User blog comment:IamJakuhoRaikoben/Chapter 366: 1000 Souls, Review./@comment-7418318-20140109161904/@comment-3987368-20140109172012

I'll answer your final question first by stating that it did bother me when I first saw it and that's because I found this to be ill-placed. Mashima's actions when it comes to women showing skin have been obvious for a while but have become more frequent as of late. My arguments simply come to me in order to defend my view, which is my own. I'm not attempting to jump on any bandwagon if that's what you were suggesting.

Now as to this issue of Erza not being able to be tortured while wearing armor, I am not convinced of this explanation at all. For one thing, there are numerous torture methods that can still be implemented on someone who is wearing armor. Waterboarding would be one example in which her head would be targeted and the armor on her body would be meaningless. For another thing, the armor she was wearing at the time she was captured does not cover her entire body. Her legs are exposed and can be used for torturing her. While I could go into detail about what could be used on her, I won't simply because some of it may be found disturbing.

As to this idea of Kyouka changing her clothes or someone providing her with something, I don't know why that's being brought up given that underneath Erza's HK armor, she is not naked as she had clothes on. She was not naked when she fell unconscious. We know someone had to physically remove her clothes for her to have been chained up as she was. People can still be tortured while wearing simple t-shirts. Whipping, sword slashes and the like would all should have had relatively the same effect on a person wearing a t-shirt as they would when used on a naked person, especially given that Kyouka supposedly has Magic to increase the sensation of pain. Erza was already tied up in anti-Magic cuffs so I see relatively little danger of her requipping an armor to spare herself the pain.

As such, I feel a good writer would have found a way to torture a character without having to resort to actual nudity if that was what they actually wanted to do. It takes very little effort to come up with alternative ways for this to have happened in a more suited manner.