Ice Car

About

"Ice Car" is a meme that stems from the Arc System Works fighting game Blazblue: Calamity Trigger , an arcade game released in Japan in 2008 and ported to PS3 and Xbox 360 in June 2009. The game was part of the "revival of the fighting game genre" that occurred in 2009 when fighting games suddenly became popular again due to the release of games like Capcom's Street Fighter 4.

Usage

Ice Car is the nickname for Jin Kisaragi's special attack Musou Senshougan (lit. Crystal Strike) which can be performed by inputting 214 (quarter circle back) and any button. It can be performed on both the air and the ground and it's primary uses are for combo extending although the D version (which costs 25 meter and is named Musou Tosshougeki, lit. Freezing Crystal Strike) is fast enough where it can be used to punish your opponent for carelessly throwing out slow moves.^[1]

The move is more or less Jin summoning an icicle, hopping on it, and then riding it across the screen. The B, C, and D versions have Jin following up the attack with a sword strike.

Spread and Popularity

The Blazblue Jin flow chart was made to parody the Street Fighter 4 Ken flow chart

The move gained it's notoriety when the game was released to console June 2009. In the netplaying community, it was known a fast moving attack that many people new to the fighting game genre had a difficult time dealing with. On top of that, Jin was a very strong character and annoying to fight against because whenever he did a freezing move, the player that was frozen would be required to manually shake out of freeze state (this was changed in the sequel Blazblue: Continuum Shift).

Ice Car heavily annoyed early players of the netplay community, leading many to ragequit matches.

Though it is unknown where exactly the term "Ice Car" came from, most of the topics about it originate from Gamefaq's Blazblue: Calamity Trigger board. The term became popular when one user created a flowchart for how to play Jin, very similar to the flowchart of the character Ken from Street Fighter 4.

The creators of the game also took note of Ice Car spam and created the trophy "Ride the Icening" which is granted to a player who uses Ice Car over 20 times in one round and kills the opponent.^[4] The name of this trophy is a parody of Guilty Gear character Ky Kisuke's "Ride the Lightning" which was named after the song by the rock band Metallica.

In general though, it is not uncommon for fighting game players to create their own jargon for moves and a lot of special moves from Blazblue have their own nicknames.

Jin Kisaragi

In the game's story, Jin Kisaragi is a high-ranking officer of the global military force NOL (Norvus Orbis Librarium) and also nicknamed the "Hero of Ikaruga". In the story, he learns about Ragna the Bloodedge's return, and goes AWOL in order to chase after Ragna. Normally he has a cold and sadistic personality, but around Ragna he becomes insane and creepy.

Jin in general is popular among fans of the Blazblue story for being a rare example of a male yandere. There are many jokes among the Blazblue fandom about Jin and probably the most popular thing about him is how he creepily calls Ragna "Nii-san" when fighting him. These jokes are also often perpetuated by the story writers and this relationship is highlighted in many joke ends of Story Mode along with Jin's segment of "Teach Me Ms. Litchi" and "Help Me Professor Kokonoe".

Origin

Ice Car was not the first "car" type move in an Arc System Works game. Before it was "Hair Car" which came from Guilty Gear. Like Ice Car, Hair Car was the nickname for Millia Rage's Iron Saber special (performed by doing quarter circle back + punch).

While Ice Car is probably the most well known these days, generally a "car" type move refers to a move that causes the character to travel forward across the screen on some sort of vehicle. For example, the character Arakune's 2C is known as "Shark Car" and Platinum's Mami Circular special is often referred to as "Heart Car". These moves are fast and cover a lot of space, but they also tend to have a lot of recovery which allows the opponent to freely counter attack if they block the move.

The oldest post mentioning Jin's Ice Car is a post on the Blazblue/Guilty Gear fansite Dustloop.com in the CT Jin combo thread.^[2] Though it is very likely that the term is older than this. It probably originated around the time of the game's console release on June 25, 2009. The oldest thread complaining about Ice Car on gamefaqs.com was posted on July 1st, 2009.^[3]

External References

^[1] iplaywinner – Blazblue Jin Jisaragi Combos Moves Strategy Videos

^[2] Dustloop – Jins Combos and glitches

^[3] Gamefaqs – I need help with Hakumen…

^[4] Playstation Universe – Ride the Icening