Top 10 Favorite BlazBlue Characters

Hi, everyone. Gokuzard here and welcome to the finale of BlazBlue Month.

BlazBlue may be among the unholy trinity of “What the f**k is this story” alongside Kingdom Hearts and Metal Gear, which is especially annoying because this is a fighting game series, but at least that means plenty of great characters. Plus, most of them are fun to play as, with, like, 2 exceptions out of a 36 character roster.

So today, we’re talking about my favorite characters in the roster.

Like I said in previous fighting game lists, I don’t play characters based on their tier placements, and like I said in past fighting game lists that aren’t Smash, I’m not ordering this based on how much I like playing the characters. It’s more about personality and actions for me.

I’m gonna mostly keep it to the fighting games because I never played the visual novels, Dark War or Entropy Effect, I haven’t watched the anime in forever, and I never read any of the manga. Also, I’m gonna ignore Tag because at the time of writing this, I haven’t finished the story of that game.

2 warnings, though: this list is NOT spoiler-free, and BlazBlue is by far the darkest and most problematic of the unholy story trinity. Probably. I haven’t played much of KH or any of MG, but if you don’t want spoilers or you’re easily offended, LEAVE NOW!

Also, some story footage is hard to find, so you’ll just have to deal with that. And last thing: I originally planned on this being a top 15, but I wanted to replay the series first, which I didn’t finish until the 22nd. Sorry about that.

But with all that out of the way, for the last time this month, the wheel of fate is turning! I’m Gokuzard and these are my Top 10 Favorite BlazBlue Characters! Action!

Rebel 10

So unlike the last 2 lists, the entries aren’t evenly divided by games this time, which should be obvious, because 10 isn’t divisible by 4. I’m gonna tell you now that there are more characters from the OG roster on this list than newcomers to the rosters of other games.

And we’re starting off the list with Jin Kisaragi.

As I said in a previous list, many fighting games have the rival to the protag; Ken, Iori, Ky… Does Mortal Kombat have a definitive protagonist? I dunno. I’d get on it if the older games were on systems I owned, and Warner Bros’ CEO wasn’t such a greedy piece of $h!t!

Back on topic, Jin is the rival and younger brother of main protag, Ragna, and their relationship, at least at the start, is more Scorpion and Sub-Zero or Kyo and Iori than Ryu and Ken or Terry and Andy. I.e.: they kinda hate each other. Kinda.

If you want the cliff notes, Ragna, Jin and their baby sister, Saya, were orphaned long enough ago that the games gloss over pre-orphanage, and eventually, Saya got a fever, Ragna spent a lot of time with her, and Jin grew a jealousy-induced hate/murder boner because he had dependency issues as a kid. That’s a bit bass-ackwards, but let’s ignore that.

So after being given an awesome MacGuffin ice sword, the Mucro Algesco: Yukianesa, and being told about the Black Beast lurking inside Ragna (long story,) he cut off Ragna’s arm and headed off with series main villain, Terumi, after the latter made things worse (he does that a lot.)

Then he was adopted by the Kisaragi family of the Duodecim, basically meaning it’s one of the most powerful families of the staple overly-controlling government known as the Novus Orbus Librarium. The guy very quickly rose to a Major, and mastered Yukianesa.

For the sake of not taking too much time and not causing too many headaches, and because I can go more over Jin another day, let’s skip a lot of lore about the sword and keep the talk about Jin’s playstyle brief. Aside from his brother and maybe the ripoff of his brother, Jin’s the closest thing to a Shoto in BlazBlue. Then again, Ryu doesn’t literally freeze people!

Aside from that, Jin’s the only character with EX specials that use meter, which does mean you need meter to make the most out of him, but it’s worth. Either that, or save meter for the ice waves, ice arrows, counter super ripped off Hakumen (another long story,) or his Astral, which, while basic, is effective as long as they STOP JUMPING! Also, it’s one of 2 Astrals canonically used in the story.

But Jin doesn’t care about the fame he gets from doing the NOL’s dirty work. Or that much else, for that matter. Most of the time, he’s the standard cold, edgy loner. Especially towards poor Noel. He HATES her, mostly because she reminds him too much of Saya. Trauma does things to people, I guess.

Which kinda explains how he views Ragna. Yeah, saying he’s unhinged around Ragna is an understatement. The icy shell breaks whenever big bro is around, and I don’t know who’s more of a murderous yandere for him: Jin or Nu.

And on that note, because this apparently needs to be said in this day and age, just because you like a media doesn’t mean you have to like everything about it, just because there are problematic elements doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to like it, and just because you don’t like a media doesn’t mean no one else is allowed to. You might as well cancel real life, because a lot of problematic $h!t happens irl and is a DIRECT cause of a lot more real people dying and/or getting traumatized!

Anyway, doesn’t help that Yukianesa has a mind of its own, constantly tempting him to kill anyone in his way, especially his own brother. Thankfully, he has another broken power in his arsenal that eventually keeps it in check, known as the Power of Order.

The Power of Order is basically the world’s balance system, and in Jin’s case, makes him about as powerful as his older brother, and by Chronophantasma, keeps his sanity in check so he fights Ragna without his emotions or Yukianesa hindering him too much, and makes him mostly immune to the god-tier life hack known as Phenomena Intervention!

In fact, the Power of Order is so broken that he’s one of the few to keep his memories in Central Fiction. (Yet another long story.) Though he does start off the game seriously injured because of a 2v1 against beast mode Ragna, until anime ghost girl Trinity heals him so he can return her back to the magical bigender staff she used to hide in, and return the body back to normal (there are a lot of long stories in this series.)

