月姫

“El Vampir In Visum Et Memoriam.”

You might be asking on why I intend to do this for the record. To tell the truth, blogging Tsukihime is out of the question. That is, until TYPE-MOON announced a remake for the said game. And besides, the game is good. I would curse myself if I don’t even uphold my affiliation to the Back Alley Allegiance. Sacchin needs some lovin’ now.

To be honest, I was amazed on how this doujin game became popular. I mean, it’s just a doujin game, mostly done by two persons who have no affiliations to any company, and yet it received so much rave. I never even thought such a feat would be recognized so much, let alone have a doujin game that is respected in its own. Unfortunately, THERE IS NO TSUKIHIME ANIME. Any faggot trying to insist that the one who goes by the alias “Shingetsutan” should just die via Gnadenstoss. No bull.

Now, any typical TYPE-MOON fan would know how the story goes: You follow the life of a man named Tohno Shiki. Eight years ago, Shiki was involved in a traffic accident that nearly killed him. Fortunately, he survived, but there’s something else to note: Aside from having a big scar on his chest, Shiki can see strange “lines” on his surroundings, running from buildings, things, animals, and even people. This scared Shiki as his condition got worse, until he met his “Sensei”, Aozaki Aoko. Only after that fateful meeting did Shiki live his life peacefully in the Arima Clan house, a branch family of the Tohno Clan, where he recovered most of his health. It seems that all is well, until his younger sister Akiha sent him a letter telling him to come back to the mansion. Of course, having no choice, Shiki accepts the offer. Now, this is where things go bloody haywire, and that’s where you come in for Shiki. After moving in the Tohno Clan mansion, Shiki will experience strange things depending on your choices and decisions. The decisions are categorized into two sections: The Far Side of the Moon, and The Near Side of the Moon. These sides also determine the heroines destined for Shiki.

“Hello, Student-san. Are you going to school today?”

First, The Near Side of the Moon. This side contains Shiki’s canon love interest: Arcueid Brunestud. Probably the most enigmatic of all the heroines, Arcueid simply states her existence as a vampire. She has a bubbly personality, but has a solid heart of truth (she never lies) and unsullied sincerity (she’s so true to her feelings that she even gets confused from them), serious or not, but only for Shiki. As the last of the true Ancestors and the perfect incarnation of the vampire ancestor Crimson Moon, she comes to Shiki’s city to hunt her own kind, only to stumble upon Shiki himself.

In contrast to a normal relationship, the Moonlight Lovers (as Shiki and Arc are more commonly known, especially in Melty Blood) have something that is more inclined to a parent-child relationship, i.e. Shiki indulging to any of Arcueid’s requests, Shiki teaching Arcueid the basics of modern living, etc. Of course, with his “responsibility”, (him “killing” Arc), as well as some uncanny interest for the True Ancestor, Shiki never fails to be at beck and call. Arcueid, in turn, teaches Shiki the hidden “discrepancies” that the world has to offer: Vampires, demons, assassins, inhuman powers, and the like. I guess the relationship works in both ways for Shiki and Arc. To teach normal things to someone as abnormal as an irregularity of nature, and for a normal person to know things that are out of this world, it seemed a simple balance between two opposite forces.

C-C-C-C-CURRY-SEMPAIIIII!

Then there’s Ciel, who is everybody’s “Curry-senpai”. She’s bright, is pretty much formidable when it comes to handling school affairs (being a student council member is hard work), and comes along with an insatiable appetite for curry. Eventually, you’ll know she’s got more secrets up her sleeve: She’s actually an agent of the Burial Agency, a sector of the Church that exterminates anomalies and abnormalities in the world which are labeled simply as heretics, and that includes vampires and demons.

Ciel’s route is all about hypnotism, suggestion implanting, the works. In order to blend in a normal society while tracking down her enemies, Ciel must use deception. But Shiki’s unexpected interference will change her drastically. Will she be able to deceive the person that trusts her the most? Will she be able to disregard him in order to finish her personal vendetta? And if she really loves Shiki, will she be able to carry the burden of watching him die when fate dictates it so? In this route, Shiki is not the only one who’s trying to get a grip of himself, for Ciel is no exception. Eventually, the Glasses Team (it figures, since both wear a pair, hence the team name) will be able to discern themselves, and finally understand their mutual feelings for each other. Adding Arcueid to your mix is a plus, too.

The Far Side of the Moon is vastly different compared to the western inclinations of the Near Side. It offers more characters, which are deeply related to your surrogate family, the Tohnos, and the poor classmate Yumizuka Satsuki is also given emphasis here. This Side will have the most revisions for the remake version, mainly because of the popular rumor that poor Sacchin is finally getting a bit of spotlight with her own route.

Deep red, dirty red, blood red.

To start off, we have Tohno Akiha, your stepsister and current head of the Tohno family. She’s the strict, overprotective, and sadistic master of the house, with a famous penchant for incest. She orders you to return to the Tohno family mansion after living for eight years in the Arima Family. By this time, you are to fill the gap you left after you were transferred to the Arima residence. You make your presence known, you state a new living address, you know more about Akiha, you befriend the twin maids Kohaku and Hisui, you try to figure out anything about Yumizuka, and so on. However, something about Shiki’s identity will shatter the whole household as a long lost “relative” comes back to haunt him.

