Things were going well, until the tower's mages showed up. In the ensuing carnage, Simon's lower jaw was blasted off, and Rob Lowe gave his life to save Erza. In a rage, Erza called upon her latent magic, picking up all discarded weapons around her, and using them against the guards to finish the revolution.

As the other slaves got onboard ships, Erza went to find Jellal. But what do ya know, he's been possessed by the demon of Zeref. Well, until that was retconned. Anyways, Jellal decided that the only way for them to attain true freedom was to complete the Tower of Heaven and revive his boi, Zeref. Erza refused to help him, prompting Jellal to cast her out of the tower by herself, only letting her live because she helped take care of all the guards who would have opposed him. Before letting her escape, Jellal told Erza to keep the Tower of Heaven a secret from the government, as well as to never return to the tower, threatening to destroy the tower and kill everyone in it, including their friends, if she disobeyed.

After washing up on the shores of Fiore, Erza made her way to Fairy Tail and joined the guild, as she began to constantly wear armour and act distant from the other guild members until Gray Fullbuster helped her out. She also received an artificial eye from Porlyusica to replace the one she lost.

In the year x780, Erza became the youngest member of the guild to become an S-Class mage by passing the Promotional Trial, and later on in the year x784, created a team with Natsu Dragneel, Happy, Lucy Heartfilia and Gray Fullbuster to take on the challenges of the world.

Supernatural Abilities

Zoro

Haki

During the two year separation from the Straw Hats, Zoro trained under “Hawkeyes” Mihawk and learned the immensely vital technique of Haki. Haki is a mysterious innate power found in all living things. It ties directly to the user’s fighting spirit, willpower, ambition, confidence, etc. If you’re thinking to yourself it’s yet another Ki clone in anime, you would be correct. However, Haki provides the user with a handful of unique abilities, all of which fall under three separate categories. So far, Zoro has been shown to be capable of using two types of Haki: Color of Armament Haki and Color of Observation Haki.

With Color of Armament, or Busoshoku Haki, Zoro can wield Haki as an armor and cover his body, his weapons, or even any projectiles he fires with it.  So far Zoro has only been shown imbuing his swords and hands with Haki, but logic dictates that if forced to, he is skilled enough to use CoA on other parts of his body too. This armor not only increases durability, but also greatly improves attack power. To give the sense of scale to the stat increase, fodder Kuja warriors with weaker training in CoA Haki can imbue their arrows with Haki so that when they strike their target, they explode with a force similar to an grenade. CoA Haki has the unique ability to nullify the abilities of Devil Fruit users. For example, while Luffy’s rubber body gives him great durability against blunt force attacks, a CoA powered punch to the face can bypass his unique body’s properties. Luffy has also stated that Zoro was one of the few Straw Hats who could harm Caesar Clown, who could turn his body to gas and bypass physical attacks, meaning Zoro can harm people with elemental mimicry.

Lastly, with Color of Observation, or Kenbunshoku Haki, Zoro gains a sixth sense of his surroundings. He is able to sense the auras of living things to feel their emotions and locate hidden foes, as shown when Zoro was shown sensing the location Pica’s real body within the giant stone golem. More usefully, CoO Haki can be used to predict the attacks of one’s opponents.  This happens as a brief premonition of the oncoming attack in the mind’s eye, showing the user what is about to happen. Basically, it is the Spider-Sense.  This ability increases in effectiveness as the opponent becomes more bloodthirsty. Using this form of Haki, Zoro’s already blistering fast reflexes are increased.

Asura

Manifested in his fight against Kaku, Zoro’s Asura technique is Zoro’s most mysterious and unexplained ability. It is also one of his most rarely used, having only used it against Kaku in Enies Lobby, Indigo in the Strong World movie, and a Pacifista in Shabondy Archipelago. Using what appears to be an extension of his spirit, Zoro gives off the illusion that he has six arms and three heads, giving a total of nine swords and allowing him to use his Kyutoryu category of attacks. While the technique is part illusion-based, the result is very much tangible, granting Zoro a large increase in cutting power. This is proven when he used it to cut through Kaku’s Amane Dachi, which Zoro couldn’t hope to power through before.

Erza

Requip - The Knight

Requip is Erza’s signature magic of which she is a master of using. The Knight in particular features Erza changing the armour she’s wearing to fit the circumstances of who she’s fighting. She is regarded as being truly exceptional with this, as she’s the only known sword mage who can requip while fighting, which has made her quite well-known throughout the country as Fairy Tail’s strongest female wizard, the legendary “Titania”. She is said to possess over 100 different armours, but unfortunately she hasn’t shown us all of them. But we’re still gonna cover all the ones we are aware of, or at least those that would be worth the mention and actually be used in Death Battle.

