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Main Protagonist

Shiki Tohno

Voiced by: Kenichi Suzumura (JP - Anime), Steve Staley (EN - Anime), Kenji Nojima (JP - Melty Blood, Carnival Phantasm), Ryousuke Kanemoto (JP - Remake, Melty Blood Type Lumina), Keiko Nemoto (JP - Child), Wendee Lee (EN - Child)

^{Click here to see him in the remake} 

"—If you could see death... you couldn't maintain your sanity ...If you could see death —you wouldn't be able to even stand ...Being able to see the "death" of things— means you are forced to see the world's uncertainty and fragility. It's like the ground isn't there. You can't imagine what it's like to hallucinate the whole world perishing any second. To feel like the sky could fall at any moment— That is what it means to see death."

The protagonist of Tsukihime. As a child, Shiki was seemingly involved in a particularly nasty car accident that left him with a massive scar on his chest, anemia, holes in his memory... and a strange ability to see glowing, pulsing red lines on everything and everyone around him. Lines that, when practically anything is traced along them, cause whatever they're connected to to fall apart. Growing increasingly unstable from the horror of this world made of shattered glass, Shiki tries desperately to make his visions of the lines go away, including attempting to claw out his own eyes. However, after multiple attempts to harm himself are stopped, Shiki runs away from the hospital into a nearby field, where he meets a self-proclaimed "Sorceress" named Aoko Aozaki. The two of them spend a long time talking and she teaches him to respect life and explains his strange new ability, which she calls the "Mystic Eyes of Death Perception". Her parting gift is his trademark pair of glasses that prevent him from having to see the lines. Afterwards, Shiki is able to regain some semblance of normality, and goes to live with a branch family of the Tohnos for eight years, before eventually returning to live with his sister Akiha at the start of the story.

From here, the story splits into the Near and Far Side. In the Near Side routes, Shiki runs into a beautiful blond girl with piercing red-eyes on the street, and suddenly feels a strange urge to follow her. Soon after, as the unknown urge inside him grows, Shiki removes the glasses that stop him from seeing the red lines, and proceeds to cut the red-eyed girl into 17 pieces in an alley. However, after coming to his senses and promptly passing out in shock over what he just did, Shiki wakes up in his bed at home, leaving him unsure if what he just experienced was a dream. Even stranger, the next day the red-eyed girl shows up again, demanding an explanation for why she was just murdered, despite being very much not dead, and that he help in her secret war against an undying vampire that she claims has infiltrated the city.

In the Far Side routes, Shiki returns to the Tohno mansion eager to renew his relationship with his sister and to hopefully see his childhood friend and a mysterious girl he sometimes saw in the window watching everyone play. However, he soon finds not everything in his family is as it seems, and before long is caught up in a series of bizarre serial murders plaguing the city that are connected to the Tohnos' darkest secrets.

