Mai Natsume

Mai Natsume is the main character of the manga BlazBlue: Remix Heart. She was also part of the Duodecim noble family. Mai is currently the Intermediary Grimoire.

Information
Mai was the next heir of the Hazuki Family. One month prior to the events of Remix Heart, he somehow ended up as a girl and tried to turn back using various grimoires, but without success.

Remix Heart
Mai comes to the Military Academy for the first time on the day with the Ars Armagus assessment, claiming to have just returned from the hospital. Her assessment failed due to the grimoire used for measurement short-circuiting, but she made friends with Noel Vermillion, Tsubaki Yayoi, Makoto Nanaya and her eccentric roommate Cajun Faycott.

On the same day, she comes to know about Noel's death cooking, which is said to cause whoever ate it to wander between life and death. Despite the warnings from both Makoto and Tsubaki, Mai volunteers to eat Noel's dish so she would not be upset. She somehow survives and even enjoys it, calling it a godly dish, but her roommate Cajun was knocked out instantly. After bringing Cajun back to her room, she reveals that her tongue, which is super sensitive to taste, was what enabled her to eat Noel's cooking, though it prevents her from eating normal food. Listening to her story, Noel, Tsubaki, Makoto, and Cajun promises to find a way to cure her supertaster ability. They decided to throw a pajama party afterwards, but Mai fainted after looking at everyone else's naked bodies in the bath.

A few weeks later, the Torifune Festival comes. Jin Kisaragi wins as the Izanagi of the festival after a rock, paper, scissors game, causing Tsubaki to decide to join to become Izanami to be near him. Since there is no certain way to win a game of luck, Mai is asked to use her supertaster sense to read the minds of the girls in the next day's tournament by kissing them so that Cajun could deduce their thought pattern. Their plan succeeded, but Tsubaki found out afterwards. Mai apologizes to her, but Tsubaki thanks her and tells her not to do it again.

Later on, Mai was tricked by Cajun into believing that all females had to wears maid's outfit for clean up duty. Mai and her friends were then assigned by Estella McKenzie to clean her room. As Team Remix Heart cleans up Estella's room, Mai's true identify was almost revealed when she touched Ammit Cryas. However, her former self was not shown clearly, appearing only as a black figure when she quickly pulled it onto the table without the members knowing who it was.

During the Torifune festival, she slowly started to accept her new life as a female instead of finding a way to change back into her original gender, since her previous life was only being a puppet to the heir.

The next challenge for Team Remix Heart was to find the Conversion Grimoire in the desert, but Makoto got caught in an ant lion pit after she saved Noel, and Mai tried to save her by using her own bra and t-shirt as a rope to pull her out. Then, suddenly, a Guardian of the Azure Grimoire appeared to congratulate them. As the Guardian presented the Team Remix Heart with the task of choosing between the Conversion Grimoire or the Azure Grimoire, Mai decided to choose the Conversion Grimoire instead of the Azure Grimoire, which turned out to be a fake. After they made it back to safety, Akane tells them they are at lowest rank, but Jin congratulates them, since they were the only team who brought a grimoire (the other teams brought junk, according to him), so he will give Team Remix Heart the title of MVP for the sports festival.

In the library, Mai encountered an object in the shape of a picture book. As she touched it, she got a cut in her finger. Instinctively placing it into her mouth, she tasted her blood and, due to her supertaster ability, her mind got transferred into the book-like object called the Hypnagogia Grimoire. As Mai goes through the pages, she almost manages to reach the end. However, in their desperate efforts to save her, the pages got corrupted by Team Remix Heart. Mai ended up in a blank page, where her "father" stood, but he proceeded to call her worthless because of becoming a woman, and stated he does not need her anymore. Shocked and heartbroken by her "father's" words, Mai started suffering because of thinking of not being needed anymore. Sometime later, she encounters her friend's future selves, and notices how they are killing each other for her sake, which makes her suffer more. Mai stopped them, and told them how she really felt about them; that they are very important to her and she loved them. Suddenly, Mai saw Tsubaki and Noel's future and true selves as Izayoi and Mu-12, respectively, until waking up and seeing everyone at her side. Mai wonders if it is okay to tell them the truth, fearing that if she does, Team Remix Heart will be broken up.

