Hades: Izanami

Hades: Izanami (冥王・イザナミ), also known as just Izanami (イザナミ) and formerly as the Imperator (帝), is the true main antagonist of the BlazBlue series, and the former Imperator of the Novus Orbis Librarium. She became a playable character in BlazBlue: Centralfiction. She is actually the Drive of the girl inside the Master Unit, Amaterasu.

Appearance
In Saya's body, she looks like a young woman with very long, violet hair tied into a ponytail, and soulless red eyes. She wears a white and red Japanese-style outfit reminiscent of an empress, tied with a light blue sash, with a golden crown and a dark cape over her shoulders.

In BlazBlue: Centralfiction, she does not battle in her normal priestess-styled regalia, but changes to a less restricting, more revealing outfit, with Yasakani no Magatama floating behind her. It's also shown that she has doll-like parts.

Personality
Hades: Izanami is devoid of all emotion and extremely literal-minded. She is obsessed with making the world die and will stop at nothing to accomplish her goal. She has little to no concern for her comrades, even to the point of offering Ragna Terumi's head in exchange for joining her side and eventually discarding both Terumi and Relius when they were of no further use to her. In addition, Izanami has no true attachment to her title and announces to the entire world that she willingly hands the role of Imperator to Homura Amanohokosaka and would grant the "gift" of death to the world.

Izanami remarks that she can "feel" the strong attachment that the real Saya has towards Ragna. Throughout the game, she constantly mocks Ragna with Saya's voice in a playful manner. Like Relius, she has a dislike of Hazama and his "playful" attitude, though it also could be out of Saya's proxy due to what Terumi did to her in the past.

History
Hades: Izanami is an immortal being, death incarnate. She is using Saya as her vessel who was also used to create Lambda, Mu, and Nu as her clones. Her goal is to reduce everything in the universe to nothing. She appears to have a feud with Rachel Alucard.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift
Izanami awakened during Continuum Shift. She cured Tsubaki Yayoi's blindness, and while Ragna sacrificed his left arm to turn Mu -No. 12- back into Noel, she damaged the Master Unit, Amaterasu, to disable the time loop while nobody's looking, and took control of the Takamagahara System, thus granting herself the one wish she had always wanted: to prevent time from looping any longer and make the world the way she believes it should be: a "world of death", where death is permanent, and when things end once, they shall end permanently.

BlazBlue: Chronophantasma
To make people aggressive, Izanami created Phenomenon Interventions in Ikaruga. To cancel it, the Amaterasu Unit had to get closer to the world, and was pulled out of the Boundary. After that, Izanami summoned Gigant: Take-Mikazuchi to destroy the Master Unit, but Rachel protected it with her Tsukuyomi Unit.

After Take-Mikazuchi was defeated, Izanami turned it in the Embryo, to create the True BlazBlue with it. She made Ragna's Azure Grimoire go fully berserk and declared that her alliance with Hazama and Relius Clover is now over since the "Banquet" has now ended, and that she will give them a "Good Death" for having served her.

As she heavily relies on the effects of seithr, Kokonoe's and Kagura's initial plan was to nail her with Kushinada's Lynchpin.

BlazBlue: Centralfiction
In BlazBlue: Centralfiction she serves as the boss for Act II, "Nightmare Memory". As revealed in Rachel's Arcade, Izanami is just the Drive of the Master Unit or rather the girl that was inside it.

Her vessel Saya is revealed to be a doll customized by Relius to house her but it is already starting to deteriorate.

In her Act III Arcade, she has a conversation with Relius about the nature of souls. He said to her that even if she was just a Drive Existence, as she has her own desire, which makes her a full individual with her own soul. Then she says that her only desire is to grant death to the current world.

Powers and abilities
Izanami is known to be extremely powerful, as she manages to damage the Amaterasu Unit easily. The BlazBlue Material Collection mentions that her vessel has incredibly high Armagus aptitudes. As well as this, she is immortal, in the same way that Rachel is. Not even Hakumen's Time Killer technique is able to affect her. This is due to her not feeling time. Rachel claims that she is as strong as the Black Beast, if not even stronger, as indifference to the Black Beast, she cannot be killed. Rachel also says that even if Hakumen had access to his full power, he would still have a difficult time defeating her.

Her boss battle in BlazBlue: Chronophantasma shows off her skills in battle. She can effortlessly control the Nox Nyctores Take-Mikazuchi in battle as well as unleash an extensive myriad of energy projectiles that cause an extraordinary amount of damage against the opponent. In BlazBlue: Centralfiction it is shown that she can float at will, and has the ability to control time.

Her Drive, Exodus Arc, activates her special Unit, Yasakani no Magatama. While it is active, Izanami's abilities change, she can shoot Magatama projectiles, but cannot block. Her Overdrive, Arc Force, gives her access to all of her abilities of both modes, allowing her to block while the Unit is active.

Etymology
Hades is the name of the God of Death and the Underworld in Greek Mythology. Izanami is the name of Izanami-no-Mikoto, the Goddess of Death and Creation in Japanese Mythology. Both names reference to her being death incarnate.

Trivia

 * She is named after Izanami no Mikoto, the goddess of death and creation in Japanese mythology, and the former wife of Izanagi no Mikoto.
 * For reasons unknown, her Japanese voice was redubbed for the release of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend. This could have possibly happened because Kanako Kondō's performance sounded almost exactly like Noel and Mu, which would give away the Imperator's relation to them.
 * In BlazBlue: Continuum Shift's True Ending, Hades: Izanami was actually dubious when she talked about Amaterasu. However, the English dub makes it easy to misunderstand that she destroyed the Unit.
 * She has a strong resemblance to Saya Terumi not only in appearance, but personality and even turns into her during Amane's Astral Heat.
 * She is the only character who is not super heavyweight type character like Iron Tager, to have no double jump. Instead, she gains a floating ability.
 * Her pose in the character select artwork along with the Yasakani no Magatama on her back is based on the Nataraja, a dance performed by Shiva, Hindu god of destruction, that is used to destroy and recreate the world.
 * In Shinto mythology, Yomotsuhirasaka (黄泉津平坂: cavern that was the entrance of Yomi) was the entrance to the underworld, where Izanami-no-Mikoto resided. It was sealed off with a giant boulder by Izanagi-no-Mikoto upon his escape.
 * She is the fifth character in the series to be shocked and possess no skeleton, instead an outlined ghost with a constant emitting aura can be seen, which is white normally and black in Overdrive.

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