Characters in Blazblue Gaslight you (And why its Pretty Cool) 

Ragna: looks like a psychopath but is actually a good guy Jin: looks like a good guy but is actually a psychopath (but is actually a good guy) Terumi: looks like a Joker wannabe but is actually God (but is actually a robot (but actually isn't??? WE NEED ANSWERS MORI WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN US

I wish BlazBlue as a story wasn't seen as a joke because there's so much love and passion put into it

Hakumen really looked oblivion in the face and said "nah". Also really funny how Rachel(?) Made Jin get in the suit and then Kokonoe becomes his "controller" later really emphasising the fact that Jin hates women.

that was a close one, almost made me want to get into blazblue lore

The craziest part is that even after the tense intro you see in the match, if you win with Jin, he shows his psychotic colors from the curse he bears, giving you the urge to go look at the wiki to see why he's off his rocker

Ragna's one of my favorite characters in fighting games because from the outside he looks like your generic edgelord MC (and kind of acts like that a bit in CT) but once you get past his outer shell he's actually incredibly chill and friendly. He's a dude who actually just wants to vibe with cute animals and stuff but kept getting dealt a shitty hand by life.

Honestly I don’t have a joke...I just want my baby boy Ragna back. I miss him everyday

A little note: hakumen before the conclusion of calamity trigger (eg the calamity trigger itself) wasn't a specific Jin from an alternate timeline, it was what every Jin is destined to become at the end of any timeline concluding at calamity trigger Basically hakumen is for Jin what the BB is for Ragna, the realization of one accepting his role of a hero and the other succumbing to his role as a rebel, and yet it's possible only because Jin do try to save ragna from his fate following the BB to a different timeline That's why hakumen always know where to go and when other ppl will show up at the gate while from Cs onward he kinda roams around beating everyone trying to understand what's going on

You nailed it at the end, at surface level they catch my eyes and interest simply by how they look, acts and interacts. And later after delving in more deeper into their story and how they are the way they are is fascinating and that's one of the charm of this series. They made 1 big cliche as the basis of their character design but then throws you off with their personalities and how they interact with one another not really lining up with how they look. It gives them depth and that much more interest. Then you pick one character that you really like and put all your time into following and researching them, then another bits of interesting piece of their story suddenly connects with another person then you're intrigued with that connected character and so it goes on and on looking up through every character because in blazblue all of them connects with each other, directly or indirectly. I especially really love how they handle the in-game interaction through clash and unique dialogues when up against certain characters, it gives me so much curiosity at how they're connected and what their backstories together was like. Like how come Relius and Kokonoe has connection with each other in the past, or how Celica the most wholesome person made such pure evil entity like Terumi shudders and ill. Those interactions are what really makes BlazBlue interesting. I don't care if my ramble made little to no sense here, I just really love BlazBlue as a whole that I just want to write these. It's sad to know the series is over too. (Or at least, until arcsys feels like bringing it back) Oh also good job on the video, writing detailed and in-depth stuff while being coherent is hard

Blazblue w/o lore: these are cool characters! (clueless) Blazblue w/ lore: these are cool characters! (tired and depressed and also deranged)

Whenever I open Blazblue: CF, I always think "This is the best Anime FG ever made" Something about it just hits different

ragna got that hourglass shape

I've always loved how Ragna is ironically one of the most sane/chill/down to earth guys in the entire cast at least until you piss him off anyways. He's essentially the straight man to all the insanity; even more so in the gag reels. He's easily one of my favorite fighting game characters and probably in my top 20 characters overall. But yeah, I love BlazBlue's convoluted ass story. It's got a lot of heart and a lot of really fun characters (and some insufferable ones). And even from a gameplay standpoint, I just love the VN style implementation. It's honestly my favorite way of doing fighting game story, which is ironic considering plain old VNs are just painful for me. Yet I love it when other genres like FGs and RPGs use it.

Finally. Someone with a platform understands that Blazblue, its gameplay, story, and characters, is peak fiction. Very well-done on this video.

Ragna was the hero the world needed and Jin the hero the world wanted

Hazama in the older games was a good example of this if you didnt now about the lore. At first its looks like a elegant chill dude, then as the fights go over you start to see him as a weird character, "too chill" but pasive agresive at the same time, and then, terumi appaers in his atacks and OV, and is like "JESUS CHRIST, THIS DUDE IS CRAZY AS FUCK", and then all the mask about being chill now looks in a sarcastic condecent way. At least that happen to me in the playtrought of the arcade in blazblue CP, and instantly the character became one of my favorite ones. Specialy because its done almots complety in pure gameplay (literaly, show dont tell)

Great video man, Blazblue originally caught my eye because of the character design, they immediately tell you their story even if many are intentionally misleading. Daisuke and Mori are the GOATS

Strive's story mode is a movie where Xrd's is an anime season. It's shorter and less meaty on plot, but the pacing and action is so, so much better.