Heart Kreuz Armor

Erza’s basic and casual armor which she’s almost always wearing. It doesn’t have any real special attributes, though it obviously still works as protection.

Heaven’s Wheel Armor

This armour grants Erza short-distance flight, and known for it’s large sword-requiping abilities. When Laxus activated the Thunder Palace spell around Magnolia, Erza used this armour to requip roughly two hundred swords to destroy the orbs circling the city. Though this did use up a large amount of her magic and the Heaven’s Wheel Armor is most commonly used to take on multiple opponents at once, not one. But still, it shows that she could potentially overwhelm an opponent with attacks from multiple different angles at once.

• Blumenblatt - Erza requips a fair amount of swords, and then charges at the target, slicing them with the two in hand. As she rushes past, the requipped swords will follow, acting as a secondary strike.
• Circle Sword - Erza requips swords and has them circle around ther by utilizing the command, "Dance, My Swords". The swords then begin spinning rapidly around her and then she sends them flying towards her opponent(s) in a disc formation. Upon impact, the swords separate and fly in different directions dealing great damage.
• Trinity Sword - Erza slashes the opponent in a delta formation.
• Pentagram Sword - Erza slashes her swords in the shape of a pentagram at the target.

Black Wing Armor

The Black Wing Armor grants Erza flight capabilities as well. It also greatly increases her offensive abilities, allowing her to deal great damage to her enemies with numerous weapons.

• Moon Flash - Erza rushes past her target, slashing it in a cross pattern.

Flame Empress Armor

This armor grants Erza a resistance to flame-based attacks, cutting their normal damage output in half, as well as grants Erza fire magic of her own.

The Giant’s Armor

Not the best armor for something like Death Battle, but The Giant’s Armor greatly enhances Erza’s physical strength, particularly when it comes to throwing.

Adamantine Armor

This armor is the ultimate, high-level defensive stance, though it has absolutely nothing for offense. While wearing it and using its shields, Erza was able to withstand the Magic beam fired by Jupiter, a magic cannon that could destroy the entire town of Magnolia. Despite receiving injuries and the armor breaking in the process, she still successfully protected the entire Fairy Tail Guild and all of its members with no harm coming to any of them. It also grants her short-range flight.

Purgatory Armor

Erza claims this to be one of her strongest armors, which makes sense given its intimidating look and spiked mace for a weapon. She even claims that no one has seen her use it and lived to tell the tale. Unfortunately however, this power has yet to be shown onscreen, as Ikaruga and Azuma were both capable of taking it down relatively easy. Funnily enough though, neither one of them ended up surviving the encounter thanks to this next one.

Bandage Clothing

A personal favorite of Erza’s “armors”, the bandage clothing is what Erza often uses as her “final option” in a fight, due to its complete lack of defense, allowing her to focus all of her magic and energy on speed and attacking. She’s used it when facing Ikaruga, Jellal, Azuma, Master Hades, finishing Pandemonium and when fighting on the fifth day of the Grand Magic Games.

Lightning Empress Armor

Another of Erza’s “Empress” armors, which grants her resistance to electricity-based attacks, such as when she took hits from Laxus Dreyar, a very powerful Lightning Mage, with very few and small injuries. It also of course gives her lightning magic of her own.

• Lightning Beam - Erza fires a blue beam of lightning towards her opponent from the tip of the armor’s spear.
• Multiple Lightning Beams - Similar to the Lightning Beam, but with several attacks being fired at the same time from the Magic Seal formed on the spear’s tip.
• Lightning Shield - Erza charges her spear with electricity creating a powerful lightning barrier that protects her from her foe's attacks.

Flight Armor

This armor grants Erza a large increase in speed, to the point where she could match Erza Knightwalker's speed while the latter was using Silfarion, which gave her FTE speeds. She was also able to keep up with Racer despite being under the effects of his Slowing Magic.

Robe of Yuen

The Robe of Yuen features elastic properties, so it can be stretched without getting damaged. This also helps protect Erza from anyone who might have some binding abilities to use on the piece of clothing.

Morning Star Armor

This armor grants Erza energy-blast capabilities, firing either small ones from both her twin swords or a charged blast from both of them at once.

Armadura Fairy Armor

According to her Edolas counterpart, Erza Knightwalker, this is Erza’s most powerful armor (or at least it was at the time). It has immense offensive ability, capable of destroying her counterpart’s strongest spear, Ravelt. The Armadura Fairy Armor was unfortunately also destroyed from Knightwalker’s attack, but hey. It also gives her some energy blast abilities like the Morning Star Armor.

