BlazBlue / YMMV - TV Tropes

Works with their own YMMV page

Tropes for the whole series

Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Nu-13 gets a lot of this in fanworks; the thinking is she's so screwed up because of the near constant Mind Rape she experiences, either through the boundary or at Hazama's hands. Thus she's often redeemed with a little bit of TLC, or alternatively tough love. As to whether the ending of Chronophantasma has changed this tendency (or indeed it was a Take That, Audience! on ASW's part in response to an Unintended Audience Reaction) will become clear in due course.
- Depending on how much in the know Jubei is about the time loops, it's possible he thinks that a Ragna with the strength and smarts to move the story onwards on his own emerging (so the good side stands a better fighting chance in the possible upcoming conflicts) is preferable to breaking the loops prematurely.
Americans Hate Tingle:
- Noel Vermillion is goddamn popular in Japan. However, Westerners that hate Noel are very vocal due to her perceived Scrappy/Creator's Pet status. This is only partial because for all her faults, they think Cristina Valenzuela had done a superb job on her, while they tend to think Kanako Kondo's performance on her is Cute, but Cacophonic. The fact that she's been consistently taking levels in badass in every game has also migrated the hate somewhat.
- Since Japan loves little girl characters and she's voiced by Aoi Yūki (AKA Madoka Kaname), Platinum is ALSO wildly popular in Japan, ranking high in popularity polls. But in the west? She's pretty much one of the few characters whose Scrappydom are higher than her fanbase (majorly Luna's).
- While Celica A. Mercury is very popular in Japan, a sizable chunk of Western fans accuse her of being a Creator's Pet and hate her for the large amount of screentime she got in Chronophantasma. That said, she was better received in Central Fiction.
- In Japan, while she always scored low in popularity polls, Litchi Faye-Ling is still a respected character, considered to have an admirable goal and a sympathetic backstory. In the West, she's more a Base-Breaking Character; while some respect and sympathize with her, others lambaste her for being an unlikable idiot Love Martyr who doesn't listen to good advice and keeps making things worse. This is most likely due to Values Dissonance.
Angel/Devil Shipping: There exists a staggering amount of fanart shipping Terumi/Trinity, likely owing to how Trinity unwittingly enabled Terumi's reign of terror across the series.
Audience-Alienating Era: The franchise has entered one since the late 2010s. The warning signs were BlazBlue: Central Fiction not being dubbed dividing a significant chunk of the fandom. But what truly started it was with BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, which had a hugely controversial launch unseen since the days of Street Fighter X Tekken due to half of its roster being locked behind DLC despite them save for the RWBY characters being reused assets and the game being released during the ongoing fallout from Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) over its monetization practices, which made gamers (especially western gamers) wary of post-launch monetization. Even after the clarification that the entire 20- character DLC set would only increase the game's $50 price tag by $20, the damage had been done. Couple that with the game's lackluster reception in the competitive fighting game community, the Troubled Production and failure of BlazBlue Alternative: Dark War (which actually led to its creator Toshimichi Mori leaving the company), and Arc System Works's increasing emphasis on its flagship Guilty Gear franchise, the BlazBlue franchise has been stuck at a rock-bottom point with little hope of getting out, even with Minoru Kidooka's assurance that the series isn't done.
Best Known for the Fanservice: Outside of the Kudzu Plot, the other element that the franchise is most (in)famous for is the sexualized character designs of majority of the female characters. Even compared to its sister-series, Guilty Gear. This unfortunately also garnered BlazBlue vocal detractors who swore off playing the games solely due to the character designs.
Bizarro Episode: Gag Reels are this, but deliberately so. While the exact content varies from game to game and character to character, common themes include characters acting wildly OOC for little to no reason, allowing the villains to partake in whatever activity is ongoing, ridiculous Excuse Plots and a lot of slapstick. And no, trying to explain what's happening will not make it make sense. But that's fine, because they're all Played for Laughs and explicitly designed to run on Rule of Funny.
Character Perception Evolution: In Continuum Shift, Terumi was seen as an obnoxious, overpowered Invincible Villain who frequently made all of the heroes' efforts for nought, not helped by his at best vague motives for his actions. After the series' conclusion, and with him finally getting his comeuppance, fans are able to look back on his early days with more fondness.
Cliché Storm: Gloriously so! Ragna alone could be considered the expy of a gazillion shounen or seinen heroes, and the story just fires off anime cliches one after the other, yet fans insist that it's part of its charm.
Common Knowledge: MUST DIE, the theme of Susano'o, is quite notorious for having edgy Gratuitous English lyrics... that don't actually exist, as Word of God states that they're actually written entirely in old Japanese, with whatever lyrics sound like Engrish being no exception.