Though it’s weird how Jin’s the final boss of the main series so far instead of any variant of Terumi or Noel, but then again, we kinda had to have a final Ragna vs. Jin fight somewhere. He REALLY doesn’t like the idea of the memories of Ragna getting deleted, apparently.

Too bad it doesn’t have Under Heaven Destruction backing it, but it wouldn’t be a shonen anime without the main theme in the climax. Which isn’t selectable in Vs. Mode?! Are you serious?! Speaking of music, why is his theme named Lust Sin? I feel like Envy Sin or Murder Sin would make more sense.

Rebel 9

Oh, f**k. Now I gotta go more into the lore of the series. Strap in, people. This’ll be on the test later.

So about a century or so before the events of the main series, there was this eldritch Orochi demon known as the Black Beast, and it destroyed Japan because they just love kaiju destroying Japan.

After moving to Eurasia while killing everything around it, it was stopped for a year, giving people time to develop countermeasures, inventing magic science bull$h!t, and having 6 brave warriors lead the charge against the Beast.

And this is my overly long buildup to putting one of the Six Heroes at this spot. Not my favorite (more on that later,) but I’ve dragged the opening long enough. Let’s talk about Jubei.

I find it kinda funny how the world’s strongest warrior and the guy who taught Ragna how to fight, is a cat. That’s selling him short, of course! The guy isn’t even in peak form (he is over 100, after all,) and he still makes Terumi sweat just by being in his presence! I like to think that he did the most direct damage to the Black Beast as well.

And that’s not his only legacy either. He’s also the husband of the Great Sage Nine, the father of the most foul-mouthed furry scientist you’ve ever seen, Kokonoe (yes, this is human x animal. Just go with it,) and his DNA was used to make the warrior kitty race known as the Kakas. Jury’s still out if making Tao is a good thing, but training Ragna to become a bad@$$ definitely is!

Also, I love this guy’s attitude. Instead of your typical old martial arts master, Jubei’s laid-back and chill off the battlefield, unless he goes through guilty mode through letting so many people die, including his wife, and leaving his newborn daughter behind, but that makes his drive to fight back against the villains and train Ragna and Jin to fight, even stronger.

He even fought the actually not dead Nine, who had gone genocidal after finding out the series’ looping timeline (one of the longest stories,) fending her off when she revealed her true form at the end of Chronophantasma, and again to guard the entrance to her lab when the good guys were sneaking in during the events of Central Fiction (have you gotten used to seeing “long story?”) Then after her sister puppy dog eyed some sense into her long enough for Ragna to nearly kill her, supposed main villain Izanami showed up to finish the job, but like any good husband, Jubei stepped in to protect his wife. Too bad WE CAN’T PLAY ANY OF THOSE FIGHTS, but thankfully, Jubei became playable eventually.

It only took him until Evo 2017 to be revealed as playable, at the very end of Central Fiction’s DLC, but MAN, was he worth the wait?! Well, maybe. I never played BlazBlue until 2021, but the guy really does prove his title as the world’s greatest warrior, even if he’s been out of the fray for nearly a century!

First off, he’s fast, both in movement and attacks, even for a cat with 2 swords, and his 6A and 6B are counters, even if he can’t counter overheads with either. He also has rekkas, and I love mixing with those, he has a big, high-bouncing fireball, his dash side switches like it’s Smash 4 instead of not being able to run through people, and most importantly, his D buttons also side switch AND, if they hit, let him nothing personal people with his supers, which also get a damage buff!

Except for his install super, which lets him special cancel his rekkas, complete with easier inputs for each special, AND changes his D buttons to controllable 4-part teleport dash attacks! The main problem is $h!t defense, especially since he has a bit more hitstun than everyone else, but he is short enough to low profile many attacks.

And remember that this only a fraction of his full power! Makes me wonder how strong he was during the Dark War. Can we get a Warriors spinoff set during the Dark War? Kinda like Age of Calamity except people actually die. Please?

Rebel 8

Only number 8 and we’re now in “OMG! I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!” land.

Those of you with a very specific memory probably remember Tsubaki Yayoi getting on the honorable mentions of my waifus list, and I don’t know what I was thinking. Not that I don’t like her anymore, obviously, but I don’t like her as much as the ones ranked above her anymore.

Born to the Yayoi family, once the peak of the Duodecim, Tsubaki was the only one of her generation to not die too young for… health reasons, and like everyone else in her family, was raised on the idea that the Imperator of the NOL is always right. An ideal she took a bit too close to heart. More on that later.

Tsubaki is mature, smart and generally outwardly serious about her job as an NOL officer, and tries her hardest to be someone to look up to, even when she was in the Military Academy. But she really loves her friends, especially Noel and Makoto. In the case of the latter, even with her introducing herself as a cold loner, Tsubaki saw her as an actual person and told off some racists picking on her for being half squirrel.

Aside from that, she really loves Jin, most likely because he was the first person she ever met outside her family. Yeah, she was REALLY sheltered as a kid. And she also idolizes Hakumen, which is kinda ironic for reasons I’m not gonna talk about today.

But she also struggles with her sense of justice, which is very apparent, because Terumi and Izanami easily manipulate her into trying to murder Jin and Noel in Continuum Shift! Not that she doesn’t feel conflicted, because she absolutely doesn’t want to. Not that she couldn’t if she didn’t hesitate. I mean, aside from her weapon, the Izayoi, being kinda broken, she has the skills to use it well too.

Tsubaki’s a well-rounded beginner-friendly character with a lot of what you need to get the job done, including projectiles from both the ground and the air, a rising slash and a pseudo-rekka combo including a Charging Star ripoff, all with holy-themed Latin named.