I actually really like the shapes bit, I'm going to be forced to look for this in literally every character design for a month.

I appreciate you putting in the effort to talk about observation because that stuff is a whole can of beans and can lose an audience real quick, but you tied it in well enough that I really liked it. Blazblue's plot is a mess, but its characters are surprisingly interesting and endearing when you just accept them and ignore all the confusing parts. It's why they have so many fun interactions in Cross Tag and why gag reels work so well. To anyone even vaguely interested in BB's characters, I actually suggest just watching the gag reels and "Help Me Professor Kokonoe!" bits that started in the Continuum Shift days. You get to see the cast enjoy themselves in contexts isolated from the insanity of the main plot and they're such a joy to watch.

BlazBlue is so complicated that you feel like you stepped into the Nasuverse.

I love the longer-form content. Keep up the good work

also can we talk about the fact that the whole “fights against destiny” plot line is emphasized by the fact that he’s technically the calamity that the 6 heroes faced (at least that’s what I remember, funny haha bb story)

Mans english teacher is cracked. Teaches design theory and does genshin cosplay? Sheesh

fun fact: when you OD as ragna against jin, he straight up shouts "JIIIIIIIN" and it's maybe the most badass line in the game (idk about story mode), only saved for this one matchup. Arcsys loves doing stuff like this too the interactions between ragna and most characters is special Kagura checks out every girl he doesn't know in canon, and the girls he does know tend to either punch him or scoff platinum's jab is randomly one of three identical hitboxes, rock, paper, or scissors. this means nothing until you get into a platinum v platinum match, where rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, and paper beats rock. there's more too I'm sure, but they put a ton of characterization into the ~5 second intro they had and the gameplay

I love that in Blazblue Lore, Ragna was quite literally born to suffer. He is just observed and born to be the subconscious will of humanity as "enemy" no matter what he does. The crazy part about this is that they actually set this up during Calamity Trigger, alongside Noel's Role as the Eye/Avatar of Amaterasu thing. Mori may have basically extended thing and made stuff to much by extending the first part of the final story arc into a long filler arc (Chronophantasma) but I put my respect for him for actually saving up a big plot point that was introduced in teh beginning of the series and saved it until the ending. Also, I saw someone make a Fighting Game Protagonist Suffering Tier List, and Ragna was on a Tier of his own above everyone else

The lowkey does to strive’s story lol. Hopefully they start knotting it together whenever they decide to continue it. :)

Hakumen: I don't need you to observe me to be real, I can observe MYSELF to be real!

i must say it was kinda hard getting a cohesive comment about the entire video since it had more bullet points in it so i decided to leave my thoughts in that way aswell -i never did initially notice how shapes affect character design to give an idea of the character and how they act -predicted there'd be a differing colors point, but that made me realize how utilized red v blue was and it makes me wanna see more colors utilized to show different personalities or rivals -seeing as i know almost nothing about bb as soon as plot and observation was mentioned my brain slowly lost function -and at the point where i heard the ultrakill track my little toy chip in my brain started making noise overall as a final verdict i do just enjoying watching you talk about random stuff you happen to be talking about, it's amusing and of course i can't leave a video without mentioning how much i want that sans video, sincerely~ me

Rest in peace the amazing world of Blazblue

Damn really needed this after the Blazblue news lately. great video!

I agree that SMT3's story makes no sense and it's why I love it so much. I'm a sucker for moody abstract shit like that.

As a blazblue fan who was roped in specifically for the story and stuck with it from Calamity trigger to Central fiction (not cross tag sorry) including all of the side media at the time) I appreciate this. I appreciate this video. I infact love this. The characters of the series a wealthy development batch. Some more so then others. From Nine to Tager. even the likes of Litchi and Bang. Great video !

"I'm gonna make you cry, I swear to God." - Ragna the "Trying his best" Bloodedge

This made me look back at my fist ever interaction with the series: playing trough the arcade mode in Continuum Shift as Noel. Yeah, this is completely right. Even in that short period of time, in just those 10 fights (multiplied by a thousand cuz goddammit unlimited Hazama) it really made me connect to her and the world of Blazblue. They did an amazing job at that and no one can deny it.

