harmless kitten

Anything that gives Ragna proper pants can never be wrong. I like the design, but not the pose as much.

Happy (somewhat early) birthday, Ragna. Also, are the CSE downloads up anywhere else?

Makoto talks about them a little in the beginning of her story mode. Says that they've "gone native" in their handling of Ikaruga and now sympathize with the Ikarugan refugees more than the Library. There's been tension between them and the rest of the NOL, and now it's finally manifesting in the form of an uprising.

Look in the pictures of P0. It's normal and relatively human-shaped (the fingers are clawed under the gloves, but not much more than that) except when he regains the use of it. He could easily maneuver it through the sleeve if he just used his other arm or asked Celica... @Tong: Yes, they cover most of his gloves and the red gem. There are a few pictures of P0 Ragna in the CSSMC and it's easier to see that then. @AT: You create a time paradox. P0 Ragna isn't nearly as cool as Baiken. @NovaFortuna: Colonel Kagura Mutsuki, the Black Knight. They're involved in the uprising in the NOL.

They probably have something to do with the Azure Grimoire. As a young man, Ragna wears a long glove with different bindings on his right arm. They completely cover up his Azure Grimoire. Although, the bindings he wears in Phase 0 don't actually cover his Azure Grimoire--take them off and you can see the sleeve of his right arm beneath them...so they're kind of pointless. They're probably just there to make his design cooler. I'm more bothered by how P0 Ragna never puts his damn jacket on properly. It just hangs off half his body. Looks bad.

One problem: He's wearing the jacket like P0 Ragna. Why would present day Ragna wear it like that? From the one glimpse we get of him without his jacket in CS, he doesn't wear those bindings that he wears in P0 either. But the whole sequence seems bizarre. I think any explanation is gonna be like whuhhhh?

NO I mean, no. That's a bad idea. Also I don't think Ragna had a wibbly wobbly mirror moment like Celica did... Or at least, I damn hope so. Eh? From her perspective, she has no reasons to like him. She doesn't know that he's a decent guy. The information she has been fed is that Jin abandoned everything to run after him, and he lured Noel out of her position as well. She can't very well blame the NOL for giving Noel those orders and condemning Jin, so she blames Ragna instead. He's an easy, acceptable target, and a criminal to boot. Ragna's job is to suffer. Luckily, he suffers beautifully.

I don't recall if it is, but I assume it was since the shock of blowing her cheap headband off also caused her to cease observation of Hazama. Hazama doesn't see a use for her anymore and wanted to get rid of her at the end of CS. However, Tsubaki has always hated Ragna. In her arcade quote she tells him she'll never forgive him. She blames him for what happened to Jin and Noel. Hell, even when she's under Mind Eater she holds him responsible. lol if anything she might dislike him even more because he commands so much of her lovely Jin-nii-sama's attention. @mAc: Forgot about that. The whole thing is so bloodless I forget that both Ragna and Nu were impaled on it. Repairing her internal organs would also take a lot of time. @Zedar: Thank you very much for your translation! :]

The explanation Hazama gives is pure willpower. Part of it is likely due to the life-link between her and Ragna. Relius kills Hazama with Ignis and Hazama comes back fine due to the life-link between him and Noel. I guess the damage to Nu was much greater. After all, she had fought Ragna and Noel immediately after tempering, and at that point it was only willpower and the life-link that was keeping her together. Falling into the Cauldron couldn't have been good for her either. I guess Ragna can die in CS because Nu isn't quite alive yet. So if Ragna kicks in, there's no Nu to keep him alive.

It seems like she tried that during the summaries, assuming the interpretation is correct, but she's too unstable. Litchi has been getting glimpses of other timelines and possibilities since CT. They may have been her ties to the Boundary flaring up, but they might have given her a slight edge in observation if she weren't so conflicted. Also, pretty sure Hakumen called him an uncertain or external factor, not an observer. An uncertain factor (like Hakumen and Terumi) needs an observer or they lose their foothold in this world. You have to think of them like Schroedinger's Cat. @mitsuyoshi: uhhh I don't think observation can save you from certain death.

Only because Takamagahara + the Imperator have a dimensional interference great enough to screw with the Idea Engine. I'm pretty sure it's just phenomena intervention. I wouldn't count on Izayoi helping Arakune. Arakune needs someone else who can observe him who knew him as LOTTE (such as Litchi or Kokonoe), not just ARAKUNE. Izayoi just totally fucks with observation. Possibly, if he spent too much time within her sphere of influence, he would just fade like all external factors without an observer. While a scrap of information is better than none, if it engenders confusion and wrong information it's no good at all. People are still confused about stuff that happened in CS because of old rumors or misinformation. We should probably take all this stuff with a heavy heaping of salt. @The-Yukianesa01: Celica was sort of brought forward in time by Kokonoe sometime before CP. She shows up in his arcade ending and he is soooo not happy to see her. @kylehyde: Yes, he would need to find a new observer if Rachel kicked it or stopped observing him.

Sort of? Jin/Hakumen's power of order is the rejection of phenomena intervention by force of will, the means by which observers manipulate reality. I think Izayoi is compared to a black hole in the story. Not even "light"--in this case, observation--can escape. It absorbs the user's life force in exchange/fuels Izayoi, but hey who cares about that? Even Takamagahara could not observe events which happened within Izayoi's sphere of influence. This is the entire reason Kokonoe gets so worried when Tsubaki shows up. If Jin's Power of Order is denial of phenomena intervention, Izayoi is a weapon created to completely absorb and neutralize the powers of an observer. An observer can still observe around Jin, but phenomena intervention can be deflected if his will is strong enough. Not so with Izayoi. An observer can't peek if Izayoi is exerting its power, though I'm not sure if it's mentioned whether phenomena intervention will work (I'm guessing no simply b/c an observer has to observe it first). Not sure what you meant on particular plot point. What is Ragna a biometric key for? The Nemesis Horizon?

