Hades: Izanami

Hades: Izanami (冥王・イザナミ), also known as just Izanami (イザナミ), is a Drive manifestation. She is a playable character in BlazBlue: Centralfiction. She was also one of the main antagonists of the BlazBlue series.

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, only smiling when it regards her goals and when her opposition is struggling against her. 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 Emperor 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.

However, Izanami shows signs of being frantic when Mu-12 successfully absorbs her due to Ragna’s interference, which was a possibility she never expected due to her arrogant and dismissive personality.

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.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift
Izanami awakened during Continuum Shift. She cured Tsubaki Yayoi’s blindness, and while Ragna sacrificed his left arm to turn Mu-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”.

BlazBlue: Chronophantasma
She serves as the main antagonist in Chronophantasma. To make people aggressive, Izanami created Event Interferences 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 Highlander: 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 Blue 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 magic element, 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 2: “Nightmare Memory”. As it’s said by Rachel, Izanami is just the Drive of the girl inside the Master Unit, so it means she’s also a part of the Origin’s soul.

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

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.

She was eventually absorbed by Noel after she had merged with Mu-12. The attempt would’ve failed with Izanami gleefully using her powers to overwhelm Noel at close range if it were not for Ragna inverting her powers with the use of his Blue Grimoire (to which Izanami expresses her frantic disbelief).

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 Magic Formula 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 Event Weapon 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 shield her from opponent’s attacks or act as an extension of herself in attacking her foes. She can even conjure large orbs of dark magical energies that she sends crashing down on her opponents. She is also a surprisingly skilled and flexible physical fighter. She also has the ability to teleport and drain the life energies from her opponents.

Also in BlazBlue: Centralfiction she claims that it would be difficult for her to create an energy blast like one Corpse Burial: Requiem was supposed to make, which was going to atomize the entire planet and the moon with 10 to the power of 31 joules worth of power, but she made it sound like she was actually capable of that.

Her Drive, Sand Shine  (沙麟＜エクソダスアーク＞), 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, Suppressing Realm  (絶界＜アークフォース＞), gives her access to all of her abilities of both modes, allowing her to block while the Unit is active. Lastly, her Astral Heat, Eternal Darkness (常世の闇), has her launching the opponent high into the air and calling upon the spirits of the afterlife to aid her in dragging her opponent into the netherworld.

Trivia

 * Naming
 * “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.
 * On that note, the term "meiō" (literally meaning "dark king") is one portion of the term "meiōsei" ("dark king star"), the Japanese name for the Pluto star; Pluto being Hades' other name and also ties in with the dwarf planet of the same name.
 * Despite being female, Izanami’s title of “Hades” and "King of Sheol" below both refer to a male instead.
 * Her theme music is called “YOMOTSUHIRASAKA”. In Shintō religion, Yomotsuhirasaka (黄泉平坂 or 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.
 * Her move naming theme is mainly nothingness, destruction, and meditation.
 * Appearance
 * 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.
 * Other
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * In BlazBlue manga, during fight between Ragna and Hakumen, the latter says: “Go back to the place you belong, Ragna the Bloodedge! Izanami calls you!!!”