The next day, Mai starts to recall the current events, and starts wondering if her friends would still accept her, should she ever tell them the truth. Suddenly, Mai falls in a hole, dropping Noel's cooking in the process. She wakes up in the school, now having lost her memories of the school and her friends. Mai seems to start remembering her life in the Hazuki family. She started wondering if Cajun and her are lovers due to sharing the same room, unknowingly revealing her secret; luckily, however, no one believed her, thinking it to be a side effect of her amnesia. Suddenly, when she tasted her tears, she started to remember her friends' names; with this, her friends decide to help her by making her taste their tears, but Cajun refuses to cry. At night, Mai recalls when she entered the academy, and the events that happened to her. When Cajun finally cried and Mai tasted her tears, she returned to her normal self; after being questioned by Cajun about being either a man or a woman, Mai replied to Cajun that she was a girl. Later, both are seen sleeping together.

Later, Mai and the others decide to go to the ninth level to search for the powerful Grimoire that can cure Mai's super taste. However, Team Remix Heart has to go through a trial and figure out how to use all the Grimoires they had found so far in order to pass. After they pass, the ground begins to crumble, and Mai gets separated from them, ending up in an unknown level, where she encounters Ragna. Mai explains she needs to find the Azure Grimoire, but does not tell him the truth, only stating she needs it to protect her friends. When arriving at the location, she is asked by two unnamed female guardians to save the First's soul from the Adsequi Grimoire. As Mai tried to save her, suddenly she tasted a flower petal, revealing that the First's lover was inside, and decided to kiss her so as to make her taste the flower. Realizing her lover was always with her, she became free and, with overflowing happiness, joined him in the afterlife. After that, she is reunited with her friends, and they go back to the academy to eat snacks. However, when Mai tasted Noel's cooking, she started to choke, and began to feel pain in her chest.

Five days later, she finally regains consciousness and no longer feels any pain, but Cajun explains to her that she has the Azure Grimoire inside of her, since she kissed the Adsequi Grimoire in order to save the First. When her friends suggest that she kiss one of them if she no longer has her super taste, she flustered and runs out of her room. As she continues to run away, she accidentally kisses Taro by mistake. However, their conservation was cut short as Mai continued to run away until she found a place to catch her breath. Her friends later managed to find her, explaining that her super taste is not cured, but evolved. She can now copy from something she has eaten/kissed to someone who she kisses, but can't use the ability she copies, thus turning herself into an Intermediary Grimoire. At the end of the day, the members of Team Remix Heart are seen bathing together.

As Tsubaki hurried to warn Jin about the effect of Taro's cooking, they encounter Shiori Kirihito and Chachakaka, two assassins sent by the Hazuki family to spy on Jin. Mai remembers that Kirihito family is an assassins, but she thinks that Shiori may not be a professional killer because of her frail body. After Team Remix Heart decides to look after Jin and others, Mai goes to tell Noel about it, and they two again met Shiori. Mai recognizes smell of the poison, and she has a bad feeling that Shiori is going to assassinate Jin. When girls decided to cook porridge, Shiori recommended rare medicinal herbs, but Mai was afraid that those herbs are poisonous. She tastes Noel's medicine herb porridge to make sure that it is not poison. After she tasted it, nothing happened, but she thinks that it would take time for poison to proceed. As Team Remix Heart (except Noel) re-visit Jin and others to feed them, Mai still can't get over from her accidental kiss with Taro, the more she thinks about it, the more she flushes. After that, Team Remix Heart heard a loud explosion in Jin and other's dorm and hurried there to make sure they are alright. As they arrive, Jin, Akane, and Taro's room is covered in block of ice which was caused by Jin, who under the influence of Nox Nyctores, Yukianesa, thought that he must destroy the "Dark One". Suddenly Mai was attacked by Jin, thinking that she was Ragna. As Mai panicked, she heard a male voice that directed her to go straight ahead to the school yard, Jin followed her. There, Mai was saved by Taro from Jin's ice attacks, Noel used her Nox Nyctores, Bolverk to distract Jin, and Taro managed to bind Jin until an alchemist professor, Seifer Albar, calmed Jin with an unknown ability. Mai then realized that it is his voice she heard in her head.