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• Adaptational Badass: In his battle against Roa in Arcueid's route in the original visual novel, Shiki uses his Mystic Eyes to "kill" the hallway they're in to make it collapse, destroying Roa's legs as he climbs out of the rubble. In the remake, Shiki doing the same thing now directly hits Roa, causing his legs to "die" and leaving him crippled. Nasu specifically brings attention to this as something he wants to explain later, making it apparent that this is something new Shiki can do.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: In Ciel's route, Roa's possession begins turning him into a vampire. Though he returns to being a human in most endings, in Ciel's True End in the Remake, it kind of sticks, leaving him a half-vampire.
• Anti-Hero: When his bloodlust takes over he stops having any real regard for the lives around him. However, this only happens around beings that are dangerous to humans.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Shows shades of this. It's established that the only thing that means anything to him is the value of life - it's the one and only thing he truly believes in. Nothing matters, nothing has any meaning at all because "the whole world could perish in an instant", so Shiki holds that it's important to live a good life while you can, and he does what he can to preserve and improve the lives of others. Shiki's outlook has a lot to do with his Mystic Eyes - "Being able to see the "death" of things means you are forced to see the world's uncertainty and fragility. The ground is like it's not there, and the sky seems about to fall at any moment," as he puts it.
• Back from the Dead: Shiki's supposed near-death experience was actually death. However, Akiha was able to use her ability to create Shikigami to bind Shiki's soul back into his body before it could dissipate into Akasha, effectively resurrecting him at the cost of half her life force.
• Badass Boast: "What you and I see isn't the same. All you can see is life— the part that keeps things alive. You don't understand death at all. That's why you can't kill me, why all you can kill is a weakened woman. —If you could see death... you couldn't maintain your sanity ...If you could see death —you wouldn't be able to even stand ...Being able to see the "death" of things— means you are forced to see the world's uncertainty and fragility. It's like the ground isn't there. You can't imagine what it's like to hallucinate the whole world perishing any second. To feel like the sky could fall at any moment— That is what it means to see death. Do you see your mistake now, vampire? Life and death may be two sides of the same coin, but they will never face in the same direction. I'll show you. This is what it means to kill something."
  • From '-A Piece of Blue Glass Moon-':
  The only creature that's allowed to prey on her is me.
• Big Brother Instinct: He displays this in Carnival Phantasm when his male classmates start to creepily gather around a mentally-regressed Akiha in his classroom and is absolutely not pleased at all with the situation.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: Kohaku was rather impressed by what she saw of him, and she has the experience to tell.
• Bizarre Human Biology: Dr. Arach remarks that Shiki's bones are lighter than the usual human, almost like a bird, allowing him to move in bursts of speed.
• Blessed with Suck: The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception are one of the most powerful offensive abilities in existence, but also have huge drawbacks to Shiki. He has an Absurd Cutting Power that will inflict a Wound That Will Not Heal by tracing along the "lines of death" his eyes show him, and can even flat out kill the very existence of practically anything by piercing their "points of death". However, a normal human's brain isn't supposed to see death, so it is both exhausting and will kill him young. Also, if he doesn't wear his glasses, his mind will degrade even faster than his body.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: In the Tsukihime intro.
• Came Back Strong: It was being brought to the brink of death and therefore closer to Akasha, the Ultimate Source, that allowed Shiki to perceive the death of things with his eyes.
• Chick Magnet: Women flock to Shiki. The fandom jokes that this is because of some sort of mysterious "Tohno gland", in case you were wondering what all the talk about that was for. There are five Tsukihime heroines, Satsuki, Len, Sion, Akira, jokes about Aoko, and possibly Miyako. Since he is not exactly a social person, it is unknown if this applies to women in general. As his best and only friend at school, Arihiko, puts it, Shiki tends to attract the abnormal, from which Arihiko himself (who sees death differently than most people) is not excluded. Might have something to do with his Nanaya bloodline, which attracts them to the supernatural.
• Composite Character: He's very similar in looks and personality to Mikiya Kokutou and is voiced by the same guy in the anime, while his power, choice of weapon and name are the same as Shiki Ryougi's (plus he inherited a milder version of her murderous urges, as well as some elements of her backstory). Both are characters from The Garden of Sinners, an earlier Nasu work.
• Cursed with Awesome: See above Blessed with Suck entry — the Eyes are generally seen as both simultaneously.
• Curtains Match the Window
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: His Mystic Eyes cause great damage to his own body and mind if he uses them. Thus, he almost always wears glasses that block the ability to see the lines.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Just think about his life. He lost his entire family on a night, was then adopted by the man who orchestrated the whole thing, befriends the son of said man only to find out that he is an unstable Half-Human Hybrid, is killed by said boy after being possessed by a vampire, he is revived thanks to said boy's sister, gets brainwashed to forget all his memories of said boy and gets the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, which nearly drove him insane the first time. What a Trauma Conga Line.
• Death of Personality: The original Shiki is explicitly stated to have 'died' when Makihisa brainwashed him. The current Shiki is considered someone new, born from the old one's figurative remains. The fading fragments of the original Shiki in the current one's mind describes himself as "your foundation but not your past".
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Shiki, your Ordinary High-School Student, has taken out high-tier Dead Apostles, Dead Apostle Ancestors and even True Ancestors all thanks to his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. The remake even remarks how irregular him killing Vlov is considering that the Church has only taken out two Ancestors with each taking a hundred years of preparations to do.
• Don't Call Me "Sir": He tries to get Kohaku and Hisui to stop calling him "Shiki-sama". Kohaku complies, Hisui does not.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: If something angers him enough, he'll have these in Melty Blood. In particular, Roa's presence will invoke these instantly.
• Familiar: A Shikigami bound to Akiha.
• Flash Step: When fighting seriously, Shiki can move fast enough that he can appear to be outright teleporting due to the opponent losing track of where he is.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Lampshaded to you/Shiki in the Ciel-sensei sequence if the Relationship Values check in Arcueid's route fails. Ciel points out that just because you may be crazy, it's not an excuse for you to go around doing bad things (this Bad End usually happens if you had Shiki go crazy and rape Arcueid shortly before the check, just so you know).
• The Gift: He is said to be the most talented (though not necessarily the most skilled, due to his stunted training) killer that the Nanaya clan has ever produced, due to his Superpowerful Genetics.
• The Glasses Come Off: Literally since his glasses are special-made by Aozaki Touko to supress Mystic Eyes.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: In Kohaku's route, he encounters SHIKI in the middle of the night and ends up having coffee with him while they chat for hours about things like their abilities, killing and its meaning, and so on. Both are oblivious as to who the other is.
• Half-Human Hybrid: In the remake, he ends up as a half-vampire in Ciel's True Ending due to Roa's temporary possession of his body and usage of his budding vampire powers that resulted from that. How exactly one becomes only half-Dead Apostle isn't explained though.
• Harem Seeker: All the Type-Moon male leads seem to have far more love interests than they could possibly need, but Shiki is a little different. Unlike Kokuto or Shirou, after Tsukihime itself Shiki seems to be going out of his way to keep all the girls around him as seen in both Kagetsu Tohya and the non canon Carnival Phantasm.
• Harmful to Minors: When he was six years old, his mother was killed in front of his eyes, and for that matter the rest of the clan too.
• Heroic Suicide: In both the Good and True Endings of Ciel's route, Shiki stabs himself to stop Roa from fully taking him over, with him surviving it in True End by having Nanaya die in his stead while in Good Ending, he manages to kill Roa directly. The Remake has him do this only in the Normal Ending, which he later regrets as it leads to Ciel giving up her own life to bring him back.
• In the Blood: He kept the assassination abilities of his true family, the Nanaya clan.
• Jack of All Stats: In Melty Blood, he has decent health, speed, and power.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Can happen in Arcueid's route if you choose to have him rape Arcueid in a craze. Since a Relationship Values check happens right afterwards, this action greatly decreases her relationship value, which may lead to her killing him out of a lack of affection (though it's apparently possible to pass the check even if Shiki rapes her as long as your relationship value with her is very high).
• Last of His Kind: The last living member of the Nanaya clan after they were all slaughtered by Kouma Kishima under the orders of Makihisa Tohno.
• Leitmotif: After two decades, Shiki finally has a theme to accompany his key moments in the story of Tsukihime for the remake, "Mystic Eyes Unleashed", which is later turned into "Mystic Eyes Awakening" and "Mystic Eyes, Awaken".
• Loners Are Freaks: Not touched on much in the main game, but in Kagetsu Tohya it's said that Shiki's casual regard for death subtly freaks out his more normal classmates. That's why he has such abnormal friends, such as Arihiko. Satsuki is unable to pinpoint what exactly is off about Shiki, but is nonetheless strangely attracted to it.
• Magical Eye: His defining ability is the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception which allow him to perceive the nature of death as lines and dots over everything. Tracing or stabbing these lines will break them apart or flat out destroy them.
  • They started out as Pure Eyes of an unknown function that they appear to have retained despite their transformation, judging by Shiki's ability to see the Origami.
• Martial Pacifist: As a result of his Anti-Nihilist tendencies and Aoko's teachings, he considers the idea of killing another sentient being utterly abhorrent, despite being one of the most deadly people on the planet. Unfortunately, he still has to kill anyway, since he understands that allowing people like Nrvnqsr or SHIKI to live would just mean more deaths. From a Doylist perspective, this is also a way of making Shiki's fights more interesting - instead of being simply 'Shiki stabs enemy, enemy dies instantly', they become fierce psychological struggles as Shiki knowingly tramples over the one thing that means anything to him. He's not quite a Technical Pacifist, since he dislikes even non-lethal violence, and won't resort to any kind of violence unless there is truly no other option.
