Bayonetta

Bayonetta (real name Cereza) is the eponymous main character of the Bayonetta series. She is a coquettish and mysterious Umbra Witch. Considered the black sheep of the Umbra Witches due to her Umbran and Lumen descent, which breaks both respective clans' sacred tenents, she possesses a remarkable talent for Bullet Arts and possessed the Left Eye of Darkness.

In the first game, she was sealed away five hundred years ago until she was later found and awakened. Spending twenty years with amnesia, she battles against the angelic hordes of Paradiso and fights to end the malicious plans of the last of the Lumen Sages, Balder.

Months after, Bayonetta, in the second game, finds her friend and fellow clans member Jeanne taken down to the realm of Inferno after a summon gone wrong. With the help of Rodin, she is not only hounded by angels but even demons and uncovers a deeper plot of a former half of a god conspiring to reclaim his lost power and the truth behind the Witch Hunts.

As the main protagonist, she is playable in both Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 as well as Tag Climax. She is set to appear as a playable character in Bayonetta 3.

Personality[]

As a young child, she often looked up to her mother, Rosa, regarding her as a hero. As seen with her time displaced version of herself (that later overrides her history), she also maintained an attachment to her father, Balder. Initially described as a "cry baby" by her older counterpart, she followed her older self under the assumption of being her mother, Rosa, and throughout the journey, is inspired by her and gains confidence in herself to live up to being as good as her. She also developed a fixation of lollipops due to being entertained by Luka in an effort to calm her down. This confidence and pride later reflects in her life as a young adult, being a proud Umbra Witch despite being a black sheep in the clan. Because of her adventures with her older self under the assumption of her mother, she was able to reawaken her Left Eye of Darkness.

As an adult five hundred years later in the timeline, Bayonetta's personality can be described as nonchalant and is perceived as somewhat callous to others, such as Luka, who believed her to be the killer of his father, Antonio Redgrave. Throughout the first game, she's shown to enjoy fighting angels in a playful yet brutal manner, maintaining her cool and even tends to attempt to banter with the more serious angels such as the Auditio and Infernal Demons. Often bantering, her wordplay leans towards the constant use of sexual lingo within a given situations to taunt and tease her enemies and friends alike. Bayonetta tends to enjoy using her sexuality as a means to an end in more instances than not, often using it to tease or intimidate the likes of Luka. Bayonetta tends to operate alone and prefers to do things by herself if going on a mission or adventure, and not get encumbered by other people, at least initially. She can also be construed as somewhat impatient, especially towards the more "talkative type" of enemy she encounters such as that of Temperantia and Father Balder.

However, Bayonetta has also shown genuine concern. It's witnessed that her amnesia troubled her for the last twenty years, having done her best to explain to Luka in the past that her father's death wasn't her fault and has been seen taking his venting of anger and frustration towards her to heart.[1] She also becomes fiercely attached and protective of her younger self, unaware of the fact it is actually her[1] as well as Loki.[2] After rekindling her friendship with Jeanne, she was also shown to value her friendship and was willing to risk going down to Inferno to rescue her, placing the blame on herself for not foreseeing Gomorrah's attack to her in time.

She is also not immune to displaying outright anger and hatred, having done so for both her father[1] and Alraune.[2] Despite her close connection to her father, upon re-learning her memories concerning his supposed actions of starting the Witch Hunts, she denounced her father.[1] In the animated movie, she goes even further and blames him for the death of her mother believing him to be responsible.[3] However, her hatred dissipated for her father upon learning the truth of her mother's death at Loptr's hands and his sacrifice and corruption of his very body at the hands of the aforementioned being whom ascended as Aesir.[2] Her hated of Alraune, due to her attempting to absorb Jeanne's soul and nearly sealing her fate in being trapped in Inferno, reached to the point of almost killing her outright out of revenge.

Relationships[]