Shiki doesn’t know about the facts when he returns to the mansion. In fact, Akiha is trying her best not to let Shiki know, even though she’s having battles of her own regarding love and sibling relationships. She’s torn between two choices: Void the sibling relationship so she can have Shiki, or keep his true identity secret so that she can keep her relationship with Shiki. This only makes matters worse as Shiki is trying to figure out some of it by himself. The more he knows, the more Akiha is pressured to make the decision. But, well, as we can see, they’re still at it with the sis-bro play, so I guess the Graceful Elder Brother and the Demon Younger Sister combo is still accepted. Outrageous, and sometimes, funny.

He is My Shiki, Criminal-sama.

Next is Hisui, Shiki’s personal maid. Though Shiki insists calling him simply by his first name, Hisui still has her habit of calling her master “Shiki-sama”. But even though she serves Shiki in a very “effective” manner, Shiki is somewhat worried about the cold demeanor she’s sporting all throughout. Of course, the two start to fall for each other, and as one gets to know the other, the past starts to blend everything into a cauldron of mayhem, mana and murder.

“You are My Master.” Aren’t those words just appropriate to denote the Hisui-Shiki team? Well, it only garners fifth on my pairing ladder, so I don’t think I can write much about it in contrast to how I can reason out that it fails. If Ciel is the Near Side’s “Poor Little Girl”, then Hisui is definitely the Far Side’s. If I would compare Kohaku’s predicament turned diabolical scheme, Akiha’s love turned psychotic obsession, or Sacchin’s admiration turned vampiric tendency, they all failed to compare to Hisui’s jolly childhood turned melancholic masquerade. Why? If you can see the logic here, all of the Far Side girls had their mishaps, which they used to fuel whatever reason they have to live on, mostly being Shiki. You see the “rebound” there, from a downward fall to a bounce back up, and that doesn’t happen to Hisui. She gets a nice childhood, finds out her twin sister raped, then proceeds to succumb into some kind of emo depression as an excuse to make her sister cheer up. She fell, and no rebound happened. She can only be so supportive and alone that she’s one you would always find on the background, not having a time of her own, even after falling in love.

I was broken, but I was fixed.

Last of the attainable heroines is Kohaku. Only after finishing all the other routes will her route be available to pursue. She is Akiha’s personal maid, although there’s a certain mix on that regarding “power relationships”. The story doesn’t really focus on Shiki or Kohaku or anything else. It merely focuses attention on a promise: Shiki is to return Kohaku’s white ribbon when he returns back to the mansion. But since eight years have passed, Shiki is simply clueless as to which of the twins is which. Toss in an ultra-possessive Akiha and you have all hell breaking loose.

Now, I can’t say that mending broken dolls is something I liked. They come in all shapes and sizes, anyway. Shiki’s one good guy to do that for us, heroine-wise. I mean, you’ve got a girl with a broken persona that has almost nothing to lose, constantly manipulating events without your eventual knowing, and then you screw her plans, her body, and her senses halfway before the plan’s completion. Still, the plan proceeds, but with our little broken doll trying to get a grip years after she promised herself that all there will be is the plan, she asks herself: Did she really want any of this? And if she did, what then? Suicide? Call it quits? It seems that our little patient Shiki isn’t going to be the only one needing paranoia shots. Please pardon the injection! Magical Witch Amber on the syringe, injecting your drugs!

Oh yes, there will be blood.

The game offers a cocktail of paranoia, fear, instinct, and plain craziness, all rolled into one. Shiki being GAR is also another factor. He’s one with a peculiar combination of weak physical and mental constitutions, negated by a counter force of innate assassin skills, uncanny speed, an above-average build, and stunning charisma. Add in the irony of “normalcy” and you get something that can relate on any kind of girl, be it demonic, vampiric, or romantic. The blend of eastern and western inclinations spiced up every aspect of the game, and Shiki’s base characteristics molded him as to how he should be if he is to pursue a route, regardless of side or heroine. See, that is one of the characteristics that I liked from Nasu’s works: He takes a normal person as a protagonist, gives the person extraordinary powers, and then retains the normalcy of said person, which masks the person’s powers with a powerful facade made out of the person’s values and principles, which we can reflect from a normal person’s point of view.

Even with elements coming from both the surreal and the ordinary, the story balances even with such evident polarities. It’s running on a tightrope that can cater to tastes without losing interest. More like it opens a new way of how a fictitious story is told by taking everyone’s feelings into account, and how the characters feel the emotion, how they cope up with it, and what the other characters do in response. Each character has his or her own way that the story is told on everyone’s perspective.

The Seventh Holy Love Quarrel.

Battles include wall running, slicing, more slicing, MORE SLICING, clawing, sword throwing, bayonet guns, regeneration and resurrection, and a walking zoo made of black goo as heavy as a small continent. That’s some plethora. Nasu tells how duels are fought with good precision, and these just make up half of it. The other half is how the combatants feel while they are fighting. You don’t see how fear is exemplified on a near-dead character that often. Seeing how it affects fighting capabilities is another question. Nicely done. Quite.

Ultimately, Tsukihime is one big eye-opener, if we give regards to the fact that this is a way the occult is seen in a morbid and insane point of view, which is something that has inclinations to being real or human. It doesn’t require you to use logic or common sense that much, but every route is a piece of a puzzle that will only be complete once everything has been experienced by Shiki. What comes after? Who knows? All of it may just be a lunar eclipse of a dream on a grassy, windy plain.