The director, Hideki Tachibana, worked on Azumanga Daioh, A Certain Magical Index and A Certain Scientific Railgun. Seiji Mizushima (Slayers Next, Shaman King, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, Natsuiro Kiseki) serves as the anime’s assistant director. The anime’s script is co-written by Deko Akao (Mysterious Girlfriend X) and Tatsuya Takahashi (The World God Only Knows and The Idolmaster).
Toshimichi Mori, the games' producer, helps the series composition and supervises production of Alter Memory. It is a co-production between two anime studios: teamKG (of Hanayaka Nari, Waga Ichizoku Kinetograph fame) and Hoods Entertainment (also with Mysterious Girlfriend X).
Funimation simulcast BlazBlue: Alter Memory and can be watched on their website here
. It has since been announced that it's getting an English dub, with most of the English voice cast reprising their roles.
This anime provides examples of:
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Taokaka's noticeably curvier than she's normally drawn in the game's artwork.
- Adaptational Jerkass: Downplayed: in the original games, Jin is already quite a Jerkass, but he still has a soft spot for his Childhood Friend Tsubaki. Here, that soft spot is gone.
- Adaptation Expansion: The anime's rendition of Continuum Shift adds a lot of additional development and establishing scenes.
- Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole:
- In the games, Ragna left Hazama for dead because of the life link he had with Noel, meaning he couldn't die anyway, something Ragna acknowledges. Since no such thing is even mentioned in the anime, Ragna's decision makes no type of of sense.
- In the games, when Jin fights Tsubaki without Yukianesa he is unable to use any attacks that involve ice. In the anime version of that fight, Jin shoots a blast of ice. While Jin can use Ars Magus on his own, he cannot use any ice attacks without Yukianesa.
- All There in the Manual: Well, the original game. Most of the anime makes little sense to those who haven't played the game beforehand, due to many things going unexplained.
- Anime of the Game: As far back as 2010, even the game designer was hopeful for an anime adaption. One of Arc System Works' partners, Zen United, launched an official petition to support BlazBlue becoming an anime. They finally got what they wanted.
- Big Damn Heroes: Ragna pulls one on Jin in Episode 12. Lampshaded.Ragna: I was lurking in the shadows, waiting for you to get beat.Jin: You're so mean, brother.
- Blood from the Mouth: Happens to Hazama after Ragna defeats him with Devoured by Darkness.
- Call-Back: Kokonoe has coffee in her laboratory, despite hating the stuff. The only reason she even asked for coffee the first time was to give Roy, who is now Arakune, a reason to leave the room when she talked with Relius a long time ago. She never drank his coffee either, but constantly requested he make her some.
- Call-Forward: The Kaka hot springs weren't introduced until BlazBlue: Chronophantasma in the games, yet they appear here and serve the same general purpose.
- Cold-Blooded Torture - Forced to Watch: Hazama tortures Makoto to enrage Noel and destroy Bolverk's limiter.
- Compressed Adaptation: The two-and-a-half episodes devoted to Calamity Trigger ignore everything that isn't to do with the central Ragna plot. The Continuum Shift part also had plenty of content that wasn't related to Ragna or Noel cut, even adding in filler to make up for the lack of content those two provided.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: A number:
- Ragna's first fight with Jin.
- Jin vs Bang.
- Hazama gives one to Noel and Makoto once he decides to use Ouroboros. It's also implied that his fight with Tager went this way.
- Declaration of Protection: Ragna to Noel.
- Demoted to Extra:
- Platinum and Carl each only appear in a single scene.
- Arakune gets shafted as well, only appearing a little more than Carl and Platinum.
- Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Happens to Tsubaki as she uses the Izayoi.
- Gorn: In Ragna's flashback to when his house was burned down, a flooding of blood spews from what was left of his arm.Terumi (English Version): Hey kid, need a hand? Well shit, Rags. That looks kinda painful! So? How much does it hurt on a scale 1 to 10? Whoops, don't have enough fingers to count that high!Terumi (Japanese Version): Whoops! He cut it off! Oh crap! That looks super painful, Ragna-chan! Does it hurt? Come on, does it hurt? Well, of COURSE, it hurts, right?!
- Honour Before Reason: Bang doesn't want to defeat Jin if neither are at full strength. This ultimately leads to Bang bringing Jin to his village to help Jin heal.
- Hot Springs Episode: Appears as an excuse to heal Ragna faster.
- Idiot Ball: Yes, Ragna, leave a nearly dead Hazama on the ground. This can't be a terrible decision in any way. note
- Late-Arrival Spoiler:
- Sort of. At first, the website completely spoiled that Hazama is actually Yuki Terumi of the Six Heroes. A later revision removed the spoiler-y parts.
- And now the first episode spoiled Hazama's involvement of the plot, as well as the existence of Lambda-11, Platinum, Relius and Imperator Saya by placing them in the end credits. The first and the last were the twist in their respective games.
- Milking the Giant Cow: Who else but Hazama? And right after the LIES LIES LIES speech, to boot.
- Mind Screwdriver: The anime explains some of the odder plot elements of the video games a lot more clearly. For example, in Episode 11, Hazama explains the connection between the Boundary, the Amaterasu Unit, the Izayoi, the Prime Fields, Takamagahara, and the BlazBlue.
- Not Worth Killing:
- Ragna does this after nearly killing Hazama. This bites him in the ass big time. However, this is justified in the game.
- Jin says this to Tsubaki after he defeats her.
- Once an Episode: Whenever Jin appears (until Episode 9), expect him to get/open up a severe injury in some way.
- Out of Focus: The anime mainly focuses on Ragna, Jin, and Noel's routes from the first two games, so as a result nearly every other character is kinda pushed to the side with little to no info from their own routes. It might justified with there being just too much to cover in only 12 episodes however.
- Funnily enough, this is Inverted in regards to Makoto Nanaya. In the game she debuts in, while she does get a little screentime, she ultimately doesn't have much of an impact on the plot. In the anime, she's actively working to protect Noel from Hazama.(The former goes after the latter in the games, despite warnings not to.)
- Put on a Bus: Most of the cast from the games. For some the bus came back. Poor Carl got hit the hardest.
- Retcon:
- Rachel's fate resembled her bad ending in Continuum Shift a lot more than it did her true end.
- Lambda's joke end is canon. However, it takes place between Lambda and Ragna, instead of Lambda and Makoto. The tartar also dies before Lambda reaches Kokonoe's lab. This also explains why Lambda sacrificed herself for Ragna, instead of using a Hand Wave and saying Nu did it.
- Ship Tease:
- Halfway through "The Red Rebel," we get some between Ragna and Noel. When she find him laying down and taking a nap, Noel actually rests him on her lap, puts her hand on his face to see if he has a fever and tries to get him to a doctor.
- In Episode 4, she eventually finds Ragna in Kaka Village resting from his injuries...shirtless, which prompts Ragna to tell her not to stare and she denies it...while blushing. And then the next scene has her bandaging his wounds....with less than desirable results.
- Episode 5 has the hotspring scene.
- Episode 8 is little more than this between Ragna and Lambda-11.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: Taokaka stops appearing after the first few episodes. Bang appears later, but is completely serious after learning about Jin's wounds and doesn't resemble his Hot-Blooded self at all.
- Stock Footage: Usually during fights.
- 12-Episode Anime