• Fairy Piercing Sword - Erza charges one sword with a large quantity of Magic Power and attacks the target with a powerful piercing attack. This was the attack used to destroy Knightwalker’s Ravelt, and the resulting collision of the two attacks completely shattered an entire island. By the way, this is actually a fanmade name. The move’s actual title is unknown.

Sea Empress Armor

Just like the Flame and Lightning Empress Armors, this armor grants Erza resistance to water attacks as well as water magic of her own. It was capable of cutting through Juvia Lockser’s own water attacks, who is one of Fairy Tail’s strongest mages.

Seduction Armor

This one speaks for itself. Bet you money Boomstick will make a joke about it in the episode.

(Erza never actually used this armour, it was just a joke in her fight with Azuma.)

Piercing Armor

The Piercing Armor comes with a jousting lance for what else but piercing. This weapon has shown the capability to pierce and penetrate an opponent through a mass as large as a fortress, as seen when Erza pierced Kyôka through Cube, leaving a large hole in its wake. (*Insert Gurren Lagann references*)

Wind God Armor

The Wind God Armor is used along with its blade to grant Erza wind-based magic, which she used to blow away a large amount of sand created by Ajeel Ramal, one of the Spriggan 12 of the Alvarez Empire.

Wingblade Armor

Erza’s newest armor, which we actually have very little knowledge on. We don’t even know its real name. The outfit comes equipped with wings made of swords that can act as a shield, and any of these swords can be also easily summoned and used for offensive purposes The swords can "dance" on command in mid-air, similar to the circle of swords of the Heaven's Wheel Armor, in order to attack multiple foes simultaneously. According to Erza, these swords are capable of landing blows without making direct contact, allowing her to bypass other people's defenses. That’s some pretty hax stuff right there.

Nakagami Armor

Erza’s strongest armor, which uses so much of her magic she needs to activate her Second Origin in order to use it. Hell, so much magic that Erza was the first person in TEN YEARS to wear it. And with it, Erza is capable of completely dispelling magic, including Minerva’s spatial magic.

Telekinesis

Erza possesses some telekinetic abilities over her weapons, capable of summoning them out of thin air and sending multiple at once to attack her enemies.

Physical Abilities

Zoro

Swordsmanship

Yes, those are three swords you’re seeing. While it seems impractical, the world of One Piece runs on enough highly-condensed shenanigans that Zoro can not only make his Santoryu (“Three-Sword-Style,” for non-weebs) work at all, but make it deadly and efficient.  And if more “traditional” swords styles are more your fancy, he’s every bit as skilled with one and two sword styles as well.  Each one of his current swords (as Zoro has broken quite a few over the years) is of legendary quality, and known throughout the world for their durability and their sheer cutting power.

As becoming the Strongest Swordsman in the World is his ultimate goal, Zoro chooses to fight against sword or blade-wielding opponents. In doing so, he has gained tremendous experience fighting a wide variety of different fighting styles. The sword styles he’s faced and defeated include (inhales): Cabaji’s Carnival Tricks, Hatchan’s Eight-Sword Style, Daz Bones’ Dice-Dice Fruit, Ohm’s Ordeal of Iron, T-Bone’s Right Angle Slashes, Kaku’s Four-Sword Style (aided by his Rokushiki martial arts and Giraffe Devil Fruit), Ryuma’s Kenjutsu/Battojutsu/Fencing Style, the copied sword styles of the Humandrills, Hyouzou’s own Eight-Sword Style, Monet’s ice picks, and Pica’s big ass katana.  

Whew.

Part of the reason Zoro has been able to contend with such a wide range of opponents is due to the flexibility of his own fighting style. As was stated before, Zoro is more than capable of fighting with anywhere from one to three to even nine swords at once. Over the course of the series, he has constantly been pushed to come up with new techniques to fit new combat situations. While listing them all would be far too time-consuming, if not redundant in some places, some of Zoro’s signature attacks are worth mentioning.

Onigiri

The first move Zoro ever used, Onigiri (literally means “Demon Cut”), still remains a clear example on Three-Sword-Style’s applications. With two swings in an “x-cross” pattern, and his mouth-sword trailing behind, Zoro manages to attack from three separate directions in a near-instant. The only way to safely block this maneuver is to intercept Zoro’s swords in the exact moment where the three swords intersect. However, this also requires one to be stronger than Zoro, else he’ll just push through anyways.

