Black Rose

"I wouldn't have made it this far without you. What am I to do when you start doubting yourself?"

- BlackRose

BlackRose (ブラックローズ, Burakkurōzu) is the main female protagonist in the .hack//Games and a critical character in the Twilight Incident. She is also the star of Another Birth which retells the Games from her point of view.

Appearance
BlackRose is a dark-skinned girl with numerous yellow/pink wave symbols around her body. She has pink hair and a revealing set of reddish-violet armor. A Heavy Blade, she wields large two-handed swords, though she seems to favor broadsword type weapons over the katana also available to her class. She looks similar to Mimiru and Rena, due to sharing a character model with the former and the latter being based on her.

In .hack//XXXX, BlackRose wears earrings and has a rose in the center of her chest. In .hack//GIFT BlackRose wields a tennis racket instead of a sword, likely as a reference to the fact that Akira Hayami is a skilled tennis player.

Personality
BlackRose first appears confrontational, arguing with Kite the very first time they meet. However, it is soon revealed that her tough attitude is just an act she uses to try and mask her fear. Though her real motivation is kept hidden for a while, she quickly allies herself with Kite after hearing his story and becomes one of his strongest supporters. BlackRose eventually develops a small crush on Kite, though she would never admit it. She is on friendly terms with most of Kite's party, especially Mistral, who she regards as a sort of "big sister" and Natsume, who sees her as a sort of mentor. She is not very fond of Piros, whose crazy antics annoy her, and Terajima Ryoko who becomes her main rival for Kite's affection. BlackRose also has several friends outside of Kite's party, like NOVA, and Chimney.

Basic Info
The player behind BlackRose is a 16 year old student in her first year of High School named Akira Hayami (速水晶良), who lives in Asahi ward, Yokohama, and attends Asahi Senior High. Akira lives with her parents and has two little brothers: Fumikazu and Kouta. She has several close friends at school, her best friend being Risa Hamaoka. During the Twilight Incident, she lived in the same apartment complex as Shugo Kunisaki and Rena Kunisaki. Her family used to live in Kujūkuri in the Chiba prefecture.

Hobbies
Akira enjoys physical sports such as tennis. At school, she was the only 10th grader to make it to first string in tennis, but because of this, she gets bullied many times by the upperclassmen who are jealous of her success. Her main aspiration is to play center court in Wimbledon. She also loves swimming, which she learned back when her family lived in Kujūkuri.

.hack//Games
BlackRose's little brother Kazu was defeated by a Data Bug at Δ Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground and fell into a coma in the real world. Because of this, she embarked on her quest to find a way to revive him. She soon encountered Kite, and after realizing he had the same goal she did, she decided to partner up with him. BlackRose proved invaluable to Kite's mission, helping him in his investigation and arranging meetings with people like Helba, Wiseman, and Lios. Together Kite and BlackRose slowly began to build a team to combat the Cursed Wave and the Eight Phases. This group would later be called the .hackers.

As Kite's partner, BlackRose was present in almost all of his battles against both the Cursed Wave and Cubia. During the final fight against Corbenik she was rendered temporarily comatose as a result of its Drain Heart attack. Fortunately after Kite and Aura succeeded in defeating the final Phase, BlackRose regained consciousness and was successfully reunited with her brother.

Shortly after the events of the Twilight Incident, BlackRose invites Kite to the dungeon Ω Raging Facing Mirror's Virgin, unaware that Terajima Ryoko invited him to the same dungeon. While traversing the dungeon, BlackRose and Terajima Ryoko leave Kite before finishing, due to the fact that both girls wanted to go through it alone with him. In Another Birth, BlackRose and Terajima make up afterward and become friends.

.hack//XXXX
As Kite's partner, BlackRose has sworn to help Kite in any way that she can. However she frequently gets angry with Kite's habit of going off by himself. Despite this she is very protective of him, and doesn't tolerate anybody who would try to harm him. When Kite falls into Cubia's clutches, BlackRose is the one chosen and blessed by Aura to go rescue him.

