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 one of the primary antagonists of the BlazBlue series, alongside with Relius Clover and Yūki Terumi, 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 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. One of these doll-like bits is that she does not have proper feet.

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, which was also cloned to create Lambda, Mu, and Nu. Izanami, like Noel, possesses a part of The Origin's soul, since she is the manifestation of her soul's power, her Drive. Her goal is to reduce everything in the universe to nothing.

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 it was: a "world of death".

Chronophantasma
She serves as the main antagonist in 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: Takemikazuchi to destroy the Master Unit, but Rachel protected it with her Tsukuyomi Unit.

After Takemikazuchi 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.

Centralfiction
In BlazBlue: Centralfiction she serves as the boss for Act 2, "Nightmare Memory". As revealed in Rachel's Arcade, Izanami is just the Drive of the Origin, and the story mode revealed that due to her being a Drive, her soul is a part of The Origin's soul.

Her vessel, Saya, was customized by Relius to house Izanami but it already started to deteriorate.

In her Act 3 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 Takemikazuchi 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, bringing it to a stop and leaving her opponents completely defenseless for a set duration. She is also capable of conjuring skeletal constructs of spectral energy that aid her in offensive and defensive ways.

Her Drive, Exodus Ark, 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, Ark Force, gives her access to all of her abilities of both modes, allowing her to block while the Unit is active. Lastly, her Astral Heat, Tokoyo no Yami, has her calling upon the spirits of the afterlife to aid her in dragging her opponent into the netherworld.

Trivia

 * "Hades" is the name of the God of Death and the Underworld in Greek Mythology. Izanami is the name of Izanagi no Mikoto's former wife, Izanami no Mikoto, the Goddess of Death and Creation in Japanese Mythology.
 * Her theme music is called "YOMOTSUHIRASAKA". In Shintō religion, Yomotsuhirasaka (黄泉比良坂) 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.
 * 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. However, Naoto Kurogane said that Izanami is not his sister.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * In Hakumen's Act II ending in BlazBlue: Centralfiction, Izanami describes Saya as a "yorishiro" (依り代), which is a Shintō term for an object that can attract and house spirits.