is a Japanese adult visual novel game created by Type-Moon, who first released it at the Winter Comiket in December 2000. In 2003, it was adapted into both an anime television series, Lunar Legend Tsukihime, animated by J.C.Staff, and a manga series, which was serialized between 2003 and 2010 in MediaWorks manga magazine Dengeki Daioh, with ten volumes released.

Several other related media have also been released, including the bonus disc Tsukihime Plus-Disc, a fan disc Kagetsu Tohya, and the fighting game series Melty Blood. Story concepts and characters shared many similarities with other Type-Moon's series The Garden of Sinners, and the two were also subtly connected. A remake with updated art and story was announced in 2008. The first part of the remake, Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon, featuring a rewritten and expanded version of two of the original routes, first released in Japan in 2021, and was released worldwide in 2024. The second part, Tsukihime: The Other Side of Red Garden, was teased in a secret unlockable trailer in A Piece of Blue Glass Moon. Melty Blood: Type Lumina, a fighting game, was released worldwide on September 30, 2021, as companion to the remake titles.

Gameplay

left|thumb|200px|A screenshot of gameplay in Tsukihime. The colors of the backgrounds in the game are often monochromatic shades of dark blue at night, with lighter blues and vermillion in the day.

Tsukihime is a visual novel where the story is presented via text that intermittently presents choices for the player to make. These choices influence the story, some in large ways while others in small ones. Some choices lead to bad endings where the protagonist dies, after which the player can optionally view a comedic section called Teach Me, Ciel-sensei!, where a fourth-wall-breaking version of the character Ciel offers hints on what led to the bad ending. The game is divided into five routes, distributed amongst two scenarios: The Near Side of the Moon (Arcueid and Ciel routes), and the Far Side of the Moon (Akiha, Hisui and Kohaku routes). Every heroine except Kohaku has two possible endings. When the player has achieved all possible endings, a new epilogue part, entitled Eclipse, is unlocked.

Tsukihime remake entries are visual novels like the original, and though it features modern amenities (such as better skip functions), it plays mostly the same. The Teach Me, Ciel-sensei! section after a bad ending also returns. Unlike the original, both remakes of Near and Far sides titled Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon and Tsukihime: The Other Side of Red Garden are released separately:

  • Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon solely focuses on the Near Side storyline. The Arcueid route titled Tsukihime has one ending, while Ciel route titled Midnight Rainbow has two branching endings.
  • Tsukihime: The Other Side of Red Garden solely focuses on the Far Side storyline, featuring Akiha, Hisui, and Kohaku as heroines. This also adds an additional route not included in the original game featuring Satsuki Yumizuka, exploring events previously left unexplored in the series' fighting game follow up Melty Blood.

Story

Setting

The game's plot follows the perspective of protagonist , a second-year high school student in the fictional town of Misaki. He suffers a life-threatening injury at a young age. After regaining consciousness, he gains the ability to see "Death lines"—lines by which things, living or not, will eventually break when they die. Due to his injury, Shiki has immense headaches as his mind cannot cope with the sight of death. Soon after he is given special glasses from Aoko Aozaki that block the sight of these lines. Due to his injury, Shiki is exiled by his father to a branch family of the Tohno household. Eight years later, he returns to accompany his sister after his father died. After moving back, Shiki has trouble adjusting to the old-fashioned lifestyle his sister lives by. As the game progresses, Shiki confronts supernatural beings such as mostly two different types of vampires (, a natural-born vampire race; and , a race of former humans who were mutated into vampires via magecraft or being bitten by a vampire), as well as his family's secret and his actual past.

As with many Type-Moon works, Tsukihime takes place in the shared "Nasuverse" universe and is set many years after the events of Witch on the Holy Night. The original 2000 release takes place in the fictional town of Misaki in 1999, with the events of Witch on the Holy Night being a prequel that explores the backstory of Shiki's teacher Aoko Aozaki. The 2024 remake takes place in the fictional city of Soya in 2014 and serves as a direct sequel to the 2022 remastered version of Witch on the Holy Night instead.

