harmless kitten

I actually think that "that power" is referring to Jubei's Sekigan. Either Jubei used it to save Ragna before he took them to the church, or she's just referring to how Jubei used it to switch places with Terumi.

Closest thing is what happens in his CT bad ending, where if you lose to the shadowy Ragna, Ragna goes crazy and say he's going to destroy everything. Well, he accepts that he's an artificial human, but human despite everything. What I mean is that he recognizes that Nu and Noel are human as well (before he insists that Nu is a thing). To say that they were inhuman would be the same as saying as he was inhuman, and Ragna realizes that's not true. He didn't let go of all his hatred, far from it, but I think that recognizing Terumi as the source of his ills and his experiences with Noel have eased him somewhat.

I think Ragna let go of his hatred somewhat in CS. I was glad to see that the anime made it more obvious though; CS hardly touched upon it.

I'll go through CSE again. I don't remember anything like that but I have a bad memory in general. Yes, first loop only. Nu mentions how he's smiling in the game too, but the various adaptations show his crazy smile. Ragna had mad anger issues in CT, and I guess he really took it out on Nu.

Where exactly?

I personally don't think he's a half-vampire because I have never seen it mentioned in anything official, but I don't want to dredge up that argument again haha Most of his healing in the game is from the Azure Grimoire, like his lifesteal. Rachel only bites him in one time loop, but he has a red eye in all timelines. Plus it stops working in Phase 0. It's considerably more likely to be the product of the Azure Grimoire.

The Azure Grimoire doesn't care about fatal injuries. He'll be fine.

They seem to be more like backup bodies in case one is destroyed. In her story mode, Nu spends more time floating in a blue space in the Boundary while her body is being tempered. They're all Nu, but her soul simply returns to the Boundary and then goes to the next body. This was how Kokonoe powered Lambda--she caught Nu's soul and used, stripped her of memories, and put her in Lambda's revived body. To elaborate, there is only one soul for Nu. There is only one soul for Mu. Lambda is long dead and is largely irrelevant aside from Kokonoe using her dead body to make her own Murakumo Unit. I don't have an explanation for the numbers, though Mu also had backup bodies that Makoto saw in Ikaruga.

What doesn't make sense about it? It was one of Nu's unfinished bodies. Ragna killed her before she was done tempering like he did in another unnamed NOL base. She had something like three base bodies, but Ragna destroyed two of them (hence what her "is this the fourth time?" "No, third." exchange with Ragna is all about). In her CT story, Nu even has flashbacks to both times, though she was incomplete to the point of not even being able to hear in one of them.

Kind of meh, but I pretty much got everything I wanted already in the first episode. Will the Ragna nendo be exclusive to the limited edition volume 5, or is there a chance it will be sold separately down the line?

He's got his face turned towards Celica, so he's actually giving her the death glare. He even broke his chopsticks at her offering Ragna food.

That's why I said sneak into Takamagahara. Or he just needs to die to get into the Boundary in general. I don't like going by Rachel's example because she does all sorts of weird shit when it comes to the Boundary (showing up in Nu's dreams, Noel's CT arcade ending, Phase 0 near the end, Phase Shift 4, etc). Of course, if you believe Terumi's taunts to her, she's not even fully alive in the first place--he calls her undead. Just watched the new videos posted in the gameplay thread with those stages. "Old Gate," with the stage quote of "Certa amittimus dum incerta petimus" (We lose what is certain when we seek what is uncertain). Where is Ishana supposed to be anyway? The other stage is Yggdrasill Seed (and fittingly enough shows a tree with glowing blue leaves in the background of what appears to be a NOL facility) in the 6th Hierarchical City of Yabiko, stage quote is "Speak fair and think what you like."

Ragna stops beating Terumi up because he knows he's just wasting time and effort. Terumi had planned for Ragna to actually kill him, but he doesn't. Relius ends up using Ignis to tear out his throat (probably because Terumi has to die for a moment in order to sneak into Takamagahara). I think that by undoing her tempering and causing her to lose the power of the Eye (temporarily?) Ragna also broke the life-link. Hazama was going to kill Noel after Mu was defeated, but the Imperator showed up and told him to stand down before then. AFAIK Ragna and Nu still have theirs. Certainly nothing else has been said of it since. I remember somebody comparing life-links to Schroedinger's Cat, but I think nothing has actually been established in series. Aside from what Terumi tells Ragna and some of Kokonoe's mutterings, there's jack.

