Jose Porla

Jose Porla was the Guild Master of the now-disbanded Phantom Lord guild and was the main antagonist of the Phantom Lord story arc.

## Appearance

Jose is a tall, slim man with long, straight, dark red hair reaching down to his shoulders and a thin moustache. He has got a long and sharp face, vaguely pointed ears, prominent eyelashes and dark-coloured lips.

His first attire bore a resemblance to the fictional depictions of both a sorcerer and a jester, consisting of a flamboyant coat with a high collar that sported a jagged mantle and jagged lower edges, as well as intricately decorated borders and inners (which were instead portrayed as plain in the anime), featuring two prominent wings similar to a bat’s, with a matching witch-like hat bearing Phantom Lord’s symbol, complete with an extremely long, bent top hanging down on Jose’s left; a plain shirt which sported his Wizard Saint’s medallion around the neck, with two light ribbons falling down from it, loose striped culottes paired with long socks, and a pair of pointed shoes each bearing two furry balls, one on the front and one on the back of the foot.

While donning this attire, his left hand's fingers were adorned by a pair of rings, with one of them sporting a spherical gem.

His second outfit was less flamboyant, being more militaristic: it consisted of a long, grayish (blue in the anime) coat closed on the right side of Jose’s chest by a belt circling his waist and by another one going over his right shoulder, sporting Phantom Lord’s symbol on its buckle; the coat had wide golden stripes going down from the high collar, which sported a pair of large rings hanging from it on the front, to the cuffs, with other golden parts in correspondence to the closure and below the waist, on each side.

His Wizard Saint’s medallion was still visible on the same spot, but had dark ribbons hanging from it instead.

Covering Jose’s left arm was a brownish cape, sporting a wide golden-coloured stripe near the edges and some small shield-shaped ornaments placed at the same distance from one another.

The outfit was completed by loose pants tucked inside boots. While donning this second attire of him, Jose did not sport a hat, and his hair was tied in a high ponytail. In addition, his left hand still sported two rings, with the one decorated by a gem seemingly being the same, but with the other being adorned by large black lines.

## Personality

At first, Jose acted very silly, somehow like his rival Makarov, using jokes and silly motifs to make points and dodge important questions asked of him.

He was also portrayed as a comical character of sort, displaying stunned expressions on different occasions, such as when Adam Ordeis was seemingly going to pee before him, when he kicked him in the groin, or when he let himself fall from tens of meters from the ground to escape him.

He also claimed to be a gentleman, and appeared to be very respectful of his subordinates, referring to them with the honorific "-san", and even referred to the captive Adam with the even more honorific "-sama".

He was also shown sincerely praising Erza Scarlet's skills, showing himself prone to commend magical talent.

However, Jose's true personality particularly tends to surface every time he gets angry.

In such state, he shows himself as he truly is: an evil, reckless, manipulative, and sadistic man, willing to cause extreme suffering to his enemies and to commit evil deeds only to prove the superiority of his own Guild, which seemed to get his full attention and care.

He is also greedy, and willing to blackmail and pump money out of the rich Heartfilia family to finance Phantom Lord's activities.

This evil side of him seems capable of literally affecting Jose's appearance, as seen during his fight with Erza, in which he was shown taking on monstrous features while claiming that she was a woman worth killing.

Jose also seems to have a jealous streak and a lot of pride, as well as a distinct, boundless hate for Fairy Tail.

He truly loved his guild, and he took Fairy Tail's rise to power as an insult to his pride for making Phantom Lord the best.

After hearing that Fairy Tail and Phantom Lord were considered equals, he almost went ballistic; but it was not until the White Wizard, Adam Ordies, who had joined Fairy Tail, that he truly started to crave for a guild war to claim back his guild's supremacy: fearing that the White Wizard would have made Fairy Tail surpass Phantom Lord, Jose could not take it anymore, and started to sow the seeds of war between the two guilds.

