Line #1 Manga/BlazblueRemixHeart


1	! Due to the nature of being a prequel to ''VideoGame/BlazBlueCalamityTrigger'', {{Late Arrival Spoiler}}s for that game, and other subsequent entries in the ''Franchise/BlazBlue'' series will be left unmarked. Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned!
2	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/blazblue_remix_heart_volume_1.png]]
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4	''[=BlazBlue=]: Remix Heart'' is a prequel manga taking place before the start of the main series and is set at the NOL's military academy in the 15th Hierarchical City of Torifune when many of the characters were still students. It is drawn by famous {{Doujinshi}} artist, Sumeragi, and authored by writer for the ''Franchise/BlazBlue'' games, Deko Akao, based on a story outline by the producer of ''[=BlazBlue=]'', Toshimichi Mori. The story centers around [[GenderBender Mai Natsume]], a new student who had just arrived late due to a week absence and focuses on her interactions with her roommate Kajun Faycott and other major characters from the series including Noel Vermilion, Tsubaki Yayoi, and Makoto Nanaya, all of whom then make a posse together called [[TitleDrop Remix Heart]]. Other characters from the games do show up, but mainly as cameos. The series was serialized in a digital only magazine and ran for 24 chapters.
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6	''VideoGame/BlazBlueChronophantasma Extend'' includes a section named ''Remix Heart Gaiden'' containing two side-stories that take place during the early part of the manga. Remix Heart will be getting a sequel manga titled ''Manga/BlazblueVariableHeart'' written by Mori himself and illustrated by Sumeragi.
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8	!!This series provides examples of
9	* ACupAngst: Noel got struck with this a few times, such as when she tried to fit one of Miss Emma's bras. Made funnier later when Miss Emma suspected something weird when she sees Noel suddenly having large breasts. It isn't played as often as you'd expect it to be, though, considering she's basically surrounded by big breasts...
10	* ArtInitiatesLife: In ch. 8, a drawing of Hakumen comes to life after Tsubaki draws on the Hypnagogia Grimoire. The drawing is imbued with the will of the grimoire to stop anyone bothering with it - which means Tsubaki, Noel, Makoto and Kajun. Thankfully though, the Hakumen drawing isn't that strong and is beaten by Makoto.
11	* AttackOfTheKillerWhatever: In ch. 3, the watermelon seed that Noel swallowed gains a will of its own and tries to run to a blocked door while carrying Mai's friends. Subverted when Mai gains knowledge of what the watermelon wants: it wants the Evolutionary Grimoire so it can turn itself into a (honeydew) melon. (Because watermelons are technically a vegetable.)
12	* AnswerCut:
13	** In ch. 6, Mai wonders where the Azure Grimoire might be. Cut to a shot to someone in Torifune's woods... who's none other than teenage Ragna.
14	** Extended version in ch. 12: Mai, due to her newfound power, has accidentally transferred someone's ability that she acquired to Taro with a MagicKiss. When Noel wonders whose ability that might be, the scene cuts to Taro's room where his friends collapsed from eating Taro's food, and he himself followed as he tasted it himself. Then it cuts again to a scene a few hours after where Tsubaki realized whose ability it is: [[LethalChef Noel's.]]
15	* BarbieDollAnatomy: There's a page in the first chapter where 2 of the 5 ladies display this in the shower; Makoto is closest to the 'camera', with Noel next, with both of them lacking nipples. Also happens in the end of ch. 12 where this happens to Shiori and Chachakaka.
16	* BeachEpisode: Occurs in ch. 7 where Team Remix Heart (and Jin and Taro) [[ItMakesSenseInContext accidentally became a human ball and flung far away to a stranded island.]] They decide to have fun there for a bit after Jin called his friend for a chopper to take them up after a few hours.
17	* BecomingTheMask: Mai tries to pass for a normal girl as she wants to keep her true identity a secret. As a result she deliberately uses feminine speech patterns (such as the first person pronoun "watashi" instead of the more masculine "boku" she had used as a boy) and generally attempts to act as a girl even though she considers herself to be a boy in a girl's body. [[spoiler:Eventually however she comes to think of herself a girl.]]
