oh no, he said

I'm not convinced that that spike is the enhanced version of Griflet. There's also another crest that seems to emerge from the edge of Griflet's hitbox that doesn't seem to appear when she uses it on naoto earlier in the trailer (though it's a little hard to be sure since it cuts away not long after she uses it) and it strikes me a bit superfluous to add in that extra hit if the REAL enhancement was the downward strike. Would it no be simpler to just amp up the hitstun so the spike just naturally links? Hard to say, but as of right now I'm unconvinced. Also we can see towards the end of the trailer she has a little dashing pommel strike move that causes Celica to wallsplat/bounce. Pretty funny coming from a move that looks more like a poke. Would wager that's her 6A. (also you can see the activation hitbox for that full circle version of her drive that she uses in this combo at 0:55 in the left corner of the screen)

I don't think that's a follow up animation to activate the crest, that just seems like a normal to me. If you slow the video down you can see how the crest starts to active while it still looks like she's in the last frame or two of recovery from that overhead. Edit: Here's what I'm talking about:

Couldn't Izanami still pelt people who can jump out with her 4D? I mean, sure, it's hardly advantageous, but if you're going for a style points finish like za warudo, who cares? spam taunt and 4D on someone frozen offscreen sounds hilarious. Even with that in mind, I don't think the entire cast is capable of jumping out of her range, just some of the more air mobile ones. I would guess that the only people who can do it that you didn't list are Amane and probably tao, though I'm a little dubious on that one to be perfectly honest since I pretty much never play as or against tao.

What interests me about this, is that we've had stage quotes about the devil before, and all of those are stages Hazama can be found on. In Kagutsuchi port (At night) the quote is "The Devil can cite scriptures for his purpose." and while Altar is not Hazama's stage, most story modes lead to you having to fight him on Altar, where the Quote is "· The devil is not so black as he is painted." In both instances, it works as forshadowing. Hazama's trademark lies of omission is exactly like a devil citing scripture for his own purposes, telling you the "truth", but it's an edited version of the truth made to cater to their wants. Hazama not being black as he is painted also works, as it foreshadows that he is not the real big bad, when going into BBCS it really did look like Terumi/Hazama was the ringleader of the whole operation. One might argue that this tend doesn't hold up in BBCP, because the devil isn't mentioned in either Hazama or Terumi's stage quotes, but I will say au contraire, mon ami, because that actually adds to the point I'm trying to make. In CS, Hazama and Terumi were one incredibly nasty package, while in CP and CF, they have different stages for each of them. I propose that the "Devil" is Hazama and Terumi together, and as of Hazama's Act 3, they are an item again. Assuming that is the case, "The Devil take the hindmost." could be read with some scary implications of what the terrible twosome might be planning.

Relius outright says that a black beast is the core of a Nox nyctores, actually. You might wanna take that with a small grain of salt because the translation on CSEX was kinda awkward if you ask me. Based on what's said we can kinda assume that Take-Mikazuchi was a black beast made from human souls, and then got neutered to make the other Nox.

Well, Celica has very numbered days, and Nine will likely go back into the ground after all's said and done, so as of right now chopping block seems to be Ragna, Rachel, Arakune, Tager (ominous AF ending tho), Any but most certainly not all member of the 6 heroes, and any saya clones except for maybe Mu and Noel. Kagura and Hibiki have both started tripping on death flags, though not especially many, and Hazama is a wildcard. Plaintum's whole deal is a little bit up in the air right now, so let's all join hands and pray that Luna does not survive the ordeal so based Sena can be the last man standing. Relius and Terumi would make sense, but Relius dying wouldn't feel.... satisfying, in my opinion, he's the type of villain who gets locked away forever, thematically speaking, and Terumi has enough stamps on his "jk not really dead, lol." card to redeem a free pizza on his next brief stint in the afterlife, so good fucking luck getting that shit to stick. Everyone else is probably safe.