• May–December Romance: Played With. Each of the 6 main heroines of Tsukihime are around Shiki's age physically, give or take a year. Key word is "physically", as while Akiha, Yumizuka, and the maids' ages are genuine and thus make them only younger than Shiki by a year, both Arcueid and Ciel are far older than him chronologically; Ciel is estimated to be about 25 (making her older than Shiki by 8 years or so) despite looking 18, whereas Arc is several centuries older.
• Meaningful Name: His name is a homophone for 'corpse demon' or 'time of death' in Japanese. Not a bad name for someone who can kill just about anything.
• Morality Chain: Discussed. Ciel states that with him around Sion "will not be able to do bad things" in the Melty Blood manga, though it doesn't seem to be the case, with her continuing to do questionable things despite his disapproval. Also notes silently that she wants to "pretend innocence to" him, but again, depends whether you interpret that literally as her being deceitful, or genuinely acting better for him. When later Sion recalls that conversation, she asks Shiki if Arcueid avoids him to act good in front of him, and he reacts with laughter: "Arcueid being worried what others think of her? Yeah, right". Akiha also invokes this trope in her Kagetsu Tohya sidestory. In any case, he is closer to Living Emotional Crutch, since he is the only guy, and generally the nicest and sanest person, his love interests interact with. Some like Ciel or Akiha do have other acquaintances, but due to them keeping secrets like being an assassin or half-human hybrid, they cannot really confide in them.
• Morality Pet: Shiki is implied to be one for Kohaku. Early on her own route, one of the first times she shows her real personality is when she questions Shiki on why he decided to return to the mansion. Likely because his return started to give her second thoughts on her plan to destroy the Tohno family. Even when she goes as far as drugging him, she shows a lot of reluctance at first, only carrying through it when he insists he trusts her. And even then she shows a guilty expression after doing the deed.
• Named Weapons: His signature is a knife named Nanatsu Yoru, the only thing he has willingly inherited from the Nanaya family.
• Near-Rape Experience: Due to a combination of his Nanaya bloodlust and Arcueid accidentally using her Mystic Eyes on him, Shiki nearly ends up raping her. Arcueid blames her eyes alone and is under the impression that she made him do that. Shiki, on the other hand, thinks that neither factor had anything to do with it, leaving it questionable as to how much was his own intention and how much was not.
• Nice Guy: If you are not superhuman or in bed with him, he's a perfectly nice guy.
• No Saving Throw: The reason why the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception is such a fearsome power — it bypasses almost all forms of protection from injury and/or death with the exception of a few very special cases. Those that Shiki cut react with horror and dismay when they realize they cannot regenerate or reattach their limbs.
• Not Afraid to Die: According to Arihiko's Kagetsu Tohya sidestory, when Shiki comes face to face with death he becomes very calm. However, this doesn't quite match his behavior in some of his fights such as the one against Nrvnqsr Chaos.
• Not a Morning Person: According to Hisui, it is physically impossible to wake him up, or rather, he sleeps so deeply that no one will even attempt it.
• Oblivious to Love: It takes Shiki a while to realize when a girl likes him, unless he is beat over the head with it.
• One-Hit Kill: Can kill any person or object by interacting with their lines of death.
• Powers via Weapon: Subverted. Several characters initially think his lethality is a product of his ancestral knife, but it's actually due to something else.
• Psychic Link: Because he's living on Akiha's life force, he has one with her, which sorta crosses into Mindlink Mates. It's occasionally used for drama, mostly in the Akiha Route, but otherwise it's mostly used for quick gags, especially in Kagetsu Tohya. And, since SHIKI is stealing Shiki's life force, they also have one. While that one is mechanically weaker, its effects are more pronounced than the link with Akiha, for a variety of reasons.
• Precocious Crush: Had one on Aoko, which may or may not have persisted into the present.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Giving in to his Nanaya instincts and raping Arcuied in a dark alleyway will result in her ripping Shiki's throat out and draining him dry of blood and soul, a process he describes as limitless, all-encompassing pain frying his nerves. This is, naturally a Bad Ending.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: To Roa before killing him. It's even better in the manga where he's casually killing Roa's magic and Roa is completely horrified and unable to understand.
• Reverse Grip: His slashes tend to be reverse grip and his stabs tend to be normal grip. When he begins switching like this, it's a good sign that something awesome will happen.
• Sanity Slippage: A lot, in part due to his really deranged state of mind courtesy of a very tragic life and his killer instincts occasionally muddling his thoughts. Bad Endings and several of the route's darkest hours show Shiki capable of truly disturbing ventures as soon as he starts giving in to these thoughts, even a little. In the Flower of Thanatos sidestory in Kagetsu Tohya he narrates casually how he periodically raped Hisui and Kohaku out of boredom during his breakdown.
• School Uniforms are the New Black: Although he's been shown to have casual clothes in Tsukihime, in all subsequent media, he is only shown wearing his school uniform. Which is all well and good because frankly, he looks good in it and his casual clothes are hideous anyway. The remake is notable as the first work since the original visual novel to give him an actual new outfit with a gray and black jacket on white t-shirt with jeans look along with redesigning his school uniform.
• Shirtless Scene: Gives one in Kagetsu Tohya to Hisui, Kohaku, and Akiha. He forgot to put one on after showering, which Akiha barely manages to point out to him through her stutter, as she and the maids barely contain their awe for his body.
• Slasher Smile: Sports this when his Nanaya instincts take over.
• Slow Transformation: Him becoming Roa's next host in Ciel's route means that he is slowly developing vampiric characteristics. This mainly appears with him not dying immediately to Arcueid's attacks, but in Ciel's True Ending in the remake, him utilizing his vampiric powers to fight off Arcueid leaves him as a half-vampire even after Roa is killed off.
• Sociopathic Hero: Played with. His Nanaya instincts at first seem completely sadistic and murderous to the point where Shiki wonders if he is the killer, but it turns out that it only acts that way towards dangerous nonhumans.
• Story-Breaker Power: The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception make for very tense fights in Tsukihime proper where he is exceptionally out of his depth and every hit from him or his opponents could spell a One-Hit Kill for either side... but sequels/spinoffs where he's experienced in using his family's skills and his eyes have had trouble coming up with ways to legitimately challenge him and how easily he can now One-Hit Kill anything: Kagetsu Tohya has him spending much of his time in a dream where he can't attack his 'opponent', who he doesn't particularly want to kill anyway. And in Melty Blood, he spends the entire story searching for Wallachia's core rather than having much of an issue with its various generated illusions.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Shiki Nanaya, which is basically Shiki on autopilot and run only by instincts.
• Super Powerful Genetics: He doesn't even know it himself, but he is weapons-grade badass when it really counts. He's actually from a clan of demon hunters capable of Charles Atlas Superpower and mild psychic powers. While he himself initially lacks the training and mindset to use it effectively, his instincts take over when he is around superhuman beings.
• Taking the Bullet: As a child, Shiki shielded Akiha from newly-inverted SHIKI's knife, and would have died if not for Akiha giving him half of her life force.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: His description of what his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception show him are pretty terrifying, with him calling himself, other people, the ground everyone walks on, the sky, and even the entire world itself nothing but fragile illusions that will fall to pieces with just the slightest nudge, and noting that no one can stay truly sane staring at such things all the time. Various visual representations of Shiki's power play this up as well, with Shiki's vision devolving from the lines of death into the entire world shattering into pieces around him to illustrate him losing his grip on reality.
• Tragic Hero: The more he uses his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, the more they take a toll on his body and mind. He was already likely to die young following his accident as a child, but using his eyes only shaves more and more off of what time he does have.
• Tsundere: Towards Arcueid, and only towards her. Since she's a bit of a ditz, at first she thinks he hates her or is just mean to everyone. Upon being informed that he only treats her that way, she reacts in an oddly genre savvy manner by being pleased.
• Unconventional Alignment: His in-universe alignment for the remake is listed as "True Unknown".
• Wall Crawl: Can do this when his Nanaya abilities come forth. Though, he himself lampshades that even he can't crawl on the wall like a spider and defy gravity, being only able to muster enough speed to go up the wall while moving through the hallway and taking a single step off the ceiling.
• Weak, but Skilled: All Shiki has are his ability to detect dangerous non-humans, his eyes, and an untrained physique inherited from a clan of assassins. Yet he has killed dragons, unicorns, and other monsters summoned by Nrvnqsr Chaos, Nrvnqsr himself, Roa, TATARI, the forest of Einnashe and he has shown the ability to beat Satsuki, Ciel, SHIKI and Vermillion Akiha. He even took down Arcueid at the start of the story and did a damn good job of doing it again at the end of Ciel's route. These are all heavyweights of the Nasuverse power tiers and at their worst only ungodly killing machines.
• Weirdness Magnet: In one side-story, Arihiko comments that Shiki gives off this "vibe" that repels anyone normal who are affected by death but attracts people who are abnormal. Arihiko himself classifies himself as abnormal after watching his grandmother kill herself in order to save him when they were both trapped in a collapsed building. The only other classmate who was similar was Satsuki. Aoko actually warns him about becoming a Weirdness Magnet, saying in regards to his Mystic Eyes that "special powers attract other special powers."
• What Beautiful Eyes!: Akiha gasps out and says this after Shiki takes off his glasses to fight her in the climax of Kohaku's route. In the Bad End where he decides to kill her immediately, they were the last things she ever saw.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Prolonged use of the Mystic Eyes puts an enormous strain on the human brain. Perceiving death is not very conductive towards one's mental stability.
• Worthy Opponent: In Arcueid's route in the remake, he recognizes Vlov as an exceptional fighter whose skills and instincts as a knight were so strong that he was able to briefly overcome his vampiric madness and take Shiki completely seriously despite being ignorant of his capabilities, something his predecessor in the original game failed to do and paid for it. Even though they didn't know each other long, Shiki can't help but hate the circumstances, as Vlov would have been a great knight had he retained his sanity and humanity.
• Your Days Are Numbered: The human brain wasn't meant to perceive the death of all things, so using his Mystic Eyes strains him every time he uses it. There's also the matter of the Mystic Eyes slowly growing stronger as he ages. The glasses he wears can give him a normal life for now but eventually the Mystic Eyes will become too strong for them to contain, at which point he will have only two choices left: rip his eyeballs out, or leave them in and die young.