18	* BeCarefulWhatYouSay: In ch. 3, Makoto jokes to Noel that an eaten watermelon seed may grow out of her navel. It becomes serious when, due to them venturing to a place with thick concentrations of seithr, the seed actually ''does'' grow from Noel's navel, forcing them to try and find a solution.
19	* BorrowedWithoutPermission: In ch. 9, when Noel comes up with the [[MagicMirror Ammit Cryas]] in her possession (as it's supposed to be kept in the school staff's room), she claimed that she "borrowed" it for her team's trip.
20	-->'''Tsubaki:''' You went and "borrowed" it...
21	* TheCameo: Ragna, Jubei, Hazama, Relius, Kagura and Kokonoe all make an appearance in at least one chapter. Meanwhile Mai and Kajun makes an appearance in ''CPEX'', and Taro also gets a few mentions. The former two also appears in Makoto's Act 1 arcade (in her flashback) before Mai was confirmed playable and Kajun appearing in her arcade story.
22	* CerebusSyndrome: While the manga never gets very dark, the second half is a departure from the SliceOfLife setup the manga started with and features a more serious plot.
23	* ChewOutFakeOut: In ch. 2, at first it looks like Tsubaki's going to chew Mai, Makoto and Noel out for basically cheating on behalf of her to get her the "Izanami" title. But then she thanks them, noting that they all have tried to help her. [[SubvertedTrope And then Tsubaki does tell them not to do that again.]]
24	* ClothingDamage: Happens often with the girl characters, but Mai gets the most of this.
25	* DeepCoverAgent: There are three instances of this in the manga:
26	** [[spoiler:Miss Emma]] is secretly working for Kagura Mutsuki. She refers to herself as [[spoiler:"Agent E"]] when talking to him on the phone.
27	** [[spoiler:Kajun]] is a DoubleAgent from Sector Seven who was sent to locate the Burning Red grimoire for Kokonoe as she wanted to use it as a power source for Iron Tager.
28	** [[spoiler:Both Shiori and Chachakaka]] are assassins who have enrolled at the Military Academy as students. Their mission is to assassinate Jin Kisaragi.
29	* DemotedToExtra: While he isn't exactly an "extra", Jin (one of the protagonists in the games) is mostly a supporting character in this series.
30	* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnFemale: Makoto tells Mai it's OK for girls to kiss girls--by which she means "{{forc\|eful kiss}}ibly, without their permission"--which no one disputes. Pushing the same logic to the extreme, Mai then figures that makes it OK to disguise herself as a guy (when at this point, [[RecursiveCrossdressing she still considered herself male]]), sneak into girls' rooms, and suddenly kiss them to use her ability to read their thoughts. None of the girls make a big deal out of it because [[NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization they all loved being kissed by a handsome stranger]].
31	* DramaticIrony: In ch. 10 and 11, the team goes finding hints of the Azure Grimoire in the lower levels of the city, but in the end they only stumble upon a small fragment of it. But little did Mai knew that the guy she met when she's separated from the others (who got hounded by the "zombies" and ended up outside) had the Azure Grimoire with him.
32	* EarlyBirdCameo:
33	** [[HandsomeLech Kagura]] debuts in this series in one chapter, quite a few months from his playable debut in ''VideoGame/BlazBlueChronophantasma''.
34	** Mai herself. The first chapter of Remix Heart was released in 2012, ''four years'' before she finally made it into the games proper.
35	* ExcitedEpisodeTitle: Since the second volume, most chapter titles end with an exclamation mark.
36	* {{Fanservice}}: Increased relative to the main series, though still tame compared to other ecchi manga. No nipples are ever shown and the most that happens is occasional groping between some of the girls.
37	* FeetOfClay: Played for laughs in ch. 9 where Noel claims that she won't get her eyes stung by cutting onions because she cooks often. Right after that we see her getting teary-eyed from cutting onions.
