A Review of Tsukihime Remake by a Nasuverse newcomer

Hi all! As someone who discovered Fate ~seven months ago I wanted to jump over to Nasu's other works. Tsukihime is the one outside Fate everyone talks about and also got (half) a remake so I figured I'd start here. Also because I want to get the Fate/EXTRA remake and Arcueid's in there.

My tl;dr: is the game's okay. It's not the 10/10 kamige I've heard everyone say it is, but I get why it's liked and I myself like it enough to have binged most of it and read through the bits I didn't. I'm also interested in the sequel coming at some point. Apparently.

Premise and General Praise

Anyway, the premise is: you're Shiki Tohno, a 17 year old with the ability to see lines across everything in the world that when cut will "kill" it. He keeps his sanity with glasses that hide them, given to him by one of the heroines from Witch on the Holy Night. In the present he's distracted from his walk to school after moving back in with his rich family by a woman he's so captivated by he just HAS to follow her home and ruins her plans. The next day she - the vampire Arcueid - guilt-trips him into helping her deal with a vampire terrorizing their city.

You play through Arc's route first which unlocks Shiki's senpai Ciel's route, which in turn has a "True" ending hidden behind a "Normal" one. To start with the obvious: the presentation is great. All the tracks, both those remixed from the original and new pieces written for the remake are wonderful. The main theme as well as Ciel's are personal stand-outs for me. The art is also very crisp. I recognized a bunch of poses from Fate/Stay Night (Akiha, Shiki's sister for example, uses a lot of Rin's), but they're drawn with such high detail they blend in with all the unique stuff. There's also some very basic animation to showcase movement in certain scenes, as well as "shaky cam" and similar tricks to emphasize momentum in action scenes. Oh, and the sound effects are great too, with some bespoke ones that stood out in particular. I didn't think I'd recognize the sound of someone stumbling around in their own blood but... yeah, that's probably what that sounds like.

By the way, even the early game "Teach Me!" segments spoil what Ciel's deal is before the story itself does and as far as I can tell the marketing and other reviews don't bother hiding it either, so neither will I. There are no actual spoilers here though.

Arcueid's Route

As with other Nasu works, the first route is also used to explain how the specific magical phenomena of this game works. In this case, vampire hierarchies and powers. From what I've seen, this is presented with more detail than the original which is why Arceuid's route takes almost twice as long as the original despite the plot being near identical. Nasu has a bad case of "purple prose" at times, but I think he kept it in check well enough here. But since this route doubles as an introduction the main story is pretty basic. While the two villains are creepy and the art loves to show the former's unhinged-ness off in particular, they're also deep as puddles. Arceuid's feud with the Church and Ciel in particular never get fleshed out beyond "they hate vampires" either, but that's what Ciel's route is for.

Arceuid herself is the main draw of her route. I wasn't prepared for how much I'd like her. She's cold and calculating when dealing with vampires but a complete dork who's always bouncing around like a child on a sugar rush. She's clearly smitten with Shiki from minute one and the moments showcasing it gave me so much life. The key emotional beats have the intended effect and the ending in particular is great. I have two main issues with this route. One is an overarching problem I'll save for later but the other is the final boss's downfall (identical to the original) is an anti-climactic Deus ex Machina. Weirdly Nasu also believes this and said he'd address it in Red Garden, which makes me wonder why he didn't just fix the ending now. Heck, not even the Japanese fandom knows when Red Garden is coming out!

Ciel's Route

While the former was near-identical to the original version, Ciel's route got a major revamp and it shows. It's FAR longer and is a lot deeper too. Shiki clicked much sooner for me here than he did in the former - partly because, as with Shirou in F/SN, he gets more fleshed out after Route 1 - and Ciel is a better foil for him than Arcueid, given she's more down-to-earth. It's easier for the two to relate and since Ciel also attends Shiki's school you see more sides to her through her interactions with other characters.

Arcueid is still a major player for the first half of this route (just like the original) but Ciel takes over afterwards. It's hard to discuss her story without spoilers, but suffice it to say, we learn more about her past, why she sided with the Church and why she hates vampires so much. While the first "boss" of the story is still basic, the second gets fleshed out WAY more than I expected. Their story is a classic case of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" but you can buy how they made each step down there (or maybe I'm just a sucker). It's honestly kinda jarring to compare them to the moustache-twirler in Arc's route and I wish we'd gotten hints of this there, but making them more interesting is a net positive, so... shrugs. Ciel's route is by far the highlight of Blue Glass Moon. I think there's one subplot in particular that goes on a bit too long because Nasu wants it to be a big deal in future routes, but it's an interesting tangent and wrings a bit more development and angst out of Ciel so it's all good.

