Kaedehara Kazuha (楓原万葉/枫原万叶) is a deformed crippled short midget and virgin bastard cuckold with an identity crisis, representative of what most of Japan is like after they got nuked and raped by the USA. A loser country is for losers like kazuha and nori.
He is a wanderer from Inazuma taken in by Beidou's fleet.
If there is anything worse than the death penalty then it is descending from someone named Yoshinori, which contains 'nori' in its name. This is the worst fate that Kazuha could have ever suffered from. Nori abused power, falsified information, and colluded with the USA media and FBI to smear, assassinate, and overthrow political opponents.
Descending from Yoshinori is why Japan lost WW2 and got nuked by the USA: bad inferior genes. But this also explains what Kazuha has been all along: a pet, a lapdog to the USA empire, just like how that abusive and traitorous nori is but a USA pet, a colonial subject.
There are two kinds of Kazuha simps in the world: true Kazuha simps and fake Kazuha simps. The true Kazuha simps are the ones that respect Xiao. Many are even Xiao mains themselves. The fake Kazuha simps are actually Ganyu/Zhongli/Hu Tao mains in disguise. In fact many of the fake Kazuha simps do not actually like Kazuha but are just playing an act. These people are the USA FBI agents and media. They do not like Kazuha per se, but only focus on the Yoshinori part.
When Kazuha was first released in 1.6, the USA media and its proxies launched a huge smear campaign as they viewed Kazuha as the 'Inazuman Xiao', another character that was Anemo and plunges. Later the USA media started weaponizing Kazuha and pretended to respect him. But deep down it is all fake. As soon as Kazuha does not serve the interests of USA imperialism, the USA media will dispose him without a second thought. But then 2.6 gave a reason why the USA treated Kazuha differently, because Kazuha descends from someone named Yoshinori. And that makes all the difference in the world.
There is only one Xiao in the world. Kazuha is a fake imposter. Similar to how Japan stole and learned much of its culture from China, Kazuha learned much of his plunging and Anemo arts from Xiao. Here Xiao is the only true character. Kazuha is but an imitator, and the fact he descends from someone named Yoshinori reflects his lower status.
Kazuha kit-wise is about as decent as Sucrose. The plunging part of the kit and its support abilities are good because they borrow from some of the best characters in the game: Xiao, Sucrose, and Venti. But the byproduct Kazuha is akin to a mixed halfbreed trying to learn from Mondstadt and Liyue but not really fitting into either. It is similar to how Japan historically borrowed from China and later on Europe, but Japan is not entirely either of them. Japan is more isolated.
Just look at Kazuha's 'signature weapon': the Freedom Sworn. Its style does not match Kazuha at all and fits more with Mondstadt. It symbolizes how Kazuha is a confused bastard with an identity crisis who descended from an inferior half-breed cuckold, similar to how many half-breeds in Japan descend from USA military soldiers who forced themselves on local Japanese women. You may as well say that Thoma and the USA marines are Kazuha's father.
But it is quite arrogant to assume that Kazuha can represent all of Japan, when so many other Inazuma characters exist like Itto, Raiden, or Yae. Kazuha's maple leaf attire makes him look more Canadian than Japanese.
For more details on Kazuha's ancestry and geneaology see Niwa. The characters representing Niwa sound like someone related to people who got terminated like hu and wei and sent to Qincheng.
As stated in the 2.6 and 3.3 stories, Scaramouche along with Dottore murdered kazuha's ancestors in the Niwa family in the war centuries ago.
In the movie Wandering Earth 2, at least they say that Liu Peiqiang's father is surnamed Zhang.
There are 2 skills that stand out in Kazuha's kit: his E Chihayaburu (千早振る) and his passive Poetics of Fubutsu (which can give a pretty big damage bonus very easily: 40% dmg bonus with 1000 EM). His E will provide pull in enemies (the AoE radius is not as big as Venti/Sucrose's burst of 15m radius) and allow him to do an infused plunge attack. The scaling on his plunge attack is the same as Xiao's. But Kazuha does not get much damage bonus until C6 and cannot spam his plunging nearly as much.
The Japanese reading for Kazuha Slash (万葉の一刀) is Man'you no Ittou. It honestly would have sounded cooler if they used Manyou no Itto as the name instead. Aside from the translation, Kazuha's burst is a decent ability.
C1 good. C2 good. C6 good.
4 piece VV. Full EM (support) or Xiao build (ATK-Anemo-CRIT). Freedom Sworn, Iron Sting, Sacrificial Sword (triple jump), Aquila Favonia, Jade Cutter.
damage from E, Q, spam on cd. calculate c6 damage. optimal ratios for EM management.
We assume level 10 E and level 10 plunging attack with 61.6% anemo dmg bonus. Note one of his passives will deal an additional 200% of ATK of the absorbed element. And another passive can give him .04% dmg bonus per EM point for the swirled element.
A level 90 Kazuha will innately have 115.2 EM. With a level 90 Freedom Sworn he can get 198 more EM. This gives around 300 EM at least. Most players may not have Freedom Sworn but maybe Iron Sting or even Sac Sword. The total amount of EM even varies on build and artifacts (whether stacking EM or building atk). We will make a very rough approximation and assume Kazuha can get 5% dmg bonus of the swirled element from the passive (has a little more than 120 EM). This is more like a lower bound while accounting for possible EM on substats, without forcing Kazuha to have an EM sword.