Complete Monster:
- Takehaya Susanoo-no-Mikoto, better known as Yūki Terumi, rebelled against his "sister" Master Unit: Amaterasu and dedicated his entire life to spiting her and destroying all of her creations. Having created the apocalyptic Black Beast, Terumi was brainwashed by Nine the Phantom to assist the fellow Six Heroes in the Dark War. When freed, he returned the favor by casting her and Trinity Glassfille to the Boundary to die. He would later murder the caretaker of Ragna, Jin, and Saya, burn down the church they called home, and compelled Jin to sever the young Ragna's arm. His myriad of other atrocities include, but aren't limited to, being responsible for Lotte Carmine's horrific condition as Arakune; mind raping Noel Vermillion into becoming Mu the Godslayer; breaking Tsubaki Yayoi's spirit; harvesting the souls of his own NOL personnel to power up Cauldrons; and assisting Relius Clover and Izanami in enacting "Doomsday". An arrogant, sadistic god who sustains his wretched existence through others' hatred and despair, Susanoo coveted the True Azure to destroy everything, create a single world to lord over, and fill it full of every living beings' suffering for eternity.
- Hades: Izanami, despite the circumstances of her existence, ousts herself as the sinister "Goddess of Death" whose innermost desire is a world of death and total nothingness. As Imperator Librarius, Izanami used her authority to help conspire with Terumi and Relius to destroy Amatersu and bring about Doomsday. Izanami placed Tsubaki under Ruby: Mind Eater and forced her to use the Izayoi's Immortal Breaker on Jin against her will. She later compelled Ragna to enter a berserk, Black Beast-like state also against his will, resulting in him crippling Jin. Coldly betraying Terumi and Relius for her own devices, Izanami tasks herself trying to bring about untold annihilation within a massive radius following Nine's failure. When confronted by Ragna and Noel, Izanami tries to tempt Ragna into killing Noel to gain the True Azure for himself. When Noel as Mu-12 tries to assimilate Izanami's soul into her own, Izanami reverses the process in an attempt to erase Noel's entire existence. A nihilistic, self-serving goddess, Hades: Izanami used all in her arsenal and disposed of anyone at any time to achieve her "dream".
- Relius Clover, "The (Mad) Puppeteer", once saw the "true form" of every person, their soul, and lost faith in the inherent value of human life, vying to construct a perfect world as "The Architect." An esteemed scientist and alchemist, Relius conspired with Terumi to create the Kusanagi and assisted with the Black Beast's birth. After being flung into the future and eventually regaining his memories, Relius manipulates Sector Seven and Kokonoe Mercury into recreating the Nox Nyctores Nirvana and producing an energy core using the lives of the organization's members. Relius would later murder his own wife and daughter and reform them into unfeeling Killer Robots, leaving the latter unfinished for his son Carl to witness. Cold and unfeeling, Relius inflicted or was complicit in all manner of atrocities or torture in the name of science.
Continuity Lockout: Due to a LOT of things happening in each game, the story is pretty hard to follow if you don't start from the beginning, especially due to some details becoming more important later on. Not only that, the game has supplemental materials and spin-offs that add to the lore, and the spin-off stories' inclusion in the main games tends to complicate matters. At least CSEX is kind enough to give you Calamity Trigger Reconstruction, and CPEX also gives you abridged versions of CT and CS, although they're trimmed down to their most plot-important details and might miss other details from other characters.
Creepy Awesome:
- Ragna the Bloodedge is this, along with being an Iron Woobie.
- Arguably Arakune as well.
- Izanami in the fourth game is this in spades. She has the otherworldly air around her, both in mannerisms and fighting style, and some of her attacks can be quite freaky looking. She can also break into an uncharacteristic Slasher Smile at worst times.
Creepy Cute: Taokaka counts due to being a Genki Girl with adorable cat mannerisms despite her face being a black shadow with glowing red eyes and Cheshire Cat Grin.
Crosses the Line Twice: Most humor involving Hazama/Terumi. Most every joke he makes involve being a jerk, but it's hard to deny he's hilarious.
Designated Hero: The majority of the game's Good is Not Nice characters are often seen in this light. The only flat out exceptions are Ragna and to a lesser extent Hakumen (mainly thanks to Continuum Shift). Rachel and Luna do get this treatment but the most prominent cases for this are Jin and Kokonoe. (Mainly thanks to the events that occurred in Continuum Shift, it was getting really hard for a sizable portion to remember that Kokonoe has not pulled a Heel–Face Turn.) This trope could be caused because when your main oppositions are extremely over-the-top monsters like Terumi and Relius... anyone can claim high moral ground for opposing them no matter what reason. It's lessening for Jin in Chronophantasma, but Kokonoe still sits here.
