A new legend... Begins with the "Azure."
The children who resisted fate's designs.
The mysterious organization that guides destiny.
The "Azure Power" that surrounds and transcends everything.
The wheel of fate is now beginning to turn...
— XBlaze's First Trailer
In the past, there was a girl that was a doll.
She gave her body to the god, and saved the boy she loved.
However, the tragedy didn't end.
The thorns known as death binds his body, and refuses to let go.
Inside the eternal solitude, the girl learned about the boy's fate, and together with despair disappeared into the darkness.
— Nobody in XBlaze Lost: Memories's PV
In the year 2050, there was the protagonist, Touya Kagari, who lives in Neo Yokosaki City. One day, he follows a mysterious ringing sound into the Restricted Zone, which had been quarantined after an incident ten years earlier. Inside, he comes upon an injured man crying out and groaning in pain. As Touya approaches, the man suddenly changes and attacks him. A wall explodes as the man lets loose a horrible roar, which seems to be synchronized with the ringing of the bell. Unable to comprehend the situation, Touya attempts to run away and escape.
Just when he thinks all hope is lost, a young girl appears and repels the attacker. The Azure Maiden easily wields a massive sword. Her name is Es. Seithr, Drive, D-Progressor Union, Ensis Librarius Imperium... Touya's peaceful life is turned upside down by a series of confusing, unbelievable events. The wheel of fate is turning.
XBlaze Code: Embryo is a Visual Novel created by Arc System Works. XBlaze is a prequel to BlazBlue, which set 150 years earlier, according to series producer Toshimichi Mori. The game was developed by the BlazBlue team and was released on July 25, 2013 for the PlayStation 3 and Play Station Vita. The game was localized and released on June 24, 2014 in North America by Aksys Games.
A sequel, XBlaze Lost: Memories, was released on April 9, 2015. This story is about a girl who is referred as "Me", who lives in Ishana together with her sister. One day, her sister disappears, so Me goes into her father's workshop and somehow enters the phantom field were she meets with a mysterious girl known as Nobody, and together with Nobody, Me searches for sister while observing memories through "pieces of memories".
Tropes pertaining to Code: Embryo include:
- Anime Theme Song: "Be Oneself!" by Megu Sakuragawa.
- Bad Ending: Determined by how you use the TOi, either by ignoring everyone before Chapter 5 or not focusing on anyone to select a route afterwards. Either Sechs just appears and kills Touya for not doing or caring about anything, Es fails to catch Hinata when Ripper drops her off the hospital roof so Touya goes berserk and turns into the Black Beast or Touya goes berserk upon learning Hinata is the Embryo and Es has to Mercy Kill him before he fully becomes the Black Beast. The Gag Reel also has them for making bad choices.
- Bittersweet Ending: The T-system is destroyed, Unomaru and Sechs are defeated, the Gate cannot cover the world in seithr and the time loop has ended. However, in becoming the Embryo, Es is forced to remain in the Boundary to seal the Gate and prevent the Embryo from distorting the world, removing herself from the timeline and erasing everyone’s memories of her in the process.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: All over the place. The Drive Screaming Jaw, which creates destructive sound waves, becomes Screaming Joe and Touya’s mother Ryoko Kagari was misheard as Suzuko Kagari (although this one was fixed in Lost: Memories). The most egregious example is Origin of the Grimoire. “Gensho no Madousho” literally means Grimoire of Origin while Original Grimoire is the most natural translation, but somehow they managed to combine the two in a way that, while kind of having the same idea note , doesn’t sound natural and does not fit the naming convention set by the main series.
- Body Horror: A Drive-Infected Patient has a crystal grow on their body that attaches itself to their nervous system, making it impossible to remove and survive. The crystal is surrouned by large glowing veins that show like the crystal is a tree with roots in the infected’s body.
- City of Adventure: Shin Yokozaki City, which is filled with Unions, the Mitsurugi Agency that combats them and a Gate to the Boundary. Becomes this even more so once the Magic Guild gets involved.
- The Corruption: The Crystals that turn people into Unions can appear suddenly and bond with their host. While they grant a Drive that gives the Union incredible power, they become more violent and insane the more often the Drive is used, eventually causing them to dissolve into seithr.
- Didn't Think This Through: Seriously Magic Guild? How could resurrecting a super-powered Serial Killer possibly go wrong? Oh wait, he could kill your entire top brass and escape to terrorize innocent people again. Oops.