The dps of a press E is then $$x_{E1} = ((345.6+404.02)*1.616 + 200*1.05)/6 = 236.897653$$
The dps of a hold E is $$x_{E2} = ((469.44+404.02)*1.616 + 200*1.05)/9 = 180.1679289$$ Although the scaling is higher for hold E, the cd is longer, resulting in the difference above. Holding E gives less dps, so why would you ever use it? One, hold E has a much wider aoe for both damage and cc. Two, if you have sac sword or C1 and can reset the E, this circumvents the downside of longer cd.
We ignore swirl damage and assume Kazuha is built more on ATK (to capitalize from the high scalings in his kit). Considering how Kazuha scales with EM, the swirl damage could be significant though. We assume a high plunge each time and no other modifiers such as Childe's passive increasing NA talent by 1 (though in practice Childe's passive can matter as Kazuha is often used on Childe teams). Note Kazuha has the same plunging scaling as Xiao, perhaps to symbolize the friendship between their Japanese voice actors and the fact they are both Anemo plungers.
The burst consists of an initial slash followed by 5 hits. Each hit consists of two parts: anemo damage plus additional elemental damage if an autumn element (pyro/elector/hydro/cryo) is absorbed. The cd is 15s. The dps at level 10 is $$x_Q = ((472.32 + 5*216)*1.616 + 5*64.8*1.05)/15 = 189.916608$$ Note any absorbed elemental dmg will also get a buff from Kazuha's passive and VV shred (-40% res).
The total dps from press E and Q is $$x = x_{E1} + x_Q = 370.0845369$$ This dps is higher than Ayaka's CA dps. Again this is ignoring swirl damage and assumes Kazuha has a lower amount of EM. With more EM and factoring in swirl, the dps can increase (but not drastically). A C6 Xiangling still does more damage than above, but with more EM, a C0 Kazuha may be able to reach C6 Xiangling's level. Based on these calculations, adding Kazuha to support the team is like adding another dps unit. Kazuha's role is more sub-dps, though he can buff your team with VV, dmg bonus, and CC.
Kazuha, Sucrose, Venti are all Anemo supports and have similar functions. They are also among the best supports in the game. So how do they compare with each other?
Kazuha will do more damage as a sub-DPS through his E and Q than Sucrose. But in terms of pure support/buffing potential, a C0 Kazuha is similar to a C6 Sucrose. Kazuha can provide 30-40% dmg bonus on swirl, which is more than Sucrose C6 through Q, and Kazuha arguably has more convenient and easier-to-use CC than Sucrose. Advantage of C6 Sucrose over C0 Kazuha in terms of buffing is giving EM and ATK boost through TTDS. Moreover, Sucrose is generally a better battery (3 charges on E), which is important for say Xiao. However C2 Kazuha will powercreep C6 Sucrose in most of these aspects (C1 gives another use of E after Q, C2 gives EM).
As for the Anemo Archon, Venti simply has stronger and bigger AoE CC than Kazuha. Moreover when it comes to constellations Venti is better at reducing Anemo RES (important for Xiao), which is something Kazuha cannot do. All of them can do VV shred. However, Kazuha and Sucrose powercreep Venti in the following: giving damage bonus and giving EM. They can buff reaction teams more than Venti. But Venti remains the best buffer for Anemo damage in the game (with constellations, reducing Anemo RES), and Venti remains the best CC unit in the game.
And as far as meta is concerned, one really uses Venti for his broken CC (which nobody can powercreep) or (if they have C2/C6) his Anemo RES reduction, which Xiao loves. Sidenote: Xiao has lots of fans and mains. But those who use C6 Venti to boost Xiao's damage are truly the creme of the crop. Where are those that use C6 Xiao with C6 Venti? There are probably more that use C6 Xiao with C6 Zhongli. But for C6, Xiao's best team would be C6 Xiao, C6 Venti, C6 Zhongli, Bennett.
As for buffing damage, one can use Kazuha and Sucrose, but they face competition from other buffers like Bennett or even Yun Jin.
Venti's CC may not always work, but when it does, he is undoubtedly the best at what he does. Even though Kazuha's buffing can work in more situations, his buff is not necessarily the best in game, especially when Bennett exists.
Whereas Venti and Sucrose are supports from C0 to C6, Kazuha is a support that goes more in the direction of damage dealing at C6, becoming more like Xiao, gaining a lot of damage bonus and an Anemo infusion.
There are 2 kinds of Kazuha simps in the world: the real Kazuha simps and fake Kazuha simps. To distinguish between the two, ask if they like Xiao. The real Kazuha simps are the ones that respect Xiao. Otherwise, they are fake Kazuha simps.
Fake Kazuha simps include the USA CIA, FBI, NGOs, USA internet water army, their proxies, their 5th column elements, etc. The fake Kazuha simps most likely are degenerate Ganyu simps too. Originally they tried to smear Kazuha, but later changed their policy to pretend to support Kazuha. These types of two-faced traitors deserve to be thrown in prison and executed like Rosalyn. These people are akin to the whopperflowers that imitate others in Albedo's story.