Last week I ended up wishing for a better vampire. Well, no matter what else I can say about Lunar Legend Tsukihime, I will get at least that – not difficult given the bar that was set. Was my search vindicated, or did I wish on a horrifying monkey paw with predictable results? Let’s find out.
Before really digging in, I feel the need to mention that I have not actually read/played the Tsukihime visual novel. I say this because, despite not being a player, I’m all too aware that fans of the VN absolutely despise this adaptation. Unlike Muv Luv Alternative where I could talk intelligently about what was or wasn’t done in taking the original medium and bringing it to the screen, I’m approaching this as an anime-only viewer, someone who went in knowing only the vaguest of snippets from the broader Nasuverse.
So, Lunar Legend Tsukihime starts out with our main character, Shiki Tohno. He’s special because, after a near-death experience as a child, he began to see lines and points throughout the world that, when struck with his knife, destroy whatever the target was – a power known as the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. This caused little Shiki great distress, but a friendly wizard lady gave him magic glasses that would suppress the effect, telling him that some day he would need that power to protect something important. He’s just moved house to live with his adoptive little sister (and new family head), Akiha. He still seems to go to the same school he’s familiar with, though, as he hangs out with “the one guy the story gives a harem protagonist to talk to”, Inui, and “The girl in his class with an obvious crush that won’t work out because she’s the normal in a supernatural story” Yumizuka.
Actually, I’ll say this now, these two characters are actually fairly well done. They have stock roles, but there’s a reason certain roles become stock in the first place. Yeah, there’s not a whole hell of a lot to either of them, especially not Inui, but they’re used decently well in order to make us feel that Shiki has human bonds outside of the supernatural BS he’s wrapped up in, rather than just being told it. They make the setting feel more like a living and breathing world, and reduce the overall sense of isolation, something that’s important with some of the themes of Tsukihime. And they’re not annoying characters either: Inui seems like a nice guy and good friend, and gives us at least a little personality. Yumizuka plays into a character type that I tore into last week with A Dark Rabbit Has Seven Lives, but she’s a decent person – she’s clearly interested but she actually relates to Shiki like an actual friend, and there are more subtle or human scenes that establish the two of them having a bond despite her distinct lack of a shot, rather than relying on silly romance tropes.
Anyway, on his way home from school, Shiki sees a mysterious blonde woman. He then chases her down and murders her with his mystic eyes and weird special pocket knife.
Yeah, it’s a bit sudden like that. For no reason that is ever explained in an adequate fashion, Shiki chases and murders a woman that he’s never met. He seems to have done it in some sort of fugue state as well, since he convinces himself that it was all just a dream once he gets back home to his ice queen sister and her kind of weird identical twin maids, Kohaku and Hisui. I know it seems like I’m kind of brushing this off when it should be a big deal, but the show kind of brushes it off too.
Shiki shortly thereafter ends up meeting the woman again, who calls him out for having brutally dismembered her. Why can she do this? Well, because this particular blonde lady is none other than Arcueid Brunestud (Arc for short, or at least that’s what I’m going to write), an ancient and powerful vampire who spends her time hunting other, more evil vampires, and who now needs some help since being horribly killed took a lot out of her. Logically, she goes for the guy who murdered her, since clearly he’s pretty good at killing vampires, and fortunately for her when he’s in his right mind he’s kind of a scared kid and not terribly inclined to repeat his performance.
She’s not the only new face, though, as a young woman named Ciel inserts herself into Shiki’s life and circle as an old friend, clearly using some sort of magic to brainwash people into thinking they remember her and she belongs.
It all comes to a head fairly quickly when Shiki, with Arc at a hotel, becomes embroiled in an attack on the hotel by an enemy vampire who can summon various beasties from his body to consume people. The entire place is turned into an abattoir – no survivors expected. This hits Shiki especially hard since Yumizuka was supposed to be there having a birthday bash with her family.