- Fanservice: Just like the main series, there’s fanservice in abundance, most notably in the pool scene, shower scenes and Es and Hinata’s Out-of-Clothes Experience.
- Gas Leak Cover Up: The official explanation for the Wadatsumi Incident and the Mitsurugi’s go-to excuse to hide Union attacks. A number of TOi posts take notice of this and start speculating about it.
- Golden Ending: Es’s route is the true and best ending. While it is still a Bittersweet Ending, it is this by default since all other endings are negated when Hinata presses the Reset Button. Es’s story breaks the time loop and canonically leads into Lost: Memories and by extension, the rest of the series.
- Gratuitous German: The Ten Sages are given German numbers as titles, as opposed to the English numbers used later in the timeline, so we have Sechs, Acht, Drei and Zwei. Additionally Kuon and Elise’s spells have german names.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: In proud Blazblue tradition! Hinata’s power as an incomplete Embryo allows her to subconsciously reset time to the beginning of the game whenever something bad happens using Phenomon Intervention. The loop only ends when Es inherits the Embryo and Sechs is defeated.
- Masquerade: Maintained by the Mitsurugi Agency, who have authority over the police and Shin Yokozaki’s hospital in order to keep Union activity hidden.
- Mass Super-Empowering Event: The Wadatsumi Incident resulted in the creation of a large number of Drive-Infected Patients. While there were Unions before the incident, they were incredible rare, around one in ten thousand people. The incident caused the rate to increased more then tenfold in the Shin Yokozaki area.
- Multiple Endings: There are at least six endings (including the Bad Ending and the Joke Ending).
- N.G.O. Superpower: The Mitsurugi Agency has pretty much complete control over Shin Yokozaki city, commanding the police, able to buy Touya’s entire school overnight and with ties to the similarly powerful Magic Guild. Lost: Memories reveals that the Shin Yokozaki branch is just a small part of the Agency and the much larger and stronger branches are searching all over the world for other Gates.
- Organization with Unlimited Funding: Again, the Mitsurugi Agency. Unomaru, the leader of the branch in only one city, was able to buy Touya’s high school overnight just so he could enroll Es in it without having to deal with getting her credentials, and this is before any of the experiments with Embryo and the Gate. In Lost: Memories, Mei remarks that the Agency was probably created by a bunch of rich old men with nothing to do.
- Power Crystal: The appearance of a Crystal is what turns someone into a Union. They gain a Drive that uses seithr to power supernatural abilities, but go insane over time as it is used.
- Relationship Values: By using TOi, you are able to read articles that the other girls have read, which will unlock additional scenes with them as you bond over shared interests. Choosing who to focus on determines whose route you end up on.
- Reset Button: Hinata, as the incomplete Embryo, keeps pressing it via Phenomenon Intervention. Whenever Touya dies she sets time back to the beginning of the game, beginning the "Groundhog Day" Loop again. Even if she dies, the button is still pressed since she is not consciously using the incomplete Embryo, or even aware she is it.
- Shout-Out: At one point Yuki mentions being a fan of JohnJohn’s Bizarre Adventures.
- One of the TOi comments references the over 9000 meme.
- In the gag scenario Es says her father took an arrow to the knee.
- Significant Birth Date
- Es’s birthday is October 15 (Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day), which is somewhat ironic considering that She becomes the Embryo.
- Team Mom Hinata’s birthday (May 8) is Parent’s Day in South Korea.
- Kuon and Akira were both born on September 21 (International Day of Peace).
- Elise, who often lies about her relationship with Kuon, was born on April 1 (April Fool’s Day).
- Unomaru’s birthday is March 20 (International Day of Happiness), which is fitting since he wants to create a world where everyone is happy by using the T-system to prevent anyone from making any evil actions.
- Like Rachel, Drei was born on October 31 (Halloween).
- Significant Double Casting: Chie Matsuura voices Ringo Akagi and Inori Minase voices Mei Amanohokosaka. The two characters are related to another 2 characters in BlazBlue that they also voiced: Kokonoe for the former because Ringo is also a Mercury and Homura for the latter because Homura is also an Amanohokosaka.
- Spoiler Opening: Right from the start we see Touya taking on the appearance of the Black Beast as he unleashes the Origin of the Grimoire and him wielding Murakumo and charging at Sechs at the very end, hinting that this will be the final battle and established Sechs as the main Big Bad. We can also see the Es-N units hidden in shadow and Ringo in her Zwei appearance fighting with magic.