38	* FindTheCure: a big subplot of the story involves the team trying to help Mai cure her super taste. [[spoiler:In the end, as the No Name completely merges with her, her ability becomes essentially permanent - but the end of the last chapter has the team [[AndTheAdventureContinues vows to keep trying.]]]]
39	* FirstEpisodeTwist: The first chapter plays Mai as an awkward schoolgirl around her friends. It is explained away as her being a sheltered girl and was hospitalized during the first school days. However, there's another, bigger reason revealed at the end... She actually was a guy. This twist then becomes one of the driving points of the story as a whole.
40	* FirstLawOfGenderBending: Mai's condition is basically irreversible [[spoiler:but she comes to accept it in the end.]]
41	* ForbiddenZone: The lower elevation areas of the city is filled with thick seithr and is thus harmful to people. Our team naturally goes there a few times, trying to find grimoires.
42	* {{Foreshadowing}}: Played with. The fact that Mai is from the Hazuki house of the Duodecim is revealed in ch. 2, but there's how Tsubaki, Jin and Kagura (also from the Duodecim) remark in different occasions that they've seen someone like her before. It does, however, lead to the InternalReveal in ch. 23 that shows to them (mainly Tsubaki) that yes, she is Mai Hazuki.
43	* FourPhilosophyEnsemble: Within the Remix Heart, Tsubaki is the cynic, Makoto the optimist, Kajun the realist, and Noel and Mai the conflicted.
44	* FreudianTrio: A couple appears here. Aside from Tsubaki/Noel/Makoto, we have:
45	** Mai as the Ego, Kajun as the Superego and Shiori as the Id.
46	** Jin as the Superego, Akane as the Ego and Taro as the Id.
47	* FuroScene: Happens a couple of times, mostly involving the titular team. CensorSteam is also involved as well.
48	* HotSpringsEpisode: The Gaiden ch. 1 (part 2) is this. Kajun finds a hot spring in the middle of a forest and she and Mai takes rest there for a bit.
49	* HotTeacher: Miss Estella "Emma" [=McKenzie=].
50	* LaserGuidedAmnesia: In ch. 9, a grimoire causes Mai to lose her memories of her school life and gets freaked out by her surroundings. She even blurts out that she's a guy to her friends, but they're just confused over her behavior. Only after she tastes her own tears, and later her close friends', that she goes back to normal.
51	* LethalChef: Noel's "quality" is shown more here. Apparently, her cooking is so atrocious that Miss Emma uses it to punish anyone who didn't do their cleanup job well. Mai, however, notes that it tastes so awesome (because she can feel through the food that Noel pours all of her pure heart into it) that later she would eat nothing but her cooking. This is a running joke in the manga.
52	* LighterAndSofter: The series is mostly a comical SliceOfLife series compared to very dark atmosphere of the video games, though the second half does become more serious.
53	* LossOfIdentity: Mai constantly struggles with her gender identity throughout the manga. She enjoys the warm and fuzzy feeling that she gets from her new life, but at the same time she fears two opposite things: the time where the truth of her condition may be revealed to her friends (as they all wanted to "turn her to normal"), or the time where she "loses" her real self. [[spoiler:Both of them are eventually resolved near the end of the manga.]]
54	* LotusEaterMachine: In ch. 8, Mai gets her mind accidentally transferred into the Hypnagogia Grimoire when she bled a bit from her finger when she holds it and instinctively licked it (because she has that super taste). Within that grimoire she experiences fantastic dreams as the pages of the book gets filled with her pictures... and when her friends found her lying down on the floor with the book, Kajun says that if it gets filled until the final page, Mai's mind will be trapped in there forever. Cue the team doing everything they can to get Mai out of the book. Her dream inadvertently turns into a nightmare when the projected memories of her friends meet her... and start fighting each other, while saying that they will fight anyone for her. Seeing her friends in such a state makes Mai realize that she really cares about them and she doesn't want them to get hurt because of her - and it makes her reject the dream world, finally freeing her from the grimoire.