As per usual, absolutely goated video, I know nothing about blaze blue apart from neco arc is like a thing maybe but this still just go through to me so well BUT CAN WE ALSO TALK ABOUT THAT TIME THAT IS A NEW RECORD LETS GO

I got interested in the thumbnail due to being new to blazblue and also learning about Ragna and Jin by digging a little, and your takes on the plot and characters got me even more invested, so, wonderful job! ...but what really sold me was the nocturne take, instasub, someone finally gets me.

the gameplay itself also happens reward you on your time spent with a character, even after only being interested in them superficially at first. I love this game. Can’t wait for it to go on sale again

BlazBlue's story is absolutely insane. I love it, but oh lord... Its a wild fever dream... (Literally)

Wish you talked more about Jin. I'm completely new to BB lore so seeing his facial expression in the Ragna Vs Jin animation along with your description made me very intrigued

Superb job with BlazeBlue, sir. I personally really like the story because it goes a lot harder and trying to actually have a story then the most combat related titles do.

I used to not be too huge on fighting games (and even now as much as a lot of my favorite games are FGs, I wouldn't say completely that it's my preferred style of game), and even though I was interested in Melty Blood (even then it was moreso Tsukihime) and Under Night, it still took me a while to truly get into them. Now, I knew about Blazblue through BBTAG but it still took me a while to get into it. At the time my friend was obsessed with GG Strive and I might've been too--had I had any current console or hardware to play it. Lo and behold, I suddenly get an increasing amount Blazblue vids in my recommended which leads me to watch them and go "hey hang on a minute, these characters and plot actually cool af". Which then leads me to get INVESTED in Blazblue HARD and eventually get the entire series on PS3 (cause that's the most current console I have) and now I have absolute crippling obsession with Blazblue and now enjoy fighting games far more than I would have (I do love Under Night but considering I'm more of a guy who plays video games for the story most of the time and I bought UNI: LATE, there wasn't much story for me aside from the arcade mode) before. Needless to say, it's all because I absolutely fell in love with the characters and there was also a shit ton of story that I could get myself invested in. Also I get to sorta renact fandom wars between GG and BB because while I'm a BB fan, my friend's a GG fan. Though we both do admit that both games are still cool af. Mini rant of how I got into Blazblue aside, you hit the nail on how the characters gaslight you. And that's also another reason why I like Blazblue so much--the characters have so much hidden depth that keeps you digging for more. Also I love the fact that the characters each have their own agenda and are doing their own thing most of the time. It feels like it's one big crossover between heroes (or more specifically antiheroes) and villains in the same vein Marvel and DC do it with their own characters--which I absolutely ADORE. It makes the world feel big and lived in because it's not just a very specific bunch of characters (okay sometimes it is) doing shit--there's characters doing their own thing. And that's kinda unheard of (at least for me anyways) in most anime/animeesque media.

6:52 Oh yeah my 500 hours of reading text abount lore is finaly usefull

SMT3 criticism detected: Opinion Invalidated

You know... every square is just two triangles~

Whether I tell Jin and Hakumen where mcdonalds is depends on how much I hate the local Mcdonalds branch.

Personally love the story, found it easy to understand after some time when looking back into it. That said, thank you for the video. You did an amazing job describing exactly what I love in this game when it comes to their characters. Ragna is still the best character

you english teacher DOES WHAT

What's the deep part of Azrael's lore? Checkmate Professor Reliable! Ha!

Love that Bullet's in the thumbnail when she's *the* Blazblue character with ZERO depth

Wanna put it out there. Triangles in particular elicit very different emotions depending on the way they are rotated

Videos like these are why I'm glad I subbed to you. Too many people sleep on Blazblue fr fr.

Your forgotbthe best ending were rachel keeps giving ragna the glass of the rizzler and henspendnthenrest time time running to avoid death by snu snu.

Ain't no way this dude made a regular length video what thr hell

Aww. Nocturne was actually really simple, though. A bunch a guys want to be gods so they do a ritual to make that happen. You fight for survival and to influence the outcome of that ritual. The end. It's a neat game.

You can tell blazblue had a lot of effort put into it personally because I still remember a lot of the gag reels when I was a teenager/preteen playing through them. Noel's terrible cooking, Jin's psychotic brother complex, Bang Shishigami's incessant need to be the hero with his own god damn theme song when he activates Fu Rin Ka Zan. Even as the cast grew in size they still kept that energy up. Its why bullet has the nickname butt floss which also works as joke with multiple meanings like "were you just horny at character select when you picked her?". Blazblue is hilarious we have daddy issues, brother issues, ESPECIALLY sister issues, you take everyones issues add a dose of magic amp it to 100 and see what the hell comes out of it.