Designated Villain: NOL. Just so you to remember, not everyone in NOL are self-serving high and mighty jackasses, most of them are more under Terumi and Relius' influence, they're mostly police forces trying to make best of the harsh situation they're in, but they're going to be considered The Empire. Lately, however, thanks to Graying Morality, drafting Litchi into NOL (though she's not very pleased) and the addition of Kagura Mutsuki, an actually not-so-jackass dude being actually the biggest badass of NOL's Duodecim... it may start losing the status. Especially after the end of CP where the leader of the NOL is changed to a more benevolent and rightful one: Homura Amanohokosaka.
Die for Our Ship: Arakune must die for Bang x Litchi, Noel must die for Jin x Tsubaki, Noel and Tsubaki must die for Ragna x Jin, everyone must die for ν-13 x Ragna, and so on... Nu-13 and Tsubaki kind of agree with their fans on this one...
Draco in Leather Pants:
- Nu-13. It's very easy to forget that she's a creepy Yandere, Weapon of Mass Destruction that hates the world and wouldn't think twice of blowing it up on a whim... Especially when she's being so adorable in how she did the Yandere thing. For example, you look at this Amane-ified Nu and try not to say how adorable she is.◊
- Some people like Hazama so much that they forget that he's a depraved monster par excellence that is designed that way, even according to Word of God (who says that he's devoid of redeeming qualities).
- For some, there's also those who'd consider Kokonoe having one. She'd be considered an amoral bitch unworthy of being cheered even when she's being an ally thanks to her laundry list of atrocities, ignorance of things. However, because she's considered highly amusing with her snarkiness and F-Bombs and her other competition is a high-caliber bastard like Terumi (and she herself is considered an attractive pink-haired Cat Girl), she often got her atrocities and dangers glossed away. The game also glosses it somehow, even if Ragna and Hakumen called her nasty decision-makings out, she's still tailored to be the best mind they had for ally and she still gets to enjoy a protagonistic role while never having to realize that she is wrong and needs to fix her attitude.
- Played for Laughs with Relius. Despite being one of the most horrific examples of Abusive Parents in gaming, the fandom insists that he's genuine "Father of the Year" material for some reason.
Dry Docked Ship: Some fans think Makoto and Kagura were at least Friends with Benefits in the past, which explains their rather... interesting interactions in the present. It certainly helps that Kagura directly implies this is the case.
Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: You'd be surprised how many people who generally don't like fighting games got into the series specifically because of the insane story and ridiculous but lovable cast. This is probably the reason for Stylish Mode to exist, to let people get through fights easily if they just want the story.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Rachel's frog George XIII from one of her attacks, who has been confirmed for god-tier.
- Bang was but a very minor character in the first installment for the Arcades. When Bang went for the home console release, he already had quite a following fandom in Japan, this resulted in:
  - Him being in many of fan-artworks sent for contests by Arc System Works; keep in mind that only Ragna, Noel, Rachel, Litchi and Taokaka have as much, or more, entries than Bang, for very obvious reasons, of course.
  - The vocal version of Gale -Reppu-, Bang Shishigami's 1st theme song was originally written and performed by a user from Nico Nico Douga, the song was so catchy and worthy of Bang's fame that it caught the Blaz Blue's official radio show (Bururaji) attention. All the impending success of the song made Daisuke Ishiwatari invite Bang himself (Tsuyoshi Koyama) to perform the vocals for his 1st theme song, this of course with the very same lyrics the original writter envisioned. Oh, and in Guilty Gear x BlazBlue Live Music 2011, Tsuyoshi himself sings this same song with these same lyrics!
  - His Subordinates are even considered this. At least to the people on Dustloop and occasionally GameFAQs. You can definitely expect them on any character wishlists for the next game or as DLC.
  - Even more impressive that Ragna and Jin have their share of fan vocals tied to their themes, still no word on Daisuke Ishiwatari promissing to have the same lyrics whenever he invites the voice actors to perform the official vocals.
- Taokaka as well. In Relius' joke ending in Continuum Shift: Extend, she lampshades her popularity. (The kicker? She said this while in Hazama's body. Yeah, it's like that.)
Taokaka: Tao would never say that, 'cause Tao is adorable and friendly and a fan-favourite.
- Hype Dog, a white, fluffy dog in the background of a stage in CS, is arguably as popular as the rest of the cast.
- Makoto seems to be really popular with both the fans and the producers, despite her limited screentime. When she got her screentime in Extend, however, she technically isn't so much this trope as she used to be, but she is still a beloved character all the same.