55	* MagicMirror: The grimoire named Ammit Cryas takes form of this. It shows within the mirror [[TheMirrorShowsYourTrueSelf the "true self" of the one holding it.]][[note]]Kajun nearly revealed her "true self" (i.e being a Sector Seven DoubleAgent) before she threw it away, while Mai also gets hold of it and we just see a silhouette. [[/note]] But as Kajun noted, gazing at the mirror for too long may lead to you being absorbed into it. Noel herself instinctively feels that she shouldn't touch the thing.
56	* ManipulativeBastard: During the first volume, Miss Emma is concerned by the fact that the team somehow finds/stumbles upon a number of grimoires pretty easily, and worries that someone is manipulating them. Turns out that she is correct, as [[spoiler:Kajun deliberately makes the group go looking for grimoires, mainly using the search for a grimoire to cure Mai as an excuse (though she resorts to other methods, such as tricking the group into thinking that they needed to find a grimoire to win in a sports festival). She does that because her mission from Kokonoe was to find the Burning Red grimoire and she thus investigates any signs pointing to the presence of a grimoire in the hopes of finding it and uses her friends to help her without revealing what she's after.]]
57	* TheMatchmaker: Both times involving the whole Remix Heart team.
58	** In ch. 2, Jin is selected (once again) as the year's "Izanagi" for the school festival. Tsubaki, naturally, wants to be the "Izanami" besides him; Kajun devises a plan that will carry Tsubaki through the RockPaperScissors game that is used to determine the winner. It worked well until the losing contestants talked about "the mysterious kisser" (Mai in disguise) they met the night before. Kajun steps in, trying to prove Tsubaki's innocence by taking on the rock-paper-scissors game with her... and then Kajun gets the title instead. But then Kajun basically says that getting the title shouldn't really matter (see PyrrhicVictory below).
59	** In ch. 18, the team suspects that Mai is lovestruck with Taro and decide to plan a date for them. It doesn't go as perfectly as expected, but in the end Mai does get to be with Taro and everyone's happy.
60	* NegatedMomentOfAwesome: In ch. 11, Ragna is doing some beating on the "zombies", but they keep coming up. He then goes to activate the Azure Grimoire... but then 2 zombies grab them from behind and throw him into the dust shoot.
61	* OnlyOneWhoLikesSpam: Nobody likes Noel's cooking except for Mai, who can sense Noel's innocence and earnestness due to her "super-taste" powers, meaning it tastes "like heaven" to her.
62	* PoorCommunicationKills: Downplayed: It doesn't particularly harm Mai, but the fact she worries that her friends will reject her if they knew she had concealed the truth about who she is, does cause trouble for her as she keeps trying to maintain the image of a normal girl. [[spoiler:When her secrets are finally revealed near the end, her friends don't really care and they still love her like before, giving her closure.]]
63	* ThePowerOfFriendship: Shown a number of times.
64	** In ch. 6, the fact that Makoto goes out of the way to save Noel out of the antlion pit and then Mai trying to do the same for Makoto impresses the Guardian (who made the pit in the first place) so much, because other people came to his place looking for an object of desire, and all of them showed selfishness (like sacrificing their own friends to save themselves or abandoning them) which makes him got fed up with it; such that he offers to grant our team one wish. And our team gets their objective, the Conversion Grimoire, from him.
65	** In ch. 8, Mai's friends' projected desire to save her from being trapped in her dreams (because of the Hypnagogia Grimoire) is what eventually saves Mai.
66	** In ch. 23, the support and affection of her friends allows Mai to realize that her life isn't meaningless even if her father has seemingly rejected her and allows her to gain self-esteem, accept her current self and be happy as she is.
67	** Discussed in Gaiden ch. 1 (part 2) where Mai is feeling down about herself because she can't be "perfect" and she thinks she's a burden to everyone. Kajun reminds her that nobody's perfect, and that's why people make friends - to help each other. She also recalls that Mai also has helped her friends before. Because of Mai's past, it really helps her becomes more confident with herself.
68	* PseudoRomanticFriendship: All the members of Remix Heart are very affectionate with each other, but none of their feelings but Shiori's for Mai are treated as romantic. Despite close contact with girls initially flustering Mai, because she used to be a boy, she doesn't seem to be attracted to ''any'' of them.