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: An upperclassman of Shiki and the sole member of the Japanese tea ceremony club. She is also a secret agent of the Church's "Burial Agency" created to exterminate heresy. Her birth name was . Before joining the agency, when she was sixteen years old, she used to be the seventeenth host of a certain Dead Apostle. However, even after Arcueid freed her from the Dead Apostle’s influence, Ciel was cursed with immortality and will continue to live as long as the Dead Apostle does.

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: Shiki's sister, assumed the responsibility as the family's head and acquired the knowledge, behavior, and etiquette for an appropriate noble family. She has mixed feelings about her brother Shiki, whom she has been estranged with for seven years, and seeks him to live like an upper-class man.

: Once Shiki's revealed to have been adopted into the Tohno family and is merely a human, Akiha and her blood family are revealed to be half-demons who wield the , a cursed demon's blood which not only grants them pyrokinetic abilities but also changes their hair color and enhances their physical capabilities. However, those who have succumbed to the curse also lose their sanity, excluding those who have inherited willpower such as Akiha, certain members of the Arima, and the last surviving member of clan.

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: The younger of the twin maids in the Tohno mansion and is a childhood friend of Shiki. She attends Shiki when he comes back to the Tohno mansion. She acts cold and unfeeling, but it is only an act to hide her kinder nature.

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: The older of the twin maids in the Tohno mansion and is always seen to be smiling and cheerful. She is gifted with medicine. Beneath her warm demeanor, Kohaku hides a traumatic past, causing her and Hisui to switch personalities in the present.

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: A succubus familiar who has an ability to create dream worlds and can shape shift into a normal black cat. She was once belonged to Arcueid, before eventually reside at Tohno Manor. Serving as a main viewpoint heroine of Kagetsu Tohya, set after the event of Tsukihime, she uses her dream manipulation put Shiki into slumber to keep him alive, until a mix between Shiki's psyche and her power goes horribly wrong that created two his worst nightmares. However, Shiki manage to solve his situations to face his fears, before ultimately made pacts with Len to be his familiar. She will return to play a major role in upcoming Melty Blood Twi-Lumina.

Recurring characters

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: A mysterious vagabond sorceress, who gives Shiki glasses that allow him to suppress his Mystic Eyes from its ongoing activation. She also appears in Witch on the Holy Night, a prequel to Tsukihime franchise, particularly connected to its remake timeline.

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: Shiki's best friend and classmate, who is frequently absent from school.

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: Shiki's classmate. In the Far-side routes, she becomes a Dead Apostle.

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: A Dead Apostle and the secondary antagonist of the Near-side routes in original game. In the remake of Near-side routes, he is a minor character. His real name was .

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: An 800-year-old Dead Apostle who uses reincarnation through possessing his current host as a path to immortality. His seventeenth host was Ciel. He is the main antagonist for the Near-side Routes.

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: Akiha's older brother, and the protagonist’s adoptive brother. He is also Roa’s current eighteenth host. The main antagonist in the Far-side routes.

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thumb|280x280px|Neco-Arc, as seen in the Tsukihime video game remake timeline entries

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: A small anthropomorphic mascot cat version of Arcueid who occasionally appears alongside a Teacher variant of Ciel as guides for the players who fell into the Bad Ending of a certain route they ended up. She is an interdimensional anthropomorphic alien cat known as Neco Spirit originating from the Great Cat's Village where most of her people's appearances are closely just like her and Arcueid, albeit with few differences in resembling one of their Earth counterparts in different Type-Moon timelines. While often making cameo appearances in Tsukihime-related media, Neco-Arc also appears in other non-Tsukihime media.

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: The late biological father of Akiha and original Shiki Tohno, and a posthumous antagonist of the series. He was also responsible for orchestrated a massacre on the other Shiki’s home clan by sending one of his henchman to kill them except that Shiki, as well as his brutal treatments towards his own blood children and even Kohaku. His death at the hands of his own son, Shiki led the latter to become Roa’s current host.