  - Her variant of Amane's Astral is most frequently subjected to (thankfully worksafe) fan art. No points for guessing why.
- Valkenhayn, like Jubei, he's been requested by many fans to become a playable character, and that wish has now come true.
- Even before Kokonoe was revealed to have inherited her mother's talent for magic, she was a fairly popular request to be playable. It helps that she is a direct descendant of two of the Six Heroes... She's even complained about the fact that she isn't playable yet in Valkenhayn's Help Me! Professor Kokonoe! segment.
- Azrael is the most well-received character out of all the Chronophantasma newcomers, due to possibly being even manlier than Bang, and the fact that his Japanese voice actor's previous role was a certain six-armed god killer gives him even more popularity points.
- Speaking of, this◊ rendition of Bullet in a Ragna-inspired outfit has gotten a surprising amount of attention—and fanart—from people. She just can't help but look good in that Badass Longcoat.
- More bizarrely, a notable example is Ragna's projectile move, Dead Spike. A rare case of a fighting move being popular. To the point where it has its own tag on Danbooru, and it continues to grow. And now it has its own DDR-style game. Hilarity Ensues.
- Hibiki Kohaku was already warmly received in Chronophantasma due to serving as the straight man to Kagura, but following his playable appearance in Central Fiction, he seems to have attained a surge in popularity, resulting in him becoming the third most popular character according to the 10th anniversary popularity poll. He is notable for being the only one in the top 10 who is neither a main character (Ragna, Jin, Mai, Celica, Noel, Es) in any form of media nor a major villain (Hazama, Terumi, Nu).
- Lambda-11, particularly after her appearance in Blazblue Alter Memory. After starting as a Palette Swap of Nu-13 in Continuum Shift and being cut in Chronophantasma, Lambda's sympathetic storyline and tragic end garnered enough demand for her to return in Chronophantasma Extend, now equipped with a more aggressive playstyle and her Character Development from the anime to make her even more distinct from Nu.
Evil Is Cool:
- Hazama and/or Terumi. He's an arrogant Troll who's even more abrasive and mean-spirited than Jin and has more or less fucked up the lives of everyone in the series, most of all, Noel, when he transforms her into Mu-12. Fans love him because he's funny, handsome, and a cool dresser. Now with the two of them separated, recently their popularity was explored even more, with Terumi's fighting being more brutal than Hazama's. This applies to him as Susanoo too, not just because he looks intimidating and badass, but also because of his deep voice, his awesome theme song “MUST DIE” and because of him being the true mastermind behind everything that happened in the story.
- Relius, to a lesser extent. A brilliant researcher who sought only perfection and has performed horrendous experiments and plans (as shown during his EX Story where he practically played Sector Seven and Kokonoe for chumps to create his Ignis). He just got less time to shine than Hazama.
- Nine, as well. Being a genius magician who created Magitek of the setting, having a cool outfit, Awesome Ego, biting lines and well-put out movelist really help.
- Izanami as of the fourth game; her fighting style and creepiness as well as Yukana's good performance really got stuck in the fans' minds.
Fandom Rivalry: BlazBlue partly owes its existence to the fact that Arc System Works at the time lost the rights to independently create Guilty Gear, so BlazBlue got retooled as their new flagship fighting game. Naturally, this led to a beef between the two fanbases over which series was the superior one. Only doubly so after ASW finally got the rights to Guilty Gear back and seemingly started giving that franchise more priority.
Fashion-Victim Villain:
- Relius' outfit might not look so bad if the colors weren't so garish, if his chest piece didn't look like a video game controller, and if the rings at the bottom of his cape didn't make it look like he's wearing a shower curtain.
- Definitely Mu. It's almost the same as the Murakumo Units', except that it's so revealing (and not to mention a gratuitous ass shot in her original Astral Heat). Though she later becomes good, her outfit doesn't change.
- To an extent, Izanami's battle outfit. While it suits her more flexible movements unlike her original robes, it's often said as not really as threatening as a villain of her caliber would be. Especially her "unicorn crown".
Foe Yay Shipping: There is a lot, almost makes you think it's intentional on the creator's part.
- First and foremost are Ragna/Jin. It'd be enough if they were just rivals, but Jin's extreme obsession with killing his brother just pours fuel on the fire.
- Then there's Ragna/Hazama; the latter was sustained in the world because of Ragna's hatred towards him, though it's primarily applies only to Terumi. The very latter literally couldn't live without him.
- An interesting case of this lies with Trinity and Terumi as it was partially canon. Trinity had feelings for Kazuma, the vessel in which Terumi resided in before Hazama. Terumi exploited her feelings and had her free him from her friend Nine's control. Ever since, the fans just kind of took off with the pairing, even though Trinity wants nothing more than to end Terumi's existence.