Shiki agrees to take on the vampire responsible, apparently called Nrvnqsr, (your guess is as good as mine. I had to look the name up.) with Arc. Arc uses herself as bait and battles him as best she can, which ultimately does let Shiki get inside his guard and dispatch him with the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, ending his serial-killer threat and avenging Yumizuka in a rather restrained little action scene. That doesn’t seem quite right for Nasu, who normally loves describing combat in epic detail which usually translates to some serious visuals in the anime outings of his works, but being a Tsukihime newbie I guess I’ll let it go.
The next day, Akiha is frustrated that her brother doesn’t seem to abide the draconian rules of the house, Yumizuka is found alive and well at school (she got sick and missed both her planned party and the previous day, incidentally saving her life), Akiha makes it up to Shiki by holding a proper welcome party for him, the whole vampire serial killer thing in town should be done with, and all’s well that ends… wait, we’re just in episode four?
Yeah, this thing isn’t over, not even close. Arc comes to school the day after to pick Shiki up, and lets him in on the fact that The Vowelless One wasn’t the only bad guy vampire to worry about. The other one’s pretty sneaky, though – though that vampire, Roa, has some kind of history with Arc, he’s a spirit who’s survived by jumping from body to body, meaning it’s not clear who Roa is – he could be anyone. Because of this, they need to draw him out by hunting down his byproducts, vampire-zombie slaves known as The Dead.
With that, we enter the more light-hearted and harem-ish phase of the show, going on dates with Arc and also incidentally having a number of character interactions with Ciel and Akiha (who both seem to know more than they let on) as well as Kohaku, Hisui, and poor Yumizuka. Shiki keeps going out at night (Hisui and even Inui cover him) hunting the Dead with Arc… or maybe just going on dates with her. We don’t see many Dead clashes (this show does not like doing action) and we do see the dating scene stuff. Everybody goes to an amusement park, Ciel and Akiha get really catty with each other, that sort of stuff.
We get some movement again when Shiki witnesses Akiha being kind of inhuman – drinking blood from one of the maids with her hair turning bright red. Suspecting she may have been taken by Roa, he tries to go to Arc, only to be attacked by a figure that the audience can be fairly sure is the real Roa. This individual seems to know Shiki, and is fought off by Ciel (in her “nun perching on lamp posts” mode) when Shiki gets taken down like a chump and wounded.
Taken home, Shiki learns from the maids that the Tohno clan has always had some inhuman blood and that head of house goes to the one with the most cool powers like that, currently Akiha. Shiki explores the house, finds a creepy dungeon, and gets flashbacks to his largely forgotten early childhood when he got into a battle to the death with a different boy named Shiki.
I’m just going to cut this amnesia plot short and lay out the facts: Shiki we know is not a Tohno by blood, of course. He was adopted from a different family and became close with Akiha and her big brother who was already named Shiki. Other Shiki tried to do bad things, Our Shiki got stabbed over it, Akiha used her monster powers to save the Shiki she liked better, and dear dad sent Other Shiki to the dungeon, from which he would be released long after by Akiha. Other Shiki is now the host of Roa, and it seems that much of the individual’s personality is a blend of the ancient and cunning evil of Roa (it was he who first convinced Arc to drink blood, which has been an addiction it’s taken all her strength to fight ever since) and the complete insanity of Other Shiki. I’ll keep referring to main character Shiki as Shiki and the other one as Other Shiki or Roa-Shiki
Shiki meets up with Arc, who is having some trouble since, in the reduced state she’s been in since Shiki killed her, the bloodthirst has been welling up again. She gets out the backstory that Ciel is special because she’s a former Roa host, now working for the church to destroy him. After Shiki’s wound opens up, driving Arc to hunger, Ciel breaks them up and spills more beans to Shiki after Arc runs off, explaining Roa’s connection to Arc and how she’s been using long periods of torpor to conserve her power and stave off the bloodthirst he left her with, waking only to kill Roa again and again.