Near-Side Heroines

Arcueid Brunestud

Voiced by: Hitomi Nabatame (JP - Anime), Michelle Ruff (EN - Anime), Ryōka Yuzuki (JP - Melty Blood, Carnival Phantasm), Ikumi Hasegawa (JP - Remake, Melty Blood Type Lumina)

^{Click here to see her in the remake} 

"When everything's over, let's come here again, Shiki! It won't have any meaning, but I'm sure it will be really, really fun!"

Often called the Princess of the True Ancestors or White Princess, Arcueid is a vampire born as a living weapon to hunt down and destroy the True Ancestors who went rogue and the Dead Apostles, other formerly human vampires created by her kind. Shiki meets her the day after he cuts her to pieces, at which point she introduces herself in an oddly cheerful manner. Due to Shiki nearly killing her, she's temporarily vulnerable but still strong enough to kill him, so she strongarms him into helping her destroy the vampire she is hunting. Over the course of their temporary relationship, Arcueid gets the chance to really see the world for the first time due to sleeping almost all of her very long life.

She has a strange relationship with Ciel and is hated by Akiha. As the most powerful True Ancestor ever, she possesses super speed, strength, durability and resistance to attacks she has experienced before, higher power during the night and an extremely flexible ability called the Marble Phantasm.

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• Action Girlfriend: Heroine of the first route and about one of the most powerful beings in the Nasuverse.
• Advertised Extra: While she's more or less considered Tsukihime's main heroine, she only plays a major role in the Near Side routes, which make up less than half of the VN's total routes. She's reduced to a cameo in Akiha's route and is otherwise a complete nonentity in the Far Side routes. This is especially telling since Ciel, the other Near Side heroine, has a supporting role in the Akiha's route and at least appears in Hisui's and Kohaku's routes.
• Aggressive Submissive: Arcuied is absolutely the one with the pants on in her partnership with Shiki and impossibly more powerful than him, frequently ordering him around and being the only one of them with in-depth knowledge on the supernatural. Despite this, she's a pliable, submissive and bumbling mess in the bedroom and lets Shiki do pretty much whatever he wants with her body despite her verbal protests. Taking this too far by giving in to Shiki's Vampire Hunter instincts and raping her will result in a Bad End of Arcuied losing control of herself and drinking Shiki dry of blood.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: In the official Type Moon manga, she gets drunk - from twenty bottles of wine. When Ciel tries to pick a fight with her, she starts fondling her butt, comments on how awesome it feels, and manages to get a blush and cute "Kyaaaahh!" out of her. After Ciel gets away, she angrily asks to let her touch some more. When fed up she finally leaves; Arcueid starts crying on how lonely she feels. She eventually falls asleep (in a ridiculous position with her head under her butt) in Shiki's room while trying to give herself Lap Pillow.
• Animal Motif: A cat. Selfish, moody and elegant. She sometimes sprouts cat ears when she's emotional and in "Help Me Ciel-Sensei", she appears as the Super-Deformed Cat Girl "Nekoarc".
• Anti-Hero: She won't involve normal humans in her business and only kills vampires, but she's not exactly doing it out of the kindness of her heart. And when we say kills vampires, we mean she brutally tears them apart no matter who they are or what they're doing. She refrains from killing the vampires she and Shiki know because he would get mad if she did. Her chief motivations in Tsukihime are revenge and not really having anything better to do.
• Artificial Human: Or rather an Artificial True Ancestor. The other True Ancestors created her through unknown means to be a living weapon. Apparently, they intended to let her have a normal life after that was all done but things just didn't work out as planned.
• Badass Adorable: A bright, cheerful and adorable young lady who can rip through armies like a lawnmower through grass, only ten times as messy.
• Battle Aura: Whenever Arcueid faces down an enemy with the full intention of annihilating them, the atmosphere around her physically becomes more oppressive. Various people have described themselves as suffering actual physical pain merely from being the target of Arcueid's killing intent.
• Battle Ballgown: In her original set of clothing as Archetype Earth.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: The climax of her and Archetype Earth's plot in Current Code is this; with the winner coexisting with humanity or destroying it.
• Cain and Abel: The Abel to Altrouge's Cain, in a way.
• Character Exaggeration: She was perfectly capable of strategizing and even being a dead serious, outright scary combatant in the original story (mocking Nrvnqsr as he is being killed by Shiki, or Ending of Ciel Route come to mind), but some adaptations tend to focus almost entirely on her airheadedness.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: She disappears from the story completely in the Far Side routes. She makes one appearance in Akiha's route when Shiki sees her walking down the street from behind, but that's it. This is even lampshaded in the "Teach Me Ciel-Sensei" scenarios.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: In Ciel's route. Also, the reason why she thinks about breaking Shiki glasses — they were given to him by another woman.

• Colony Drop: She can use her Marble Phantasm to create a copy of the Moon to drop on top of her foes. Luckily for Earth (and the plot), she can't use it during the story because she is at a fraction of her normal power due to various circumstances.

• Comedic Sociopathy: Most of the time, when her behavior is causing people discomfort (mostly Shiki, Ciel or Akiha), it's because of her ignorance of social rules, rather than active malice (although the less serious work, the more likely is her just being a jerk). Endings of Ciel's route drive it up to Obliviously Evil, when she's genuinely confused and hurt, that Shiki resists becoming her slave, given that saving him from Roa's possession is her genuine wish (even if forcing him to stay with her forever is nice bonus as far as she's concerned).
• Continuity Nod: Arcueid's Last Arc, if used against Shiki, will hit him 18 times and is a reference to how he originally cut her up into 17 different pieces. Also, her "true self" cuts Shiki into 18 pieces in Kagetsu Tohya. Shiki even points out how she one-upped him.
• Costume Evolution: Her redesign for the remake adds some changes to her default outfit, giving her a much shorter skirt and a necklace.

• Daywalking Vampire: When Shiki asks her why she can go about during the day if she's a vampire, she agrees that it probably would work like that normally, but it just makes her slightly uncomfortable and tired.
• Demoted to Extra: The only Far Side branch appearance is her brief cameo in Akiha's route, in which Shiki gets distracted from his attempt to kill her.
• Ditzy Genius: So we're told. The ditz part is undeniable, but the truth is that she's actually just lacking in social skills and common sense. Some side material in Kagetsu Tohya indicates that she's actually highly intelligent and able to learn just about anything she wants to instantly. Not that she should since it's dangerous for her.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: The first one is that she's forced to maintain herself at 30% power all the time. The second is that Shiki forces her to waste most of that power. Third is the fact that by the way he did that she's recovering incredibly slowly. Arcueid is one of the absolute top tier characters in the Nasuverse, but during Tsukihime she doesn't really get a chance to show off.
• Dumb Blonde: Subverted, not that she's dumb but she really seems to lack in reading social cues.
• Emotionless Girl: What she was before Shiki "broke" her.