Ragna is also an actual terrorist who has likely killed NOL randoms who happened to be in his way when he was gonna got fuck up the caldron. You don't exactly earn the moniker "The Grim Reaper" for kissing kaka kittens and whistling Dixie while sending terrorist attack RSVP slips to all employees and the next cauldron he wants to fuck up so he doesn't ruin their casual Friday attire with all that blood of their coworkers and possibly their own. I know Ragna is presented as a hero, and he's definitely taken several times the recommended daily dose of chill pills since his introduction, but like the villains are: A manifested drive with a rager for genocide;effectively death itself, Puppet wizard Joseph Mengele, and a pschopathic ghost who subsists on hate and despair and has about three minimum hidden agendas at any given time. Of course he's going to come off as heroic against that. Now, I love Ragna, love how he's developed, but objectively speaking, there's really no argument against Tsubaki's judgement on Ragna beyond "He's a really nice guy, deep down, under all the bad Attitude and body count.". I Also really doubt that Tsubaki would drop everything and go ham on Ragna while the both on team #leavenoelalone. She wouldn't be happy about it, but Noel's safety clearly comes before her personal feelings right now, but Ragna is mad huge point on her team's favor for now and Tsubaki's not the Lawful Stupid.

Jubei appears firs the first time ever in BBCF and he fucking pulls this shit. I'm almost entirely certain Jubei purely exists as Mori's meta avatar trolling conduit.

Whoop, there it is. Also, If Noel won't die even if she's killed, then does Nine's blow up the world strategy even work? Couldn't noel just survive and then recreate everything again?

Yeah, nah, fuck this, I'm waiting for console to try to figure out what on fucking earth Naoto's whole deal is. Thankfully his story seems fairly segregated from the rest of the goings on right now so whatever bullshit he's involved with I can ignore that shit until we get something other than 10 lines of dialog on the matter.

Well, only in personality it seems. The body is based on her own, if anything. Luna and Sena seem incapable of magic. However, as it must be said to please the hype gods: PLAYABLE TRINITY CONFIRMED! Kind of... for the most part... just give me a barrier fighter mori pls

Goddammit. I knew Amane would get himself involved with Ragna's business ever since their fight in CP, but this delightfully beyond my expectations. Well, Luna could be based on Nine when she was younger (fair degree of similarities, right down to the love of a certain cat) while Sena could be based on Kazuma before he started getting influenced by terumi and subsequently going off the wall. They were sort of her best friends. Carl needs to fucking chill. Seriously starting to think Amane wanted to recruit carl to prevent exactly this type of shit from happening.

I'm getting the impression that Ragna is saying it to himself. Kind of like he's Steeling himself for what he has to do, since storywise from what we know, he's likely marching off to his death. Ragna has a lot of regrets, and therefore a lot of things he feels like he needs to fix (because if nothing else, he is a self sacrificing motherfucker) from the myriad of saya clones, to saya herself, to Jin. It feels like he's trying to get his house in order. Quietly throws another death flag on the mountain-sized pile labeled Ragna

Anyone willing to translate this? Kinda interested by the fact it's in japanese while the other two text blocks were in english.

Hibiki's 236A~C/Izuna drop should also bypass ribcage. I don't think that Nine has any moves that can bypass the ribcage, Nephrite can be barrier blocked iirc.

Shouldn't it have also been broken by Naoto's drive there? That almost certainly seems like an OD perk.