He was there to nab Saya too. He carries off Jin and Saya and just leaves Ragna for dead, though oc I'm sure he knew Ragna wouldn't kick it. Celica is said to be in her mid-teens in Phase 0. 15-16? Phase 0 takes place sometime in 2106, so she would be about 18-19 by the end of the Dark War (1/1/2110).

Terumi taunts Ragna over being an artificial human and Ragna later admits it to Mu when he's trying to snap her out of it. Also, not exactly evidence but one of the color illustrations for the Calamity Trigger novel shows a wounded Jubei with Ragna, Jin, and Saya, the sibs all very young and wearing white shifts . Ragna and Saya are wearing medical ID bracelets too (well, choker in Saya's case). There's Ragna's No. 5 tattoo, but it's not visible during said illustration and who knows if it's even relevant. There's enough evidence to say that something weird was going on with the siblings + Ragna (and probably his siblings) being an artificial human, but anything else is speculation. Jin and Saya/Noel having the highest recorded ars magus scores in history is also suspicious as hell. It does look A LOT like Take-Mikazuchi, but Take-Mikazuchi can only fire once every few years right? Rachel says that it won't be able to fire for another four years.

Bandai showed off a prototype D-Arts Hakumen in October last year, but I think it may have been scrapped or something. Pity. Or was it released with no fanfare? Either way it looked pretty damn good. Noel has way too many different figures. Pick another girl. I think the last one was Makoto, and that was several years ago.

Kagura's birthday = Coming of Age Day? It was originally established on January 15th. His bday also continues the tradition of having the same birth month as their Duodecim house (Mutsuki - January, Kisaragi - February, Yayoi - March).

Thank you, Emma! Psst, you missed one of the crossed out "kills." It's spelled Cipher right there in katakana, not Seifer. サイファー, saifaa. Where are you getting this Mai will become an alchemist thing?

She calls herself that. She mutters that the released Izayoi is "able to destroy us...the Chronophantasma..." It's not like Rachel's existence isn't weird anyway. She can transfer her memory and identity from timeline to timeline in CT, appear in a parallel universe/time loop that probably already happened (Makoto's story), appear in strange places like Noel's CT arcade ending, and show up in Phase 0 (yes, current Rachel and not Phase 0 Rachel either) near the Cauldron. This has been attributed to it just being a Rachel thing or an observer thing, but I'm wondering if it's a Chronophantasma thing.

Rachel addresses Amane as Bushin, but it's actually read as Uzume (it's even noted in the CPSMC), so yeah Amane = Uzume unless it's all just a red herring. I thought Tsukuyomi was supposed to represent Yata-no-Kagami (Tsukuyomi is the mirror, Susano'o the magatama, and Amaterasu Kusanagi) by means of being linked to Noel/Mu, who is Kusanagi), but it's not like BB hasn't doubledipped with its mythological references before. The Chronophantasma are people. Rachel and Celica.

Nah, it's been seen before. He's wearing one in the concepts of his head and face in the first Setting Material Collection, but it doesn't appear often due to his hair or collar frequently covering his ears. I think the CS2 opening also had him with an earring. He doesn't have one in in his character portraits or select art (due to the aforementioned ear issue), when it does show up it's almost always shown as a green stud in his left ear.

As Tokkan said, there's nothing to actually prove that Relius takes it away. Bang's arcade story ends with Relius telling him what Rettenjou will do if it's activated. He might, or Bang might activate Furinkazan and get the hell out of there. If he did lose it in the story, he'd probably fight the same way with moves that use the nail restricted (think how Jin can't use attacks that use Yukianesa in two fights, or Ragna's struggle against Terumi).

Thanks Kurushii. Amazing that there were only two panty flashes this chapter.

The concept art is just a doodle from the CS Setting Material Collection, and it's not like doodles or concept art haven't been retconned. Info from the first SMC was retconned in later collections, even stuff from the timeline. That picture is from Phase Shift 4 and was published after the CSSMC too. If it isn't hair, then it must be a wig or something--which begs the question of why he's wearing a wig at that time. Having human hair would be really weird yeah, but Jubei's own brother has white, human-like hair poking out from his hood. Admittedly it doesn't look nearly as strange on him as it does on Jubei. @Yakuzu: It's not so much that I'm amused how he could fit all that under a hood or a helmet, but rather that I'm amused that it's Jubei. I just never really pictured Jubei with long hair, much less hair like that.

Yes, but I didn't really imagine him to have long flowing hair under the hood or the armor he wears in the novels. I didn't think he had human-like hair despite the existence of his brother and the Kakas. It's just kind of funny.