BB has been building up the idea that Rachel is crazy obsessed with Ragna. With this, it's made apparent that if he's gone for good, she doesn't want to live. During the loops, she knows that she'll see him again. She has to watch him die over and over, but she's still striding for a timeline in which he lives. In CP, if he and Nu die, he ain't coming back.* No take backs, no more seeing him again, no more hearing him call her a leech or a rabbit. I guess Rachel doesn't give a damn about this world if she doesn't have a Ragna to ridicule and faff over. *Barring stuff like as of now unknown revival methods or deus ex machina. "Same body number 11" elicits a big whuh? from me. I hope that's a misinterpretation of shitty google translate.

Well, I'm just comparing a real eye to "standard" observation and phenomena intervention, not super special Successor of the Azure powers. A human eye cannot see itself without the help of outside sources, like a mirror. I don't ever recall anything about an observer being able to observe oneself (hell, I don't remember anything about self-observation except a short bit in the Sector Seven sidestory). Scads of text devoted to how an external factor needs an observer, yeah, but nothing about an observer having to observe themselves. Oh well. Maybe it's something new, with Takamagahara borked and all.

Yes, Kokonoe states that Izayoi was made with one purpose: to counter observers. It sucks in and neutralizes any attempt at observation or phenomena intervention, among over things. Do observers observe themselves? That seems weird. I thought it was previously implied that an observer cannot observe oneself, just like an eye cannot normally see itself. Hence why Hakumen is tied to Rachel, and Terumi had to rely on Noel and now the Imperator. Although, Rachel is stated to be an uncertain/external factor, which implies that she has an observer tucked away somewhere. Maybe she can observe herself. @NumeroGaijin: :? Where was that stated? And really, Rachel never stopped being an observer. She just turned down Takamgahara's offer.

Aw shit, so Blade was right about Amane being Ame-no-Uzume after all (though he called her a false dancing goddess for some reason).

EVERYBODY calls Relius a pervert. Rachel, Hazama, Makoto, Amane, Kokonoe, etc. He gives off a creepy vibe.

Whaddya know, maybe Amane was Tenjou's son after all. The word they use is denka (殿下), which can mean royal highness. Ame-no-Uzume is mentioned, but I don't know if it's just the blogger's comments or whether it's mentioned in the actual text. That's what I just said. Normally, only Noel can open it ("the gate will not open if Noel Vermillion is not there"), but Terumi found a way to circumvent it. @Agni: But isn't that one of its appeals? BB has never had any shame in the first place. Heavens, the first game was about time loops.

Hahahaha what the hell? At least 30% of the batshittery going on in arcade mode will be explained in story mode, but that's...interesting. Why ask Izayoi? Continuum Shift arcade mode made more sense than all this. @mitsuyoshi: There's talk of how only Noel can open the Nemesis Horizon, but Terumi found a way to circumvent it. Possibly (probably? idk) has to do with Ragna and Nu killing each other given what goes on.

Well, I don't expect anything different, but for the BB world it's just strange. For a country that was ravaged by the Black Beast and then all but destroyed by nuclear weapons, Japanese culture is oddly dominant in BB. You'd think that the rest of the world was torn apart, with countries rallying around Japan after the creation of ars magus, but that's not the case at all. Like I said, worldbuilding is not BB's strong point. Not providing good in-story reasons for something that the writer wants is kind of bad writing (although, really, hoping for so much from a fighting game was a mistake of mine). I'm not expecting worldbuilding on the level of Tolkien or Mieville here, just some consistency. Relius did mess with Arakune a bit. His speech doesn't phase in and out anymore and he speaks (relatively) normally. He's still loony, though. Relius let him go, but I think Arakune is kind of devoted to Relius now.

In the CT novel prologue Jubei calls him Ragna. I'm actually assuming here, because for all I know Ragna was named Ragna by whoever had prior custody of him, but that part of his past is one big question mark. Chances are, though, that if he was artificially created he wasn't named Ragna. @Tokkan: Yeah, and the localization's Latin throws a wrench into it all, especially since that ArcSys has sort of adopted some of it (what with NOL appearing on merchandise and in the Setting Material Collection). But what I mean is, are they speaking English, Japanese, or both at different points? Ragna has move names all in English which suggests he speaks that (or...he simply thinks move names in English are cool), but being raised by a culturally Japanese nun means we rule out the possibility of him knowing Japanese. There are language markers for both English and Japanese, and it's not entirely clear which one the characters are supposed to be using. It's honestly kind of strange that Japanese is so widespread in the BB world in the first place, but worldbuilding is not BB's strong point. I guess Japan was on its way to becoming a world superpower, hence it being so enduring.

@spesialo: Thank you very much. These are amazing! Also, the pictures of the Black Beast just get creepier even as they become more awesome. Facing the thing up close must have been terrifying.

I would rather they don't. That kind of joke would be scraping the bottom of the barrel, and Ragna's name can be attributed to simple linguistic* and etymological drift (much like Noel having the masculine form of the name, as opposed to Noelle), at least if you're reaching for an in-story reason. It's not Ragna's fault that he was named by a talking cat anyway. *Never mind that it's not even obvious what language they speak in BB.

Well, Mori probably had Ragnarok in mind when he named Ragna. I doubt he knows how popular the name Ragna is, unless he's an avid fan of Ragna Ingolfsdottir or Stefansdottir. The name Ragna and the Ragna in Ragnarok both derive from the same root, ragn. There are many, many names that incorporate ragn in some shape or form, but it seems like most of them are relatively confined to their Nordic countries of origin.

It's a common name for women in Nordic countries (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland).