Leiopelma

Thanks for letting me know. Here's an illustration of Mai from Sumeragi. Happy birthday Mai!

Thank you very much for the download link. I take it that the digital version this manga volume does not include the illustration found in the back cover. A bit of a shame that Variable Heart didn't have an extra chapter like the final volume of Remix Heart did. Something I found interesting is that Mai's zipper has "TBIPFD" written on it in the illustration of Mai in Mori's epilogue. Are they planning on introducing a PFD that's based on Mai? Something else that was interesting in Mori's epilogue is that he said that Mai's fight isn't over yet and his request to continue supporting Mai in the future, followed by him saying to look forward to Dark War. I guess that Mori is indicating that Mai will be appearing in BBDW. Which makes sense since Mai did get voted as the most popular female character in the recent popularity poll and got 6th place overall.

Here are the covers of the 3rd volume of Variable heart and the BBCF Material Collection. They're coming out on the 9th of March and the 20th of March resppectively. Nice to see that Mai has such a prominent position on the book's cover

http://amatsumugi89.tumblr.com/post/168351298308/variable-heart-chapter-18-the-chapter-begins I was expecting the manga to end soon but I still feel sad that it's over. It was nice to see that Mai dealt with Meifang herself instead of it being left to someone else such as Jin. I was also glad that Mai reunited with her other friends. I had wondered if they planned to retcon the comment Makoto made in Chronophantasma that she last saw Mai during their graduation, but it looks like it still stands since Mai returned to the academy. Mai said at the start of Variable Heart that she didn't feel like she'd belong to the army, so presumably she exploited her connection with Kajun and meeing with Kokonoe to get into Sector Seven after her graduation instead.

Looks like the manga is at its climax. I'm guessing it will end up being 3 volumes long instead of 4 like Remix Heart was. Trinity gave Muchorin to Bell in this chapter. I guess that might explain why Luna doesn't remember Mai, since Muchorin uses its user's memories as a power source. Perhaps Bell will end up sacrificing her mind to save Mai.

You keep repeating this and you are wrong. Mai says in her arcade mode that she met Relius before, but she did that in Remix Heart. There's no need for her to meet him again in Variable Heart. And Mai didn't show hatred towards Relius when she first encountered him in CF. She was cautious, but her objective for finding him was to gauge whether he was a threat. She only started hating him once he demonstrated that he was a sociopath who saw everyone else as tools and material for his research instead of people. And of course you have absolutely no evidence that Relius will kill Meifang. I think it's probable she'll die in Variable Heart but there's no reason to think that Relius will kill her. By the way, here's the next chapter preview:

Here's the summary for chapter 16: http://amatsumugi89.tumblr.com/post/166245711828/blazblue-variable-heart-chapter-16-the-chapter Kokonoe seems rather ruthless in this chapter. Meifang accuses her of being interested in Mai and Bell because she wants to use them to smelt Takemikazuchi herself. This simply be Meifang's interpretation, but I suppose it would fit with the ruthlessness Kokonoe shows in the early games. She seemed to mellow out and be more caring in later games though (e.g. being determined to save Litchi in Litchi's bad ending in Continuum Shift). I suppose the fact Kokonoe doesn't sacrifice Mai could either be because she actually cares for her or because she never discovers the method required to complete Takemikazuchi's smelting.

Here's the chapter 15 summary: http://amatsumugi89.tumblr.com/post/165176276998/blazblue-variable-heart-chapter-15-summary-the Nice to see that my guess about the capabilities of Vision were correct. Rin is able to replicate the effects of Ars Magus but not actual magic. Meifang wants to smelt Mai, a grimoire, and Bell, a PFD, in a cauldron order to complete her plans. Looks to me like she's trying to create a Black Beast.

Chapter 15 preview:

By the way, here's the recording of an event that occurred upon the release of the second volume of Variable Heart featuring Mori:

Thank you very much for all of your download links Kukushi. The first page in the Dragon Age chapters tends to have some sort of announcement or comment that is removed in the tankobon version. Also I've spotted improvements in certain Remix Heart chapters in the tankobon version. There was one panel in the Dragon Age version where Mai's socks were missing and they added them in for example. The biggest difference in Remix Heart was that in chapter 22 they added two extra pages showing Shiori's inner struggle when she had to choose between fulfilling her mission and assassinating Jin or abandoning her mission and saving Mai.

Rachel had lost that by the end of CF though. I think that she wasn't dying because of her being a vampire. Her ability to revive after all of Hazama's torture seems pretty similar to the way Fuzzy's regeneration worked. Compared to the ability to literally reshape reality that you get from being an Onlooker or being able to shrug off whatever inconveniences you thanks to the Power of Order, I do not think that Vision is particularly powerful. We've only seen Rin copy some pretty mundane abilities by BB standards and she acknowledged that her copies were inferior to the originals. Shiori made it sound like Vision lets its user instantly learn how to perform a technique. This would mean that the person in question would need to be able to perform that technique in the first place before they replicated it. Taro's strings are an application of Ars Magus, which most people can use. And Vision is limited by the ability of its user, which is why Rin is not able to match Houichirou's presence, since she doesn't have the capacity to produce an aura as threatening as his. I think that if Rin used Vision to try and replicate Sorcery for example, then the best she could do would be to create a pale imitation of that specific effect using Ars Magus since she lacks the capacity to actually perform Sorcery. Her ability is versatile but I really doubt it's anywhere close to the truly broken powers that other characters have.

Thanks a lot for the raw. Mai really lost her temper when her father called her a coward. She's normally very polite, but she can become aggressive when pressured and insulted. The same thing happened with Meifang.