1:57 man Scorpion and Sub-Zero WISHED they could have this Awesome Intro.

Wake up babe Old Reliable just dropped. Memes aside I love your content it's always strange and somehow still makes sense

There are some pretty interesting notes to Observation in Centralfiction (which I feel like they never actually brought up in the previous games lmao). They basically ask 'if you rewind time but no one remembers it won't literally the same thing happen again?' Except there are people who remember it, they are simply """"""outside of reason"""""" (god help me what does this mean) and being outside of reason means that you can't impact the future because the world only exists within reason?? And observation allows things that would normally be impossible, like changing the past or being un-alive-un-exist-exist-alive to happen because 'the observer said it happened', I guess. So that's... cool.

The fact that ragna took the name bloodedge cuz it sounds cool makes him kinda similar to the average ragna main.

Blazblue has some of the most drugged out and hilarious gag endings. Even if you get a bad ending, the Help Me! Professor Kokonoe! segments are hilarious.

Blazblue is the most "Yeah I've heard the voicelines, saw the gameplay, the animations, i must know the lore... right ?" game I've ever seen So yeah i thought Hakumen was this Serious ninja cyborg who got corrupted by Evil hooded dude to become Crazy Beast thing, as you can observe in Susanoo's intro Turns out it's actually Crazy Beast thing and the prince-like ice dude who becomes the serious cyborg I'm this close to thinking Azrael's just a misunderstood dude who just likes to drink and loves fighting

Great video man. I'm now a fan

To me, BlazBlue is one of the best videogame franchises of all time, and by far my favorite fighting game franchise There's no other franchise with a lore so deep, so good and charismatic characters and everything Else

Soul eater scenes Skullgirls music Blazeblue topic You are Cultured

Me: Ok so i guess hazama, the gangster from the Michael Jackson mafia. Becomes bat shit insane and becames/was terumi. Oh this tsubaki lady looks like a cool character. She is for sure not a war criminal. (And a simp) This hibiki dude looks important. He is a ninja after all Susano is a furry Hakumen is an lawful evil robot swordsman that seeks too slay all weak living things Iron tager is a red ork? Thats so cool! Nu13 is in love with ragna? Thats such a cute ship! And There is nothing sus about it.

That welcome back to preschool joke got me good. Guess I gotta subscribe

Honestly the ending of blazblue really just ties all of the nonsense together.

Why do I feel like Old Reliable is the only one gaslighting me here

Gaslighting? There you go making up words again Dad. Did you take your pills today?

I don't know much about blazblue but hyakumen get rid of basically a restriction seal by sheer fucking will is so fucking badass

Legit, idk if this is cheesy or not but I play Ragna and a friend of mine used to play Jin. When Ragna goes into Overdrive versus Jin he screams "JIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN" in such a way that just made me feel things. Idk if that was the intention or the VO director knew, but it just hits different knowing what this character has gone through in trying to protect his loved ones and his family. Blazblue kicks ass dude,

I dunno who the character with the silly yellow hat is, but every time you put the picture of them staring at the screen with a creepy grin it gives me a fright

I knew we wouldn't get through a BB character video without at least 1 Chadkumen moment

Oi, you didn't need to throw Nocturne under the bus like that

The way I always described Ragna is that he looks like an edgelord and acts like an edgelord, but really isn't one. He's a decent guy that life just insists on kicking while he's down. A few of his quotes come off as more tired of everyone else's BS than anything else.

Every character feels so important in the story

Subs in Blazblue? …I’ll never recover from the lack of dub in CF…

I remember when I first got to play Calamity Trigger on PSP and I admit I initially gravitaed to Jin because of his design but immediately dropped him because of his ingame dialogue while fighting. I decided to play Ragna's story first and noticed a sharp contrast in the CT character design and his story images which I don't know felt softer? Its hard to explain almost fifteen years later but that is the thought that comes to mind. I relate to Ragna because despite everybody in the world giving him every reason and justification to hate the world and everyone in it he says "no" I'm not about that and works his ass off to protect everybody and everyone in it going so far as willing to become the villain in other people's eyes to do so. His ending while heroically tragic feels like the only way it could have ended for him. There is a lot more to Blazblu than what people think and it makes me sad that people do write it off as a meme and the million and one videos on this site promoting that idea doesn't help. Hell right now to the right of this very comment is a video by some rando titled "Trying to recall the plot of Blazblue Central Fiction" and it just makes me make said goodra noises. (don't read into that too much)

9:23 noticed the very subtle gigachad ost, gave me a good chukle

When I first saw Jin and Ragna, I saw them on the video about voiced Under Heaven Destruction. Judging from this, I was thinking Jin was somekind of cocky angel, and Ragna as some angry demon. Anyway, when I figured out, they both just Dante and Vergil :D (Even Jin's cockyness when he fights Ragna in early games, looks like Vergil and Dante last fight in DMC3, as the time goes by, they just fight out of fun? Probably) Also, Saya is the true antag here, she inderectly caused Ragna to lose arm, caused Jin to become more brainwashed because of Yukianesa's will, and yet Jin and Ragna still try to save her, and her little clone army.