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

Bayonetta is voiced by Hellena Taylor in all of her English appearances and was initially the only voice for Bayonetta upon the first game's initial release in Japan. Hideki Kamiya explained in an interview that he wanted a British accented voice actor for Bayonetta, because witches were more of a European myth than Japanese. Bayonetta's Japanese voice actress for the Wii U version of Bayonetta, Bloody Fate and Bayonetta 2 is Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost In The Shell and Hibana From Kunoichi.
- Comparing Bayonetta's face to Hellena's, one can notice there are some similarities between her face, especially the outline to her's. This is no surprise as many game characters share facial similarities to their voice actors/motion capture actors.
Hellena Taylor says that she had problems in pronouncing the words for summoning demons because they were so weird but Kris Zimmerman-Salter (Voice director) helped her with pronunciation.
In a scene during Chapter III of the first game, Bayonetta surfs on a wave of lava and says "Dancin'-a-go-go, baby!" which is a reference to Viewtiful Joe.
Bayonetta's watch contains the numbers 14111219. It represents the year/month/date of Bayonetta's birthday, which is December 19, 1411.
When playing as Jeanne in either game, the outfit that resembles Bayonetta's default look is referred to as a 'battle uniform' of the Umbra Witches. It can be assumed from this that Bayonetta's outfit is the usual outfit Umbra Witches would wear when in battle.
The ribbons that Bayonetta initially wears in her hair read the word "BAYONETTA" in demonic script, which is supposed to hint where she got her modern alias from. According to Enzo in Bloody Fate, the name "Bayonetta" was given to her by Rodin. The ribbons were originally supposed to be the thing that bound the hands and feet of dead Witches in their resting places, as shown in the Eyes of Bayonetta artbook.
Bayonetta's ability to weave her magic through her hair is a reference to an old European belief that women with long hair were more likely to be targeted by incubi, which later evolved into the idea that witches used their hair in magic.
In his commentary for the first game, Hideki Kamiya calls Bayonetta's "Serious Mode" one of the first tested basic designs for the character that was rejected because the hair would cloak the figure. During playthroughs, developers realized that Bayonetta has a hard time fighting big bosses with her usual attacks and thus, Serious Mode was born, where every attack creates a Wicked Weave; the older character design was then reused to spice the scene up.
When Bayonetta says the quote "Flock off feather face" and she also says "Flock off" in combos this is a reference to how the angels have feathers it could also be a reference to Jurassic Park where a characters uses the word "flock".
When in Beast Within form, a trail of black roses and skull-headed flowers are left wherever Bayonetta runs. This is a reference to Okami, where, depending on how fast Amaterasu is running, grass or flowers bloom in an identical manner.
In his commentary, Hideki Kamiya mentions that at some point in development a teenage version of Bayonetta was present in the game, linked to an older version of Magic Gauge - the Gauge used to replenish with time, and if the player would use up all the orbs, Bayonetta would morph into this teenage version of herself. When the way the Magic Gauge works was changed, teenage Bayonetta was dropped too.
In both games, you can never see Bayonetta without her glasses. In one of the cutscenes in the first game before fighting Temperantia, she does take them off, but her face remains off-camera. In his commentary, Hideki Kamiya mentions that one of the developers once said: "For Bayonetta, her glasses are like her underwear: never let yourself be seen without them". Ironically, Cereza was seen without her glasses.
If Bayonetta shoots idly at a wall, she will start writing her initials and hearts with the bullets.
When Bayonetta draws on Luka's face with the lipstick in the first game, she draws the circle similar to that of Amaterasu from Okami on his forehead, along with whiskers and an animal’s mouth.
Bayonetta's ability to transform into a crow and a panther are similar to a concept in Okami that had Amaterasu transforming into a dolphin and a falcon—although, unlike Bayonetta, the idea did not appear in the final version of Okami.
Bayonetta shares similarities with Samus Aran (Zero suit Samus) from the Metriod series. Both characters are the protagonists of their series, they're beautiful, athletic women who wear skin-tight bodysuits, possess gun-like weapons, went through a difficult past relating to their family, and each have a beauty mark on the right of their lips. Fans currently still compare Bayonetta with Zero Suit Samus.
Bayonetta was going to be included in the Sega crossover kart-racing game Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed as a playable character, but according to a forum post from the developers, she was scrapped because the developers had trouble trying to keep her in-character without the ESRB/PEGI rating potentially going up.
Jubileus, The Creator roughly resembles Bayonetta, especially regarding Jubileus' wearing eyewear similar to Bayonetta's butterfly glasses, a similar hairdo and something similar to her Umbran Watch on her chest. According to Hideki Kamiya in the official artbook commentary, this design was intentional as Jubileus, Bayonetta and Queen Sheba are supposed to represent the most powerful beings in their respective dimensions.
Bayonetta's intolerance of crying babies and cockroaches is referenced in The Wonderful 101, when one of the later bosses calls the titular superheroes "crying baby cockroaches".
When questioned if Bayonetta and Jeanne were blood related, Hideki Kamiya stated that they are not related by blood but are just of the same clan. He elaborated that Bayonetta is of English descent whilst Jeanne is French.
Bayonetta's long taunt in Bayonetta 2 is a reference to Hideki Kamiya, who frequently responds to questions asked of him on Twitter with "Ask your mom."
When Hideki Kamiya was asked about the relationship between Bayonetta and Luka, he simply stated: "She teases Luka; like a toy, but will never commit, he'd die long before her."
According to the other-media appearances, Bayonetta's weight is 4.67 Umbran Witch Weight and her stature is 11.951 Umbran Witch Height.
Bayonetta colors in the first two games are just like Sonic and Shadow from the Sonic the hedgehog series the first game colors having red & black like Shadow and the second game having blue colors much like Sonic.
Before Bayonetta fights Aesir she said the line "Let's rock" it could be a possible reference to the movie Aliens where someone in the film said this line.
Bayonetta makes several references to the novel "Alice in Wonderland" that was written by author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson in both games: repeatedly calling Luka "Cheshire", which is also the name of Cereza's stuffed doll, and calling herself "An innocent little girl lost in Wonderland, suffering at the hand of the queen's trumped-up troops" to Loki in their first introduction.
Although there has been changes in the timeline, it does not seem have affected any of her relationship or history with other characters.
As a running joke through out both games, during the game intro, Bayonetta would be forced to use regular firearms before getting her magical guns (Scarborough Fair and Love is Blue) and complain when said firearms break under the stress. Another gag is between her and Luka, where Luka would come to her "rescue" without realizing she is in Purgatorio, which would therefore cause him to fail and then slam into a wall.
In the Japanese version of Super Smash Bros. 4, if the player picks Bayonetta's "A Witch With No Memories" costume, she will speak English, but in her Bayonetta 2 outfit, she will speak Japanese. This reflects how Japanese dubbing wasn't put in the original Bayonetta, and was exclusive to Bayonetta 2.
A running joke is that Bayonetta has a team with Jeanne, Luka, Rodin, Enzo as they are always seen in the end and the team is nicknamed "Team Bayonetta".