Tsukihime (2000)

After years of lurking in the "Nasuverse," I finally sat down with Type-Moon’s first official release.

For a doujin work, the quality of the writing and the horror elements were surprisingly good! However, the legacy of its era is hard to ignore. The eroge elements feel entirely out of place, regardless of how hard the narrative works to justify them. Explaining why these tropes haven't aged well would take thirty pages I don't care to write.

The largest mechanical problem is the repetition. Across the various routes, I found myself re-reading plot points so frequently it feels like the same story with a different coat of paint depending on which girl you’ve sided with. While the lore is interesting and the minor nuances in each path are good, it was not enough to justify the repeated content.

I almost went crazy with the same 8 or 9 OST tracks, I swear.

So, about the routes:

• Arcueid: Unsurprisingly, the standout. It’s a classic "boy meets (vampire) girl" setup blended with genuine horror. Arcueid is a deep, lovely character who justifies her status as the face of the franchise.

• Ciel: Running in parallel to Arcueid’s path, this feels largely redundant if played second. While it attempts to flesh out Ciel’s reasoning, the repeated beats made it hard to stay engaged.. I also found Ciel herself to be insufferable.

• Akiha: Even as a fan of the tsundere trope, Akiha... pushed my limits. Also, incest, what the heck.However, she does provide a necessary shift in perspective for the overarching mystery.

• Hisui: A complete snorefest. Most of the narrative takes place in a bed, and while the horror elements provide occasional sparks, it wears super thin quickly. It only redeems itself at the very end with a revelation that forces you to go straight into the next route.

• Kohaku: My second favorite! It’s a shorter experience, but Kohaku has an interesting and layered character writing. I appreciated it. I won't say much more since it will fall in spoiler territory.

I would recommend it only to true Typemoon fans.

Very likely I will read the remake version sometime in the near future, but I need a pause from this world for now.

Tsukihime is an incredibly hard game to play. Not necessarily because it's unenjoyable to read or that it's storyline is obtuse-- It's because the darn thing hasn't been properly released since the year 2000. Yet, it has a pedigree in the weeb community, a devoted fanbase that hails it as one of the greatest visual novels ever released, a mythical quality about it that made me go through the computer-destroying trouble of playing it (I'm a high-class weeb, it's imperative that I get the know on everything ever). I can confidently say I liked Tsukihime. I liked it in the same way I like my middle school noteboooks, filled from worn-out cover to cardboard back with pseudo anime ocs. It is flawed in many ways, but has an over-eager quality that makes it difficult for me to dislike.

Tsukihime wants to tell you about it's magic system. It wants to tell you about it so bad. Given the chance, Tsukihime would transform itself into a full-on Wikipedia website just to show you how freaking cool it would be to kill 666 demon vampires at once with a ballpoint pen, please, oh my god please ask, it's so freaking cool. Wouldn't it be awesome, if there was a society of vampire hunters also? Or if this character was actually a bajillion years old, or if this character was a wizard and here's how this magic system works, or-- or-- Well, it would be freaking cool? And Nasu (our darling writer boy, that starry-eyed goof, him) will sit you down, will spend entire scenes and routes and encounters just to explain something really cool he thought of. Arcueid (the blonde vampiric poster girl) is less of a character and more of a lore vehicle, an admittedly effective character design that acts as a spoon to feed you Nasu's stickman anime fight scenes. The other characters prove to be more interesting, but one cant help but feel they are less of characters and more lore dumpsters assigned a few personality traits.

Because Nasu is so keen on his joyous little ideas, the plot can feel extremely disconnected. Things happen because it would be cool if they happened. I call upon memories of facebook roleplay-- "I teleport behind you", "I'm immune to lasers", "Broods dark and broodily". However, it's not so bad, as the lore and ideas are quite a lot of fun. The first round of routes can feel extremely basic but it's only because they act as primers for the REAL lore. And that lore... I can only describe as "a real doozy". It's overthought but hey, that's thought, and it's going to give you a good workout.

Along the way you'll die. Quite a lot. I found myself searching out these deaths because Nasu clearly took some joy in writing in these parts in particular-- They're indulgent, gruesome, and the build-up is delightfully intense. At the end, you'll be rewarded with some tips on how to not paint the hallways red via Cheeky Anime Friend and Mascot Gag. The game wants you to die, and you should try to as much as possible.

Something I would like to make note of is the treatment of female characters. Most of the cast is female, and basically all of these ladies have their own badass times in the spotlight-- But we have copies to sell. Rent cannot be payed with purity alone. There is a large amount of sexual assault, some scenarios in which the player is given the option to pursue, and a a conclusion involving an abuse victim forgiving her abuser, which did suck a bit of soul out of me. I'm not against dark topics being explored in fiction but these instances are so clearly presented with indulgence I could practically feel the hot breath of a deodorant-deniar on my neck as I space keyed through these cesspools of writing. Oh, did I mention that your sister has a route--

Oh dear. Lets perish that thought.

In the end, Tsukihime is a very excited conversation you had with your weeb friend back in middle school. The base ideas are large in number and executed in the way only Nasu (or any other facebook roleplayer) could, so it's up to you to decide which aspects of storytelling you value more. The art is slightly crude, but to me, it's perfect in all it's early 2000's glory. I couldn't evaluate sound because my EXTREMELY LEGAL FULLY FUNCTIONING copy was not as fully-functioning as I'd hoped, so I just played touhou lofi in the background (it worked pretty well). A remake is coming out shortly. It will no doubt be top-of-the-line, polished with all the fondness I truly think it deserves. It's kind of silly... But it's of it's time. And that, in itself, is endearing enough to me.