Her main gimmick is she can charge up with the D button to give herself EX specials also used with the D button. You do leave yourself open when charging unless you just tap the D button mid-combo, or you can go for a command grab and get 2 charge stocks out of 5. Or you can OD for auto-charge if you have it.

Of course, ⅔ of her Distortions use those stocks, with one of them booping you with her shield… book… thing, and launching all the light she’s stored up, unless you use the C version instead of the D version, another giving her unlimited stocks for a limited time depending on how many stocks she has, and the other throwing a bunch of swords at you. And her Astral is a full-screen dash that, on hit, has a giant statue throw a giant spear of light at the other person.

Terumi even told her about the timeline where Tsubaki ends up as Jin’s secretary instead of Noel, just so she’d get jealous and actively try to murder her, and her inner turmoil got so bad that her default color turned from off-white in Continuum Shift, to black and red in Chronophantasma!

Well, actually, it’s caused by the Imperator putting a curse on her, but anyway, Jin confronts Tsubaki and she almost returns to the good side, but then the Izayoi takes full control over in Chronophantasma, and playing her… well, I prefer playing base Tsubaki, but Izayoi’s fun to play too.

Izayoi still has stocks for some specials, but in this case, it’s for extensions for specials unlocked and re-locked with the D button. With the exception of her teleport dash, her specials add stocks to her when locked, and aside from the aforementioned extensions, some of her buttons get changed when unlocked, and she gets a spread version of her projectile and a nothing personal version of her teleport. Also, she has a big sword super, a drone super for extra hits, and her Astral is basically a reskin of base Tsubaki’s.

The Izayoi even has the power to kill immortals, which is especially troublesome because Noel… well, that’s yet another long story. But thanks to Makoto and Jin beating the $h!t out of her as Noel recorded to send it to Worldstar, Tsubaki starts regaining her sanity. Unfortunately, not fast enough to not STAB JIN! Oof.

But thanks to the power of love and friendship, she breaks out of the curse, and cue one of the most touching scenes in the series as she’s reunited with Makoto and Noel, and thankfully Jin survived because the Power of Order is stupid broken. All’s well that ends well, I guess.

Also, I love how Tsubaki wears the Susano’o Unit in the epilogue. It’s very thematically fitting.

Rebel 7

The newcomers in Chronophantasma are hit or miss imo. Amane didn’t interest me in personality or role in the story and his playstyle is one of my least favorites. Bullet’s one of my favorites to play and I like her dedication to Tager, but her role in the story is basically just warming up Azrael. Speaking of, Azrael’s also fun to play, but his potential was squandered twice, and Kagura’s a bad@$$ when $h!t gets real, but when it doesn’t, he’s basically the worst kind of college roommate.

But CP’s biggest hit for me is the one that generally doesn’t.

Yup, Celica A. Mercury is my precious baby and if anything happens to her, I will kill everyone in this room and then myself. Oh, wait. This is BlazBlue. I shouldn’t say things like that, because something’s bound to go horribly wrong.

Anyway, in contrast to all the edge, angst and emotional outbursts of literally every other character in the series, Celica is a pure, sweet girl who both literally heals with magic, and brightens the mood of most scenes she’s in. Sure, the pure bundle of healing sunshine has been done a billion times, but I like my pure bundles of sunshine.

If there’s one flaw with her, it’s that she’s a bit too nice. She always sees the good and pretty much ONLY the good in other people, even with the villains in the series. I dunno about you, but I’d be pissed if someone killed my sister!

Aside from that, she’s TERRIBLE at directions. Kokonoe literally tells her directions to her lab and she gets there, like, 2 hours behind schedule because she insisted on the path she’s taking being faster.

She’s also kinda stubborn, and rebellious toward Nine and her coddling from back in the day, but even then, she always describes her as the GOAT, even when she tries to end the world that she loves so much.

Also, she’s one of the, like, 7 million girls in the series to love Ragna, and probably the one I ship with him the hardest, if not Rachel, because they’re like each other’s guardian angels. Heck, her name is derived from the Latin word for heavenly! Funny, because after the Dark War, she became a nun, built a church over the remains of the Black Beast, and eventually was the foster mom of Ragna and his siblings after Jubei entrusted them to her.

For those paying attention, yes, you did read that right, and with that, it’s time for more BlazBlue lore being wack! Celica is from WAY in the past, and Kokonoe, who’s her niece, by the way (oh, forgot to mention Nine is Celica’s sister,) pulled some Ultimecia bull$h!t, basically copying her dead body and pulling her soul to the current time of BlazBlue. You’d think Celica would look like an old lady, since she’s in her hundreds and basically undead, but her healing powers made her age like wine. I guess this explains why she didn’t look like an old lady when she took care of kid Ragna and his siblings. I kinda wish she was at least fully grown, though.

You may be asking why Kokonoe pulled her soul a century into the future. Well, for 2 reasons. First off, because Terumi is a being that feeds of hatred and despair (more on that later,) throwing a pure and innocent bundle of joy like Celica at him is like throwing acid at him.

And remember at the beginning when I said Celica’s not much of a fighter? Well, she kinda doesn’t have to be. As another form of the Power of Order, the remains of the Black Beast, known as seithr, just evaporates around her, which doesn’t do much in her era, but basically makes her a walking EMP when uncontrolled in the 2200s when it’s used for pretty much all technology.

Of course, she’s kinda vulnerable by herself because aside from healing and the anti-seithr thing, all she has is floating magic and lightning magic, the latter of which she never uses because thunder scares her. So Kokonoe built her a super fighting robot named Minerva to both amplify her power and fight for her.

Unlike the Clovers, Celica herself isn’t much of a fighter. All but 5 moves are Minerva attacking and/or Celica healing. The other 5 are dive kicks, flailing her arms in the opponent’s general direction, and tripping like an embarrassed anime schoolgirl playing Brawl because she’s too precious.