69	* PyrrhicVictory:
70	** Inverted in ch. 2: Tsubaki loses the contest for determining the "Izanami" title for the school festival to Kajun (who didn't mean to win in the first place), but she noted that, in the previous year, Jin (as the "Izanagi") neglected the "Izanami" of previous year because he's so busy, and she predicts that Jin will be the same again this year. Which basically means Kajun saves Tsubaki from getting a PyrrhicVictory. Later on Kajun herself just slacks off from being "Izanami" and Tsubaki just walks into the student council room and meets Jin by herself, readying to work as a student council member under him.
71	** Also inverted in ch. 6; in the athletic contest, the titular team comes the last on finding their objectives... but Jin and Akane still give them the MVP title because other groups brought out frauds/facsimiles (i.e those whose objective was "Six Heroes" only brought with them paraphernalia of said heroes) while team Remix Heart brought a genuine grimoire, and all of those objectives are supposed to be impossible if done exactly. [[spoiler:Behind them, however, Jin notes that, of all the objective cards given to the contestants, he doesn't recall one of them being a grimoire. This intrigues him and Miss Emma.]]
72	* SeeksAnothersResurrection: In ch. 11, the guardians of the Adsequi Grimoire (aka the Grimoire of Pursuit) tells the story of the very first StudentCouncilPresident who was [[TheAce very influential to the academy and later the NOL,]] until her beloved died; she then tirelessly pursued a way to resurrect the dead, until she comes across the grimoire, which absorbed her soul into it. Even after that, the girl is still trying to resurrect her beloved by manipulating the Azure, but she gets nothing but failures. In the end, it's revealed through Mai's ability that [[ItWasWithYouAllAlong the soul of the girl's beloved is already right besides her]], in the form of the flowers surrounding the statue (the grimoire). The girl, named Elina, is so happy to [[TogetherInDeath be reunited by her lover's soul]] that she releases herself from the grimoire and thanks Mai.
73	* SchoolFestival: Occurs in the second chapter.
74	* SchoolOfNoStudying: Most of the time, the team Remix Heart goes into adventure, "solving cases" and other things than doing schoolwork. It's slightly averted, however, e.g Mai finding some books in the library to study (which leads to the plot of the chapter) or 1-2 scenes of class activities.
75	* SchoolSportUniform: The team wears one during the athletics festival (ch. 5 and 6).
76	* SchoolSwimsuit: The team wears one in the opening color page of the volume 3, as well as the entirety of ch. 17.
77	* SeriousBusiness: In ch. 4, Mai takes "slacking off from cleaning duty" seriously because she'll get to eat Noel's cooking if she does.
78	** In ch. 5, Makoto takes winning the athletics festival seriously. We see why later: apparently the rules say it's okay for each contestant to take down each other. And Kajun noted that some contestants in previous festivals who went on to find the objectives needed didn't come back.
79	** In Gaiden ch. 1, Kajun takes the Torifune Yam they just found seriously. The yam is apparently rare and is very nutritious and can improve a girl's looks. Mai doesn't really get it, though, and notes that Kajun becomes "different" when it comes to this.
80	* TheSevenMysteries: The team in Gaiden ch. 2 explores this. It comes to a stop, however, when they got trapped in an empty building with the Ars Magus security barrier suddenly activating, with Jin (who intends to stop them once he knows they're there). But at least they come to know one mystery - [[spoiler:[[GeniusLoci the building has apparently come to life]] and tries to keep our group and Jin inside because it was lonely (because most of the students are leaving for vacation for 3 days). When Kajun reported this to Kokonoe, the latter says that it must've been the Evolution Grimoire the team found some time ago. She said that someone must've sealed the grimoire there, but she isn't sure who.]]
81	* SecondLawOfGenderBending: Mai's life significantly improves after being turned into a girl, though gender was largely incidental. Originally, she was under the thumb of her harsh and domineering father who forced her to work and study all the time, prevented her from having friends and demanded from Mai to be perfect in everything. Turning female lead Mai to the academy, where she made close friends she could feel comfortable around.
