What Tsukihime anime? I thought it didn’t exist.

Such is the legendary reputation of the anime Shingetsutan Tsukihime, the incredibly polarizing adaptation of Type-Moon’s hit (or at least, quite good) visual novel Tsukihime. The general consensus is, if you’re seeing the content for the first time – if the anime is your only experience with Tsukihime – then it’s a very good show. But if you’ve played the visual novel to any degree of completion, you’re going to hate it like it’s name was Makoto Itou.

(Incidentally, the reason why we don’t have a School Days 10 post today is because it would be five pages of ranting about how everybody sucks and that there are no more heroes – except maybe Nanami – and that everybody should die, burn, fire, katto katto katto katto, etc or at the least not have a happy ending. An entertaining post maybe but School Days has it’s direction pretty well defined by now, so I don’t need to talk much about it.)

And so, having read the Tsukihime visual novel “cover-to-cover”, finishing all 5 paths and the epilogue, I embarked on possibly the most masochistic quest yet: watching the Tsukihime anime. It would be a true test to see if I could really, really hate an anime.

Going into it I was vaguely familiar with some of the fan community’s bigger gripes about what Lunar Legend Tsukihime got wrong, so I can’t say I was completely shocked by the incorrectness of some things, but seeing it in person is always better and more complete than listening to one person flame about it (hopefully in this post I will just be smoldering) – not to mention, there were still a few minor surprises in store in terms of direction taken.

So. Love? Hate? Love? (I don’t even watch that anime.) As usual, as much as I’d like to take the arugment to some sort the real answer is somewhere in between in that the anime does a lot of things right – one might say passably – but there are some things that hurt (and not so good, either) to watch.

Spoilers on the Tsukihime visual novel follow. Jump, how high, etc.
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Following on the heels of my praises of Hisui and Sacchin in the other post, Kagetsu Tohya (the visual novel sequel to Tsukihime that I’ve raved about before) is telling me that it’s Satsuki Yumizuka’s birthday today.

As silly as it is to celebrate the fictional birthday of a fictional character (which would explain why my post is the first one for it as far as I can find), I’m an anime blogger who has lost all sense of shame over the summer and as such it’s time to have a day where maybe it won’t be so sad for Sacchin.

(Now if only that wasn’t one of her two-odd appearances in KT…)

Pictures, character ranting, blatant fanboying, etc after the jump. Spoilers on her character from the Tsukihime visual novel, if that worries you.

The Tsukihime fanbase has always been a tough one to get a read on; unlike other series where clear fan favorites have been established, it’s difficult for white me to say just how popular or unpopular a character like Satsuki is.

While it’s true that the catchphrase “Isn’t it sad, Sacchin” was borne out of, I believe, a CCC doujin page discussing how Satsuki came in last place in the popularity poll, it certainly feels like, at least in the English-speaking Type-Moon community, that Satsuki has quite a following, at least more so than the likes of, say, other main heroines, like Ciel or Kohaku.

I’m pretty sure Arc is up there because she’s the Main Character. Akiha’s a tsundere, and an imouto. Hisui’s a shy/quiet girl (and a maid, I suppose) and adorable to the eleventh power. So while I don’t expect Sacchin to be the unloved character of the Tsukihime universe like her reputation is, she’s not going to be a chart-topper at any rate.

But, topic-wise, some of the less Sacchin-devoted may ask, why Satsuki? (and why do you keep changing back and forth between the two names?)

I think the first reason that a lot of people like Satsuki is, well, what has come to be known in the business as the Nayuki Factor. Characters that have high potential in this factor are usually the ones that well, don’t win, to put it that way. These characters get the shaft in one or multiple ways, whether it be simply getting ignored by the main character or all the way up to, in poor Sacchin’s case, turning into a vampire and dying. In a sense, a lot of these characters are Red Shirts in that they are sort of expendable, and not the main focus of the series.

Those of us who like to root for the underdog will find all sorts of things to like in the Nayuki-Class as a result; that urge to see the infamous Nayuki Ending, or Satsuki Path, really drives a fanbase, to the point to where it almost becomes ridiculous (I know the fabled Satsuki Path has been mocked once or twice by Type-Moon in their works).

So, perhaps if Satsuki did have an arc in Tsukihime, she wouldn’t have had as much love as she does now. But, as just mentioned, there are plenty of things to find to like about Sacchin.

She’s pretty much The Normal One of Tsukihime, something that no other main heroine in Tsukihime can attest to; although she does get vampireized, it’s not a condition that exists in the start of the visual novel, as opposed to everyone else, who is just hiding secrets from you. Sacchin is closer to a, I suppose, more typical and pure visual novel girl, the kind that fell in love with the main character X years ago and just now is trying to really capture him.

Except in Tsukihime, everyone is somewhat of a three-dimesional character, and so Satsuki made a few wrong moves and ended in up the perilous situation of being a vampire, leading to the famous confrontation between her and Shiki which brings new meaning to his promise to “always protect her” – which in this case, means killing her to end her suffering.

And yeah, there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s really sad, Sacchin.

Somehow it seems that the more tears a visual novel character can induce in their arc, the more love they get; maybe this is part of that whole “moe = want to protect” thing (which is probably completely wrong on my part), but definitely I am a fan of characters like Satsuki, and Hisui, whose whole story – especially the ending – just brings a new meaning to “;_;”.

In conlcusion, yay for Sacchin, the underdog character of Tsukihime who will probably never get a true closure apart from death; but she lives on in non-canon stories (truth: her Blood Arc in Melty Blood, especially versus a Shiki, is one of the best moves in the game to watch) and in the fanbase.

If you’re looking for those pictures of Satsuki, I’m sorry to do this to you but I’ve put it into a zip file and uploaded it to Rapidshare; 25 images is a pain in the butt to upload one-by-one, so download them all at once and pick out the ones you like. There’s a lot of good artwork in here.

Yay, Sacchin! Fight!

-CCY