Galaxia

Galaxia is a legendary sword that serves as Meta Knight's primary weapon.

Appearance
The sword itself, is golden in appearance, with a blade about as long as Meta Knight himself is tall, with a single rounded or oval ruby set within its hilt. Its handguards point towards the blade, which has a mirror-like, polished appearance compared to the hilt. There are usually six spikes along its blade, although there can be anywhere between zero to eight depending on artwork, and they range from simple outward pointing spikes to ones which have a slight outwards curve to them, similar to a fiery pattern.

As portrayed in the anime, Galaxia's blade has the unique property of only phasing into existence once it is unsheathed. This makes its sheath very short - a simple shallow cup for the small part of the hilt extending above the sword's handguard, which avoids encumbering Meta Knight's movement. The phasing blade also explains the Hammerspace (magic satchel) effect where Meta Knight seemingly produces a sword longer than himself from out of nowhere in the games.

Kirby wields Galaxia twice in the anime; once in Sword and Blade, Loyal and True / Hour of the WolfWrath and once in Crusade for the Blade. When doing so, he wears the traditional green Link hat from Sword Kirby, but swings Galaxia instead of an ordinary sword. Despite these appearances, the official site for the anime does not name it as a Copy Ability, and from its appearance it is likely a derivative of Sword. Regardless, fans have named the move "Galaxia Kirby", much as "Master" Sword has been named after Master.

Galaxia's name sounds masculine in Japanese pronunciation, and feminine in English. This coincides with the fact that the sword's voice is male in the original, and female in the 4Kids dub.

Kirby's Adventure and Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land
Meta Knight first appeared in Kirby's Adventure, but the sword which he wields in this game (and its remake), looks like the swords Sword Kirby, Sword Knight, and Blade Knight use. It is assumed that this blade is not Galaxia.

Kirby & The Amazing Mirror
In Kirby & The Amazing Mirror, released in 2004 after the anime episode was aired, Kirby uses Meta Knight's sword, which gave the Master Copy Ability, to confront Dark Mind.

Despite never being stated if it was truly Galaxia or not, it bears a striking resemblance to it in color, and the only difference is in the design of the blade, since Meta Knight never wielded a golden blade in the games he featured in before. The Master Sword's design in Kirby & The Amazing Mirror varies within the game itself; in the ending artwork in the game, its blade is silver / steel gray in color, but during gameplay, it looks like a larger, golden sword with the same hilt as the Galaxia, and does not have the spikes on the blade like Galaxia does. When the game is paused while Kirby has the Master ability, its icon on the pause screen shows its outline with Galaxia's spikes. Official artwork of Meta Knight for Kirby & The Amazing Mirror shows him swinging a spiked golden sword, which is a portrayal which is inconsistent with the rest of the game.

In all games after Kirby & The Amazing Mirror, visualisations of Meta Knight's sword in the games is based on Galaxia's design.

Kirby's Epic Yarn
Kirby's Epic Yarn is the first game main series title to directly give it a name, as the Galaxia Sword can be found in Battleship Halberd as a treasure - in addition, Meta Knight himself wields different yarn swords in this game.

Kirby Mass Attack
In the Kirby Quest sub-game of Kirby Mass Attack, Galaxia is fought as a boss separate from Meta Knight himself, with 2,500 HP, Kirby should not miss in any of the previous fights. If Kirby manages to defeat it, he then wields it against Dark Matter, who comes right after as the final boss of the sub-game. If the player lands the best timing possible, Kirby then fires a sword beam which takes out whichever form Dark Matter is in in one hit.

Kirby's Return to Dream Land
Galaxia is used by Meta Knight in this game. In addition, following the halfway point of the battle against Magolor Soul, the boss will use two giant, icy swords resembling Galaxia to slash at Kirby.

In the Super Smash Bros. series
In Super Smash Bros. Brawl as well as in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, Meta Knight wields Galaxia during battles. Meta Knight's Final Smash in all three games is "Galaxia Darkness", which also refers to the sword.

In Kirby: Right Back at Ya!
"If my mother gave her life for this, I shall too."

- Sirica

Galaxia is first named in episode 60 (Crusade for the Blade) of the original Japanese version of Kirby's anime, Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, aired in December 7th, 2002 in Japan. This is the episode where all the available back story of the sword comes from, as no details are ever revealed about it in the games.