• Enemy Without: In Melty Blood her bloodlust is manifested as Red Arcueid/Warcueid.
• Eye Colour Change: Her eyes change color in accordance to how powered up she is in comparison to her "normal" state. In her "completely serious but still restrained" mode, the change merely applies to her irises, turning them from red to golden. In her "fully unleashed, batshit crazy" mode, the change extends to her sclera, which turn into a blood-red version of Black Eyes of Crazy.
• Fertile Feet: In the remake, tapping into her full power causes flowers, vines and other vegetation to sprout whenever Arcueid takes a step. At the end of the Ciel route, when Arcueid has recovered most of her strength, the effect is strong enough to cover an entire city block in creepers in a matter of seconds.
• Flash Step: Can do this like most vampires, but not as fond of it as Red Arcueid. Perhaps due to her disadvantage, or Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass status.
• Forceful Kiss: Does it twice to Shiki in Ciel's Good Ending. The first time was to save him from Roa, which would had side effect of turning him into her servant whom she can mind control at will, if she succeeded. Second time is just an expression of love... in front of Ciel, who was not amused, especially since Shiki reciprocated the kiss.
• Friendless Background: Arcueid didn't have friends until she meets Shiki in either her or Ciel's route. This is justified as she was artificially created by the True Ancestors in the twelfth century to be a weapon with an emotionless soul. They did plan to eventually give her freedom until Roa tricked her into drinking blood, causing her to go on a rampage and wipe out most of her fellow True Ancestors. Since then she has spent most of her time sleeping inside the Millennium Castle, awakening only to kill Roa's current incarnation before going back to sleep again. It isn't until she meets Shiki that she begins to socialize and finally gains her own humanity.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Arcueid actively suppresses her Bloodsucking Impulse to be around humans and finds human activities very engaging once roped into them by Shiki.
• Game Face: Like most vampires and demons in Tsukihime, the appearance of her face changes when she power-ups, although she has two variants rather than just one.
  • Her first "face" is a simple eye color change from crimson to Supernatural Gold Eyes; this powers her as high as she can without turning into Red Arcueid.
  • Her true Game Face is the one she sports as Red Arcueid, gaining the Supernatural Gold Eyes in the iris but also changing the sclera to blood red; other changes include her teeth becoming razor sharp, giving her a Slasher Smile, and having her face become somewhat inhuman all together. Her hair even joins in on the fun.

• Hair Intakes: She has a rather impressive pair of intakes that resemble cat ears. One of the notable parts of her remake design is their removal.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Innocent, beautiful and young in her own way since she hasn't been awake for very long. However, it becomes tricky when her occasionally amoral attitude enters the equation, making her more nice than good.
• Head-Turning Beauty: So stunningly beautiful and cute she turned every head at Shiki's school the second she arrived there.
• Heroic Willpower: After Shiki kills her, she's forced to resist her vampiric bloodlust on nothing more than her strength of will. It almost fails her several times. In the backstory too, as she's the only True Ancestor to have retained her sanity after drinking blood.
• Home Field Advantage: The entire planet is one for her thanks to being an agent of Gaia. As long as she's alive, the planet will keep supplying her with mana. The only way to cut her off is to drag her into a Reality Marble, or to kill off the planet itself. In the finale of Ciel's route, Shiki uses his Mystic Eyes to kill the earth she's standing on, weakening her.
• Humanoid Abomination: Her Luminous Body form in the remake is a vaguely human shaped "small yet massive being" made of pure mana that represents the living concept of a vampire unshackled from its physical cage.
• Hunter Of Her Own Kind: Created for the specific purpose of killing other True Ancestors who begin feeding on humans, A.K.A. Demon Lords.
• Hypnotic Eyes: Of the strongest sort, much more powerful than Ciel's. She does not appear to use this ability frequently, however, since she's so incredibly strong even without them.
• Impossibly-Low Neckline: In her original set of clothing.
• Jedi Mind Trick: She uses her Mystic Eyes of Enchantment for this purpose.
• Leitmotif: Arcueid has one theme with three variations in the remake.
  • "Moonlight", which is used in Shiki's first encounters with her. This first variation has ominous strings with piano intersecting throughout to emphasize her disturbingly ethereal nature.
  • "Princess, Your Hand Please", which is used when Shiki and Arcueid slowly bond and become closer. As the title indicates, it primarily consists of gentle piano to underline their blossoming romance.
  • "Dance of the Blood Princess", which is used when Arcueid becomes hostile towards Ciel and Shiki. The piano is taken out as synths and drums are introduced into her theme to make it more action-oriented.
• Lightning Bruiser: Even if she isn't at full strength, she still has higher strength and speed than the rest of the characters! Carried over into Melty Blood.
• Love Makes You Evil: In a sense. Before she fell in love with Shiki, she may be highly destructive, but she is basically emotionless and only acts in hunting down other vampires rather than out of her own desire. After she fell in love, while not exactly evil, she begins to pursuit her own whims, which frightens both Mario and Ciel, as she is now akin to a child with the sun itself as a toy, and the world has to pray and hope that she doesn't do anything that hapen to destroy everything and everyone around her. This eventually puts her so out-of-step with her "role" that the planet itself begins to reject her, nearly causing her to self-destruct.
• Magical Girl: A Parody as Phantasmoon, who becomes so by stealing Caster's staff.

• Mayfly–December Romance: With Shiki, since they're the Official Couple, due to their vastly different lifespans. Made worse by the fact that Shiki's lifespan is even shorter than a normal human's. Given the circumstances at the end of Tsukihime, they probably would not have much time together even if they do finally find peace. However, Arcueid mentions in several works that when Shiki gets close to death, she'd be tempted to turn him into a vampire to keep him alive. However, there are implications that Arcueid herself won't last nearly as long as she would have originally.

• Mythology Gag: During Ciel's route in the remake, Arcueid's Made of Magic outfit starts morphing as she loses more and more control over her emotions, until she's just wearing the same white sweater, long skirt and black heels she had in the original Tsukihime. In Melty Blood: Type Lumina, she similarly has the same long skirt and black heels from the original game in her "Red Arcueid" berserk form.
• Neutral Good: Her in-universe alignment for the remake.
• No Social Skills: Justified as she was born to be a weapon by the True Ancestors, never mentoring her about the social conventions of each time era but they were planning to give her freedom until Roa made her drink his blood and under the vampiric impulse after drinking blood, she wiped out most of the True Ancestors against her will and had to go into a deep sleep and awake to kill Roa in his reincarnated host bodies then repeat again as her main duties until the modern time era where she meets Shiki and bonds with him.
• Not Good with Rejection: Outright becomes the final boss of Ciel's route just because Shiki prefered another girl.
• "Not So Different" Remark: In Ciel's route in the remake, Shiki calls her out for being the same as Roa, to which she takes great offense. Indeed, like Roa, Arcueid learns to love for the first time in their life, becomes violently obsessive with the object of their desire and seeks to make that person theirs forever, in Roa's case by forcing Arcueid to go after his reincarnation time and time again, and in Arcueid's case by making Shiki her eternal servant.
• Oblivious to Hatred: She either doesn't seem to notice or mind that Akiha hates her, mostly because Arc is fond of her, or at the very least, finds Akiha amusing either way for her to mutually hate back.
• Our Fairies Are Different: According to The Garden of Sinners, Elementals such as Arcueid are described as being "really powerful fairies". Fate/Grand Order elaborates that true faeries are born in the depths of the Reverse Side of the World and can be thought of as Divided Spirits of Gaia itself. All True Ancestors, being nature spirits created by Gaia to protect it, naturally fall under this category, and Arcueid doubly so, since she's an incomplete Type Earth.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Has shades of this even when at 30% of her max power, but at full strength she's capable of feats such as instantly melting the polar caps, halting the rotation of the globe, and playing continental pinball with a thought. She cuts loose in the remake during Ciel's route.
• Physical God: The Fate Complete Material Book IV about Fate/EXTRA reveals that as a True Ancestor born from Gaia, she's one step above Divine Spirits. She has the power to match it too at full strength as Archetype Earth, nearing that of the Types a.k.a. Ultimate Ones. Alas, she never gets a proper chance to show it off because she's using 70% of her strength to keep herself from succumbing to her bloodlust and losing her mind.