## Magic & Abilities

* Shade: Jose is a master of Shade. His spells revolve around the manipulation of ghostly figures, which can be used for a variety of purposes. He mainly employs his Magic for offense, having proven himself capable of shaping large masses of his ghosts into powerful ethereal tornadoes, pillars and lightnings, and also to immobilize opponents, as well as shoot various kinds of blasts and beams. Jose's Magic has been described as feeling very evil, and has been shown to make nearby people feel physically sick and cold when Jose employs it. With Shade, Jose is also capable of creating ghostly soldiers that he can command at will, even from far distances. These have their faces hidden by hooded capes, with their blank eyes glowing under the hoods, don long robes and are armed with large sabers. Their initial abilities are likely those of simple trained soldiers, but Jose can freely increase their strength remotely, to the point that they become powerful super-soldiers: in such state, their eyes become more evil-looking, their robes crackle like flames, and they don't employ weapons anymore, assaulting their enemies bare-handed with powerful unarmed moves. They are also strong enough to drag and employ large battering rams composed of massive logs in small numbers. Until they are destroyed, those ghostly soldiers show no sign of fatigue or exhaustion. They can be produced in large masses, as Jose could create enough of them to overpower the exhausted Fairy Tail members.

* Jellyfish Form: Several of Jose's Shades merge to form a large, strong jellyfish-like ghost with many arms, which floats high up in the air and uses its numerous, massive fists to attack.

* Dead Wave: Jose extends his right arm sideways and generate several of his ghosts around it, which start circling it in spirals. He subsequently shapes such ghosts into a destructive wave of Darkness Magic which is sent rushing at the enemy, splitting anything in its path, including the ground itself. The full power of this attack was never seen, as Makarov Dreyar, whom it was used against, blocked it before it could connect. The anime, on the other hand, portrayed this attack as a large beam fired from Jose's Magic Seal.

* Shade Entangle: Jose's ghosts are used to grab, immobilize and strangle an enemy, causing them great pain. Jose claims that, the more the opponent struggles, the tighter the grip on them will become.

* Dark Pulse: Jose moves his hand in an arc before him, engulfing a large area in an explosion following the same pattern as his hand.

* Thought Projection: Jose has been shown capable of using this Magic, producing an astral projection of himself, impervious to damage, which allowed him to communicate over long distances, and, most importantly, carry on his deceptive plans, as shown from his using of Thought Projection to distract Makarov Dreyar and have him sneak-attacked and critically injured by Aria. Jose's skill with this form of Magic seems remarkable, as shown from Makarov exchanging words with it, not realizing that what he was talking with wasn't actually Jose before physically striking him, and even managing to project the image of another individual, this being an unconscious, tied up Adam Ordeis.

* Immense Magic Power: Jose, as one of the Ten Wizard Saints, possesses a vast amount of Magic Power, which is manifested through the ghosts from his Magic Shade. It is so great that even Mirajane was rendered nauseous and sick just by standing near Jose, although her powers were sealed at this time, and its immensity was proven again during Jose's clash with Makarov, when the surrounding environment was altered in a wide area by the two Wizard Saints confronting each other, with the sky, the earth and the sea being affected. When exerted, it is purple in colour.

* Immense Reflexes: Jose, aside from his magical abilities, is known to possess extremely sharp reflexes and great agility and speed: he was shown capable of effortlessly avoiding all of Erza Scarlet's sword slashes during their confrontation, ducking with fast and almost acrobatic motions, as well as dodging them by moving sideways and stepping backwards while calmly speaking. In the anime, his speed was further emphasized, Jose shown traversing short distances in the blink of an eye, appearing and disappearing at an incredible rate, as though he were teleporting.

* Enhanced Strength: Despite not favoring melee combat, Jose displayed a highly considerable amount of physical strength: he was shown able to throw Erza Scarlet flying several meters away from him and crashing through a solid stone wall, destroying it in the process, with a single, upwards swipe of his left arm while the latter was clad in her Black Wing Armor.

* Enhanced Durability: Jose has proven himself a resilient Mage, having a large beam of light from Makarov pierce clean through his right shoulder and immediately counter-attacking without a flinch.