- Subliminal Seduction: Unomaru created TOi to monitor people’s interactions and intake of information. While the system is just supposed to find articles that the user would like, it also controls what is shown to direct people’s interests and attention away from the Mitsurugi Agency. It is a small prototype of the T-system, which intends to the same on a much larger scale with Phenomenon Intervention.
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Which route you end up on depends on which TOi articles the player chooses to read and which characters have also read them. However, you don’t know who else has read them until after you select them, meaning that, without Save Scumming, you have no way of knowing if you’re picking an article that you want for a certain route. This seems to be intentional since it will most likely lead you to the Hinata route if you read all the articles, which appears to be the intended first route since it reveals that Hinata is the Embryo and is causing a "Groundhog Day" Loop and on every other playthrough you can see which characters have read the articles before you select them to more easily find the other endings.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Shin Yokozaki City is a fictional city that is somewhere in Japan.
- You Lose at Zero Trust: If you don’t learn about any of the characters with TOi, Sechs gets bored since Touya’s not accomplishing or caring about anything and kills him, resulting in a Bad Ending.
Tropes pertaining to Lost: Memories include:
- Alternate Timeline: As it turns out, Me’s timeline (the main BlazBlue timeline) and the XBlaze timeline are not one and the same), somehow. In Me’s world the Wadatsumi Incident never occurred. This allows Es to change Touya’s fate without the risk of a paradox that would affect Me’s life.
- Anime Theme Song: "END GAZER" by Haruka Shimotsuki.
- Another Side, Another Story: All of the Memory Fragments Me can find in the Phantom Field, except the black ones which takes place afterwards and reveals that Touya is an Artificial Human, show the events of Code: Embryo’s canon Es route from each of the main girl’s perspectives note , showing what each girl did when away from Touya and explores their characters further, showing things like Kuon and Mei having a duel that lets them become Vitriolic Best Buds and revealing how Hinata became the Embryo.
- Bad Ending: After Es returns to the XBlaze timeline the player makes choices like a traditional visual novel, with incorrect choices leading to the B routes that end badly. Most of them involve Freaks killing everyone but there are a few joke endings too.
- Bittersweet Ending: For Me’s story in the first half of the game She found her sister and escaped the Phantom Field, learning that her father did love his family and making her first friend in the process, allowing her to care for and trust in others. However, after learning that Nobody cannot leave the Phantom Field and of Es’ tragedy, she comes up with a plan to restore Es to the XBlaze timeline so that she can save Touya and her friends. Unfortunately the plan requires Nobody to give up all of her own memories, so she will not remember Me so Me not only will never see her first friend again, but will not even be remembered by her.
- Chibi: The quizzes Nobody gives after each floor of the Phantom Field use the same style as the ''Teach Me, Miss Litchi'' segments.
- Color-Coded Characters: The game gives colors to Code: Embryo's protagonists. Es is blue (considering the Azure, this is a minor Foreshadowing), Kuon is red/orange, Mei is purple, Hinata is green and Touya is black. Me also gets white.
- Death by Childbirth: Me’s mother dies giving birth to Little Sister. This is because the seithr ME produced while in her womb poisoned her leaving her too weak to survive a second childbirth and she refused to choose her life over her child’s.
- Delighting in Riddles: The mysterious waif "Nobody" entertains herself with riddles, and later gives riddles to Me.
- Downloadable Content: The game has Sechs' story which details his past as a free DLC.
- Dub Name Change: Watashi and Imouto have become Me and Little Sister respectively, a translation of their Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep" names.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Es finally gets a happy ending, as opposed to Code: Embryo’s Bittersweet Ending. She gets to return to the XBlaze world, helps avert Touya’s tragic fate, and becomes human. While it’s unclear whether or not Touya and the others regain their memories, they still welcome her into their life. She and Touya work together under Mei in the Mitsurugi Agency and it’s almost guaranteed that they are going to get together, averting Star-Crossed Lovers.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Me and her family have no given names, just being Me, Little Sister, Mother and Father. However, it is pretty obvious that Me, Little Sister and Father are named Konoe, Celica and Shuichiro respectively; Mother’s name still remains unknown.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You can give Me another name, but her Canon Name is still Me. You can't, however, give her the name "Konoe". Or "Nine". Or "Phantom". Or Celica, Kokonoe and Shuichiro for that matter.