In Kabu's own words, Galaxia is a powerful sword forged by Photron, the mighty ruler of the fire people, "in a time long forgotten, thousands of years ago when the universe was young," created "with a will and life of its own." Galaxia's name was given by Photron himself, but for what purpose it was forged for, and who was its intended wielder, was never revealed. Nightmare Enterprises sent Kirisakin to steal the sword, hide it away in a dark cave, and guard it throughout the millennia that will come to pass until it is seen again. According to Kabu, possession of Galaxia gives Nightmare the power to control the universe, but how, he did not elaborate. The sword did lie dormant in the cave for a long time, so despite what Kabu had said, Nightmare must have had difficulties harnessing the sword's power; since if he had, he would have succeeded in his goal of ruling the universe millennia ago.

Its legend lived on, however, and Meta Knight and Garlude were eventually sent by the Star Warriors which they were associated with to retrieve the sword. The two met their match against Kirisakin, a monster powerful in its own right. Garlude sacrificed her life to make the mission a success, and Meta Knight escaped with Galaxia and a heavy heart.

It is not until a long time later when Sirica, Garlude's daughter, sought out Meta Knight to retrieve the sword for herself, as she was misled that Meta Knight betrayed Garlude and left her to die to keep the sword to himself. Her opinions were corrected by Galaxia's sentient voice itself when she touched the sword and it found her to be unworthy of wielding it, and Sirica later became an ally of Meta Knight.

Transformation Sequence
The transformation sequence is the exact same as Sword, however, above the hilt, instead of the regular sword, it forms Galaxia, of course.

Properties
As explained in Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, Galaxia was forged with a spirit and will of its own, and so may only be wielded by a select, powerful few. The unworthy only find harm, are killed, or are turned evil when they touch it, which makes the sword radiate overwhelming electricity. Meta Knight was also shown weaponizing this electricity into an attack in Kirby: Squeak Squad. Only Kirby and Meta Knight ever wield Galaxia in the anime (Kirby wields it three times). Whoever wields Galaxia was shown to have virtually all moves by Meta Knight used in the past games, including the sword beam attack which appeared in Kirby Super Star. In the anime, Sword Kirby can still produce sword beams, but when wielding Galaxia, the beam takes the form of a concentrated blast of golden/green energy instead of white, and is powerful enough to shatter rock, create immense crevasses in the ground, and completely overwhelm opponents' defences and slice them right in two.

In the games, Meta Knight wields it like Sword Kirby, but with several additional moves. In Meta Knightmare Ultra, he makes use of his trademark Mach Tornado by spinning Galaxia around him.

Related Quotes
"Meta Knight's Final Smash. He flips his cape, and the darkness within envelops his foes and plunges the world into shadow. He then unleashes a series of sword strikes that do terrible damage and launch his foes. In the darkness, Meta Knight can also reach and attack distant enemies. One can imagine Meta Knight zipping back and forth at high speed to accomplish this."

- Trophy description

"Meta Knight swings his cape to ensnare foes. Darkness falls, enveloping them in an empty void and then a giant sword slash cleaves the blackness. If the cape doesn't capture anyone, this Final Smash will fail. It has more range than you might think, though and you only have to catch one foe to deal damage to everyone!"

- Trophy description

Etymology
"Galaxia" is Spanish and Portuguese for "galaxy." This may either be because of Meta Knight's Spanish accent in the dub, or because of the Japanese name for the Star Warriors, the Galaxy Soldier Army. The latter is more likely, as Meta Knight did not have a Spanish accent in the Japanese (original) version of the anime.

Trivia

 * In Kirby Mass Attack, for the Kirby Quest sub-game, Galaxia is shown in the background of the logo.
 * When Meta Knight first appeared, he did not use Galaxia as his weapon. He used a regular sword.
 * Galaxia Kirby makes a cameo in Kirby's Return to Dream Land when he has the Ultra Sword ability.
 * Dark Meta Knight wields his own variation of this sword, which is largely silver with a blue sapphire in the crossbar.
 * In Galaxia's first appearance in Kirby: Right Back at Ya! (Crusade for the Blade), the Japanese voice for Galaxia was male, but in the English dub, it was female.