As for the two endings... I think I prefer the Normal one. It's bittersweet and has a melancholy air to it, but I think it's truer to both the characters and the tone of Tsukihime up to that point. Not only is it harder for me to buy how the True ending splits off (Shiki does almost the same thing in both paths and stuff outside his control changes too, both with little reasoning), it also feels way too over-the-top? Sure, the extra fight scenes are interesting but the whole scenario is just so jarring. Maybe Nasu had just gotten out of proofreading some Fate stuff and forgot to switch gears.

Remember how Darling in the FranXX started with brainwashed kids in mechas and ended with planet-sized giants fighting in outer space with the power of friendship? Yeah, it was that kind of jarring. The final cutscene is nice, but in context it's TOO nice and overall isn't worth it. Even how the battle was won is explained with an offhand reveal of a loophole in Nasu's magic system after the fact. I know Magecraft is full of loopholes, but it's so out of the blue here even by those standards.

My Biggest Complaint

So I think I've been mostly positive until now. I had problems but there was more good than bad. While I liked Tsukihime more than I expected and DO want to read Red Garden if it ever releases, there's still one other issue that dragged both routes down for me and here it is.

It seems I'm not a fan of how Nasu writes romance. Which is a problem when it feels like every VN out there has mandated romances at the end of every path and doubly so for a remake of one that was also an eroge of all things.

While it's a bit tricky for me to see how Ciel would fall for Shiki so quickly given her past, I can connect the dots in my head with a bit of effort. I can't do that for Arcueid though. The story's clear that, as a vampire, she doesn't interact with people. At all. She also spent almost her entire life in hibernation. So while her being curious about Shiki after their chance encounter makes sense, I don't buy her falling in love with him at... zeroth sight? She says later in her route she fell for him just by imagining what kind of person he'd be!

She just reads like a kid (I wasn't joking when I said she felt like one earlier) being excited about her first crush. Even Shiki thinks to himself that their definitions of love are probably different, so I just feel bad for both of them! Maybe their relationship being unhealthy was the point, but it's hard to argue that when most of their interactions are banter or the cute stuff I mentioned before.

If the former was the intent (despite losing the original's H scenes, Arc's route still has an "intimate" one while Ciel's stops at hugs and kisses for example) I wish Nasu had committed to it by writing them similarly to the main couple in fellow vampire-romance VN Bishoujo Mangekyou. Maybe Arc fell in "real love" by the end of her route, but since Shiki is her only friend and she's all over him all the time you can't really make that distinction either. I stand by what I said before that the emotional beats of her route land... I just had to disconnect myself first.

I think Nasu implied a second Arcueid route was coming in Red Garden? If so I hope it opts for a slow-burn on this dynamic. While I don't like how Nasu writes people getting together I think he does a fine job with established couples so this might be what I'm missing from the given dynamic (apparently the manga does this, so that's on my to-read list). Maybe she could befriend Shiki's bestie Inui, so we could see how she interacts with more than just him? After all, as with many romance VNs, the best friend continues to be best girl.

Anyway, the other issue with Arcueid's love for Shiki being such a prominent aspect of her is that in Ciel's route it becomes her only aspect. She leaves that route because she's upset Shiki chose to work with Ciel over her and by the time she returns to the story she's just a jealous ex ready to fly off the handle at a moment's notice. Heck, calling her a monster like the big bad upsets her less than Shiki saying he likes her but likes Ciel more!

Sure, the story draws attention to "love" being new to her and how it makes her unpredictable, but we've learned so much about her and her past grievances at that point (and with Ciel doing all the work she should be physically and mentally more stable anyway), so it feels reductive to reduce her to just that when her tipping point could have been her lashing out at the Church for treating her as a monster despite the good she's done, her regrets over her past actions boiling over or something like that. Even if I liked the romance I'd still consider this a poor choice for a final conflict. All three leads deserved better than for the emotional climax of this half of the remake to be a dumb love triangle spat.

Closing Thoughts

So... yeah. Despite the ramble at the end, I think there's more good than bad in Tsukihime (60% good, 40% mixed or bad) and since I'm in the minority with my earlier criticism chances are you'll enjoy it even more than I did and if you're a fan of the Nasuverse this is likely on your to-read list anyway. Again, I'm looking forward to Red Garden since the three Far Side routes are apparently even better than the first two and I'm curious to see how the remake can improve on them. The cynic in me is convinced TM will eventually release a "complete edition" of the remake at some point though, so if you're on the fence maybe you'd rather wait for that.

Anyway, that's it from me. Thank you all for reading this! Let me know what you thought of the VN or this write-up and how wrong I am for saying our bubbly vampiress was done dirty.