___# Pound Cannon

Like any self-respecting anime swordsman, Zoro’s such a badass that he’s able to swing his swords so hard that they release a compressed vacuum of air. In other terms, sword slashes are turned into long-range ammunition. The power of this technique (and the number in the name) increases based on the amount of swords Zoro is currently using.

Tourou Nagashi

Often translated as “Flowing Wolf’s Blade,” this technique acts as a sort of counter move. Zoro dances through a wall of blades or a volley of projectiles, before getting close enough to slice up his opponent.

Shishi Sonson

Another anime must-have: the quick-draw. Sheathing all of his swords, and grasping only one (usually Kuina’s), Zoro gathers his concentration before lunging forward and unsheathing his blade in a blink of an eye. This technique, along with any of its derivatives, serves as Zoro’s go-to for cutting through the hardest of defenses.

Santoryu Ougi: Sanzen Daisen Sekai

The ultimate, the most powerful technique in Zoro’s long arsenal: “Billion-fold World Trichiliocosm.” Placing two swords together, Zoro starts to spin them round and round, quickly turning himself into a human blender. This move was strong enough to cut through a stone statue the size of a mountain, and send the top half hundreds of feet into the air.

Strength

• ^ That. And you may not be able to see it in that picture, but he’s standing on his thumbs, not his whole hands
• Can pick up and throw multi-story buildings
• Could block an attack that cut two buildings in half
• Can cut through iron with ease
• Along with Luffy, he contributed to an attack that burst a giant hole through a huge tsunami
• Deflected an attack from the super zombie giant Oars
• Can easily one-shot a Pacifista, which previously took the combined efforts of the entire pre-timeskip Straw Hat crew to take down.  That included 3 multi-city block/town levelers, a few city block levelers, and a handful of building levelers
• Beheaded a dragon
• Broke out of Fujitora’s gravity, a feat that a city level character like Law had trouble doing. Fujitora can use his gravity to instantly bring down huge meteors from space
• Cuts a city-sized rock monster thing in half with one strike
• Has city destroying power even without Asura or going all out
• His strength isn’t limited to swords either.  He also has a No-Swords Style method of fighting, which he used in his fight with Sanji against the Groggy Monsters

Speed

• Massively faster than eyesight, can outrun bullets while disappearing, and dodges shotgun bullets at point blank range
• Can swing his swords with such great strength and speed that he can create huge air slashes and tornados
• Can keep up with the second strongest Rokushiki user, the weakest of which can react to lightning.  Noteworthy because this was pre-timeskip
• His fight with Oars shows his great speed and mobility by dodging his attacks.  He can even leap hundreds of feet into the air
• Dodged Kuma’s pad cannon, then dodges multiple pad cannon attacks
• Scales to Sanji and Law, who reacted to Doflamingo’s hand swipes.  Doflamingo can cut up a meteor moving this fast at close range
• Shows great agility and the ability to slice up numerous bullets at close range in his fight against Ain

Durability/Endurance

In a shonen series where ten-year-olds can survive being shot by a cannon, Zoro stands out among the entire cast as one of the most triumphant examples of ridiculous endurance. Yes, this includes the main character.

• Defeated Hatchan while losing tons of blood and still recovering from a lethal slash across his abdomen from Mihawk

• Tanked Daz Bones’ building-slicing slashes and buzzsaws, yet still winning despite massive blood loss
• Survived millions of volts of electricity from Enel

• After fighting for an entire night against hordes of zombies, a resurrected samurai, and a giant possessing all of Luffy’s abilities with added strength, Zoro is one of two characters to remain conscious after a titanic shockwave generated by Bartholomew Kuma.  On top of all that, while already heavily wounded and fatigued himself, he accepted all of Luffy’s own pain and fatigue.  Luffy at this point was also fighting the entire night and taking damage from Gekko Moriah and Oars, AND at one point absorbed 100 shadows to become Nightmare Luffy.  Note the average person can only possess 2 or 3 shadows before passing out.  Even crazier?  When sunrise came, he was still standing
• On top of all that, while still recovering from all of the above, he still contributed to the defeat of a Pacifista
• Tanked the force of Fujitora’s gravity, which can pulverize huge holes into the ground, instantly summon meteors from space, and crush city blocks worth of buildings

Mentality

While far from the dumbest character in One Piece, Zoro is pretty single-minded when it comes to combat.  His MO is beating his opponents through sheer physicality, technique, and attrition, not really through clever planning or strategy.  However, as the all but confirmed First Mate of the Straw Hats, he has been known to see the bigger picture in trying circumstances, such as when the crew was deciding whether or not to allow Ussop to rejoin.  His fight with Pica also showcased a rare example of his tactical prowess, as shown above, running through multiple options before deciding the best possible (and ultimately correct) course of action.  Not necessarily Lelouch vi Britannia, but it’s something

