harmless kitten

No, no, the game takes place in 2199. 2100 is the beginning of the Dark War. Nothing in the game takes place in 2100. Look up arcade ending pictures and whatnot; they show the date as 2199 or 2200.

She was created to be a weapon. A Murakumo Unit. During the third attempted tempering of Mu-12, Ibukido was destroyed by Take-Mikazuchi. Cocooned within the Cauldron's space-time projection, she survived, but her tempering was left undone. Her Murakumo programming was later suppressed. what

Eh, it's not like BB itself is a novel storyline or plot. It's pretty derivative, but kind of fun in a way. Haha, he practically tells Carl as much.

Ya, I feel ya. It bothers me too and it wouldn't be at all comfortable for her... Makoto, just get a sports bra that actually fits you. @Elochai: I think he just means "you're a right bastard and I'm not gonna listen to a thing you say."

Pre-battle outfit that she takes off, like her NOL coat in CS.

Idk, it seems fitting to me. Ragna seems to like petting soft, fuzzy animals--after he realizes the Hero Jubei is a cat he starts petting him and coos about how soft his fur is. Plus, he's seen bigger but doesn't even seem fazed around Litchi (although he does imply he thinks she's a hooker or escort). I forgot to note that in Makoto's win quote, he tries to touch it and she tells him to go away. Makoto: Tsubaki and Noel are the only ones allowed to touch my tail...! Now shoo! Shoo I tell you!

I don't think the guy will be satisfied until everyone else is living a nightmare... Also, I'm sure that Ragna is talking about Makoto's tail. In his CSE win quote against her he ahs and ums and finally says her tail is really big. "You're...um...well...that...um...tail of yours...is pretty...uh...damn big, isn't it?" <-- actual quote

There is no need to be so aggressive. The series zigzags through time a lot, but that's kind of taken to an entirely new level. It would mean she was taken to the past to create the Murakumo Units all throughout time and then taken to the future. If Terumi could plan something like that, I think he would've taken steps to ensure that the Black Beast wasn't such a colossal failure. Those Murakumos were base bodies for Lambda or Mu and never used or were failures (S7 tried to temper Mu-12 twice before the disaster at Ibukido and there were 3 base bodies created for Nu, so there's already the precedent of a lot of base bodies for the Murakumo Units lying around). Plus it would mean Sector Seven fucked up enough to produce a LOT of failed Murakumo Units. @raziel12: I think Kokonoe took steps to try to keep Nu's Ragna complex under control, including keeping Ragna's profile from Lambda. Lambda starts to glitch up as soon as she hears Ragna's name, so any more information could've led her seriously astray or cause her to glitch up more.

Not all of the Murakumo Units use Saya as a base. Only the ones we have seen use Saya as a base: Lambda-11, Mu-12, and Nu-13. The first Murakumo Unit/zeroth prime field of this series was tempered in 2099, waaaay before Saya would ever be born (and then the whole experiment went wrong but that's not important). There were probably intermittent attempts at one in the following 100 years, although given that none of them are still around they were probably all failures (like Lambda) or were destroyed. Certainly Kokonoe knew of their existence, and in the Sector Seven sidestory Relius tells her that he will give her a Murakumo Unit (and we only see him making the bodies for Lambda, Mu, and Nu). Idk, it's possible even if it's not probable. Ragna's birth/creation is a bit of mystery. Personally I think he was just an attempt at a plain ol' supersoldier with Black Beast genes, or created for some other unrevealed purpose.

My memory's a little faulty but I think Ragna only started attacking Librarium bases two years ago, shortly after Jubei gave him the stuff. They parted ways after the church. This would make him about 20-22 years old. Ragna's portrait used for this sequence is his adult one, just sans jacket and sword. When he's introduced to Tao, it's his younger portrait (the one with his scrapped design), and his voice is a little higher. I would say that he's really more like 15-17 when he met Tao, and she could've been 5-7. (Is it mentioned how young she is at that point? I don't recall.) Approximately 7 years passed between the destruction of Ragna's home and the current game events, and one of the timelines in the CT Setting Material Collection (not sure about the CS one and I can't check right now) lists the event happening in 2192 or 93. So she could be 14 right now. Still kind of bad, but not as bad as like 9 lol. Beastkin maturing quickly makes sense because they were created as biological weapons, the Kakas especially. Do all beastkin have long lives? I'm not sure about that; Jubei, the Kakas, and Valk seem like special cases.