• Proper Tights with a Skirt: Her redesign for the remake.
• Reality Warper: In the remake, Arcueid's Marble Phantasm goes even further than its original depiction. Rather than just manipulating probability, she can temporarily create a miniature universe where she makes the rules. The world she creates while battling Roa completely lacks any of the concepts or the ether required to use magecraft.
  Arcueid: This is my world. Although it can only exist for one night like yours, there is no world I cannot make.
• Really 700 Years Old: She was born in 1200 AD, but as a True Ancestor she's probably The Ageless, on top of spending much of her time sleeping and waiting for Roa to reincarnate.
• Red Baron: Referred to as "The White Princess of The True Ancestors" by Dead Apostle Ancestors and her other foes.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Red eyes are a Nasuverse standard for beings that are humanoid, but not human.
• Secondary Character Title: While her actual name itself is not in the title, the title is a direct reference to her, the titular "Moon Princess" and her route in the remake is named Moon Princess.
• Sexy Sweater Girl: She wears a white sweater that accentuates her figure.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: In Ciel's route in the remake, her outfit shifts from the younger looking mini-skirt and boots to a more mature looking long skirt with a slit down the side and black heels, to reflect her innocent wonder being consumed by her imperiousness and desire to have Shiki for herself as she loses control of her vampiric impulses.
• SNK Boss: In Actress Again, she has another new form called Shinso Arcueid or "Archetype: Earth", which is a fragment of Crimson Moon Brunestud hidden deep in her mind that has become something that is neither Brunestud nor Arcueid, and yet also both of them. She can wield the full 100% of Arc's power. Be afraid.
• The Social Darwinist: Subverted. While she does argue that only the strong can survive, she adds that humanity's particular strength is their ability to cooperate, which allows them to defeat beings far greater than themselves.
• Story-Breaker Power: Her Marble Phantasm can pretty much make anything naturally possible happen regardless of its probability, and she has enough raw power to approach that of the Ultimate Ones, putting her far above every character in the story combined. So, naturally, she doesn't get to use it, being too debilitated from being sliced into 18 pieces in her first meeting with Shiki on top of using much of her strength to restrain her bloodlust.
• Strong as They Need to Be: Official sources have stated that her power automatically adjusts to match her opponent's innate parameters thanks to receiving backup from Gaia. This puts her at a disadvantage against Gilgamesh, whose power comes from not any strength or speed, but his infinite armory of legendary weapons. In the Remake, Ciel understands this well, and plans to deliver one decisive killing blow before Arcueid realizes the extent of her capability and adjusts accordingly.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Her Mystic Eyes of Enchantment are a bright golden color.
• Title Drop: A real title drop rather than a joke one as in the case of Tsukihime Souka. The title of Arc's True End is "Tsukhime." Also, the name of Arc's Blood Heat Arc Drive in Melty Blood is named "Melty Blood."
• To the Pain: In Ciel's route. If Shiki decides to refuse her offer and cuts her neck open she gives us this gem:
  Arcueid: Destroy. Destroy. Destroy. Slowly, completely, gently beyond comparison, cruelly to the point of numbness, I'll violate your life. That's right. The instant I rip off your limbs, tear open your ribs and pull out your intestines, biting into your neck as you scream in agony, chewing through your eyes as I ignore your pleas for mercy and spreading your brains on the ground like butter...!
• Tragic Hero: Her growing bloodlust from being a True Ancestor vampire will ultimately make her incapable of living in the world of humanity that she is so fascinated with, nor staying with Shiki, the first boy she ever fell for. Her True Ending has her telling Shiki goodbye before disappearing to fall into an eternal sleep, so she might never become a threat to the world and people she has come to love so much.
• Unstoppable Rage:
  • In Ciel's route, she hits it when Shiki Tohno rejects her attempt to save him from being taken over by Roa by turning him into her servant, by violently slashing her with his knife during Ciel's True Ending.
  • During Roa's arcade scenario in Actress Again, he goes on a rampage, kills Shiki Tohno, and then after finally coming face to face with Arcueid, he dismisses her as a disgrace to her former self for having compassion towards mankind. Arcueid snaps hard, adopts Red Arcueid's talking sprites, and then shifts the stage from Witch on the Holy Night (Aoko Aozaki's stage) to Red Arcueid's own stage before fighting him as his final boss.
• Vampires Are Rich: Arcueid is able to rent out entire floors of hotels and apartment complexes despite having no obvious source of income. Official sources handwaves this by saying that a "fan" of hers in the Magus Association apparently sends her gold.
• Vampires Hate Garlic: When Shiki makes her a meal which just happens to contain garlic in Kagetsu Tohya, Arcueid notices the flavor immediately and begs him never to make a meal containing garlic ever again. It's left ambiguous whether it's due to being a vampire or whether she just really dislikes the flavor.
• Vegetarian Vampire: While she doesn't require blood to survive, she craves it to a literally crippling degree: She has to use most of her power to suppress her bloodlust. If she does drink blood, she'll turn into Red Arcueid.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: There are times when harming Shiki causes her to go on a rampage on his assailant. One example is in Melty Blood, where at one story branch after Shiki Ryougi kills Shiki (Tohno), Arcueid shows up to take Ryougi down.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: It may surprise you to know that she and Ciel are friends despite occasional attempts to kill each other.
• What Is This Feeling?: Before Shiki "kills" her, she is an emotionless being whose only purpose is to seek out and kill other vampires as the need arises, especially Roa. After meeting him, she begins developing human feelings and wants, which greatly confuse her and those who are familiar with the old her.
• Willfully Weak: Even without being affected by the below trope, Arcueid still holds her power back, directing 70% of it to suppressing her bloodlust.
• Winds of Destiny, Change!: Her Marble Phantasm allows her to reproduce any phenomenon found in nature. However, this is limited to what is actually possible in nature and thus she cannot pull the tricks of a Reality Marble. The metaphor used is that in a bag of 99 black marbles and a single white one, her power lets her always get the white marble. A Reality Marble turns them all white instead, which is an 'impossible' trick.
• Wolverine Claws: She's been seen turning her fingers into large claws. They make for pretty effective weapons.
• Womanchild: She's never really interacted with anyone before or experienced the world, so her behavior tends to flip between that of a little kid and a woman slightly older than Shiki.
• Woman Scorned: In Ciel's route, Arcueid does not take Shiki's rejection well. Subverted in Ciel's True Ending, when after killing Ciel couple of times and mortally injuring Shiki, she calms down, forgives him slashing her neck with knife and pleads with him again to accept her help. Averted nearly completely in Ciel's Good Ending, where Shiki rejects her in much less "scornful" way. She's still pretty pissed off, but not fullblown Yandere.
• Worf Had the Flu: Shiki cutting her to pieces in the game's opening severely weakens her, allowing the Big Bad Roa to best her for once and requiring her to team up with Shiki in order to take Roa down.
• World's Strongest Man: Arcueid was created to be the strongest True Ancestor, and is even to this day easily amongst the most powerful characters in the entire franchise when she's at her strongest, approaching that of the TYPEs.
• Yandere: Her possessiveness over Shiki is played up more in Ciel's route, where she becomes terrifyingly violent against both Shiki and Ciel all because Shiki chose Ciel over her.