Erza

Swordsmanship

Erza had incredible mastery over swordsplay. Her offensive capabilities mainly come from her swordplay, which enables her to effectively utilize the weapons that her Requip provides, which includes swords, short swords, axes, lances and staffs (among others). She can wield one sword at a time or two, and is capable of both normal and reverse grip. Hell, she can even use them with her feet! Her swordsmanship is enough for her to slash through Aria's presumably intangible Airspaces, and to deflect hundreds of needles which were shot at her by Evergreen with relative ease.

Hand-to-Hand Combat

Despite favoring the use of her various weapons, Erza has proven herself to be a skilled hand-to-hand combatant. Despite her being bound to a wall, she was able to easily knock Shô unconscious with a single kick. She was also able to engage Erza Knightwalker in an unarmed fight after all of their weapons were shattered in their previous battle, attacking her counterpart with powerful punches and performing throws and takedowns to push her away. She is also able to mix hand-to-hand combat with her swordsmanship while in the midst of battle.

Strength

• Often seen carrying around large amounts of luggage when she goes on missions
• Sent Midnight crashing into a wall with just a single palm strike during their battle
• Once even cut through a large steel column during her fight with Evergreen
• While for comedy purposes, it's not exactly uncommon for Natsu, Gray and/or Happy to piss Erza off, in which case after a swift punch or kick they're sent hurling into the sky or across town

Speed

• As shown in the above gif, Erza’s easily a bullet-timer in terms of reaction speeds. And this was pre-series Erza, so she’s undoubtedly gotten faster since.

• Not only did she manage to easily knock each bullet out of the way, but she also managed to hit them directly at angles that knocked pool balls into the pockets, even getting the 8 ball
• Blocked strikes from the FTE Ikaruga.
• Dodged a barrage of attacks from Jellal.
• Climbing back up the Tower of Heaven by jumping from falling rock to falling rock.
• Deflected multiple magic bullets from Evergreen during their battle.

Durability/Endurance

• After tanking a town-level blast from the Jupiter Cannon with her Adamantine armour, Erza then fought Aria and Jose back-to-back with little time to recover, the latter of which was one of the ten greatest wizards on the continent.
• She took two-hundred of Laxus’ Thunder Palace’s counter effects and was still conscious, though fairly weakened.
• For comparison’s sake, mages such as Gray Fullbuster, who are also known for soaking up damage, took out ten or so and were in the same state. Heck, just one of them was enough to danger Bisca’s life.
• In her fight with Azuma, Erza took his Terra Clamore attack twice and could still fight, even breaking out of it the second time, and it was specifically stated to use the magic energy of Tenroujima Island (though not all of it, so it's not an island-level feat).
• During their training for the Grand Magic Games, FT members had Ultear Milkovich use her Arc of Time magic to unlock their Second Origin. While everyone else, including Natsu who’s really good at taking pain, could barely move, Erza could walk around just fine.
• When Erza fought Kagura and Minerva, she was able to take Minerva’s casually building-busting Yagdo Rigora which was visible from a good distance and didn’t even seem to flinch.

Mentality

Erza seems to have a gift for figuring out an enemy’s weaknesses and knows how to read a situation. During her battle with Midnight, she was able to figure out after just a few attacks that he can’t use his magic for both attacking and defending at the same time, and used this to advantage in beating him. When fighting Azuma, she switched to her robe attire so she could focus 100% on offense in order to take down the Grimore Heart member, and during the Pandemonium she used multiple weapon and armors at once together to figure out what would work best against each monster type.

Weaknesses

Zoro

Strong as he may appear, Zoro has a few weaknesses here and there. For one, while he’s a genius swordsman and capable tactician when the opportunity presents itself, he’s mostly simple-minded. Not necessarily dumb like Luffy is, but he has fallen into traps on a few occasions. Another weakness is the extent of his CoO Haki. While an immensely useful ability, it can be circumvented in three ways: 1) if the opponent is too fast or Zoro can’t move, it doesn’t matter if Zoro can predict their moves; 2) he can’t predict random attacks that even the opponent is unaware of, as shown in Luffy’s fight with Enel; and 3) it can lose effectiveness if Zoro loses his concentration. Zoro also has the tendency to take huge amounts of damage in his fights, only to eventually overpower his opponent. This means that if an opponent is strong enough to keep up with Zoro for an extended period of time, they could potentially win if they can just outlast him.