In complete contrast, aside from her projectile, Minerva hits HARD! She can slam her fists on the ground, uppercut you into the stratosphere, and slam into you like a jet, all with armor, and enhanced versions! On top of that, she’s got rekkas for her D buttons that also add assist game-style recoverable damage, which Celica can heal back by finishing the rekka or using her healing super! Or you can decide not to do either and buff the power of your next special instead!

Her other supers are Dragon Ball-level lasers (albeit with just as much charge time,) an invincible full-screen dash super that turns the screen black and slashes around the entire screen, and one of my favorite Astrals in the series where Celica fully heals the other person and Minerva slams into them at Mach speeds!

Also, because her body and soul are just copies of the original Celica, she’s one of the few to not get her memories deleted in Central Fiction, which makes her sad when nobody recognizes her, which isn’t even the saddest thing. She only has a short while to live, and even worse, her dying in a fire over and over is the main reason Nine tried to blow up the world, and even worse, they almost had front row seats to the world blowing up, until Nine changed her mind and froze the mega-nuke long enough for the good guys to escape.

So Celica uses her magic to force Rachel to teleport everyone else out. Right to a replica of the church where Ragna and his siblings lived before Terumi f**ked it up. And after some bonding, nostalgia and Noel accepting herself (more on that later,) it turns out Celica used too much power and gets Xenoblade 3’d before the others leave to fight Izanami. Yeah, I knew something would go horribly wrong, but it makes for one of the most touching moments in the series.

Rest in peace, Celica. You’ll live on in our hearts. And as yourself when you got in Tag. Is that game even canon?

Rebel 6

I originally wanted to start this segment with a song reference, but I figured that wouldn’t be as funny when you can’t hear me singing. Oh, well.

So next on the list is… Oh, no. Oh, no! Is it too late to back out? It’s not that I don’t like this character, obviously. It’s just that the backstory is gonna be a b!+ch and a half to explain. Oh, well. I said I’d make this list, and I’m gonna do it!

At the top of the bottom half, we have Noel Vermillion!

When you first meet Noel, you probably don’t really think there’s too much special about her. More than likely, you probably wonder how tf she’s even a cop. She’s shy, nervous, easily flustered at the slightest remarks, a bit too obsessed with cute things, terrible at cooking and apologizes for pretty much everything she does.

At this point, the best thing about her is her twin pistols, Bolverk, which first appeared out of thin air when she was attacked by a monster. Also, it’s more like the weapon’s wielding her instead of the other way around, as it suppresses her emotions.

Also, she has a bit of amnesia. All her memories cut off before she was found in a burning field and adopted by the once-illustrious Vermillion family. About 5 years ago.

So because her dad had got his title revoked after calling out the NOL’s bs, Noel joined the Military Academy, where she was mostly accepted because of her high aptitude for the mix of magic and science known as Ars Magus. Then she became besties with Tsubaki and Makoto, became a lieutenant before she even graduated, and became Jin’s secretary.

Oh, and about those lost memories, this is a very, VERY long and complicated story that’s basically unavoidable at this point. Strap in people.

So there’s this being in the center of reality known as the Amaterasu unit, with the power to f**k with time, mostly by rewinding it. Humanity was eventually made aware of its existence, and because humanity just LOVES to have all the power, they made a bunch of living weapons known as Prime Field Devices to try to reach it.

The 11th-13th PFDs were cloned from Ragna’s baby sister, Saya, and the 12th of this series, Mu-12, was made by the world’s leading science organization, Sector Seven, as a weapon against the NOL, but she was made during a war and a giant satellite laser kinda ruined her creation, and she was downgraded back to Saya mode.

And as it turns out, Noel is actually Mu, and Terumi SERIOUSLY pissing her off so she’d evolve into her true form, go genocidal and kill both the world and Amaterasu. But thanks to Ragna knocking some sense into her, she reverts back to Noel mode.

So if she’s such a nervous wreck, then why the f**k is she this high? Well, for one, she’s the adorable kind of nervous wreck. When she’s not being sorry, nervous, flustered or genocidal, she’s too precious and compassionate to pretty much everyone. She reminds me of a certain other blonde police girl, just with a few less cannons and she isn’t a vampire.

Oh, and there’s also the fact that she stopped Ragna from falling into the Cauldron, thus stopping the infinite loop of the BlazBlue timeline. Until Central Fiction reset the timeline AGAIN.

Though I didn’t mention the reason I put her above Celica: this girl’s my main! Yes, even though she’s at the bottom of Central Fiction’s tier list. I seem to play a lot of low tiers (hi, Mac.)

You’d expect a gunslinger in a fighting game to be a cheap camper who spams projectiles from 2 miles away or have other moves to make up for their low DPS shooting, but instead, Noel defines rushdown better than most of the cast! Press that Drive button and watch Noel pistol whip, dance all over and point-blank shoot the opponent’s face! Also, she can throw the darn thing like a boomerang, because why not!?

Did I mention Bolverk can transform into whatever type of gun Noel wants?! Anything from heavy machine guns to shotguns to rocket launchers, you name it! Put her in Metal Slug, cowards!

I don’t play Mu that often, but she’s pretty a’ight. Her main gimmick is these drone things that fire lasers, and you can play laser hot potato with them or make them all run into the other person at once. She also has a few sword-based moves with wide hitboxes, plus a projectile that arcs upward, this single hit Nayru’s Love ripoff, she can summon a bunch of spears of light to attack you at once, and to finish it off, 8 giant swords stabbing you at once while razing the battlefield!