Ciel

Voiced by: Fumiko Orikasa (JP - Anime), Wendee Lee (EN - Anime), Kumi Sakuma (JP - Melty Blood, Carnival Phantasm), Kaede Hondo (JP - Remake, Melty Blood Type Lumina)

^{Click here to see her in the remake} 

"Tohno-kun, you shouldn't say that. Please, listen to my selfishness. For once — For once, I want to protect you out of my own will. If I don't do that, I'll never be able to face you with a smile from my heart."

Ciel is one of Shiki's classmates and is a Sempai of sorts to his circle of friends, president and sole member of the Tea Ceremony Club and a model student. She also leads a double life as an Executor for a super-secret branch of the Catholic Church called the Burial Agency as their seventh member. Like Arcueid, she is in town to hunt a mysterious vampire, but due to working for a Knight Templar organization the pair refuse to work together. She also opposes Shiki's partnership with Arcueid while hinting at a more personal grievance with her. In spite of that, the relationship is not entirely hostile. On the other hand, she and Akiha seem to despise each other. Ciel has a high level of durability and fights with holy powers, thrown swords and some degree of magecraft.

Ciel also hosts the "Teach Me Ciel-sensei!" hint corners when the player meets a Bad End, in which hilarity often ensues as she and other characters lecture the player on what they did wrong, fill in random plot tidbits, and cause general Mood Whiplash.