No. 5 actually. He's artificially created all right, but personally I don't think he's a Murakumo Unit. Original Murakumo Units by Clavis Alucard? What? I thought the first Murakumo Unit was a failure and made by Relius, Terumi, and Shuichiro. Are you thinking of the Original (Sankishin) Units? edit: wow that was a major typo. I meant Murakumo Unit, not doll.

I think they just have a palette swap because the staff wanted them to. Plus Ragna likes animals. I think he was actually talking about her fluffy squirrel tail lol. Ragna's seen bigger, and he has this fixation with cute/fuzzy animals. In Makoto's CS winquote against him she gets mad because he tried to pet her tail and only Noel and Tsubaki are allowed to do that. Or it could be both.

At the earliest he's 20, but Phase 0 says that he's in his twenties. Put on 20 years (he was transported from 2099 to 2179), and you've got his current age. So, forties.

Born in 2194, but she didn't reach her fifth birthday until a little before Calamity Trigger. (She's older than that, really, but the series insists that a Murakumo's birthdate is their tempering.) I don't really count Relius because he's got a mess of an age. It's not even like he was in cryosleep, he just...jumped. You kind of have to cut out that 70 years from his life. Discounting those 70 years, he's in his forties. Likely mid to late forties at that. @B0B: It's an official kit from ArcSys containing some basic sprites, character art, low res emblems, palettes, etc. http://blazblue.jp/cp/special.html

Noel is five, technically. How old the cast is depends on how big of an age gap exists between most characters. Ragna is the oldest of the A team, and is probably 22-24. In the flashbacks he looks young, but not that young; his voice is almost as deep as it is as an adult and he's definitely gone through puberty. At the time when Jin and Saya were kidnapped he was probably 15-17. That plus seven years puts his age at 22-24. Jin is anywhere from 2-5 years younger than Ragna, although I just went with 3. Saya seems to be a little younger than that. If he graduated and entered combat at 18, it would put him about 20-21--with Chrono Phantasma very close to his birthday. Noel, Makoto, and Tsubaki graduated a couple years later, so right now they're probably about 18? 19? Other characters generally don't have a lot of information to extrapolate from. Ragna - 22-24 Jin - 20-22 Noel - 17-19 (five technically) Tsubaki - 17-18 Makoto - 17-18 Carl - 12-14

About time. Happy to see that it was confirmed. @Orihalcon: No, their relationship is told in very broad strokes. It beginning of their friendship is shown, but nothing is said of how Tsubaki came to love Jin as something other than a friend or little sister. Of course, fiction in general likes to do this.

@NovaFortuna: You're right, their relationship isn't really explored. They've been friends from Tsubaki's childhood and Jin's adolescence, but Tsubaki's romantic affections for him are never really touched upon. (BB likes this kind of thing. It's never really shown why Litchi loved Lotte either.) The whole thing--at least on the romantic part--is mostly one-sided. Hakumen seems to have some feelings for her, but they're of a different sort--he kind of romanticizes Tsubaki. His feelings are wrapped up in regret over what happened and anger over the man he used to be. It's love, but not the love you feel for a romantic partner. Jin sees her state as his fault on some level and wants to save her. You could say that Jin seems like a really amazing guy, and that's why Tsubaki is so jealous. To the general public, Jin is handsome, brave, a war hero and the future head of the Kisaragi family. I can see a lot of girls sighing over him. And yet, because of her family, Tsubaki is essentially forbidden to seek anything with him* no matter her feelings. Far from this tempering her jealousy, it's inflamed it instead. Maybe it'll be explored in story mode, or maybe not. * never mind that the Yayoi family started inbreeding in an attempt to keep having children with high ars magus sync rates. Never mind either that Jin has the second-highest sync in recorded history and that a match could be made if Tsubaki asked her father or something, instead of marrying her off to some cousin or uncle. @Surfeit: Relius is actually in his forties. During Phase 0 he's mentioned to be in his twenties. He disappeared in 2099, and reappeared in 2179. Carl is about, what, 15 max? Ada being a few years older. He could meet Ignis in a few years, have two children with her, and then start working on his research again. Around 2193-2194 he contacts Sector Seven and the events of "that which is inherited" happen. Hmm. Either my memory is off or something weird happened. Noel says that Carl only left a couple years ago (in 2197). Relius must have incorporated Ada into Nirvana after the Sector Seven sidestory.