Well, you have to remember that the arcade never tells the full story. Heck, some arcades contain events that never show up in story mode, Amane's CP route is a prime example of this and his first meeting with Rachel, since they already seemed pretty familiar with one another (Amane implies he knew her plan and gets smart with her) when they spoke briefly in the story. Granted, you'd have to spin the story really hard in order to make the whole "everyone is working solo, pretty much" no longer a thing. To me, it definitely seems intentional on Izanami and Nine's part. They both know that no matter what the person's desire is, Noel is going to give it a big ol' sad panda stamp of rejection, but they send them on a little mini quest to achieve their desires via the azure regardless. Sounds like classic divide and conquer to me. Furthermore, With everyone receiving shards of the azure with or without izanami's approval (here's looking at you Naoto), it makes me think that if a good amount of people worked together and put their pieces together, they might not get autovetoed by Noel, or at least not without some form of consequence that I bet Izanami (and by extent, Noel I guess) I really don't think act III will be tying much of anything together, but a good direction for the final conflict of Ranga's story, or hints at what could be.

CT only costs 25% heat though, not quite sure where you're getting that other 25%, aside from using another CT mid-combo, which i don't think izanami needs off of a 63214D confirm to get decent damage. In other news, j.2C's damage racks up surprisingly quickly, It did like just shy of 1k while finishing up a timestop combo, really interested in seeing it implemented more because i was impressed as heck by that. Also that move looks dope don't tell me it doesn't.

Feeding is when you repeatedly die to people on the enemy team, giving them gold and EXP and making them a lot more powerful and likely to snowball off of your teammates because the advantage in stats and items. If they're trying to bring it up in fighting games then they sound like huge scrubs to me. I've never heard anyone say they'd win if it was online before, though I have had my share of people saying they'd win if it was offline. Annoying playstyle imo is anyone who spams wakeup reversals. I like continuing my pressure and blocking the reversal for the 38475th time before continuing just feels annoying. If it's someone who only throws out a reversal every now and then there's satisfaction in reading it, but when it's EVERY TIME they're in knockdown state it just makes me sigh.

I still think that the main issue people are having with getting the hang of her pressure is the current under-utilization of her drive. It's active state is incredible on paper for pressure, but I think people are a little gushy about it because you sacrifice your ability to block. It kinda reminds me of how a lot of people were hesitant to really use Amane's Drill back in the day (a few still are) despite the fact that level 3 drill back then was even stronger than it is now. Being unable to block in case you fuck up your pressure can be really daunting, even with spooky skellington barrier )to back you up, so I'm still not really sure if it's a matter of her drive's benefits failing to outweigh it's downsides, or if people just aren't comfortable with the ebb and flow of her stance system/willing to go valk-tier aggro with her. Time will tell.

With this revelation that Lao Jiu was actually Roy all along, I can't help but think of Litchi's victory animation where Lao Jui "Accidentally" falls into her cleavage. Roy is a sly motherfucker.

Welp, might as well kick it off with what based jourdal has delivered. Day one combos by ??? Day one combos By Kiryu part 1 and part 2 Day one combos by Sugi and some day that isn't day one combos by sugi And last but not least, Rikutoe wrecking face with Izanami on day 2.

On one hand that would make sense given what other arcades seem to leading the plot to, but on the other, why fade to black in Jin's arcade mode when he's about to say it while with Hibiki and Kagura she straight up just tells them to murder Noel? Might be a red herring. Aside from that, it's probably just be a result of differences in how you guys are translating things, but in Jin's arcade it says someone must be defeated, which implies resistance, while in the others it says Noel must be killed, and given that little glimpse of her, she doesn't actually look like she can fight back at the moment if someone wanted to shiv her.

I feel like Izanagi would be a little too obvious, or at the very least boring. Thematically speaking, Rachel has already kinda put herself in a role similar to that of Izanagi in myth anyways. Perhaps one of the Kotoamatsukami? Amenominakanushi would kinda make sense, as their role in shinto myth is essentially being the god from which all creation originates.

The arcade has never been the greatest at explaining the plot. Heck, the events of Amane's Arcade in CP are kinda all over the place, as his conversation at the end of his arcade must have taken place before CP, since rachel already appears pretty familiar with him when he strolls through the climax of the story mode proper. Honestly, the most deserved development in the series. Hercules would have packed up and gone home 49 timeloops, 22 continuum shifts, and 4 phenomena interventions ago.