Feeling nostalgic tonight. I miss BlazBlue Alternative Dark War (or BBDW), it was only around for 11 months and didn't even make it to it's Anniversary. But I loved it all the same. Every second spent playing it I don't regret not one bit. Every point grinding event, every story node, every raid... it was all so fun to me. Just getting to play with characters you'd probably never see in a fighting game and seeing new ones too!
Shame that so many problems plagued it from launch till end. I wish I still had it today because there was still something great there! Alas that's not how things work.
I love BlazBlue I really do and I still hold hope it'll come back. And whatever form that takes? Well I'll be there to support it like I did BlazBlue Alternative Dark War.
So here's some footage I recorded back when the game was live of one of the Astrals of a new iteration on an old character.
The Astral Finish of Another Dark Mai.
Like a lot of longtime characters, Kazuma was first made playable as a 3⭐ in BBDW- though rumors and datamines suggest there were plans for him to appear in Chronophantasma at some point, as Terumi has an unused line addressing him in that game.
See also;
[Gameplay]
From the start, Kazuma was a very interesting character to me. At the start, I assumed the Kazuma in BBDW had never made contact with Terumi- and as the story went on, dropping hints of a Terumi-possessed Trinity, I started to think BBDW Kazuma would never become a host.
But the mechanics of the game would suggest otherwise. At the start of BBDW's run, there was this really interesting mechanic where character's special attacks, such as their Astral Heats, were locked a sort of leveling system. (I thought this was a fun touch, though they removed it later into the game's lifespan.) This meant that you wouldn't be able to see a character's Astral until you'd raised them for a while.
Well, unless you watched their character trailers, which always showcased the Astral Heat at the end!
With the sole exception of Kazuma's. We never got to see Kazuma's Astral in promotional materials, while other starting characters like Trinity and Ciel had theirs shown off during early streams.
Which was incredibly suspicious.
Once you did finally unlock Kazuma's Astral Heat ingame, you'd find it very similar to Hazama's traditional Astrals- he's possessed by Terumi, and begins using his powers. Outside of that Astral, Kazuma was never shown using Ouroboros or any of Terumi's snakey magic.
We also see that familiar green haze in Kazuma's third card art- I wonder if that was also a hint. Speaking of Kazuma's character art!
Kazuma is shown in Ishana- in his final art he's in the library he loved so much. I'm not sure what the building in his initial art is. Could it be the cathedral? A normal school building? The library again? Maybe I need to read Phase Shift again and refresh my memory.
His first outfit is the same outfit he debuted in in Phase Shift 1. It's also the same outfit Rei, the player character, wears- minus the tie, which is different between the two. This may suggest the two are in different grades, but I can theorize about that another time.
Kazuma is famous for another outfit- the hooded version worn by him and Terumi during the Dark War, which you can see Terumi wearing in the background of this image. However, Kazuma never had this costume in BBDW. I wonder if it would have appeared as one of Terumi's three outfits when his Chronophantasma version was added to the game.
Kazuma's later two outfits are very similar to his Ishanan school uniform, though they become more elaborate and fancy. The outfits are completely original to BBDW. They could be reflective of Kazuma's personal taste- he's only familiar with the uniform, it's the only clothing he's ever had, and he's a pretty complacent guy, so he'd likely be drawn to clothing he's already familiar with if he had to shop.
Or, could these outfits be reflective of more Ishanan formal wear? Could they also have a role in Mage Guild culture?
Went digging for something else, forgot what it was exactly I was looking for, and then misremembered and dug up the ASW favorite game/series survey results instead lol They hid the top 10 in a Tokyo Game Show talk, so here they are:
Guilty Gear Strive — 2518 votes
BlazBlue: Centralfiction — 2363 votes
Guilty Gear XX series — 2203 votes
Guilty Gear Xrd series — 1960 votes
脱出アドベンチャー series — 1803 votes
探偵 神宮寺三郎 series (Jake Hunter) — 1512 votes
Digital Holmes — 629 votes
Kunio-Kun series — 612 votes
Wizard's Harmony series — 526 votes
BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle — 464 votes
Here's through to 20, from the official survey results page.
11. Guilty Gear 2: Overture — 444 votes
12. BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma series — 413 votes
13. BlazBlue: Continuum Shift series — 404Votes
14. World End Syndrome — 364 votes
15. Of Mice and Sand series — 285 votes
16. BlazBlue Alternative: Dark War — 284 votes
17. Guilty Gear X series — 258 votes
18. Prismaticallization — 233 votes
19. Guilty Gear (1998) — 219 votes
20. River City Girls series — 207 votes
Some funny honorable mentions from the survey page (this was out of 50 total games/series:
39. Tottemo E Mahjong series — 15 votes
47. Guilty Gear Isuka — 6 votes
48. Under Night In-Birth — 5 votes