Mai Hazuki

**Mai Hazuki** (マイ＝ハヅキ), who uses the alias **Mai Natsume** (マイ＝ナツメ) after turning into a woman because of the Pure Grimoire, is the protagonist of the manga *BlazBlue: Remix Heart*, and its sequel *Variable Heart*. She is a wielder of a Legacy Weapon replica, Gallia Sphyra: Outseal. In *BlazBlue: Centralfiction*, she appears as a playable DLC character.

## Appearance

In *Remix Heart* Mai is a teenage girl with magenta eyes and blue hair tied by a yellow ribbon into a ponytail that reaches her thighs; she also has hair antennae, two sidelocks that reach to her chest. Her body is quite slender and athletic, with thin limbs and a flat abdomen, but has a bust that is second only to that of Makoto in size.

As a student, she wore the standard blue and white uniform of the Military Academy, accompanied by black thigh-high stockings and white shoes with yellow outline. At times she also wore pink lipstick and nail polish. During the sport festival, she has her hair down with her ribbon as a hairband, and a standard Japanese looking school P.E. uniform. When Mai and her friends went swimming she wore a thin, striped two-piece light and dark blue bikini with yellow straps and rims that is decorated with yellow ribbons. For her school swimming lessons she wore a one-piece competition swimsuit. When participating in the academy survival training, Mai wore a low cut black tank top with a short-sleeved jacket, emblazoned with the Academy’s insignia. The top was tucked into normal short shorts held together by a pocket belt. Black thigh-length socks and military boots finished the look off.

As a male Mai was taller, had broader shoulders, a wider waist and narrower hips. Mai had long hair that was at times tied in a ponytail, though she didn’t use a ribbon. Her appearance was sufficiently different that neither Jin nor Tsubaki who had known Mai as a boy were able to realize that the female and the male Mai were the same person. Mai had worn the formal clothes expected of the Twelve Originators member; examples include a white collar shirt accompanied with a white scarf, a dark vest, and black formal jeans.

By the time of *Variable Heart* and *Centralfiction* her appearance had somewhat changed as she had gotten older. Her hair got longer compared to her first year of the academy, with her side-locks reaching below her navel and her ponytail below her knees. In addition, Kajun said that Mai’s chest had grown in size “to another level” and Kagura also commented that Mai’s chest has grown nicely. She now wore an outfit given to her by Kajun that consisted of lowleg tight-fitting black pants that exposed some skin on her sides, a backless white halter top with red trimming, black symbols, and a big golden zipper piece, maroon fingerless gloves that reach close to her elbows and high-heeled boots. She also had a red cape that she removed before combat.

## Personality

At the start of *Remix Heart* Mai was sheltered, timid and had difficulty interacting with others. This was because her harsh and distant father had taught her to consider everyone a potential enemy, causing her to grow up without friends. In addition, Mai initially had very little self-esteem and a low sense of self-worth due to her father’s desire for a perfect heir which Mai was unable to achieve. Furthermore, her father’s apparent rejection caused Mai to fear that all the other people she met, including her friends, would also eventually reject her just like he did. She also initially felt insecure being surrounded by girls and was embarrassed by seeing them naked. However, she quickly demonstrated that she was a good person, as she agreed to eat Noel’s cooking in order to make her feel better despite the warnings of her friends. Throughout *Remix Heart* Mai was very kind, polite and did what she could to help her friends due to the fact they were the first people to fully accept her. In addition Mai showed great courage and inner strength as well as a willingness to fight in order to protect those that she cared for. Carl had commented that Mai’s personality is similar to his sister, Ada. When Mai was a man, she used to be more quiet due to the pressure of being the next head of the Twelve Originators family as well as due to her father keeping her isolated. She stated that she had been like a puppet, living an uneventful life with no freedom. Making friends and being freed from her father’s constraints allowed her personality to evolve, and resulted in her overcoming her shyness and becoming more open towards others. In addition, thanks to her friends who accepted her even though she was not perfect, Mai managed to overcome the inferiority complex and trust issues caused by her father and gained both self-confidence and a sense of self-worth. Nonetheless, Mai still greatly respects her father and earnestly wishes to earn his approval.

While Mai had used the masculine first person pronoun “boku” before her transformation, at the Military Academy Mai used the neutral pronoun “watashi” instead. This was probably due to her wanting to hide her past and pass for a normal girl. As Mai spent time living as a woman, she adapted and gradually stopped thinking of herself as being male. She got accustomed to bathing naked alongside other girls and was no longer embarrassed by physical contact with them, only looking slightly annoyed when Noel ran into her and having no problems sleeping in the same bed as Kajun. In addition she lost interest in other girls and started being attracted to men. After accidentally kissing Taro, she started to feel flustered when around him, eventually realizing that she had fallen in love with him. This resulted in Mai undergoing an existential crisis since it made her conclude that she had become female in both body and mind and caused her to worry that she had changed so much that her original self had ceased to exist. In the end however Mai decided that even if she had changed, she was still herself and with the support of her friends came to accept herself as a girl.

In *Variable Heart*, Mai disliked being called a “grimoire” because she wanted to be considered a person rather than an object. In addition, she worried about the impact her transformation into a grimoire had on her humanity. Mai showed she was able to read Kajun’s intentions, as she realized that her teasing was due to her difficulty in talking about Mai’s situation.

Mai’s *Centralfiction* profile describes her as being cheerful and positive, sincerely caring towards others, that she values her friends above all else and that she often neglects herself due to the strength of her feelings. Mai displayed her loyalty to her friends by her willingness to face Hazama in order to protect Noel even though he was a Control Organization officer and her actions could thus be seen as treasonous.

