Tsukihime (月姫, lit. Lunar Princess) is a japanese visual novel. One with an extreme large fan base. It was created by Type-Moon. Its an erogame, meaning it has sexual content in it. Is a romantic/mystery/thriller kind of visual novel. The truth is that I’ve just played around 2 hours of the visual novel.

This review is for the Tsukihime ANIME.
This is a long article so Click More to see the full review.

The story start with this guy named Shiki Tohno which looks very weak and have some memory issues. He cant recall his past very well (boy if I had a quarter every time this was included in an anime huh?). The setting is a high school. He just moved to her old home, where his sister lives alone with two maids. So is a boy that lives with three women and also have two other girl friends at school. I know what you are thinking, harem setting huh? But dont worry, tsukihime doesn’t go that way (the anime at least).

Shiki possesses a mysterious power. He can see the death of things, of everything. But he sees it as lines across the beings and objects. If you cut that line the object or person/animal/plant/whatever simply drops, dismembers and die. Everything in this world has death in it since the moment its born. Shiki can see and cut those lines. He carries a pocket knife with weird engraving (well weird in that world). The engraving are the 3 circles that are used for the sharingan or blue seed. He is very skilled in the use of this knife. The reason of why is Shiki so good at handling this knife and killing things is later revealed in the story. He is the descendant of a demon slaying clan. His clan was terminated by who later becomes his adoptive father. I don’t know if his eye power is something from his clan or it was born in the scene where he sees someone (I supposed his mom) dying in a tree and her blood falls in his eye.

Makihisa Tohno  of the prestigious Tohno family slayed Shiki’s clan. When he discovered the boy that was left from the clan was named the same as his son he took him in his wing and adopted him. He thought shiki would help controlling the Tohno blood. The Tohno clan is something else than human. For some reason most people in the clan die young and they have a hard time suppressing their powers. I think they are something like vampires but not exactly that. I didnt got it very clear from the anime. We see a scene where shiki’s sister Akiha bites one of the maids. But I dont know if she was giving blood or sucking it.

Akiha (shiki’s sister) is the head of the Tohno family. She is a very controlling and old fashioned educated woman. She also seems to have some kind of brother complex in the anime. Although somewhat subtle compared to other animes. She gets sick often, because of her bloodline and her power consists in something like turning her hair in red and the need of biting people. Again I’m not clear on whats her power because of the vague info in the anime.

Shiki has a class mate named Ciel. Ciel is in fact a church avenger or something like that. She follows the tsukihime antagonist. She is immortal and have the power to turn paper into weapons. Ciel is a kind character with a touch of sarcastic behavior and talk.

Besides shiki the protagonist of this anime would be Arcueid. She is a blonde beautiful vampire who comes to the city in search of Roa the main antagonist. She also feels like have a debt to pay and hunt dead apostles, which would be the equivalent term for ghoul in other animes and shows. A ghoul/dead apostle is born by being bitten by a vampire/true ancestor. She starts like a dark kind of hostile person but soons become the sweetest vampire ever.

The last character I want to explain a bit is Roa. Roa is some kind of demon that reincarnates over and over again. He transfer from body to body using people’s bodies as host. Because there is no way to kill him until the mystic eyes of Shiki appear. Since it can end life. Ciel and Arcueid both immortal follow Roa killing what ever host he is in and then doing it again and again forever. A being possesed by Roa cant mantain its sanity and normal thoughts. He becomes fully possessed and wicked.

Now to the story itself.
Roa in his latest incarnation posses shiki (the tohno one) and tries to kill Akiha. But the adopted shiki comes in between them and Roa/shiki kills shiki. Then the tohno father punishes Roa/shiki and hide him in jail in his house. Always recluted because he couldnt kill his own son. Akiha uses her power to give life to her adopted brother shiki. How? I have no Idea. Is not well explained. Akiha feels her demonic brother calling her and frees him. Now free the demon Roa kills akiha’s parents and run. Shiki goes to his adoptive aunt/uncle house to live and is raised there. Then after like 8 years and now in high school he comes back to the main Tohno house to live with his sister.