Most crippling of all though, Zoro can’t read a map to save his life.

Erza

As powerful as Erza’s armor is, they can still break when put through enough, and most of her greater victories (like against Azuma for instance), were thanks in part to “comrade power-ups”, though that isn't much of a weakness since it’s really more of a “don’t give up, for their sake” thing than anything else. Her magic power is basically the same thing as her lifeforce/health/energy, so running out of it too quickly would leave her vulnerable fast.

…Also cake. She LOOOOVES her cake, specifically strawberry cake.

Summary

Zoro

Advantages:

• Much stronger, faster, and durable than anything we’ve seen Erza, or her armors, can do yet
• His huge range, number of AoE attacks, great agility, Haki and experience against numerous and highly mobile enemies can help counter Erza’s flight advantage and sword spam
• His greater diversity of sword wielding opponents and personal training from Mihawk make Zoro a more skilled swordsman than Erza
• While Erza has a large amount of abilities from her different armors, many of them are highly situational or otherwise not very effective against Zoro
• The methods of attacks Erza’s armors offer also aren’t anything Zoro hasn’t faced before, and Zoro’s precognition abilities combined with his immense physical advantage prevent even her most useful of armors from being too large of a factor
• Erza’s powers and stamina are directly tied to her level of Magical Power.  The more Erza switches armors and weapons, the faster her Magic Power drains, eventually making her tire out and unable to summon more armors

Disadvantages:

• Zoro’s Observation Haki has limits that Erza can in theory exploit
• Erza just flat out has more options for battle thanks to her armors, including even flight and summoning hundreds of swords
• Erza has showcased her battle smarts a bit more often than Zoro has by bringing the most out of her arsenal of armors

Erza

Advantages:

• High amount of attack variety thanks to her numerous armours and weapons that could keep Zoro on his toes
• Many armors grant her flight, even if it's somewhat limited, meaning she would have better mobility
• Heaven's Wheel Armor will allow Erza to attack from numerous directions
• Telekinesis could help her get in sneak attacks
• Better strategist than Zoro, could most likely find weaknesses to exploit
• Can fend off Asura illusion thanks to her fake eye

Disadvantages:

• Even the strongest feats she scales to currently pale in comparison to Zoro’s feats

• Armors and weapons can break if put under enough strain
• Zoro’s Observation Haki negates any surprises Erza can throw at Zoro
• Erza using up too much magic too soon could leave her in trouble, though her Second Origin and overall high endurance help her mitigate this problem to an extent
• Swordsmanship, while exceptional, isn’t as great as Zoro’s, who had actual formal training and more regularly fights sword-users
• While she won’t see Zoro’s Asura illusion, she can’t do anything about the strength boost it grants
• Others played a hand somewhat in some of her bigger victories, which she obviously can't get here

Verdicts

Grand Blazer

Salt incoming.

Should've been Erza VS Saber... Should've been Zoro VS... literally anyone else he's requested to fight.

Coming from the guy with the Natsu avatar and Erza blog (where we got a lot of our info on her) who called Erza his waifu and favorite redhead ever (yeah haha I have shit taste I've heard Internet you're fucking hilarious), no one should be surprised when I say that I reeeaaally want Erza to win this. More than I've ever wanted any character to win in a Death Battle ever. Unfortunately, I don't think what I want is what I'm going to get.

I'd like to play Devil's Advocate for Erza here, but Zoro just has the stat trinity of strength, speed and durability on his side in spades. I'd make an argument for Erza having better endurance, having fought Kyouka with her pain receptors maxed out (to the point that a single scratch feels like getting your body blasted apart), but being able to endure the pain isn't gonna change much with the power Zoro's packing. You can endure the pain of getting your arm cut off, doesn't change that you didn't have the durability to withstand the blow, nor the speed to avoid it.

And while Erza herself is pretty durable, her armours aren't. They've been consistently broken throughout fights by foe's similar to Zoro yet far weaker (Kagura and Ikaruga comes to mind, though granted they were before the current timeskip). And even if they were indestructible they would still suffer problems.

Most of her armours are gonna do jackshit to the Straw Hat Pirate since a lot of 'em are just too weak, like the elemental Empresses, the Flight armour, the Purgatory armour, etc. And her best suit, the Nakagami armour, uses up a shit load of magic and is mainly meant to nullify magic... something Zoro doesn't use. Yeah, Haki isn't magic. It's a spiritual thing that everyone in the One Piece world has, while in Fairy Tail, only 10% of Earthland's population is able to use magic and a magic supply in a mage's body is directly related to their health. There are even diseases wizards can catch that could kill them if they run too low on magic, or if they use magic power far too great for their body to handle. They’re clearly very different things.