Fountain of Memes:
- Hazama is apparently a smooth criminal and is considered the biggest Troll ever.
- Tager. REAL SOVIET DAMAGE!!!
- Jin loves riding in his ICECARZ. It becomes an Ascended Meme in the reconstructed Calamity Trigger story.
  - His favourite brand? NIIIIIIII-SAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
Game-Breaker:
- Every unlimited character. Essentially, these are alternate forms of the characters that take their advantages and maximizes them. For example, Ragna is in constant Blood Kain with a larger health bar (AND no life reduction), all of Jin's specials are the drive variant with no meter cost, Arakune can instantly curse you and his bees are almost the size of Carl, and Tager gains two spark bolts and a greater magnetism radius. But the real "fun" starts with Hazama, who has a perpetual green aura surrounding him. Should you touch this, you will lose health as long as you are in contact with it. And all of that health you lose? Yeah Hazama gains that much added to his own health meter. Oh, and guess what? Remember that short-ranged special that stuns the opponent? Well, now it automatically chains into the second part of his super autocombo. For no heat cost. And it's unblockable. If he gets too close to you, consider a quarter of your life bar gone.
- Arakune's teleport and bee-spam antics have not made him any friends either.
- Not to mention the infinite combo on Carl, is not subject to the combo rule on BlazBlue because it contains a throw, which means he's rather nasty in the hands of a skilled player. See here for a good example of the loop.
- Someone discovered Noel's extremely broken single-move combo that can be kept up without a break. Her 2D drive; an overhead flip that fires the guns downward into the enemy, causing the target to get stunned for a moment - even the cancel/recovery takes long enough for the next attack - and can be continuously spammed once the player on the receiving side runs out of bursts. Of course, the first hit has to connect without being blocked or else it can be countered. But as soon as the first it connects... You then realize you can continue doing it and keep on looping it until the opponent's life bar rests at zero. Never mind the gold and green bursts or blocking and barrier, mistime the blocks and you'll get owned. After the bursts are all gone... et tu, Brute?
Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
- Not that he's not popular in Japan, but with American-exclusive memes like "REAL SOVIET DAMAGE" and "GIGANTIC TAGER", being a hulking, manly cyborg and possibly second-manliest man after Bang, and the voice of Jamieson Price (a fan favorite for deep voices in America)... anyone can see it coming. Azrael gets much of the same treatment for being a gleefully insane Blood Knight in the vein of American fan favorite Zaraki Kenpachi.
- Bang himself is one. In Japan, while he's well-received, it just goes as much as your typical 'goofy comic relief' goes. In America? There's a good reason why Americans tend to treat him as 'the manliest man of all BB characters'. This seeps into his pairing choice, as Western fans are the ones who would desire that Litchi get it off with Bang instead of Arakune (and unfortunately may end up bashing her for choosing Arakune, not Bang), while you're going to have trouble to find a Bang X Litchi art in Japan (or if it exists, they may be drowned with more HQ Arakune X Litchi arts).
- Jubei is significantly more popular in the west, where he is the most requested character to be playable, than in Japan, where fans are mostly neutral towards him. Makes sense then that his reveal was held at EVO 2017, by far the largest fighting game-related event in the West, much less the world as a whole.
Growing the Beard: Calamity Trigger was infamous on release for being a slow, broken and fundamentally unbalanced nightmare of a game, with several weird and unfinished systems, devastatingly strong top tiers like Carl, Arakune and Litchi, as well as being very simple mechanically to the point where most people compared it unfavorably to Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core. While Continuum Shift was a step in the right direction, Chronophantasma really set the series straight. Faster gameplay, tighter and more fleshed out systems, a veritably huge roster, refined mechanics and the introduction of Overdrive as an offensive alternative to Burst made for a much more refined and enjoyable game to play. While Chronophantasma had some notable balance issues still, the most recent iteration of the game in Central Fiction would iron most of these issues out, resulting in what Blazblue fans believe is the overall best game in the franchise.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: The CPEX Gag Reel "Phantom Blue Eyes" has the three Murakumo girls (Noel, Lambda, and even Nu) acting and living as genuine sisters in contrast to how in the main story Nu would rather kill her 'sisters' due to viewing them as rivals for Ragna's affection. Alternative Dark War shows that Nu eventually managing to recover from her catatonic state thanks to their care for her, which causes her to finally see the two of them as her sisters.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- The franchise was originally envisioned as a Role-Playing Game. The mobile Spin-Off, Blazblue: Revolution Reburning, is an Action RPG.