Shiki decides screw that, and goes after Arc. He finds Roa-Shiki being a weird creeper towards Akiha instead, and Ciel once again has to come along to break things up, letting Shiki continue after Arc. He finds her in her apartment (how logical…), they screw (You know, while there were some alright scenes between them, with Arc wanting to get to know things like dates, I’m not sure this is fully supported) and despite the whole “agree to fight together to the end and then make love” routine, Shiki wakes up to find she’s gone off to face Roa on her own and clearly isn’t meaning to come back.
This ends up being an after-hours battle at the school. Shiki meets up with Ciel, but they arrive a little late for the fight between Roa-Shiki and Arc, as Arc gets herself killed in what seems like a very final way, given that her body evaporates in Shiki’s arms. Ciel and Shiki pick up where Arc left off and battle Roa, which ends when they’re on a bridge between two buildings and Shiki takes it out, dropping Roa (and himself, but he was ready for it), which lets him get the fatal hit off on Roa, obliterating both the Roa-Shiki body and Roa’s otherwise immortal spirit.
As the saying goes, if I had a nickel for every time Nasu had a character with Mystic Eyes take out a bridge at the climax of a story, I’d have two nickels, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice. This is by far the lesser event, but that’s neither here nor there (and more a matter for another time) and it is fair enough for every scrap of action that this show can muster.
Ciel buggers off after this, erasing herself from the memories of everyone but Shiki. Shiki goes and thanks the mage lady who gave him the glasses, and one day after school apparently hallucinates Arc or is visited by her ghost, allowing her to say a proper goodbye. The actual end.
From the perspective of someone who’s just watching the anime, Tsukihime’s worst crime is that it’s just kind of sad and small, with a lot of complicated names and important-seeming backstory but not enough meat in the present to make that stuff worth having. It’s got this inordinate complexity and draggy middle that would be kind of fine in visual novel form, but which don’t really come across well when the story is placed into the framework of a twelve-episode anime. It’s not the worst thing – Shiki is kind of a nobody but the side characters are good (as I said before) and even the would-be heroines, Arc and Ciel, are reasonably interesting and likable. Ciel’s intro is good for the viewer wanting to know more about her, and while Arc seemed a little dull in the first few episodes, the juxtaposition of “ancient vampire” and “doesn’t know how to normal, but wants to” was reasonably charming. I believe the term “gap moe” would apply to Arc in a good way. Akiha sometimes came across as an unlikable ice queen, but we got enough of her inner world and actual care for Shiki that by the end I liked her well enough.
But, while it’s not bad, it’s probably not what you’re looking for if you hear “vampire hunt by the guy who wrote Fate/Stay Night”. There’s a lack of fun imagination in the presentation of Tsukihime. The action is extremely restrained. It’s not terrible, per say, but the visuals are quite simple and down to earth without being gritty in any sort of way. It is, in some senses, the least sufficient action. Similarly, the character designs are pretty dull and I think I could forget most of them pretty easily, the sets don’t have any sort of distinctive look or feel – even the designs that should be out there, like weird bandaged Roa-Shiki feel very generic. The only thing that really seems to go big at all is Count No-Vowels and his personal vampire ability to have dogs and snakes and whatnot burst out of his body to attack people. It’s a creative idea that’s pretty far from any sort of standard vampiric power, but that still feels like it has the right theme so that you accept him as being a weird vampire rather than some other type of mythical creature. But even then, his black beasts don’t look like a whole lot, especially not in the final battle with him rather than the hellscape of the slaughtered hotel.
Personally, I’d guess that’s what annoyed the VN reading crowd so much – if the original source wasn’t generic, and had some good action and wild creativity, what I’ve seen would be a pretty big disservice, taking something unique and special (as it very much seems to be to a lot of people) and turning it into something that’s dull and forgettable.
But for reviewing the anime in abstract? It’s just dull and forgettable, with some good notes like Nrvnqsr, a couple of the soft scenes with Yumizuka or Akiha, and such saving it from being completely that way. It does very little wrong, honestly… it just also doesn’t do a whole lot right. I wouldn’t really recommend Lunar Legend Tsukihime, but at the same time if you just want to see this thing, I’m not going to advise against it either. It’s a C-, nothing more exceptional in either direction.
But at least I got some better vampires, right?