Wingblade armour is meant to get past defenses, but Zoro doesn't wear armour and is naturally durable, so unless you wanna try arguing that she can cut his heart, lungs, brain, etc. open within his body, which I'm 95% sure she can't do, it just gives her another ranged option at best, something that's definitely not going to work well since her best moves are all close range. That also shoots down the camping strategy I've seen Erza supporters try using.

Her best armour for this match is probably the Armadura Fairy, but Zoro has even that one beat in power. Even at her absolute strongest, I just don't think Erza has what it takes to beat Zoro. Maybe when he's in his base, but she's not the only one who's boosting power. I mean, she can get rid of the Asura illusion with her artificial eye, but the strength boost Zoro gains is still gonna be there, so the best that'll happen is she won't be caught off guard by him having six arms and three heads.

The biggest thing working against Erza in my opinion though? The fact that the fight is coming out now, literally a few chapters away from when she'll be fighting Irene, the biggest threat she's battled so far who would give her a massive boost. Of course there are some arguments to be made against that, like saying "well Zoro's gonna fight Mihawk in a future arc which will give him big boosts too", but you get the idea. One Piece has a while to go, so I can understand it, but Fairy Tail's manga is in its End of Series stages right now, a very delicate and dangerous time to use them in VS because big boosts are sure to come, boosts that could change the outcome of the fight. If they were going to have Zoro fight anyone, it should be someone he beats who won't get any new info, like Kenshin (at least I think that's over). That way there's no chance of the outcome changing, since Zoro's the only one who's gonna get stronger.

Yeah. Anyone posting about drinking salty FT fan tears (I know you're out there, fuckfaces) is probably gonna be getting a lot of those from me, 'cause Zoro's gonna be winning this.

Metabro

Yo

So yea, Zoro should have this.  His Pica cutting feat is at least 4 times or so stronger than the best feat she logically scales to as of now, and that’s without going all out with Asura.  One Piece as a whole just showcases more speed feats than Fairy Tail does on average too, and even opponents Zoro fought pre-timeskip can run circles around most of Fairy Tail’s cast.  And while they both have an incredible tolerance to pain, Zoro has taken much larger hits with greater regularity than Erza has.

That’s all three of the stat trinity heavily in Zoro’s favor right there, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Erza is an accomplished swordswoman, but Zoro devoted his life to training and becoming the best.  As a result, he’s fought against a larger variety of sword users than Erza, both in overall numbers and in the variety of styles he’s gone up against.  This is ignoring the larger amount of formal training he’s received too, including personal training from Dracule “Thunderdick McBadass” Mihawk himself.  Erza can try and keep Zoro guessing by switching fighting styles and using other weapons like axes or lances, but she hasn’t shown nearly as much skill with these weapons as she has with swords, and Zoro is just flat out too strong and too skilled to be affected by these kinds of tactics from her.

That just leaves the biggest argument Erza has going for her: the variety of abilities her armors offer her.  Unfortunately, most of them, well, kinda suck except in special situations.  Even her Nakagami Armor, the strongest in her arsenal, only is really effective against magical opponents despite the powerful spear it grants, as it can nullify and dispel their attacks.  Magic which Zoro doesn’t have.  While some of her other armors can be useful, such as granting her hundreds of swords to control telekinetically, flight, or a number of elemental attacks, the sheer variety of enemies Zoro has faced makes these armors less impressive.  His precog granted by CoO Haki is arguably the most hax ability between either of the two, and it does wonders to keep Zoro from being surprised by Erza.  And Erza’s armors are just too fragile to stand up to even Zoro’s casual attacks, as they have been destroyed by the likes of Ikaruga and Midnight, among others.

And that ties into Erza’s biggest disadvantage: her limited Magical Power.  While her levels are very large and have increased thanks to Ultear, it doesn’t help that Erza’s fighting style is counterintuitive to it.  We see over and over again that Erza prefers to freely switch between armors to find what would work against her opponent, only for them to be eventually destroyed.  This quickly drains her reserves, and by extension her stamina.  Recently, Erza usually finds herself down to only her bandage armor and is forced to win through superior swordsmanship and endurance (and copious Nakama Power, to be honest).  This is the worst possible way for her to fight Zoro, as her main advantage in the fight is her versatility.  All this fighting style will accomplish is making her more and more fatigued at a much faster rate, which is not a position she can afford to be in against a tank like Zoro.