- Inconsistent Dub: A rare positive example. Because of "Blind Idiot" Translation, Touya’s mom was named Suzuko Kagari. In Lost: Memories this was corrected, switching to her original name Ryoko Kagari, but the discrepancy is noticeable.
- Interface Spoiler: The memory-viewing menu shows how many of each color Memory Fragment there are in the game. Noticeably blue (Es) has the most memories, double the length of even the white memories that show the current events about Me, and has split pathways. This is because Es takes over as the protagonist for the second half of the game and the gameplay changes to a traditional visual novel dialogue tree system.
- Mook Bouncer: Later levels of the Phantom Field introduce enemies that you have to avoid. Even if you somehow manage to get hit by them, they simply send you back to the start of the room, which is barely an inconvenience.
- Pensieve Flashback: The Memory Fragments Me finds show her the events from Code: Embryo and later the circumstances surrounding her birth.
- Place Beyond Time/Void Between the Worlds: The Phantom Field exists as it’s own dimension. It serves as a barrier between the real world and the Boundary, keeping the Gates closed. Time is irrelevant in it since ME can enter it and Nobody could leave it and add herself to the timeline years before Me was born on an Alternate Timeline.
- Power Crystal: The Memory Fragments. They are actually crystallized seithr created from people who enter the Phantom Field and the people closest to them. In the case of Es’s fragments, they are literally her memories, scattered across the Phantom Field after she fell into despair and became Nobody.
- Recollection Sidequest: The game centers on collecting pieces of the lost memories of "Me" and Nobody, who both forget their identities when they enter a strange dimension called the "Phantom Field". Whenever you collect a memory piece, a flashback scene will play, showing what happens to the cast of the previous game, Code Embryo.
- Red Herring: The scenes of Sechs talking to a crystal in Code: Embryo and similar endgames seem to hint that Hades Izanami is the Man Behind the Man to Sechs. However Lost: Memories reveals he is talking to A strange double of himself that appeared due to him being an Artificial Human. This double shares none of Izanami’s personality or mannerisms and even considers Sechs a friend. Additionally, it was Sechs who came up with the plan, wanting to absorb the world into seithr so that there is perfect balance in the world, without life or death, which is slightly different than Izanami’s goal.
- Retraux: The Phantom Field in all of Me’s gameplay is rendered in an 8-bit style.
- Shout-Out: When discussing Toku with Mei, Es says she is a fan of that sentai show and that rider show.
- In Mei’s room she has what appears to be Gunpla on her shelves.
- In Kuon’s Additional Scenario, she and Elise cosplay as characters from the new Cutie Cure series.
- When Drei asks Avenge who he is after he saves Touya and Es, the latter says he's "just an itinerant bounty hunter"note .
- Significant Double Casting: Me is voiced by Ayumi Fujimura and Little Sister is voiced by Iori Nomizu, the voice actresses of Nine and Celica respectively. Unsurprisingly, they are voicing younger versions of those characters.
- Yukitoshi Kikuchi voices both Touya and child Sechs. This highlights how similar the two are and cements them as each other's Foil.
- Spoiler Opening: The very first shot is of post-Embryo Es falling and crying a single tear which turns into a Memory Fragment and then shatters, with Nobody appearing the background. This is a perfect visual representation of how Es became Nobody, falling to despair and turning her memories into crystals to free her from suffering, leaving Nobody behind to serve as the Embryo. It also shows Touya confronting Freaks.
- Take a Third Option: Because the Embryo is needed to maintain the World of the Tsukuyomi, Nobody is trapped in the Phantom Field. If she left to try and save Touya and the others from Freaks, the Tsukuyomi would disappear and seithr would start leaking out of the Wadatsumi Gate to consume the world. Me figures out how use her XBlaze and Nobody’s Phantom Memories to create a human body for Es in the XBlaze world and send her memories into it, leaving Embryo behind in Nobody’s Empty Shell body to maintain the Tsukuyomi.
- The Unreveal: Me and Little Sister’s names are never directly spoken. However given the same appearances, voice actors, personalities, abilities, relationships and their appearance in BlazBlue via Amane-fication, them being Nine and Celica becomes something of a
Captain Obvious Reveal (in that game at least) at the same time.