.hack//Another Birth
For a more detailed description see the Another Birth section.

When Akira's little brother Fumikazu fell into a coma after playing the online game The World, Akira knew that it was up to her to figure out what had happened. Logging into the game herself, she created a character named "BlackRose", and soon found herself in the middle of a mystery that led her straight into the heart of The World itself. Alongside Kite, a player who had also had somebody close to him fall into a coma, BlackRose slowly pieced together the story of The World's creator, Harald Hoerwick, and Aura, the daughter he had attempted to create inside of the game. Meanwhile Akira also had to deal with real life issues, such as sports, bullying at school, and an admirer who was insistent on making her his girlfriend. Despite these obstacles, BlackRose managed to succeed in her fight, and was able to successfully restore her brother and the rest of the coma victims as well.

.hack//Unison
During Unison, BlackRose meets up with B.T., Subaru and Mimiru at a bar in Carmina Gadelica. Mimiru accuses her of copying her avatar, but BlackRose shrugs it off, saying that even though Mimiru came first, future players will consider herself as the legendary player instead. They are soon joined by Tsukasa, Crim, Elk, and Mia. BlackRose introduces Elk and Mia to the rest of the SIGN cast. Soon afterwards Bear, Mistral and Silver Knight arrive and the entire group travels to Net Slum to meet Helba. There they are joined by Kite, Orca, and Balmung. BlackRose drags Kite off and they dance together.

.hack//GIFT
BlackRose arrives at the initial crime scene with Kite and accuses Balmung of killing Orca. After meeting Mimiru, she takes an immediate disliking of her and claims she can reach the Twilight Hot Springs before her because she has Kite's bracelet on her side. In the race to the hot springs, BlackRose often exchanges insults with Mimiru as both accuse the other of copying their style.

.hack//4koma
In contrast to her original personality, BlackRose is actually one of the most levelheaded of the 4koma characters. She is portrayed as being completely loyal to Kite, a fact that Kite frequently takes advantage of by dragging her to remote places at all hours of the day. To his credit, Kite treats BlackRose with a bit more respect then he does the other 4koma characters, however that doesn't stop him from having strange sexual fantasies about her. BlackRose has a great amount of hate towards Atoli, whose constant monologues about peace and happiness have nearly driven her to murder. Oddly enough she seems to have a fairly good relationship with Haseo.

Project X Zone
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.hack//Link

 * See BlackRose (LINK)

Trivia

 * The name BlackRose came from a nightmare she had. She chose the Heavy Blade class due to a suggestion that her brother Fumikazu made to her.
 * Her starting weapon is a level one sword called Steelblade.
 * In .hack//G.U. Rebirth, if the player has a saved data from the Games, Haseo receives an email from BlackRose. Though, canonically, this email was sent to Kite right after the events of the Games. This email reveals the events around her and her brother after the game's events, and suggests she is in love with Kite.
 * The representative flower for Yokohama, where BlackRose lives, is the rose.
 * In the U.S. version of the games, BlackRose's references to Kujūkuri, Chiba were replaced with Malibu, California.
 * According to .hack//Archives_03 LIGHT EDITION her character model stands at 165, or 5'4"
 * The Shopkeeper from .hack//LINK: Twilight Knights has a picture of BlackRose in his collection.
 * BlackRose was originally set to appear in Redemption but was removed due to time restraints. Part of the design, namely the sword, was reused for .hack//Link.
 * There is some inconsistency with the color of her PC's Wave Tattoos. Most depictions have them as yellow, while others, show them the same shade of pink as her hair. Yellow is her most common color however.
 * in 4koma she is portrayed sometimes with a bag of potato chips.
 * Blackrose and her partner, Kite, will appear in Project X Zone, a crossover game between three companies: Namco Bandai Games, Capcom and Sega.