#18 Tsukihime [anime]
i initially started watching this anime to check if it would be an acceptable way to introduce my friends to the charms of tsukihime, and a good choice for watching as a group in general. and it is! obviously not a 'perfect' adaptation of the visual novel, but it has enough of an understanding of the original to feel worth seeing.
in general a fascinating relic, since it has been created really early into typemoons existence and has a very distinct style from the anime adaptations of their other works, and has a lot more stylistic freedom. i feel like many parallels can be drawn with the original fate/stay night fate route anime, since both of them follow one route of their respective visual novels but try to create a 'complete' experience by including plot beats from all the routes. shockingly the anime that nasuverse fans hate (this one) is much better at this, and manages to make the spoilers relevant to the story its telling, as opposed to the fate one which has a butchered version of heavens feel slapped into like 2 episodes in the second half and various other crimes. my only complaint is that they absolutely destroy a reveal about the twins without even thinking about it. sorry kohaku.
it feels like an adaptation of arcueid + akiha route, the two routes i have least respect for, with added reveals from the ciel route. hisui and kohaku are barely relevant to the story as a whole which makes sense, since their routes branch off in pretty significant ways and arent really 'about' the roa vampire menace. because the arcueid route is shockingly sparse in content it works quite well. there are a few things i think wouldve profited from having more screen time, especially the final stretch of the story, shiki losing his mind constantly etc, but it works. he also comes off as a shockingly polite young man in this one apart from that one time he tore a woman into 17 pieces. also they KILLED his ugly shirt and he dresses kind of cutely instead. maybe this anime is bad after all.
for those who arent 'in the know' (have interacted with the typemoon "fanbase" in any capacity [lucky]), this anime is considered so bad that the fans pretend that tsukihime has never had an anime adaptation. very funny coming from people who think ufotables dubstep version of fsn is good. as far as i understand it its because people dont like the artstyle. theres a certain charm to takeuchis old art but i just dont think you could adapt it for tv in a way that feels good. at least in the anime nrvnqsrs dogs dont look so stupid that i started laughing out loud when i saw them for the first time, which happened with the vn version.
fascinating subtitle choices too, they keep using honorifics, akiha says nii-san, arcueid is a shinso, but every single time theres ruby text over it that says 'brother', 'true ancestor', etc. it really was a different era.
in my opinion if you want to experience the original tsukihime by reading as little as physically possible, watching this and then reading hisui and kohaku routes sounds like a good compromise. i think the manga might also be good and works in a similar way to the anime but i havent read it so i couldnt say. the charm of the vn, and the thing that made it so influential is in the worldbuilding rather the prose so you dont miss as much as like, watching the ufotable adaptation of unlimited blade works or heavens feel. i would not recommend doing that by the way.