Then in Chronophantasma, she becomes less of a nervous crying puppy, quits the NOL, accepts the Mu form while keeping her emotions, oh, and did I mention that with the power of the central MacGuffin, the Azure, she can Za Warudo and change aspects of reality itself!?

Plus, she has the power to find Amaterasu, and as it turns out, Mu has a bigger piece of the original PFD, who ended up controlling the Amaterasu unit, than the other models. Translation: Noel is about half of a god!

Also, her English VA is Cristina Vee, who also voices Shantae and anyone who knows me probably knows how much I love Shantae.

Oh, and one last thing.

Rebel 5

The funny thing about the “new” characters in Central Fiction is none of them are actually new. All of them made their debut before CF, or, in the case of Susano’o, an alternate form of Terumi after he reclaimed the armor from Hakumen.

Jubei was there since the first game, Izanami and technically Nine since Continuum Shift, Hibiki since Chronophantasma, Es when BlazBlue went full visual novel, and the unfortunately Japan-exclusive manga introduced my number 5…

NOT YOU!

Yup! At number 5, we have the protagonist of Remix Heart, and BlazBlue’s resident trans icon, Mai Natsume!

No, that’s neither a joke nor projecting. Mai’s actually canonically transgender. So that makes 2 super hot trans girls in fighting games that I can think of. No, the other one is Poison, not Bridget. Even if the age of consent in Japan is 16 nowadays, and even then, it was 13 before June, Bridget still has the body of an 11 year old, even in Strive, for whatever reason. Not gonna stop other people from simping her, though, because, again, you can separate fiction from reality.

Speaking of Brisket, morons complained when she came out, but Mai predates the former coming out by nearly a decade. Granted, this was after the bigendered Platinum got in CS, but I’m gonna skip most of the manga because the Remix Heart segment of her Wiki page is way too long.

She was once the heir to one of the Duodecim before stumbling upon the Red Grimoire, which, for some reason, turned her into a girl and turned her taste bass-ackwards. Maybe I’d understand if I read Remix Heart, but I don’t know Japanese.

I don’t know what she looked like pre-transition, and I don’t care because now she looks so adorable and so hot. And thankfully, unlike Naoto and Es, I love Mai even without the context of her home manga.

As one of the best girls in BlazBlue, she’s generally nice, caring and brave, and will often protect others, especially her friends, without a second thought.

Though I don’t know who I ship her with harder: Kajun or Noel. The former was her roommate at the academy, was pretty much always seen with her, and they’re known to literally sleep together. Kajun even worked with Kokonoe to make Mai’s signature weapon, the Gallia Sphyras: Outseal.

On that note, she’s probably my 5th or 6th favorite to play in Central Fiction. Each of her standing buttons aside from D is an autocombo, and, in fact, she kinda plays like it’s a 2D Budokai game, where she gets different moves based on the button combination you input. Except for specials, which don’t use motion inputs either.

Alongside long range and pretty good speed, she can shoot projectiles out of the spear, imitate Jojo characters with the spear, dash at you with it, throw it as a projectile in one of 3 angles only for it to appear back in her hands, change its direction after it’s thrown, Wavedash, and backflip cancel into dives.

As for supers, she jumps into the air to come crashing down and stab you with the spear, she has a command dash super, her OD shortens charge time and her Astral has her throw the darn thing from the skies and making an explosion!

But since Mai wasn’t playable until near the end of Central Fiction’s DLC and wasn’t even in the games until Chronophantasma, her role in the main story of the games isn’t very major, but ya know what? She protects Noel during most of her story, so I can deal with that.

When I said I have a hard time deciding who I ship her with more, I meant it. She finds Noel and takes her in, even if she begs for purple pain- I mean food, and then when they were attacked by Hazama, Mai stepped up to protect Noel. Granted, she took the L, only for Kagura to swoop in, but A for effort. And she was sent to protect the actual Imperator, even if that was only in one chapter of the story.

And in her arcade mode, she searches for and fights Relius, only for it to be an “I win, but I don’t win” scenario and find out that he’s worse than I thought, and then not be able to move for some reason, only to wake up in Litchi’s clinic. Thank f**k I don’t have to talk about Relius today. We don’t talk about Relius.

Rebel 4

How we went 6 segments with no villains on the list is beyond me (unless you count Mu or Izayoi, which I don’t.) Then again, fighting game bosses aren’t always the most interesting villains. Several of them are generic wannabe gods just there to drain away all those quarters you had saved up. See Gill from Street Fighter, Kudlak from Chaos Code, Jedah from Darkstalkers, several SNK bosses, etc.

Thankfully, Arcsys actually does give 2 $h!ts about the character writing. Usually. Point is BlazBlue has several effective villains. Relius does a REALLY good job of making me despise him for the right reasons, Azrael has the whole “taking fighting for fun too far” thing going on, Izanami is the “ruler of the world is evil” trope done mostly right, but if you play the story mode, you know there’s one villain I can’t make this list without.

F**k your Bisons, f**k your Heihachis, f**k your Shao Khans and f**k your Geese…s. Yuuki Terumi is, hands down, the best villain in fighting games!

I talked about Terumi in my heroes and villains list way back at the end of 2021, and I still stand by everything I said about him, but that was before I finished Central Fiction, and now that I have twice, he’d probably be in my top 2. But I can go further into it now. But only stuff that’s directly relevant to the main games. We’d be here all day otherwise.

So basically, Terumi is what happens when you take an internet troll, give him a god complex, and remove ALL of his sympathy. Kinda like Hades from Kid Icarus Uprising, but also a snake god thing.