First of all, you're doing fine in terms of advancing your thesis. You're definitely going to improve, but it's not like this was a disorganized rant. Don't be so hard on yourself! Second, you've really gotten me thinking. Central Fiction as a story is really powerful, and as much as I like anime and fighters I'm actually pretty immune to a lot of its standard appeals, but there's some incredible moments in it. You're super astute in identifying that a critical theme of BlazBlue is the distinction between reality and appearance. That's also seen in my boy Kagura, in Noel, in Celica, in all of the Nine Heroes (Jubei, Hakumen, Nine) and so forth. The story loves to add layers of characterization even in addition: We already had a sense of who Celica was as the adoptive parent of Noel, Jin and Ragna, but Celica's depiction in her younger incarnated form feels like the young idealist dumb ditz type, yet people like Nine can only relate to her in terms of the mature person we know later. One thing I'd point out is that, as you play even in Versus, you can start seeing that Jin is arrogant, cruel and borderline psychopathic while Ragna has a calm and disaffected streak. It doesn't take the story mode to drive that home. What the narrative is doing is showing how characters perceive themselves and others, which is something that in-game animations and winning/losing text has always done but that BlazBlue does spectacularly well. What's particularly funny about the story is that it does maintain shades of grey even as it's already changed our perspective (e.g. Ragna's rage near the end of Central Fiction almost costs everything, and Jin starts to become closer to the compassionate person he can be). We are playing Ragna, and yet we are still seeing layers of propaganda and obfuscation. Central Fiction doesn't even start from Ragna's perspective, so we are responding to other people's perspectives even before we get into the main character's mind. And once we are playing Ragna, his inner calm, melancholy, nobility and compassion come out before his memories return. We only understand why he is as rebellious and self-righteous as he is after having seen that and knowing what events made him commit to his course of action.

This is brilliant, great stuff

I learned about 4 years ago about Nine and Jubei and that’s one of the only things I’ll never forget

I’m here for new Blazblue content in 2022

i think soul caliber 6 all so did great job at delivering the story and the personality of the characters

pog video -Ragna the Pogedge

"Observation" Is why i call BlazBlue the "Quantum mechanics anime"

I remember when It's revealed that Hakumen is Ragna's brother... I mean it's true but not with wacky other dimension crap

I will say, there's at least one character whose design does not gaslight you. Best girl Celica Though, I'm ashamed to admit I was absolutely gaslit by Ragna and Jin's designs when I first got into BB

I wish blazblue with a normal gaming controller was a fraction of as well thought out as the characters. Its literally impossible to input half the combos with a D pad or analog stick.

nine gaslights me? thats hot asf

I see you put alot of thought into this video. Good show.

You know after watching this. I just realized how great and well-suited for Jin his ending became. I initially hated it cause of ALL the build up they gave with Jin. All the training arcs and shizz, making me think he'll be integral for the ending. Then saying NAH homie he gonna go SIMP. I now realize him forsaking his " duty" to save the world and be the Hero the world expects him to be just to go and save the girl he is simping for is probably the best ending for him. Also Hakumen dont need to be observed to exist The power of Order has the ability to stabilize the existence of anyone who has it also equalizes the user's power to the same level as his enemy. Hence IIRC Jin was able to retain some memories of the previous timeline in CF Power of Order is legit a broken ass ability.

No me arrepiento de haberme suscrito a éste canal.

Inferno Divider!

Cool video, I'd appreciate more insight into how Jin being fucking insane for the first few games despite his initial cool appearance. Aka, more gas lighting.

The wildest part of this video is how your English teacher turned out to be a genshin cosplayer lmfao. But memes aside I do hope someone makes a good lore video for blazblue the same way woolfieversus did for guilty gear.

pretty sure Hakumen traded Kokonoe for Rachel once he found out she could give him 20% of his power instead of 10% and since she is an observer she cant influence his half as much as Kokonoe

Smt nocturne is one of my favorite games of all time, but I can understand saying the story makes no sense