- Arc System Works also helped publishing Arcana Heart, thus made an April Fools' Day mini-event where Heart Aino went on a wacky date with Ragna. Fast forward to 2019, and suddenly, Heart pops into Blazblue's crossover game.
Incest Yay Shipping:
- Ragna and his brother Jin, especially on the latter's end. While in the story proper it's just him being (really) obsessed to kill Ragna, the gag reels turns it into a more comical homoerotic urgings at Ragna's expense.
- The fans aren't gonna stop shipping Ragna and Noel even if she's a clone of his sister. Likewise with Nu for the same reasons.
Inferred Holocaust: The true ending for Bang's story mode is told from the perspective of the Kaka villagers, who revere Bang as a hero for "bringing the sky back" to their underground city. What's touched upon only briefly is the fact that his actions caused the destruction of most of Kagutsuchi.
- Though Continuum Shift took it into a canonical route and Bang SURVIVES the ordeal. Except without the destruction of most of Kagutsuchi.
Informed Wrongness: Despite her Designated Hero status, Kokonoe manages to have this as well, in that the series only has seriously called out for his actions or portrayed as being in the wrong when she actually has a point. In Chronophantasma, her plan to sacrifice Celica to use Kushinada’s Lynchpin is treated as a Moral Event Horizon. In spite of her making a The Needs of the Many defense, she's still depicted as being in the wrong. Central Fiction goes even further with her plan to sacrifice Minerva to destroy Requiem. Minerva is a machine that isn't made out to be a sentient being, yet Celica calls her out as being callous. Unlike in CP, Kokonoe is shown to be the right, but her plan as treated as being far more ruthless than it actually is.
Jerkass Dissonance:
- Jin Kisaragi is one of the most popular characters in the franchise, despite his personality and attitude. This is dying down in the third game, though, due to him becoming less of a jerk.
- Kokonoe has been skirting this line since the first game, but after Jin lessened his jerk qualities, she took on the trope full time. Basically, she's an extremely amoral Mad Scientist and has a lot of untamed selfish qualities, and her social skills are really not one to be talked about. She tends to use extremist method with zero regards of others' life that even Ragna was baffled and Rachel worries about her sanity. Before the last reset of Central Fiction, she was unreasonably hostile with Bullet when trying to pry on her 'secrets' that might have something to do with Tager, to the point of ordering him to kill her, or ordering Kagura to imprison her and make sure she'll never get in touch with Tager. And lastly, she took no responsibility on the dilemma of her so-called 'favorite student' Litchi, leaving her in the dark in the whole 'observing' Roy, leading her to join the villains out of desperation, all which could have been prevented if she wasn't being so cryptic and ignorant. All these, and she's usually hailed as the best character ever, because with her jackass attitude comes a very hilariously potty mouth that makes people laugh and forget her mean nature.
  - That said, Kokonoe does at least have redeeming features. She exercises more self-control than the majority of the cast (many of them would use her nukes without question if given the chance), and is shown in multiple occasions to care about the people she works with. She keeps her more insane and risky experiments to herself^note and does help Litchi after being hunted down and asked directly (though going just as far as "No, it's impossible, deal with it.", and also at first said she didn't even care about her getting arrested and trialed by Sector Seven, until a last-minute change of mind), until it's implied that the Sector Seven story experienced another timeline reset. She's blunt and her methods can be harsh, but she usually means well.
Love to Hate:
- Terumi. The fans mostly agree that his actions are despicable, but it's just amusing to see him in action due to his crass personality, his cool design, his sadistic fighting moves and how his VA is having a good time portraying him. Though how you like him depends on how funny you find his trolling (which is mainly applied to Hazama more than Terumi).
- The 10th anniversary popularity poll proves again that Hazama and Terumi are the most popular villains in the franchise, with Hazama being ranked 2nd and Terumi being 4th. The other villains are significantly less popular by a large margin, with Nu being 9th, Nine being 18th, and the rest are below the top 20. And neither of them are as despicable as Hazama and Terumi, except maybe Relius.
Memetic Badass: Bang. Fans like making him looking more badass than he actually is due to his charisma and especially manliness. He does become more badass as the story goes, but he's still got a long way to go before he even gets close to the fans' expectations.
Memetic Loser: Ragna is often made into this, due to being a rather extreme Chew Toy despite his supposed badassery. From being the butt of jokes in the comedy scenarios, to being surrounded by annoyances, to having failures over failures (and his few successes end up furthering the villains' plan in some way)...
Memetic Molester:
- Relius, because of his rather... "interesting" ways of restraining his opponents in his Astral Heat, and pretty much all of his interactions with Makoto.