So you know that Amaterasu thing that I mentioned in the Noel segment? Terumi is the soul of its brother unit, Susano’o, which exists only to destroy, who got sick of the endless cycle of destruction and rewinding, descended from heaven and started scheming to kill Amaterasu! As if that wasn’t scary enough, Terumi literally thrives off negative emotions like hatred and despair! So being pissed off at him only makes him stronger!

The thing is Terumi can’t exist without being attached to a body, and he’s had several vessels aside from Susano’o, the most notable one being the smooth-talking troll that is Hazama.

This body hopping effectively gives Terumi 3 different playstyles; First, you got Hazama using the chains of Ouroboros to swing all over the place like Spider-Man. He’s harder to play than it sounds and he’s honestly in my bottom 10 in terms of playstyle. Why does 6B have 2 billion frames of startup?

Terumi himself has half a dozen supers, but all his D buttons give him 12%-30% meter off one move, allowing him to meter dump a lot more, especially since he has a super that uses all his meter, but does more damage the more meter he has, while draining the other person’s meter! I have a lot of fun playing him, but he’s a bit middle-of-the-road for me compared to the rest of the cast.

Last, but almost the complete opposite of least, Susano’o surpasses all but Noel and [redacted] when it comes to how much I love playing him! He may start the match kinda eh, especially because he starts with a whole 1 special and his run has a startup, for some reason, but with the ability to unlock up to 7 different moves over the match, maybe it’s a good thing he doesn’t start with them all. I have too much fun playing as him anyway!

Though his personality and actions make him best villain in fighting games. He’s PRETTY close to making me flat-out hate him, but unlike, I dunno, Relius, he clearly has a lot of fun with the heinous acts he commits, while keeping a polite and professional façade most of the time while possessing Hazama.

Oh, and as for these heinous acts, we’ve got manipulation, brainwashing, kidnapping children, emotional abuse, physical abuse, enslavement, arson, extortion, conspiracy, propaganda, betrayal, torture, murder, and, oh, right, offing about half the population and destroying Japan through an eldritch abomination, which, in his own words, was a “failed experiment.” JEEZ!

Basically, he believes the world is full of lies, only despair matters, and if anyone disagrees, they’re wrong. And to anyone who disagrees, he’ll break them, either emotionally or physically.

Not even separating his spirit from his body or destroying the time he has left will stop him for long! All it does is split the issue, which does technically make Hazama and Terumi 2 separate characters now, but it’d be both redundant and unfair to Jin if I separated them on the list.

For whatever reason, Hazama kept his memories in Central Fiction, and they work to re-combine, but Hazama gains free will (oh, right. Terumi’s vessels are created and not born,) and decides he wants to be the dominant one. So instead, Terumi decides to return to his original body instead, while Hazama tortures Rachel by causing enough pain to her to kill a normal person several times over. That’s downright evil.

Oh, yeah. The Susano’o Unit. That thing was used by Hakumen for most of the series, so the only solution is to MURDER HIM, take his body back and declare his omnicidal intentions!

So here’s how to kill a literally hate-fueled god in 7 easy steps, by Ragna the Bloodedge! Step 1: intentionally let him have his armor! Step 2: lead him to the almighty plot device! Step 3: have him fight your brother! Step 4: fight him in beast mode! Step 5: have anime ghost girl force him out of his armor and have your brother put it on! Step 6: taking notes from Goku and Piccolo vs. Raditz, have your brother stab both you and the god simultaneously, tricking the plot device into thinking the god is a hero so nobody hates him! And step 7: kill him in the dimension of the plot device using your ultimate attack! Follow all these simple steps, and you too can kill a god!

Even then, Terumi dies with one last evil laugh instead of a final “NOOOOOOO!” That says a lot.

Rebel 3

And we’ve crossed into the furry kingdom again.

Do you think the word “furry” is offensive to beastkin? In which case, I’m so sorry, Makoto.

Of my second-best waifus in media I have more than one waifu in, Makoto Nanaya is easily my favorite, which is an overly drawn out way of saying HOLY F**K, I LOVE THIS GIRL!

Now I must stress again that I’m not a furry, but aside from Felicia from Darkstalkers, Makoto is the only exception, for several reasons.

First off, this girl is both super hot and super adorable, second-hottest girl in the game imo, and that says a lot, considering Bullet, Nine and the aforementioned Mai.

Personality-wise, Makoto’s kinda a mix of hot-blooded anime protag, and a bubbly anime waifu. Bright, cheerful and positive, bouncing around in even her idle animation, it’s easy to make friends with her, and few things are as important to her as her friends.

Though she’s smarter than she looks (sometimes,) being part of both the NOL’s intelligence up to the end of Continuum Shift, while being a double agent for Sector Seven.

But if you mess with her or her friends, especially Noel or Tsubaki, you’ll probably find your face caved in, which is great, because she’s one of my favorites to play. Me playing martial artists in weapon-based fighting games seems to be common. Hi, DNF Striker (side note: the DNF list was cancelled because none of the girls are my type.)

On that note, what is it with girls named Makoto in fictional media being proficient in fisticuffs? Between this, Street Fighter and Persona 5, I’ve seen this several times. Is it a thing I don’t get because I’m monolingual or is it just a coincidence? Someone who knows Japanese please tell me.

Anyway, I like to think of this Makoto as an adult version of Marvel’s Squirrel Girl, just trading out the squirrel army for more power in her fists.
And I mean a LOT more power! Beastkin are usually inherently stronger than humans and while Kokonoe generally doesn’t demonstrate that physically, Makoto absolutely does! But like with Jin, I plan on talking more about her power in another list.

Basically, if you wanna play Makoto, get in your opponent’s face and stay there, because she has the shortest range in the game, but does high-damage combos. At least you have Shadow Clones for mixups in your approach, and a projectile that’s kinda better as a setup tool as an actual projectile, because it stays there unless you 5D it. Or you can summon giant fists if you have meter.