82	* ShipTease: Jin & Tsubaki, even more so than the main series considering the former hasn't devolved into his homicidal, insane self yet and the latter's crush on him is even more blatant.
83	** There's also Taro and Mai, particularly after their AccidentalKiss and she develops a crush on him for the remainder of the series.
84	* ShowerShy: Mai initially had a hard time adjusting herself to looking at naked female bodies normally, being prone to blushing and occasional nosebleeds.
85	* SliceOfLife: While there is an overarching plot, it's about wacky high school hi-jinks for the most part.
86	* SlobsVsSnobs: Shown in ch. 11 regarding laundry: Makoto the slob (coming from a less privileged family) likes the washing part but not the folding part, while Tsubaki the snob (coming from a high noble house) says that folding clothes feels so relaxing, and Noel has a similar view like Tsubaki's. Kajun is a different kind of snob: she's so spoiled that she doesn't do her laundry - instead she has Mai do it. Even for her undies.
87	-->'''Kajun:''' The necessity for laundry is...
88	-->''Beat''
89	-->'''Noel, Tsubaki and Makoto:''' WATER!!
90	* SpeakOfTheDevil:
91	** In ch. 2, before the school festival starts, our protagonists are discussing the previous year's "Izanagi" (i.e the title given to the star of the festival, along with "Izanami"), but they don't namedrop anyone until said "Izanagi" stumbles upon them: Jin.
92	* SuperGenderBender: The Nameless Grimoire made Mai's body female to merge with her, but this also let her access its power. [[spoiler:By letting it merge with her fully, Mai is able to use its full potential, at the cost of the transformation becoming completely irreversible.]]
93	* SuperSenses: With the power of the Nameless Grimoire (aka No Name), Mai can taste something and then gain information regarding that thing or the person who made it. This ability has helped her and her friends numerous times. [[CursedWithAwesome She views this as a curse, though,]] because she also cannot eat normal food because of it - but this same ability also allows her to stomach [[LethalChef Noel's cooking]] because she only feels Noel's sincere love from the food.
94	* ThemeNaming: Most of the chapter titles has "The Case of" ("...Jiken!" in Japanese) on them. It refers to how the titular team is a "detective team". This also applies to the bonus chapters in ''CPEX''.
95	* ThirdLawOfGenderBending: Mai is mentally affected by her transformation into a girl, or at least from [[BecomingTheMask spending a long time under a female (and deliberately feminine) identity]]. Mai gradually becomes more comfortable with being surrounded by girls and acting in a feminine manner: she stops thinking herself as being different from the girls surrounding her, is no longer embarrassed at being hugged by her friends and starts to hug them herself to show affection and she becomes willing to cry in front of others. The realization that she has fallen in love with a boy actually causes her to conclude that she has become female in both body and mind, which in turn leads to an identity crisis as she worries that she is no longer the person she was before her transformation into a girl. This is resolved near the end of the manga [[spoiler:when Mai decides that she doesn't care if she has changed as she is happy living the way she is.]]
96	* TitleDrop: "Remix Heart" was first namedropped in ch. 2 by Kajun as the name of their group. [[spoiler:Then much later, ypher reveals that a perfect combination of a grimoire and a person will create a "Remix Heart", an item that is a main component of his desired creation, the Crimson Grimoire.]]
97	* TransEqualsGay: Falling in love with a guy is definitive proof to Mai that she's [[SecondLawOfGenderBending completely become a girl in mind, not just body]]. The idea Mai could identify as a boy anyway, or have already liked guys when she was male, is never considered.
98	* TwoTeacherSchool: The only teachers we ever see in the school are Miss Emma and Professor Cypher Albar.
99	* WeatherControlMachine: The Regulation Grimoire introduced ch. 7 acts as one for the whole academy. In that chapter, the thing gets broken, causing fluctuating weathers (snowy in one region and hot in another) and our team gets to fix it.
100	* WhenHeSmiles: The usually cold Jin lets out some smiles occasionally towards Tsubaki.
101	* YonKoma: The manga has them as omakes where they all made fun of the things happening in the manga itself.

Context Manga / BlazblueRemixHeart