- And of course Jin towards Ragna. There is almost no scene he shares with Ragna where he isn't being as creepy as possible in his desire to fight him; Arcsys themselves just run with it in the gag reels.
- Taokaka thanks to her love of gropping.
Memetic Mutation: Has its own page.
Memetic Troll: To no one's surprise, Yuuki Terumi. It helps that he canonically trolls the other characters, and such is his nature that he feeds on other people's hatred of him, which he instills in others through his horrible acts. As a result, his trolling has reached out Memetic level that goes even beyond his usual high-level trolling. However, the irony is that he was more of a troll when he was within Hazama's body; now that the two are separated as of Central Fiction, Hazama seems to troll more than Terumi would.
Never Live It Down:
- Ragna is often remembered for being a victim of the Worf Effect (see Memetic Loser above).
- Jin is probably going to be forever remembered as 'that brother-obsessed psycho' no matter what Character Development hit him. Even ASW endorses it in humorous segments.
- Litchi, for her unwilling Face–Heel Turn in Chronophantasma that marked her reputation as an 'idiot', 'never a good person', 'utterly selfish and obsessed' person, regardless of the tons of genuinely good things she did in the past.
Nightmare Retardant: As evil as Terumi is, the horror for his actions easily loses impact due to his inability to resist cracking a joke at almost every chance he can, even if his sense of humor serves to further drive in how evil he is.
Play the Game, Skip the Story: Many fans consider the plot too complex and hard to understand, not helped by the supplementary materials that never released outside Japan, and so they prefer to ignore it and focus on the core of the game—the fighting itself.
Popular with Furries: Despite the series having about as much, or even less, non-humanoid major characters in the series than its older brother, it manages to earn some furry fans since one of those characters, Jubei, happens to be a feline Beast Man, while Taokaka also has her fans for being a Cat Girl. Even Susanoo has a few furry fans himself! (Possibly because of his more monstrous appearance compared to most of the cast.)
Retroactive Recognition: This is possibly one of the earliest titles that featured the seiyuu Aoi Yūki, playing as Platinum the Trinity. Back in those days, Platinum's Base-Breaking Character traits probably made her a little more dismissed. Little did people back in the days know that afterwards, she would play the extremely influental Madoka Kaname and went on to become one of the most well known seiyuus in The New '10s, rivaling even the main star of this series (Tomokazu Sugita as Ragna). Anybody coming to this franchise fresh after viewing Madoka might be in for a surprise when encountering Platinum and realizing "Aoi Yūki did this brat before Madoka!?". Moreso when they realize that Platinum actually predates Madoka in terms of "Magical Girl Character Voiced By Aoi Yuuki."
The Scrappy: While it's very hard to see anyone as Scrappies (aside from tier-wise at least), there aren't many fans of Luna (not Platinum as whole). She's considered to be incredibly loud-mouthed and obnoxious, insulting nearly everyone she came across in a worse scale that surpassed even Rachel's haughtiness (and outright calling Ragna a lolicon for NO REASON whatsoever). The two other souls found within Platinum however include Sena who's much less rude than Luna and Trinity, one of the Six Heroes.
Ships That Pass in the Night: Ragna and Jin with nearly every male and female character in the series, though in particular Ragna and Tsubaki have become a well-received ship due to a series of fanfics.
Ship-to-Ship Combat: Good holy lord, where do we even start? There's fans of Bang/Litchi who are very vocal and bash hammers on Arakune, and a minority of Litchi/Arakune fans who bash hammers on the other, then we have fans of Jin/Tsubaki who bash Jin/Noel fans. As of Continuum Shift, Jin/Makoto has been getting it's good share of popularity (though, it doesn't seem to cause much tension to the shipping community). And then we have Ragna/Jin, the most popular pairing in the series who will bash other Ragna and Jin pairings if need be... Hands down. Oh, and there's a portion of the community that believes Jin will eventually be a Celibate Hero / Chaste Hero, and therefore will have no official canon Love Interest. That's not even getting into all the popular Crossover Shipping Jin is involved with. The amount of Ship Tease between Ragna and Celica in Chronophantasma adds a torpedo to virtually all the Ragna ships beforehand and makes the Ragna/Jin, Ragna/Rachel and Ragna/Noel fans foam at the mouth.
Signature Song: "Rebellion", "Reppu/Gale", "Awakening the Chaos", "Gluttony Fang", and "SIX-HEROES" are considered to be some of the most iconic songs in the series.
Spoil at Your Own Risk: Arc System Works does not like it when people post story-related videos, be they merely Arcade mode playthroughs or even joke endings, and they also don't like it when people upload any of the music from their post-2012 games. This also applies to their flagship series Guilty Gear. You either have to play the story yourself, or shell out the cash to actually buy their soundtracks, which have been reported to have shipment issues since they only distribute through one online store and don't bother to put any of their music on services like Amazon or iTunes.