## Powers and Abilities

Mai’s aptitude for Magic Formula is unclear, as the grimoire used for assessment short-circuited when it tried to measure her abilities. This was likely due to interference from the Nameless Grimoire. Mai however was able to use Magic Formula and she demonstrated that during *Remix Heart Gaiden*. The fact she’s the heir to a Twelve Originators family, who were selected due to high Magic Formula aptitude, indicates that she must have a high aptitude herself.

The Nameless Grimoire gave Mai a supertaster ability, allowing her tongue to obtain considerable information about what she tasted, including the thoughts of someone who made the food that she ate. This is why she was not only able to “survive” Noel’s infamous death cooking, but also called it a godly dish because Noel’s single-mindedness in cooking only leaves her innocence within the food. The grimoire was also responsible for Mai’s change in gender as its vessel has to be female.

Mai inadvertently had a fragment of the Blue Grimoire enter her body from the Pursuit Grimoire. Due to that, Mai became the Intermediary Grimoire and her super taste evolved into an intermediary ability; she could copy someone else’s abilities by tasting or kissing them and then transfer them to someone else she kissed though she was incapable of using these powers herself. In addition Mai demonstrated enhanced physical abilities when in dangerous situations, the ability to release a burst of energy that destroyed a monster created by Sypher, the ability to sense the location of Chachakaka during combat even with her eyes closed and she was able to bring down an alchemical barrier that was about to crush her. When using these abilities Mai’s pupils changed shape into white rectangles and her body released electrical discharges. Mai ceased being the Intermediary Grimoire and lost these abilities when Sypher extracted the Blue fragment from her.

*Variable Heart* revealed that, after the incident with Sypher at the end of *Remix Heart*, Mai’s body transformed into The Blank Grimoire, an empty grimoire that can utilize whatever power gets inscribed within it. Mai also demonstrated increased resilience as a result of her transformation, being able to remain conscious after receiving a blow powerful enough to incapacitate a normal human. Furthermore, right after her battle with Sypher, Mai was shown to be regenerating her injuries while she was unconscious. Mai was still The Blank Grimoire during *Centralfiction*and Jin, during his special interaction after fighting with her, said he was curious if this was the power of the grimoire, suggesting that it enhances her fighting abilities.

In-game, Mai’s Drive is **Gallia Sphyra: Outseal** (＝アウトシール *Garia Sufira: Autoshīru*, Red Bullet: Outseal, localized as **Exseal**), which allows her to toss her spear like a javelin. Holding down the button allows her to assume a stance and gather more power to point of it being unblockable. Additionally, she can alter the trajectory by tossing it up or down and an additional button press causes the spear to suddenly alter its trajectory to track the opponent. Her Overdrive, **Flurry of the Snow Moon** (風花雪月 *Fūka Setsugetsu*) shortens the charge time for her Drive attacks. Gameplay-wise, Mai is a very agile rush down character, displaying her adept fighting skill with her spear and uses dash-based stances that transition in to powerful strikes, her **Moon Flower** (月華 *Gekka*) in particular allowing her to jump further in the air to attack opponents from an ideal overhead position.

According to Kajun, Mai and Makoto have the best physical abilities among the Remix Heart team. Mai remarked that she had trained in martial arts since childhood, while Shiori observed that Mai knows and can use the Kirihito family’s assassination techniques. Hibiki Kohaku in his victory quote against Mai in *BlazBlue: Centralfiction*recognizes her evasive movements as originating from the Kirihito family, while Mai in her own victory quote against him remarks that the Kohaku family’s movements aren’t exactly the same as those of the Kirihito family’s, which shows that Mai is very familiar with the Kirihito assassination techniques and uses them in her current fighting style. During *BlazBlue: Remix Heart* she preferred using a longsword in her right hand and a main gauche in her left. However Mai was given a powerful spear by Kajun called Gallia Sphyra: Outseal, that is a Legacy Weapon replica and an Immortal Breaker, in *BlazBlue: Variable Heart*. Mai then started using that as her preferred weapon and continued to do so in*BlazBlue: Centralfiction.*

## TMNT X Pokemon

She helps the others train hard and teach them new moves of her own

## Trivia

* Mai’s birthday (4/4) falls between the Japanese Girl’s Day (3/3) and the former Boy’s Day (5/5).
* Her move names have a flower theme.
* Sumeragi said in an interview that Mori had her design Mai’s appearance, simply telling her that Mai should have a ponytail, that her appearance should be different from that of Kajun, Makoto, Noel and Tsubaki both in color and in hairstyle. She also said that it was Mori’s decision to have Mai be a boy that got transformed into a girl.
* In addition, *BlazBlue: Remix Heart* was initially supposed to be 2 volumes long and ended with Mai’s supertaste ability having become stronger and Mai having decided to remain as a girl, but the manga proved popular enough that they extended it to 4 volumes.
* Mori has said in an interview that Mai is one of the girls with the biggest breasts in the franchise and ranked the big-breasted girls from biggest to smallest as: Litchi, Makoto, Bullet, Mai, Taokaka.
* Mori was the one that designed the new outfit that Mai uses in *BlazBlue: Variable Heart* and *BlazBlue: Centralfiction*. An early version of it was published in the final volume of *BlazBlue: Remix Heart*.
* Because of Jūbei’s height, Mai’s high projectiles go right over his head if in his normal stance.