Heck, she loves her friends so much that she survived an encounter with a Cauldron in Continuum Shift 2, which would tear apart most souls, but instead sent her back in time to an alternate timeline where Noel doesn’t exist, and at the end of her story in that game, she fights a manifestation of either Noel or Tsubaki and returns to her own time through the power of anime clich- I mean friendship.

I do wish Makoto was in the base CS roster so she could punch Hazama in the face for his treatment of Noel, but she did leave the NOL alongside Noel in Continuum Shift’s true ending. Then when Tsubaki starts getting controlled more by Izanami, Makoto knocks some sense into Tsubaki, before Noel looks at her respectfully and then Jin beats her up further to wake her up.

Makoto even protects ripoff Ragn- I mean Naoto, when the latter was being targeted by Es, even giving her life in the process! Keep in mind that they literally just met a few minutes ago.

Though why doesn’t she have any vs. themes aside from the Sector Seven theme? It’s like she’s just third wheeling. I’m not saying make her another discount Murakumo, but still.

Rebel 2

And now for the most obvious character to put on a favorite BlazBlue character list.

What?! Like you didn’t expect Ragna the Bloodedge to get on the list?! He’s the protagonist! Of course he’s on here! And just like how I said Terumi is peak fighting game villain, Ragna is peak fighting game protagonist.

On the surface, Ragna seems like just another edgelord, rude, vulgar, easy to piss off and sick and tired of everyone’s bull$h!t. Yeah, like we haven’t seen that in a billion anime protags, especially in the 2000s. But to be fair, I’d be pissed too if some guy burned down the church I lived in, killed my caretaker, kidnapped my sister and convinced my brother to cut off my arm. And even more so if the government used my sister’s body to make cyborg superweapons.

Only surviving by vampire loli Rachel sucking his blood and snapping him a new arm with demon energy known as the Azure Grimoire, and after years of training with Jubei until the latter gave him a discount Buster Sword, Ragna started blowing up NOL bases because the government is $h!t, which naturally made him an SS-class criminal, and if Platinum Coins have the same value as yen, Ragna’s bounty would probably be about $600 million, without even accounting for inflation!

Even with possibly the largest bounty in gaming history on his head, he still walks around on open streets with no disguise, and yet hardly anyone tries to turn him in. Probably because a normal person wouldn’t wanna f**k with him, but more on that later.

But he’s the good kind of edgelord, because if you’re not on his $h!t list, he’s not a bad guy (wait, that’s the other guy.) Under the vulgar and antisocial exterior is a genuinely caring (albeit still somewhat closed off and sometimes sarcastic) interior. He kinda reminds me of myself in that way. That, and not understanding what’s going on in this series.

Anyway, reminder that the reason Ragna even started f**king up the government’s $h!t is because they used his sister for their own gain. Even beyond that, he spared Arakune because Litchi begged him enough (more on that later,) buys Tao and Platinum food (even if they ended up eating WAY over budget,) and if you mess with anyone he cares about, particularly Rachel, Celica, his sis-clones or sometimes Jin, unless you have some crazy broken power that exceeds his own, well, it sucks to be you!

Aside from his brother, Ragna’s the only character on the list whose placement would be the same if I ranked this based on how much I like playing them. Possibly my favorite Shoto, like, ever, it’s more accurate to say he’s Terry with Shoryuken, a sword and the HP of Akuma, instead of Ryu with a sword. I mean, Dead Spike is basically Power Wave, the first part of Hell’s Fang is basically Burn Knuckle and the first part of Gauntlet Hades is more or less single-hit Crack Shoot. Also, aside from Dead Spike and Blood Scythe, every special has at least one follow-up.

But I seem to be forgetting something. Oh, yeah. Lifesteal! Yeah, every D button and D special gives him a bit of life back, especially his command grab super! Though you’ll probably use Carnage Scissors for the invincible dash from downtown.

Oh, and there’s a beast inside him. A Black Beast, to be precise. So to make a Black Beast, you need an Azure Grimoire wielder and a Murakumo unit to fuse, and because Relius is a sadistic piece of $h!t, the 13th Murakumo, Nu, was programmed to be a murderous, horny yandere with the singular goal of fusing with Ragna. Which she succeeds in doing while Izuna Dropping into a Cauldron, and going back a century to start the Dark War.

Meanwhile, Ragna would still exist as himself and fight the Black Beast, and these events would loop over and over until Noel FINALLY stopped Ragna and Nu from falling into the Cauldron at the end of Calamity Trigger. Which somehow doesn’t result in the deletion of seithr. Eh, this is the same company who made Sol not get deleted seeing his past self get murdered, just because he didn’t like it.

Anyway, like any good anime protag, Ragna never gives up, no matter how bad $h!t gets. Doesn’t matter if he faces snake gods with better versions of his gimmick, literal godslayers, steroids incarnate, OPAF witches or death herself possessing his sister, he refuses to throw in the towel. And he always comes out alive, if not on top, whether it’s through deus ex machina, power of friendship, sheer willpower or whatever else.

Then in Chronophantasma, he starts relying less on his Azure Grimoire and cue Mega Man X4 meme. His eventual answer: to save people instead of killing them, even the people who ruined his life.

Unfortunately, after a 3v1 of Ragna, Jin and Noel vs. the Black Beast prototype known as Takemikazuchi, and a fight with Nu within the beast’s head, Nu stabs Ragna, Izanami forces the Black Beast out of him, he unwillingly beats the $h!t out of his siblings, and after calming down, he loses literally ALL of his memories for the dumbest reason ever.