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: A masterwork of Kishima clan and the clan's eldest son. When Makihisa sent him to massacre Nanaya clan, Kouma fought, Shiki's biological father, who took out his eye before Kouma killed him. Although he spared a young Shiki per Makihisa's order before voluntarily gone into exile as a hermit Buddhist who resides at a mountain. In Kagetsu Tohya, he only appear as one of Shiki's nightmares.

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: Shiki's late biological father.

Remake exclusives

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: A mysterious girl who Shiki meet sometimes in the city.

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: The head of the Saiki branch family of the Tohno clan, his entire face is wrapped in black bandages due to burns. He looks down on Shiki, who was excommunicated from the Tohno family and hates him. In the original timeline, the Saiki family originally debuted in the sequel Kagetsu Tohya, where the family head (who may be also Gōto) appears as a flashback character related to Shiki’s birth family.

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: A scientist who claims to be an old acquaintance of Makihisa from the university, due to her closeness with the Tohno family through him, she's been working for Akiha as a consultant in both architectural and medical matters. In Ciel's Route, it appears that Arach has a mysterious connection to the Dead Apostles since the French Incident, with one of them being a spider-themed vampire, leaving Arach's true origins a mystery.

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: A foreign teacher at Shiki's school whose actually a subordinate of Ciel and goes by the alias . Beneath her demeanor, Noel hides a traumatic past she had been endured since her village in France was destroyed by Roa when Ciel was his host thirteen years ago. In Ciel’s Route of the Near-Side storyline, she becomes a Dead Apostle and engages Shiki and Ciel in a fight. She is executed immediately by Ciel out of misery.

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: A young Italian man and the son of Cardinal Laurentis (who's first mentioned in Fate/Extra CCC), Mario is a bishop of the Holy Church despite only being a teenager. He got his nickname “The Puppeteer” due to his gauntlet-like weapon, “Piano Machine”, that allows him to use strings for combat purposes as well as controlling the movements of others (particularly Holy Church nuns, and even Noel in Arcueid's Route) like they were marionettes. He seeks Roa for his knowledge of immortality in order to fix his father’s aging problem, but eventually learns that all Roa's research has long since hit a dead end.

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: One of Mario's direct subordinates.

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: One of Mario's direct subordinates.

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: A Russian Dead Apostle Ancestor who used to be a knight centuries ago, he possesses the ability to manipulate temperature which allows him to generate and project both fire and ice for different purposes. He serves as the secondary antagonist, replacing the role of NRVNQSR Chaos from the original game. He despises Roa, for tricking him into murdering his adopted mother, . In Ciel’s Route of the Near-Side storyline, he is directly responsible for Noel's downfall, despite his vampire bite not being that deep.

Development

The original story of Tsukihime was based on one of Kinoko Nasu's ideas for a novel. It featured Arcueid as a cold stereotypical vampire that is the complete opposite of her finished incarnation. The basis for Shiki was a middle-aged old, worn-down vampire who says to Arcueid upon her first approach "I have no interest in women I've already killed once." The tone of the story was the complete opposite and only the tagline of "a biting relationship between a murderer who can see death lines and a vampire" remained in the final version. Upon developing the story for Tsukihime, they pictured Arcueid as a cool and princess-like "Noble Vampire", but thought that it overlapped with Akiha's "Lady" character. All of the heroines spoke politely to the main character, so they figured that the only character who could fit the role of someone who didn't speak politely would be Arcueid. They eventually came up with the idea of a "pure white" vampire that developed her character very differently from the original version. There was originally a planned Satsuki route for the original version, but it was later cut.

Several trial versions of Tsukihime were released before its full release. The first preview version of Tsukihime was a free promotional version of which 300 copies (on 3½ floppy disks) were produced and distributed at Comiket 56 in 1999. At the next Comiket 57 in late 1999, a demo, the , was sold for 100 yen, with only 50 being produced and sold, also distributed on 3½ floppy disks. At Comiket 58 in 2000, Tsukihime Half Moon Edition was released. 300 copies were produced and sold for 1,000 yen each. This version contained Arcueid and Ciel's "Near Side of the Moon" storylines. The half moon edition came with bonuses including a coupon that would allow purchasers to claim the complete edition in the future. The complete edition of Tsukihime was first released at Comiket 59 in December 2000. In February 2026, a fan and private collector known as Keripo reported that one of the 50 existing floppy disk copies of the 1999 Trial Edition, which they had purchased for their collection with the intention of displaying it publicly as part of a Type-Moon museum exhibit, had been destroyed by United States Customs and Border Protection personnel while in transit to their home.