Mu's creation happens on 1/7, but he probably didn't leave until a day or two later. CP occurs around the beginning of February--Ragna's ending takes place on 2/2 and Amane's is on 2/3. So, a little less than a month.

Oh, Hakumen is a hero, no doubt. He intensely believes that his actions are just, and in a way, he is right--Ragna is an aberration. It just so happens that Ragna is the protagonist of this story, so all of Hakumen's attempts to kill him are antagonistic actions. I'm glad Hakumen isn't as psychopathic as Rorschach. I'm glad that Mori says he's going to make the explanations more clear. I doubt they're going to get rid of all the quantum physics buzzwords, but hopefully stuff quantum superpositional manipulation and wave function collapse won't come up again (i.e., they're not just going to throw them out randomly with no explanation...).

He's still pretty cold to Tsubaki... I think Tsubaki and Makoto talk about that Jin does like her, because if he didn't, he wouldn't even tell Tsubaki she had chocolate all over her face. But he's certainly not as nice as he was during the Academy days. I get the impression that he's been very off since he came back from the war, in WoF and other timelines. In CS, he didn't even know Tsubaki was part of Zero Squadron, which makes me think they haven't talked much since her graduation. He runs off once he hears of Ragna, prompting Tsubaki to chase him down. And then, well, yeah. I think Jin is the type of person to take for granted the things (or people) he cares about. Ragna and Tsubaki both are good examples of this.

Hakumen. Nice. The guy who is extremely condescending to most characters (Tsubaki, Bang, and Noel are the only ones he's arguably nice to), and the guy who is hellbent on killing "the ultimate evil," our hero Ragna. I don't think it's possible for any iteration of Jin older than 18 to be nice. A good person, yes, but not nice lol

I am honestly exasperated by people who think Jin's character development is suddenly invalidated by him still being NIISAAAAN. Jesus, the guy has grown a lot compared to Calamity Trigger era Jin or the Jin in Wheel of Fortune. The Jin there wouldn't care about saving Tsubaki--it'd be all Nii-san, Nii-san, Nii-san, all the time. Go play his story in CS again! He still wants to kill Ragna! That never changed! It's just he places saving Tsubaki as a higher priority, and actually willing to put his Ragna hunt on hold in order to save her. That's huge from Jin!

They really played up the Murakumo prototype thing with Zero-Weave Izayoi...from the emblem to the intro (with the sword dropping in), it screams "Murakumo prototype."

I tried to write a response to all that but my eyes glazed over sometime in the second paragraph... too tired It's not like the game ever confirmed he was over Ragna. He's still batshit crazy to Ragna and gets excited when Ragna says that they can fight later with no interruptions or third parties. He doesn't attack Ragna in the True End because there are more pressing matters. It was a temporary truce, nothing more. He's not nearly as fixated upon his brother (he still wants to save Tsubaki and he considers that his main priority right now), but of course he still wants to kill him. Even in his CT end where he has a change of heart and some subconscious realization, he still feels like he <i>must</i> kill Ragna. It'll take a lot more character development (and lectures from Jubei) for that to change. How horrible. That would be boring if he just became a second Hakumen. That's rather excessive for maybe 10 minutes of a character we have seen so far. @TD: Tsubaki does not have a Nox Nyctores, but she has been very, very well manipulated by Terumi and fed very partial truths to make her fight Noel, and afterwards the blind Tsubaki gives up until she meets her darling Imperator. Hell, even in Jin's story she had second thoughts right up to the color change. The girl's under a mind control spell and has been jerked around so much that I can't even blame her for anything.

I thought they wanted to produce a result favorable to them--something that would be able to destroy Amaterasu. That's what they released Terumi for anyway. Takamagahara is a supercomputer/data entity/computer program that seems o exist within the Boundary. It was created by man to monitor Amaterasu and its distortions/interventions. It came to the conclusion that in order to create their ideal world, Amaterasu must be destroyed so Takamagahara might inherit the Azure. Hell, in CS that wasn't even their desired result, but Terumi snuck in and released a virus among them, so now Takamagahara is the Imperator's little puppet (see: canceling Ragna's Idea Engine through intervention). Edit: something also interesting about Takamagahara: they seem to be upholding the current world by observation. Hakumen talks about it a little, about how Arakune is becoming an uncertain/external factor like him and Rachel. External factors like them have fallen beyond Takamagahara's gaze and need another observer.