Mai appeared really isolated as a child and always thought about her father. If she had a loving mother one might have thought that Mai wouldn't have felt as alone as she did before she went to the academy. The fact she was so desperate for her father's affection and approval made it seem like she didn't receive any affection as a child. The fact that Houichirou was so powerful does help explain why Mai had an inferiority complex towards him and considered it so difficult to earn his respect. I think the fact Houichirou was able to easily take away Gallia Sphyra from Mai shows that he was really strong. So I believe that he really was able to fight off Azrael. He was probably about as powerful as Kagura, who was also able to go toe to toe with Azrael. By the way, he clearly values training, since he ensured that Mai trained in martial arts, melee combat and the Kirihito assassination techniques since childhood.

Chapter 12 summary: http://amatsumugi89.tumblr.com/post/161587057048/blazblue-variable-heart-chapter-12-mei-fang-is Interesting to see that Mai's mother is alive and well. Her absence from all of Mai's flashbacks except the one where she was an infant had made me assume that she had died. Mai certainly took after her.

Ebten is shipping a very nice printed image along with the 2nd volume as a promotion:

Thank you very much for providing us with the raws Kurushii. Poor Mai gets called dekachichi, meaning "huge tits", by Ragna. In addition, Platinum calls her dekaoppai and Kagura calls her kyonyuu-chan, so it looks like all her nicknames mean "huge breasts". I guess these fit with the description of kyonyuu bishoujo, meaning big-breasted pretty girl, that she gets in promotional material.

Perhaps Trinity's plan will get explained later. Maybe she was planning to share that body with another soul but because she found two children that needed a new body decided to put them in there instead. But this body is a two-seater. Something I found interesting is that the system being called LunaSena means that Luna and Sena are not the names of the children whose souls got put into Bell's body. It seems that the original identities of these children have been lost completely. This might also explain why Luna and Sena remained in a single body. Their body is meant to house two souls and they don't really mind sharing a body.

It seems that the manga will be focusing a fair bit on Platinum's backstory. Which I suppose makes a certain amount of sense, since we never saw that in the games themselves. Sounds like Bell is desinged to house two souls. My guess is that she needs to receive two souls in order to get the LunaSena system up and running, which would fit with what we know from the games. Presumably we'll be seeing Trinity the souls of two children to fulfill the roles of Luna and Sena later. Bell's current personality is what emerged in order to defend the PFD but I guess it will disappear before that happens.

Here's the preview of the next chapter. It's nice to see Mai using one of her distortions. I wonder if Fuzzy will end up dying; my guess is probably not because they won't want to have Mai be a killer. If Fuzzy ends up crippled by Mai's attack perhaps Meifang will finish him off.

Yeah, it made me think that Fuzzy is an artificial vampire created by the NOL. I suppose it could be Relius who did it. But of course neither Clavis nor Rachel are really "natural" either. Clavis was created by an unnamed human and he in turn created Rachel. There doesn't seem to be a race of vampires in BB just are there doesn't seem to be a race of werewolves. The examples that exist are unique entities. Fair enough, it's possible that Outseal predates the Prime Field War, since Kajun doesn't explicitly state it was created at that time. But the Izayoi we see in XBlaze looks very different and has very different abilities from the Izayoi in Blazblue. And the latter Izayoi is called an Armagus instead of a Legacy Weapon. The Xblaze and main BB worlds diverged long after the creation of Izayoi, so both worlds should have originally had the same weapon. I suppose that Nine might have radically modified it and turned it into an Armagus, but even if that were the case, the two are now pretty different. PS: Regarding the final adjustments that need to be done on Outseal that Kajun mentioned in chapter 3, my guess is that they have to take place next to a Cauldron and that's the reason they're going to Kagutsuchi.

Are you referring to the original Izayoi? Because the Izayoi that Tsubaki uses is an Armagus whose design was based on the original. Nine was said in CF to have based the construction of the Noxes on Legacy Weapons created during the Prime Field War in order to fight PFDs. It's why Ragna thinks that Outseal is similar to a Nox in chapter 10, which causes Kajun to say that it's Noxes that are similar to Legacy Weapons. And Kajun's comment in chapter 3 about Legacy Weapons being created to fight beings on a higher existence must be a reference to the Prime Field War. What source do you have that Hihiirokane was made before that war by the way? All I remember seeing in Phase Shift is that it had been passed down in Jubei's village for generations. You have nothing to base that claim on. There's no reason to think that the Immortal Breaker ability of Outseal is different from that of Izayoi. If you want something that makes Izayoi special, it's its power to deploy a barrier that blocks Observation.

It's interesting to see that Mai's spear has the ability to kill immortals like the Izayoi. Outseal has a very powerful ability, I think that makes sense since it was designed during the Prime Field War in order to kill PFDs. I suppose that the fact it could have potentially been used to kill Noel during CF never came up because none of the characters who wanted to kill Noel knew of its abilities. People like Jin, Hakumen or Hibiki knew of Izayoi and tried to obtain that in order to kill Noel instead. The fight has been going of for 3 chapters so far and will probably end next chapter. I don't think that 4 chapters is particularly long.

Here's the summary for chapter 9: http://amatsumugi89.tumblr.com/post/156980213618/blazblue-variable-heart-chapter-9-kajun-tells If found this to be an interesting action-filled chapter. Fuzzy is really powerful since he's able to take on all the other characters including Ragna. Nice to learn that the dragon in Mai's stage is the one summoned by Fuzzy and I'm looking forward to seeing Mai use Outseal. Also, it seems that the Azure is able to influence Mai since she got entranced by it and Bell had to snap her out of it. I guess that's a side-effect from her becoming the Blank Grimoire.

Next chapter preview. Nice to see Mai learning how to use Outseal.