Rambling about Fairies - Manga Chapter 142
The anime does a sharp cut of Gray getting hit and flung away before he’s knocked out, but in the manga it’s much more--- well, as you can see, he gets grabbed and choked. This, along with Gray already being out of magic from the previous fight, justifies him being taken out so easily, I guess.
This may just be an artistic choice, but I find it interesting that Sherry’s Wood Doll has a different design from usual.
Compared to the one just before it in the Racer Fight:
She usually goes for big, hulking tree monsters, rather than something that looks like a human-sized, thin and withered treant. (They’re both treants but I hope you get my point) While her dolls always had the whole debatably ‘creepy-cute’ thing going on, now it’s just creepy, all the cuteness sucked out of her with her 'good’, due to the Nirvana.
You could even say this smaller evil Wood Doll is more tactically advantageous than her usual ones. She usually relies on brute strength, just batting things with oversized projectiles or arms, but now, she goes for capture and strangulation, which is much more tactical because her dolls give her the strength to do what her thin arms can’t.
Nirvana didn’t just make her switch moral sides, it switched out her battle style to something that’s the complete opposite, too.
This would have been a really cool point for her that made her change the way she fights, with wits rather than charging through with bludgeon tactics that doesn’t suit her appearance. Heck, she was strong enough to give Gray trouble with this strategy, weakened or not.
But alas, Sherry never gets another fight after this, so it never came into play.
