I am still surprised that I get to write about Tsukihime: -A piece of blue glass moon-. I own it thrice over – the physical copy I imported from Japan, the digital version of the English-language PS4 release I picked up after selling some books while unemployed, and a physical copy of the English-language Switch release that I bought to celebrate starting a new job. I’ve played both of -A piece of blue glass moon-’s story routes to completion, including both of the second route’s endings. It was my most anticipated game of 2024, and I’ve thought about it almost every day since the English version released in late June. And yet I’m still surprised and delighted all the same. -A piece of blue glass moon-, the high-gloss remake of the original game’s “Near Side” story, proved to be everything I had hoped and more.
To put it as simply as possible, Tsukihime is a horror/romance/action story that follows a young man cursed with a terrible power as he’s drawn into the supernatural world by his encounters with two women who grapple with dreadful powers of their own. -A piece of blue glass moon- follows Shiki Tohno, a teenager with a good heart, bad health (he suffers from chronic anemia), and striking eyes. They’re both beautiful and they see the fundamental flaws in everything as cracks, and by cutting those cracks, Shiki can destroy anything or anything so thoroughly that it may as well never have existed.
Shiki has a fraught family history – Tsukihime opens with the death of Shiki’s father, who’d long disowned him – and shakier sanity than he realizes. While recovering from an anemia flare-up, Shiki encounters a mysterious, beautiful woman, slips into a fugue, stalks her home and cuts her into 17 pieces. When he comes to, Shiki is horrified, and flees into the night, convinced that he’s having a terrible nightmare. He wakes up the next morning, safe and in bed, and yes, it seems that he was having a nightmare.
And then the woman he cut into 17 pieces greets him outside his school with a cheerful, enigmatic smile. Her name is Arcueid Brunestud. She’s a vampire, and not just any vampire – she’s damn near the god of vampires. She’d like to know how the hell Shiki managed to kill her, and she’s intrigued by his sincere guilt and desire to atone. So Arcueid makes Shiki a proposition: make up for the slicing and dicing by helping her hunt down and kill her archenemy. Failing that, he’s on meat shield duty. Naturally, it’s not as simple as “hunt down Arcueid’s enemy and shank him.” There are other vampires stalking the city. The capital-C-Church has deployed agents, each with foibles and idiosyncrasies to match Arcueid and Shiki’s. Shiki’s terrified, but he might have found his place in the world. Arcueid’s used to settling scores and not at all used to living life outside of brutal revenge.
Alternatively, if Shiki awakens from his murderous fugue and refuses to lie to himself about what he’s done, he’ll cross paths with Ciel – a vampire hunter cursed with immortality who sees the good in everyone but herself. Ciel saves Shiki from his self-loathing, which pushes Shiki to try and save her from her own.
Shiki and -A piece of blue glass moon-’s heroines have sparks. They might grow into something wonderful. But terror and madness don’t wait for lovely moments to pass by before they pounce.
Tsukihime: -A piece of blue glass moon-’s ensemble are a thorny, lovable bunch, and the game tells their story with care, style, and tremendously impressive tonal balance. The horror has range, from overwhelmingly visceral brutality to creeping-up-the-back-of-your-spine-oh-dear-god realizations. The action takes full advantage of the dissonance between Shiki’s extreme lethality and his intense fragility, and the deadly dance of balancing the two when Shiki faces off with everything from shambling ghouls to a vampire who’s cheated death by hopping from body to body. The romances are swoon-worthy, particularly as Shiki, Arcueid, and Ciel put together the language for what they feel for each other and find their way to tenderness.
Or, to put it another way (with apologies): Tsukihime: -A piece of blue glass moon- got its fangs into me. I’m glad it did.
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