Squick: Some fans are grossed out by (or at least like to make jokes about) Nine bearing a child fathered by Jubei. He's humanoid, sure, but he's more cat than man.
Superlative Dubbing: Part of the massive backlash to Central Fiction lacking a dub was because of how much fans loved the English voice cast's performance, with the likes of Patrick Seitz and Cristina Valenzuela clearly enjoying their work very much. Compared to most localization efforts done for anime and video games, the BlazBlue effort boasted a very healthy selection of the most well-regarded veteran and newcomer dub voice actors that perfectly embodied their characters, along with a script that made the appropriate changes needed to make it enjoyable for the English-speaking audience. Needless to say, much rejoicing was made when Cross Tag Battle was going to support dual audio options, marking a return to these popular character/voice actor combinations.
Take That, Scrappy!: Platinum has received this treatment a couple of times. In her "Help Me, Professor Kokonoe" segment, Kokonoe ended up kicking Platinum a couple of times and Kokonoe implies to enjoy doing that by stating "At least I get to kick her again". Also, in BlazBlue: Chronophantasma, Rachel suggests muting Platinum with magic, and feeding her to Nago and Gii. Then, after Platinum calls Rachel a "loli old hag", Rachel decides to "discipline" her which can be extremely satisfying to do.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Some minor characters, like Arakune and Amane, have a fairly large amount of things that could be explored if the narrative focused on them more. Instead, they're mostly ignored in favour of the main characters and, while given some attention, aren't given nearly as much as they could be for an interesting story.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Remember the rather grim discussion between Litchi and the Kaka village elder regarding the Kaka clan's future and livelihood? Cast it out your mind, it's of no importance now!
Toy Ship: There are viewers whom viewed many of Rachel's interactions with Carl as a potential ship, and while Ragna X Rachel gets more ship-tease in the series, Carl X Rachel is not that far off. (However, this was mostly in BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger but there was a little bit of this in BlazBlue: Continuum Shift though.)
Trapped by Mountain Lions: It's kind of inevitable though, considering the nature of the series. Every character has their own plotline that runs alongside the ones involving "main characters" Ragna, Jin, and Noel. Some plot points cross, but others are left in the dust.
Values Dissonance: There's a lot of this in this franchise, but the easier one to spot is probably about Litchi's dilemma. Do you see her devotion to Arakune - to the point that she makes questionable decisions (i.e helping the bad guys) for saving him - as good^note, or too overdone^note? Do you see her not telling everyone her problems as a way of sparing them from the potential harm, or as a sign of her not trusting people that may be able to help her? In short, do you see Litchi's actions as unavoidable or unforgivable? It's up to your values. This is also why what is meant as a tragic story for Litchi, in Japanese, is instead overshadowed with the crime of 'helping evil for pursuing one selfish goal'. by some people overseas.
Vanilla Protagonist: Part of what makes Ragna such an interesting protagonist is how he bounces off the rest of the cast despite his rather one-note personality, namely how insane his situations tend to get when interacting with them. Unlike most examples of this trope, Ragna does receive significant Character Development over the course of the series.
The Woobie: Has its own page.
Woolseyism
- Many of the puns and jokes are suited entirely to Japanese, and don't translate over well into English, so naturally there's a lot of original writing in the English versions. Hence, all the memes. For most games this would come across as incredibly corny and lazy, but for BlazBlue, being the kind of game it is, this actually works quite well.
  Hazama: "C'mon, now, Carl Clover? Why so serious?"
  Jubei: "Kagutsuchi. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."
  Makoto: "Those who conquer the left, conquer the world!"
- Also, in conjunction with Cultural Translation, most of the terminology in the original Japanese script is either a direct Japanese cultural reference or romanized in English in a rather literal, plain manner. The localization team decided to instead translate these terms in a way that would give them the sort of importance they actually had while also making them more understandable to the English audience - specifically by throwing in a mix of Latin and Greek terminology. The "Arch Enemy Event Weapons" became the "Nox Nyctores Causality Weapons", and all of the subtitles preceding their actual names were given Latin names that better reflect their capabilities. Jin's "Ice Sword: Yukianesa" became "Mucro Algesco: Yukianesa", for instance. Izanami's title of Mikado (Emperor in Japanese) was also retranslated to "Imperator Librarius", and her full name of "Meiou Izanami" in Japanese became "Hades Izanami".

YMMV / BlazBlue

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Works with their own YMMV page

Tropes for the whole series