Type-Moon released Tsukihime Plus-Disc developed with NScripter engine in January 2001, a light-hearted addition to Tsukihime that featured two short stories: Alliance Of Illusionary Eyes and Geccha. The first edition included wallpapers, the first four chapters of The Garden of Sinners, an early demo version of Tsukihime, a contemporary Tsukihime demo, and two omakes featuring Tsukihime characters. The second edition Tsukihime Plus+Disc added two more stories: Geccha 2 and Kinoko's Masterpiece Experimental Theater. This version used the more capable KiriKiri engine. In April 2003, Type-Moon released , a three-disc set that included Tsukihime, Tsukihime Plus+Disc, Kagetsu Tohya, a remixed soundtrack, a trial version of Melty Blood and other assorted multimedia.

In December 2001, the doujin circle Inside-Cap released an officially licensed program for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, Rinkai Tsukihime, that allowed customers to convert their PC copy of Tsukihime into a Game Boy Advance rom; the program was distributed via CD-ROM through retail and online shops.

Remake

A remake of Tsukihime was announced in 2008, with work commencing in 2012. Work was then suspended in 2013 due to Type Moon's work on Fate/Grand Order, before resuming in 2017. The theme songs Seimeisen and Juvenile, as well as the ending themes Lost and Believer were written, composed and arranged by Kegani from Live Lab and performed by Reona, and released on CD on September 1, 2021. The soundtrack was composed by Hideyuki Fukasawa and Keita Haga, and was released as a set of eight CDs on November 24, 2021. Tsukihime: The Other Side of Red Garden, containing the remake's equivalent of the "Far-side" part of the original, was teased in an unlockable secret trailer in Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon.

The remake modernizes the setting of Tsukihime, having it take place in a large city in 2014 (as opposed to the suburban town in 1999 of the original), and also makes changes to the plot. The remake also adds new characters, voice acting, and new character designs. It also includes the Satsuki route.

At Anime Expo 2023, it was announced that the Tsukihime remake entries would get official localization outside Japan, starting from A Piece of Blue Glass Moon on June 27, 2024. It is also confirmed in Type-Moon Ace Vol. 15 that Windows version of the Tsukihime remake entries will be included as well.

Sequel

Kagetsu Tohya has teasers for a Tsukihime 2, and writer Kinoko Nasu's short stories "talk." and "Prelude" from Tsukihime material books Plus Period published on October 22, 2004, and the Type-Moons Character material published on August 20, 2006, are set before it. References to it have been mostly been made into jokes during recent interviews, and they have displayed no current plans to actually create the project. According to Character material, the sequel would have been called Tsukihime: The Dark Six and would have revolved, at least in part, around a ritual gathering of Dead Apostle ancestors. Arcueid's sister Altrouge would have had a possible role.

Video games

Kagetsu Tohya is a sequel released in August 2001 and set one year after the events in the main Tsukihime storyline. Shiki gets into an accident and has a repeating dream sequence in which he must relive the same day over until he finds Len. As the player repeats each day they are able to make different choices which affect the flow of the narrative and unlock extra content in the game, including ten short stories.

Melty Blood is a PC dojin fighting game series developed by Type-Moon and French-Bread, originally released at Comiket 63 in 2002. The game features characters from the Tsukihime games as well as new characters specific for the games. Multiple updated versions of the game have been created as well as a sequel. It later spawned an arcade version, titled Act Cadenza, that was developed by Ecole Software and was then ported to the PlayStation 2. A decade later, Type-Moon and French-Bread collaborated once again to develop the fifth installment and reboot, Melty Blood: Type Lumina, featuring the characters from the remake titles.