Tohno begins to have a lot of flashbacks and weird dreams and visions. He is anemic and kind of faint and feel weak often. Once sitting in a bench in the park he looks at a blond woman (who later we know is Arcueid) and just pops and kill her. Yeah a “good” guy just suddenly feel like killing a total random stranger and pretty much dismember her in an instant. Why? Beats me. After this Arcueid revives(no idea how and they dont explain, even though she keep saying you KILLED me) and looks for Shiki to request his help. After she revived by being killed by shiki she lost a lot of her power and need his power to deal with dead apostles and Roa. So they team up and start the ghost buster business. Ciel closely watching by.

They go hunting for like 3 times and kill some major boss and you start noticing how Arcueid start changing with Tohno. Tohno being the usual anime male guy is a moron and don’t notice every girl in the series likes him. After a while Tohno gets hurt(not rare if ur hunting demons) and Arcueid feels the urge of biting him and suppress it. But she has to run away from him because the urge is too strong. Ciel warns her that she will kill her if she hurts Tohno. In a hunting night Roa appears and disrupt shiki. Shiki has become the primary target of Roa or maybe it was always since he got into Tohno Shiki. This messes up shiki completely in the head. He begins to recall his past. His sister Akiha becomes worried and unstable too because she doesn’t want him to remember. Because she doesn’t want him to see her as a monster or because they are not blood related or the violent past or I dont know. She gets weak and depressed over it. She shows more of her brother complex.

So after a while Arcueid start getting more and more into shiki. The truth is that I never feel shiki is really into her until after they are together, which is messed up. They feel they have a strong bond and end up having a sexual intercourse. When shiki loves realized that Arcueid left, he meant too much for her and she left to try to defeat Roa alone. Shiki obviously  panicked and ran to her. So to make this long review short, roa kills her, like she was nothing. Yep, he kills her after Shiki kills her… but she revived but now she wont… wtf?

Roa has the same mystic eyes as shiki, apparently after he stabbed him when they were kids. How? No idea. This makes me doubt the eyes part of the demon slaying clan theory. But again, when have you heard another being acquiring your powers because he stabbed you? Weird.

So shiki defeats Roa. He hesitated a bit in the end but Ciel pushed the knife and did it. She told him “Killing a person is a sin, so I did it not you”. She wanted him to stay “pure”. After this Shiki cries Arcueid’s death. Then he heads back to his house and says hello like if nothing happened. He got over a 12 episodes of an anime life experience in 15 seconds and then the series END.

As you can see towards the end the series get a bit… meh. I mean like you expected to resolved this vague information deficit but It doesn’t.

Let me see how can I explain this…

First of all, the bond between Shiki and Arcueid is almost NONE existent. How and why did she changed like that so fast? Like literally one episode shes the normal kind of bitchy vampire and the next episode she is the sweetest thing on earth. The final two episodes are like if they were a together for a lifetime and no. Shiki never really answered her feeling until like the end. And what feelings? What feelings can she possibly have between such a shallow time they spent together? It just doesn’t make any sense.

Also whats up with not explaining things? Why does Roa/shiki have the mystic eyes too? Because he stabbed shiki? That doesn’t make sense. Whats exactly is Akiha’s power? How the hell Arcueid revived after being killed using the mystic eyes? How come she was killed again using the same power but did die completely? How come she revived but Roa died? Why did Shiki suddenly felt like killing a stranger? What, people just go around thinking oh I would kill that blond?

The series have a very interesting story foundation but the anime fails to deliver it properly. Everything feels rushed. There is a lot going on for just 12 episodes. The character development feels vague and the relations of characters between themselves and others are just as shallow as it gets.

The animation is ok, the voice acting and music is fairly good. Nothing extraordinary but not bad either overall respecting the technical aspect of the series.

I would recommend trying to read/play the Visual Novel game instead of going through this. This is the final advice I will give you respecting tsukihime. The anime fails to deliver… in about most of the aspects. Stick to the visual novel. For the little I have read about the visual novel game, it delivers a lot more information and development than the anime.

Not only that, but there is a free English translation patch made by fans.
You can get it here –> http://mirrormoon.org

Click here to view the embedded video.

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