Lunar Legend Tsukihime is a visual novel from Type-Moon, famous for many other visual novels such as Fate/Stay Night and Kara no Kyoukai. Today I'm taking a look into the hypothetical: what if this Tsukihime visual novel was turned into an anime? And what if said anime was adapted by J.C. Staff and came out in October 2003?
Now I know that many will wonder how one goes about reviewing that which does not exist, but let me assure you that I have my methods.
The story focuses on Shiki, your typical nerdy anime high schooler, that through an injury he received as a child, gained the ability to see these lines within objects, allowing him to cut through them. These lines disappear only through the glasses he wears. One day he stumbles upon a woman, and in a small fit of insanity, slices her into pieces. He does not successfully kill her; however, because SHOCK she's a vampire named Arcueid. He now has to fight other vampires with Arcueid, and he soon also begins to realize that the people he once knew have their own deep dark secrets behind them.
Now as far as how good it is, the series is pretty slow moving, and it constantly feels like very little is happening in comparison to what should be happening. It's a 12 episode series that has moments way too drawn out. There's a lot of the typical high school shenanigans, and right when you think the show's about to get juicy, they end up subverting your expectations and you are left underwhelmed. You think one of the major characters is dead? Nope, it was all an illusion by the main character. Furthermore, the show feels very clumsy in its attempts to adapt the visual novel, since it has a bit of exposition dump that could have been avoided had the series decided to show more instead of tell. I also feel like in spite of the show's slowness, the last couple of episodes were very rushed, almost as if the writers were attempting to fit more of the actual storyline into the show after they realized they spent too much time on less relevant aspects. What we got was interesting enough, but not satisfying to watch, because there's very little pay off for the setup.
The characters felt equally unexplored. I saw lots of potential within the characters, but because of the show's slow pacing and short runtime, it never was able to properly flesh out the characters the way it could have been. Shiki not remembering everything, and the bending of what he believes to what is reality could've been a lot more interesting if we'd been able to truly see the end result. It had the good setup, but it lacked the payoff. Arcueid and Shiki's relationship was already decent enough, and I could somewhat see their dynamic, but imagine how much more interesting it would have been if we had seen Arcueid's past through her own perspective, rather than someone else explaining it. Getting a better idea of what went down with Shiki's sister and her relationship with the twin maids. You could feel that the characters did have some chemistry, and it was made apparent in a few episodes such as when they all go to the amusement park, and you grow to get a better idea of how Akiha feels about her brother's friends, as well as how protective she is of him. Akihito's character could have been more explored, too, since I liked his role in terms of trying to keep this group of friends together, in spite of how much conflict was going on between them.
The antagonists definitely, once again, set up some interesting conflicts regarding Shiki and his own past, but are extremely tied down by the show's duration. I feel like I am repeating myself at this point, but that pretty much sums up the anime's biggest problem. It has the setup for something interesting, but doesn't go as far as it could with it, leaving the audience underwhelmed with what is there.
In terms of animation, it actually looks fairly good for its time period. For a time when anime was starting to look better on the computer, this show consistently keeps its characters on model. You aren't going to get much in terms of action sequences, since it always manages to cut to a camera angle that allows for the least amount of blood when it comes to limbs falling off. It's nothing great, especially in comparison to say, Fullmetal Alchemist or Texhnolyze, but the audience gets the idea. The shot composition is serviceable, but certainly nothing special, and while it managed to keep enough of my attention, I did tend to end up getting bored at times. As a whole, the animation is good at what it does, but certainly not great at what it does.
The OST is actually quite good. It adds to the occult atmosphere of the show, and while it doesn't convey atmosphere as well as say, Witch Hunter Robin, it still does a good job at giving the series a horror tone to it. The opening theme is a great listen, filled with these absolutely haunting chants that actually make starting each episode a real treat. The ending theme is okay, too, but not as memorable.
I know some will say, "Roger, go read the visual novel. It's got all that stuff you want." And you know what? I'm sure it does, but I'm not reviewing the visual novel, I'm reviewing its non-existent anime adaptation. And as a whole, I think that in spite of its criticisms... the Tsukihime anime isn't THAT bad. Yes, I have a had a huge amount of criticisms with it, and yes, I would never recommend it, but the show wasn't incomprehensible. I'd definitely rather have this exist than that crappy Madhouse adaptation of Chaos;Head. The show had good music, it set up interesting ideas, and it looked decent enough. If anything, I might even consider this a decent advertisement for the visual novel, and considering many adaptations aren't even good as advertisements for the source material, I'd say that it isn't all too bad. I get that the show definitely took many liberties with its source material, and I know it added in aspects that weren't there, but I still stand by what I said. I didn't extremely enjoy the series, but I also didn't feel like I wasted my time or anything along those lines.