Anime

A 12-episode anime television series adaptation titled was directed by Katsushi Sakurabi and produced by J.C.Staff. It was written by Hiroko Tokita and features original music by Toshiyuki Ōmori. It first aired between October 10 to December 26, 2003, on BS-i. It also aired on Animax Asia in Southeast Asia and South Asia. Two pieces of theme music are used for the episodes; one opening theme and one ending theme. The opening theme was titled "The Sacred Moon" by Toshiyuki Omori, and the ending theme was by Fumiko Orikasa. The reason for choosing "Lunar Legend Tsukihime" instead of the title "Tsukihime" is that the trademark of "Tsukihime" had already been used.

Geneon announced it had licensed the series for distribution in North America in 2004 under the title Tsukihime, Lunar Legend. Upon Geneon's American operations having shut down, the newly instituted licensor Sentai Filmworks acquired the North American rights to the series, with Section23 Films handling its distribution and marketing, along with other titles.

Print

A manga adaptation using the same Lunar Legend Tsukihime title as the anime, illustrated by Sasaki Shōnen, was serialized in ASCII Media Works' manga magazine Dengeki Daioh between October 2003 and September 2010 issues. The plot largely follows the game's Arcueid route with a mix of the other routes. The chapters were collected in ten volumes published by ASCII Media Works. Tsukihime creator Kinoko Nasu has praised Sasaki's manga, saying that the settings mentioned in Tsukihime and Kagetsu Tohya are integrated without damaging the atmosphere of the original. Nasu also went on to say that Sasaki Shonen's manga was the greatest rival to the remake game project, and that Sasaki's stamp of approval after he playtested it meant there was "nothing to be afraid of". In 2005, DR Master took over the publication of ComicsOne's manga titles including Tsukihime. Six out of ten volumes were published.

Tsuki no Sango is a short story by Kinoko Nasu for Maaya Sakamoto's Full Moon Recital Hall, a project organized by the Japanese online magazine Saizensen, that consisted of Sakamoto reading short novels in a theater while an accompanying short animation was aired in the background. Tsuki no Sango was the first of the recitals on December 21, 2010, and it was aired live on Ustream. The short movie was animated by Ufotable, which also animated The Garden of Sinners and Fate/Zero, and features drawings by Takashi Takeuchi and Chihiro Aikura. The animation used Frédéric Chopin composed music. The concept is "Tsukihime 3000" and the Princess Kaguya folktale. There is also a 42-page booklet version of the story with illustrations by Takeuchi and Aikura. Tsuki no Sango also got a manga adaptation with story and art by Sasaki Shōnen. It was serialized on the Saizensen web magazine from July 7, 2012, until January 22, 2019. The chapters were compiled into two tankobon volumes published by Seikaisha Comics. The first volume was released on March 10, 2014, and the second volume on May 26, 2019. An omnibus version was also published on May 26, 2019.

Music

A remake of the visual novel's soundtrack was released on February 24, 2004, titled Ever After ~Music from "Tsukihime" Reproduction~. Two soundtrack compilations were released for the anime Lunar Legend Tsukihime, titled Moonlit Archives and Moonlit Memoirs. The music was composed by Keita Haga. The Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon theme songs by Reona were released on CD on September 1, 2021 while the eight disc soundtrack, which was composed by Keita Haga and Hideyuki Fukasawa, was released on November 24, 2021.

Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon was very well received by English-language media. The narrative, production quality, and localization were all praised by reviewers. and it was (as of July 26, 2024) the highest-rated 2024 game on OpenCritic, with a 90 on Metacritic.

The manga series has shown high sales figures in its later volumes, with volume seven staying in the Japanese comic ranking for two weeks, while volume eight stayed in for three weeks.

Carlos Santos of Anime News Network's opinion on the anime's third DVD release is that it "is a show that's all about creating a mood, which it does very well with its carefully planned color schemes and evocative music score." He states, "It's an ending that takes its time, however, as this show's deliberate pacing ensures that the story is revealed only to those who are patient enough."

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Official website
  • Tsukihime anime; at J.C. Staff