Then after getting his memories back and realizing people are forcing their desires upon Amaterasu, denying the entire world, he decides the best course of action is to beat the $h!t out of everyone and absorb those dreams. This, as well as seeing Hazama torturing Rachel, resulted in him going crazy and stupid. But thanks to Naoto beating his face in, he snapped out of it in time to finish his aforementioned plan to end Terumi.

And when given the choice to have whatever he wants, he decides that humanity should set their own path, and not the gods that intervene and reset the world over and over. The problem is because the girl in the Amaterasu unit is a simp for him or whatever, and resets the world whenever he dies, he’d have to erase himself from existence with all memories of him fading away with him. However, even knowing this, Ragna does it anyway.

You know, the real world could definitely use something like that.

Honorable mentions:

Rachel Alucard. VERY nearly made the list, but I do not understand how to play as her at all.

Kokonoe. Sure, she’s rude af and acts like a know-it-all, but the good guys would be f**ked without her.

Iron Tager, because I love me some gentle giants.

Hakumen. See my samurai list for details.

Bang Shishigami, the hammy anime hero we didn’t want, deserve or need until Chronophantasma’s final act.

Lambda 11, my second-favorite Murakumo if Noel counts, mostly for taking notes on Arcueid’s route.

Izanami. Would’ve made the list if she were the actual main villain.

Valkenhayn R. Hellsing. Werewolf butler who’s one of the 6 Heroes. Enough said.

Kagura Mutsuki. His horny frat boy antics can get annoying sometimes, but at least he’s a bad@$$ otherwise.

And Nine the Phantom. You thought Bayonetta was a sexy witch.

Rebel 1

If you know me well enough, you knew who number 1 would be.

So now it’s time to once again bow down to the goddess of kindness, Litchi Faye Ling!

I said it before and I’ll say it again; Litchi is best BB girl! It really sucks how little appreciation she gets, not in-universe, but on the internet. I mean, really?! Very few top players, no love among the fanbase, heck, even the overly horny side of the internet that sexualizes any girl within a hundred mile radius ignores a woman that looks this incredibly hot?! Well, I’m sick of it! I’m gonna go over what I love about her, even if it won’t change anyone’s minds because nobody reads my lists.

Let’s start with that jaw-dropping design. I mean, I’ve heard of “Hello, nurse,” but not “Hello, doc” (and I have no idea how I didn’t make that joke in my waifus list.) Easily, EASILY hottest girl in the series, and maybe the ease on the eyes is to make up for the hand pain playing her.

I’m just gonna say this right now: DO NOT try Litchi as your first character! You’re gonna want to switch between holding the staff, throwing it, leaving it on the ground, returning it, standing on it like Sun Wukong and throwing yourself off of it. It’s a lot to keep track of. But she is SO much fun when you get at least some of it down! I’d like to see Palutena pull this kinda $h!t with her staff. Maybe I’d play her in Smash if she did.

If you haven’t played the series or haven’t played story mode or arcade mode and don’t read win quotes, I’d slightly forgive you for assuming she’s not much more than fan service, especially given her Astral, where she literally stomps people to death. I’ve seen enough morons on the internet who accuse some of my waifus as being just fan service. Heck, I was once one of them for several of mine. Hi, Pyra and Felicia.

If you’re one of those people, let me assure you that you’re wrong. There’s a lot more to Litchi than fan service. In fact, I think the reason she’s canonically the bustiest character in the game, and maybe my bustiest waifu, is because her breasts had to grow twice as fast as usual so her heart can fit. Only to fail, so she had to patch her left boob herself and put her heart in a jar. That metaphor got a bit stupid.

The point is Litchi’s so ridiculously sweet, she gives Tifa and Pyra a run for their respective games’ forms of currency! This woman is just the sweetest, even beyond being a doctor who doesn’t charge at all; looking after the Kaka clan, comforting Carl and Luna despite each of them attacking her for no good reason, and nearly convincing Noel that the wounded Ragna wasn’t in the Kaka Village when she was treating him, and she would’ve if Bang wasn’t STUPID!

Plus she’s honest, and a lot smarter than she looks, being a doctor and all. I mean, you wouldn’t want someone with 2 brain cells treating fatal wounds, or in the world’s leading science organization.

Which leads me to the elephant in the room: her story. Yeah, not gonna lie, her role in the overall story is lacking, and when it’s not, it’s usually frustrating. With one exception, her biggest contribution is treating people’s wounds, and the one exception is helping Relius with his world reset plot.

Yeah, it’s not much for the overall story of the series, but as a personal arc, it’s a whole different ball game, for me, at least. Sure, it’s an unsatisfying conclusion (thanks a lot, Bang,) but the road to getting there shows just how far she’s willing to go to bring back the man she loves.

This level of loyalty is something I really love in a woman; literally going to the ends of the earth and possibly dying just to bring back someone you love, even if it’s seemingly futile. It’s what cemented my love for Tifa and it’s what cemented my love for Litchi. It’s the kind of woman I’d love to eventually have as a significant other. As long as she doesn’t literally sacrifice the world for me, but I can understand her intentions. I’d be devastated too in her situation.

Ugh, what else do I say about Litchi?! I love this woman so much! She’s gorgeous, she’s sexy, she’s fun to play, she’s smart, she’s honest, she’s sweet, she’s loyal, she’s hands down, not only my favorite character in BlazBlue, not only my best girl in fighting games, but also my favorite character in fighting games! Well, originating from fighting games, at least. Dissidia and Ergheiz are still things. Not that I’ve played them, or can play them, since they’re not on the Switch, but I’m getting off track. The point is Litchi is way too perfect.

This has been Gokuzard, and we have one last list for the year. And next time, we’re completing a trinity.