And I have to admit, even though ultimately Kohaku is my favorite, Akiha (and Hisui) isn’t far behind, and I’ll admit cheering when I finished “A Story For the Evening” in Kagetsu Tohya!

@LeoNanaya – you’ll like the follow-up KT has to Akiha’s path then, it’s really nice.

@narkins: it’s funny how you get so attached to these characters…for some reason Akiha is one of my favourites, even though Kohaku and I suppose Hisui too had a lot of trauma to put up with.

@Stampeed Valkyrie: hope I didn’t spoil too much for you! Yeah, the maids’ importance is pretty understated. The anime ought to have been twice as long as it was…funnily enough, the anime adaptation of Fate/Stay Night is actually not half bad now I’m rewatching it after the VN, but that’s probably because it concentrates on one route (the Fate one).

probably gonna have to find the save file for KT, being stuck is no longer fun. Even when i delete the save files to start again they magically come back after I turn the machine off.

Just posted earlier when I was hunting down info on Fate/Stay looking up info on the Heavens feel route.

Ok after reading the post I do agree that the Far side stories were much better then the near side stories, However as for overall favorite characters I am having to point to the maids, And to be precise Kohaku. I think the reason for this is the fact that the maids are in every single story both near and far side, yet they are almost always overlooked or made to look like “subcharacters” when in all honesty most of the events that occur in tsukihime have some link to either one of these maids in one form or another. Then again the sheer story behind these 2 really did catch me off guard and really showed how much the Anime Epic Failed on story telling.

my 2 cents

as for Kagetsu Tohya….. I need to find the save file its just too tedious to go through… however I do enjoy getting Shiki into trouble and watching the fireworks.

(Spoilers below)

That said, for me one of the best scenes was the hidden story, it totally cemented who I thought was the most tragic figure of all Tsukihime – SHIKI. Think about it: he had an abnormally violent awakening from a vampire taking him over from the soul outwards, and then had Kohaku of all people taking care of him (ie drugging, brainwashing, and generally screwing with him to make things worse for the sake of her revenge). Poor guy never stood a chance, he’s actually really nice when sane.

Far side route is the better piece of work, Hisui and Kohaku’s two routes combine to make a truely chilling reading. I read the two route on a 2 day bender recovering after post exam celebrations, and going through Kohaku’s with the other route was a bit of a mind bender. Arc is pobably my favourite character despite it all of it though, much like saber was my favourite dispite the brilliance of Heavens feel.

As for Kagetsu Tohya, ergh…

Don’t get me wrong, its brilliant but terribly frustrating, a completionists nightmare is a understatement, I still actually haven’t finished the main story. Though despite that there are some gems there for some of the side characters, Arihiko past is explained along with his reason for his friendship with Shiki, the Con game is funny and theres other amusing things in the main story.

Yeah, the Far Side is my favorite set of routes – Akiha’s path is my favorite (in no small part because of its wonderful character/plot development), and Hisui’s path had the single best ‘What-the-hell-is-happening?!’ scenes in the entire game… Seriously, it got plain creepy at times. Try replaying the game after Kohaku’s path – a lot of her scenes get rather cringe-inducing once you know what she’s been through. Also makes you question exactly *how* much of the story’s events were a result of her drugging Shiki, any food/drink that she was involved in is suspect (it was chilling when I realized the truth about that particular “dream” where he met ‘someone’ after killing some people)…

And if you’ve played this you’re probably already playing Plus+Disk (introduces Seo Akira) and Kagetsu Tohya. Heh, I look forward to seeing your reaction for trying to beat that completionists nightmare (its virtually, if not impossible to see all the scenes without a 100% complete game file for the scene select).