Basically, Erza’s best chance of winning right now is to hope Zoro gets lost on the way to the battlefield.

Meddadius

Hey, everyone! Thanks to the Prediction Blog crew for having me guest here! No offense, Grand Blazer, but I’ll take those salty tears. They shouldn’t go to waste, just like Saber shouldn’t be wasted going up against Erza’s anti-magic plot armor.

Now, let me just say: While One Piece is among my favorite franchises ever, and I currently hate Fairy Tail with a passion, I don’t want you to think I’m being biased when I say that Zoro should take this with moderate difficulty at best. Believe me, if it were the other way around, I’d be the one giving the “incoming salt” warning. Erza was my favorite FT character before she started overdosing on Friendship Is Magic, though, so I guess there’s that.

But I digress. Getting back to the fight, now. A lot of good points have already been brought up, so as per the usual, all I can do is put my own spin on parroting and hope I can add something new.

Erza’s a powerful opponent, with a magical suit of armor made for almost any situation she could face… provided the situation is at least somewhat magical in nature. Whoops. No magic to be found on Zolo. None. Nada. Zilch. That single fact immediately makes a majority of Erza’s armors useless, including her trump card. Even if you disregard that, and focus on the amount of weapons Erza is skilled in using? Yes, it’s impressive that Erza can competently wield swords, axes, lances, etc. But as Bruce Lee said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” As good as Erza is with her multiple fighting styles, that very fact will lead to her not being as well-trained in any one of them as Zoro is with his swords. Jack of all trades, master of none.

Erza is also the only one of the two combatants here whose abilities explicitly run on a limit. As in, her magic. Each time Erza switches into a new armor in an attempt to catch Zolo off-guard, her magic meter will continue to drain. Once she runs out (as she has a habit of doing in her home series), Erza will be forced to rely on her melee abilities. And as I already mentioned, Zoro has her beaten there.

Finally, and most importantly? Zolo’s stat game too good. Speed? Zoro has feats which put him anywhere from mach 200 to mach 1900. Erza’s best is mach 11. Eleven. That is two ones. And that’s terrible. Strength? Just look at Zolo slicing the man made out of a city (literally), and sending the upper half hundreds of feet into the sky.

Endurance is probably the area where Zoro and Erza are closest in, but I’ll still have to throw my hat towards the Straw Hat Pirate. Honestly, while Fairy Tail is a series revolving around magic, it still manages to be more grounded in reality than One Piece is when it comes to what an average character can survive. Sure, Kuina died from falling off a horse down a set of stairs. But then you have teenagers surviving head-on collisions from trains (and the resulting full-body self-surgery into cyborg), bird-men not dying from a point-blank nuclear blast, and Zolo losing nearly all of the blood in his body… in, like, every fight he gets in.

I could also go into how Zoro comes into most of said fights with a handicap (either he’s already injured, missing swords, or hand-cuffed to a crewmate), but you should already understand who the winner of this fight is. I’m sure Erza will leave Zolo standing in a puddle of his own blood (and I’ll be a little disappointed if he isn’t), but at least Zoro will still be standing.

If not? Grand Blazer can drink MY salty tears.

Kirby kid

A true anime battle for once. We've had anime characters on DB before but never against each other, and I have to say that's very exciting, and for Erza and Zoro to be the characters to enter us into a full anime fight, I'm very excited.

I keep up with Fairy Tail regularly, I'm pretty much caught up with all the chapters, and Erza is pretty tough. She's usually shown to be the toughest when it comes to battling, outside of Makarov and other very powerful mages. She's very apt to pain, has so much versatility with her armors and magical abilities, and has faced against many powerful opponents.

I've loosely followed One Piece, I've read some of the manga and watched over 200 episodes of the show. Given how long the manga/anime is, and from what I've seen, Zoro is above Erza in the stat trinity.

It's a shame, this is actually a pretty close match, and while Zoro exceeds Erza in all physical stats, it's not by a ridiculously huge amount like other DEATH BATTLES have been, and they're pretty even when it comes to pain tolerance. To me, this is a pretty straight forward matchup with Zoro taking the win.

Zoro's abilities all come from his immensely strong will. Erza's come from her magical reserves, which drains A LOT quicker than Zoro's life force, being his Haki. Not to mention some of her magical armors are for counteracting magic, all of which Zoro does not have. This will suck for Erza considering her magic reserves will drain a lot faster, leaving her helpless when it'll come to the last strike.

I think Erza is Zoro's best opponent, in my humblest of opinions, and while I think she can comfortably give him a good fight, she won't be making the cut this time around.