The next day, after she had a conference with Taro, she was captured by Shiori and Chachakaka. After she learned their plan, she broke free and fought Chachaka. Then Mai went after Shiori, but after she saw that Shiori accidentally poisoned herself, she decided to suck out the poison. Suddenly Mai saw Shiori's childhood and she understood that how she felt is similar to her own past. Mai comforted and embraced Shiori until she let out her true feelings. The following day, Mai woke up and she saw that Shiori is sleeping with her. Mai was shocked as Shiori revealed that her objective to kill Jin hasn't changed.

As summer comes, her friends decided to set Mai on a date with Taro since they know she likes him. Mai prepares to her date with Taro, but suddenly Chachakaka attacks her and tries to kill her.

Chronophantasma
In Chronophantasma, Noel mentioned about Mai during a conversation about their old academy days with Makoto after hearing Jin's old nickname that Taro had called him all the time, and Makoto revealed that after graduating, Mai went missing.

Personality
Mai is shown to have a sheltered and timid personality. She feels insecure being around girls and is greatly embarrassed to see naked female bodies to the extent of her having to pass out. However, she appears to be a good person at heart, agreeing to eat Noel's cooking despite her warnings her friends gave her and is willing to help them if needed. After she accidentally kissed Taro, she started to feel nervous around him and showing signs of love, becoming a bit of a tsundere towards him without Taro noticing. She even doesn't know why she have this feeling for him despite the fact she's actually male.

Unknown to her friends, when Mai was a man, she used to be more silent and aloof due to the pressure of being the next head of a Duodecim family. She stated that she had been like a puppet, living a life with only uneventful days. The change from the fake life to the new life full of radiance with team Remix Heart has caused her personality to shift, beginning to stop feeling insecure about being a girl and started to accept her new life. In later chapters she also shows more acceptance towards physical contact with her friends, only looking slightly annoyed when Noel runs into her, and even going as far as to sleep together with Cajun, in contrast to her previous behavior.

When she had amnesia, she reverted to her original personality almost entirely, still thinking she was a man. In this state, she acted very boyish, and stated that she had no friends. When her memory returns it's very clear that her mind is mostly that of a woman by this point.

Worth noting is that she refers to herself with the gender-neutral "watashi" as opposed to the masculine "boku" or "ore", even in her own thoughts. Also to note is that she uses "boku" while her memory is lost, indicating that her way of thinking indeed has become much more feminine after turning into a girl.

Carl Clover had commented that Mai's personality is similar to his sister, Ada Clover.

Appearance
Mai is a young woman with pink eyes and aqua blue hair, tied into a waist-length pony tail by a yellow ribbon; she also has twin ahoge. Though claiming to be male, her physical body shows much femininity, with a fairly above-average large bust. She also has a small scar on her back, and she wears pink lipstick.

She wears the standard blue and white uniform of the Military, accompanied by medium length black stockings and white shoes with yellow outline.

During the sport festival, she wears her hair down with her ribbon as a hairband, and a standard P.E. uniform with a plain white T-shirt.

In her past when she was male, she had long hair tied in a ponytail in an identical manner to how she wears her hair when she's female, with the only notable difference being that she wore no ribbon. Mai wore formal clothes, as expected by a Duodecim member; examples include a white collar shirt accompanied with a white scarf, a dark vest, and black formal jeans.

Powers and Abilities
Mai's aptitude for Ars Armagus is unclear, as the grimoire used for assessment short-circuited when it tried to measure her abilities.

In terms of physical abilities however, she is a supertaster, who experiences the sense of taste with far greater intensity than average, though her ability far surpasses any ordinary supertaster. She claims that her tongue is so sensitive that she can even perceive the thoughts of the food when they were still alive. The thoughts of the one who made the food can also be perceived, which is why she is not only able to "survive" Noel's infamous death cooking, but also calls it a godly dish because Noel's single-mindedness in cooking only leaves her innocence within the food. After saving the First from grimoire in the tenth level, she has a surge from the Azure Grimoire inside her body after kissing the Adsequi Grimoire, which happens to have the same Azure surge. Due to that, her super taste evolved into an intermediary ability – she can copy someone else's abilities when she kisses someone on the lips, but she can't use the ability, instead transferring it to someone else.

Mai is shown as being skilled at fighting with a rapier and a main gauche.

During her fight with Chachakaka and Shiori, it was revealed that Mai fights using Kirihito family's assassination techniques.

In Chapter 18.5, Seifer observed Mai from his lab and theorized that the grimoire that Mai has is "Crimson Grimoire".