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• The Ace: In the Remake, she is considered one among the Church, even within the Burial Agency. She defeated three Dead Apostle True Ancestors before the story even begins, potentially adding Vlov to her count in her own route, which is more than half the total number of True Ancestors removed from the total 27 at that point. Even without taking her immortality into account and even at a relatively young age, she is an amazing and well-rounded fighter, being able to pull her weight in pretty much any situation with hand-to-hand combat, black keys, magecraft and the seventh holy scripture. And she only grows more powerful as she adds more Principles to her arsenal as she takes out more vampires.
• Action Girlfriend: Heroine of the second route and an accomplished Executor of the elite Burial Agency. She's saved Shiki's life more than once in both her own route and in Arcueid's.
• Age Lift: In the original Tsukihime, Ciel was around sixteen when she was possessed by Roa and subsequently massacred her hometown in her backstory, making her actual age in the main story around 24-25. In the remake, she was only around twelve years old when the same event happened, and character materials related to Ciel state that her current physical age is "estimated to be 18", with her mentioning in her route that she's been an Executor for six years, implying that she was dead for the prior seven years before her resurrection, making her a good deal younger than her original counterpart in more ways than one.
• Aloof Archer: She never actually uses a bow except in the True Ending of the Remake, but otherwise fits the bill. She has a variety of long-ranged attacks, favours stealthy and analytical approaches and prefers working as a "lone operator". Her codename within the Burial Agency is also "Arrow". As befitting a well-rounded fighter however, she is also an amazing close-ranged fighter, being able to match Vlov, a vampire with inhuman physical prowess and exceptional swordmanship.
• The Atoner: Her work as an Executor for the Church with her mission of personally ending Roa is her form of atonement for the brutal slaughter of her family and hometown that she committed while she was being possessed by Roa as his 17th incarnation.
• Backstory Invader: We actually see the final stages of this process early on as Ciel completes her integration into Shiki's school community, and he has trouble "remembering" her at first, until she "reminds" him of their previous meetings. In reality, Ciel is an agent of The Church who has arrived in town to pursue an ancient vampire connected to Shiki's family, so she has been using magic to insert herself into his and his classmates' memories.
• Badass Longcoat: The weird nun-like outfit she wears when she's doing business.
• Badass Preacher: Played with. The Burial Agency are less superpowered clergy and more like religiously motivated supernatural hitmen who are explicitly allowed to sidestep normal Church dogma like "thou shalt not kill" and "thou shalt not have steamy anal sex with your boyfriend". Being French and thus presumably Catholic, Ciel is still faithful to God because otherwise her sacraments wouldn't work like they do, but doesn't even teeter close to religious fanaticism.
• BFG: The Seventh Holy Scripture. Would you believe it grows even larger in the Remake?
• Blessed with Suck: Ciel's misfortune stems from being born an absolute freak of nature with extraordinary magical talent that would have been wasted on someone growing up in a Muggle village like her. All that potential did was serve as a giant beacon screaming out to Roa that she would be a good host, leading to her possession and the subsequent slaughter of everyone she ever knew and loved.
• Boring, but Practical: The humble, standard issue Black Key, though The Church usually considers them Difficult, but Awesome because they're hard to learn how to use and not much more effective than a normal throwing knife until the wielder fully masters the "Iron Plate" Effect. Compared to the more powerful, flashy and unique Seventh Holy Scripture, they excel in convenience and do not lack for versatility or strength either. Black Keys can be created endlessly and swiftly so long that Ciel has magical energy, can be carried around without attracting attention and require seemingly no maintenance. Additionally, they can also be used in conjunction with magecraft to achieve a variety of effects such as binding enemies or causing large explosions, allowing their use in a variety of situations. Even though Arcueid scoffs at them as being old-fashioned and weak, they remain an effective and commonly used tool in Ciel's arsenal for a reason.
• Broken Bird: Some of the things she says are very sobering even before her past is revealed, hinting on her personal experiences. She was once possessed by Roa, went insane and killed everyone in town and was finally killed by Arcueid. Her body revived and was tortured until the Church decided she couldn't be killed.
• But Not Too Foreign: Ciel is half-French and half-"Asian". Precisely what her mother's ethnicity was is never stated. (The easy assumption is Japanese, of course, but that's never been explicitly spelled out.) The Remake's comic anthology eventually confirms that her Asian half is indeed Japanese via her mother.
• Butt-Monkey: Fans and Type-Moon side materials aren't very nice to her, even compared to Akiha and Arcueid.
• The Cameo: She makes a small cameo appearance in the Fate/Zero manga adaptation when Kiritsugu discusses Kirei's background as an Executor to Irisviel.
• Church Militant: She's a member of the Burial Agency, the section of the Church dealing with assassinations.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: In her own route in the Remake, she does not like Shiki spending time with Arcueid at all. At one point, she brings the Seventh Holy Scripture to school and tells Shiki it is a weapon to punish sinners, the day after Shiki goes out with Arcueid to investigate.
• Combo Platter Powers: In the remake, not only does Ciel still have immortality and great magecraft knowledge to accompany her magical potential due to having been one of Roa's hosts, she also has two Idea Bloods injected into her. The first is "Castle, therefore kingdom", allowing her to create a Bounded Field that can contain one object and expand at will. The second is "Sword" that Ciel developed to create a giant blade of focused sunlight. Combined all this with the new forms the Seventh Holy Scripture received, and Ciel's overall armament is really diverse.
• Cosplay: In the original, her Church Militant outfit is not a uniform provided by the church, but clothing she made herself. In the remake, she says it is just a uniform.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • On the receiving end against Arcueid in the original route and in the Normal End of the remake, not that anyone can blame her.
  • On the giving end against Noel, after Ciel breaks out of her telepathic connection. She proceeds to kill every single one of Noel's undead in seconds without breaking a sweat, no-sells her attempt to re-apply the telepathic connection, and easily defeats her in combat. Even Noel's last ditch attack does little more than emotional damage.
• Curtains Match the Window: She has dark blue hair and eyes to go along with it.
• Death by Adaptation: The remake's "Normal Ending" plays out a lot like the original's "True Ending" with the difference in that when Shiki stabs himself to kill Roa, Ciel sacrifices her own life to keep Shiki from dying from his suicide attempt. It ultimately ends with Shiki training to becoming an Executor in hopes that he can find a way to bring Ciel back to life before he himself kicks it as well.
• Death Seeker: More specifically, a natural, human death. Ciel views her continued existence as unnatural and sinful, and she hunts down Roa both to atone for her "sin" and to regain her ability to die again. She's not keen on death itself though, just the ability to die like anyone else.
• Enemy Within: In her backstory, Ciel was taken over by Roa and became one of his incarnations, slaughtering her entire family and hometown.
• Fetish: Ciel has a weakness for anal sex.
• The Glasses Come Off: Ciel wears glasses to make her look more casual when she's going with civilian life. When she needs to assume her Executor duties, she removes her glasses.
• Godzilla Threshold: In the True End of the Remake, Ciel pulls out all the stops to defeat Arcueid before she kills Shiki and consumes the city entirely. She first uses up all her magical energy utilizing the Seventh Holy Scripture to snipe Arcueid from afar from minute one. When that fails, now out of juice and having lost one form of the Seventh Holy Scripture, Ciel consumes Vlov's Idea Blood to replenishes her Magical Energy, knowing she would lose some of her humanity in the process, and continues the assault, with both weapons and magecraft, the latter of which she detests using. Finally, she unleashes Star of Calvaria, the apex of human magecraft, which finally destroys Arcueid's body and splits the city in half.
• Gratuitous French: "Zero! Trois!"
• Hair Color Dissonance: She's noted to have black hair in the narration, but illustrations depict it as blue.
• Hartman Hips: Has the largest hip measurement of the cast, and her wide hips and rear are considered her best physical feature. Even Arcueid envies them secretly.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Somewhat. Epitomized by her Powered Ciel form, she can be ruthless and brutal toward the monsters she hunts. In Melty Blood, it is stated that she drinks Dead Apostle blood to replenish her magical energy, which allows her to use the Seventh Holy Scripture, causing Riesbyfe to liken her to a vampire herself. In the Remake, she possesses and uses Idea Blood from three deceased Dead Apostle Ancestors, allowing her to use their power. In her own route, she can even drink the Idea Blood of Vlov in her fight against Arcueid, which is stated to make her less human.
• Horrifying the Horror: Shiki, when heavily under the influence of Roa, thinks like a cold-blooded serial killer revelling in his vampiric superiority. One look at the Seventh Holy Scriptured wielded by Ciel and, though defiant, the vampire is brought to absolute terror.
• Hypnotic Eyes: Ciel possesses an unspecified variety of Mystic Eyes that allow her to implant hypnotic suggestions. She used them to convince the school that she's a student there and always has been.
• I Am a Monster: Ciel considers herself to be a monstrous, evil being due to being a former host of Roa now cursed with an unnatural immortality. Her wish is to kill him so that she can finally die as a human. Despite this, she also tells Noel that even evil creatures like her can do good, hence the discrepancy between the alignment she thinks she is and the alignment she actually displays in her actions.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: She seems to enjoy her fake school life a great deal, hinting she wishes she could just be a student. She was born as a baker's daughter and all she wanted growing up was to take over daddy's business. Then look what happened.
• Immortal Life Is Cheap: Ciel gets killed a good many times in her scenario in the original game due to her ability to revive from any and all deaths until such time as Roa is destroyed.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Definitely deserves this trope, due to the fact she helps Shiki find Millennium Castle Brunestud in the manga.
• Jack of All Stats: She has decent health, power and an edge in speed as well as varied projectile patterns in Melty Blood. And of course, in the wider Nasuverse, she's got her nigh-immortality to back her up. In the Remake, she is even listed as having no particular natural enemy due to being an all-rounder.
• Lawful Evil: Her in-universe alignment is listed as this in the remake, but only because she believes that she is Evil. Otherwise she would be Lawful Good.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: She shows awareness of the visual novel Tsukihime and its fans in Kagetsu Tohya, such as noting she's rather depressed regarding her low popularity.
• Leg Focus: In the remake, Shiki has the option of taking a long, long look at Ciel's legs as he breaks down just how wonderful they are, complete with various shots of her legs and thighs in the background.
• Leitmotif: Ciel's theme in the remake is a cheerful rustic piece that uses acoustic guitar to accompany her surface level facade as a reliable senpai in Shiki's high school.
• Loophole Abuse: One thing that Ciel has in her arsenal is the remake is Torture Instrument: Virgin Pain, an armor modelled after the Iron Maiden that cannot be removed until the wearer dies, but the wearer also cannot die while the armor affirms if they're a witch of not. Because Ciel is immortal, this means that she will get revived if she dies from the armor's affirmation or if she tries to remove the armor, and the affirmation clause means that she is projected from outside attacks.
• Male Gaze: Has the biggest butt of the cast (Arcueid even admitted while drunk that she was envious of Ciel's), although this mostly makes her the butt of fat jokes. Takeuchi has described her ass, more specifically her "entire posterior" as well as her "child-bearing hips", as Ciel's best point.
• Master Archer: As suggested by her codename, "Arrow", the full extent of which is shown during the Remake's True End of her route. Her maximum range is 5 km. She manages to land a headshot on Arcueid, who is 500 m away, with her eyes closed and while using the Seventh Scripture, which is a task so difficult for one person it is described as being akin to "simultaneously performing every role necessary to fire the main guns of a warship".
• Master Swordsman: Her skill with a sword outmatches even Vlov, and she only lost due to his greatly enhanced physicality as a vampire versus her human body. It was stated that this skill was passed down to her by a now deceased Dead Apostle Ancestor, Be'ze. Considering she has Be'ze's Idea Blood, she might have surpassed her teacher too.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Ciel is French for "sky", though the word can also sometimes be used to mean "heaven," hinting at both her heritage and her association with the Church.
  • In the early stages of development, she was instead named Arc, referring to the shape of a bow, referencing her nickname within the Burial Agency: "Arrow", for her use of projectile weapons.
• Morph Weapon: In the Remake, the Seventh Holy Scripture is shown to be one of these, being able to assume multiple different forms that each embody a different concept of death. Those that have been revealed so far include:
  • The traditional Pile Bunker form of the Seventh Scripture from the original Visual Novel, a large pneumatic bayonet capable of destroying most vampires in a single shot. Derived from the concept of death by conviction.
  • A large serrated sword that can separate into multiple segments and wielded like a flail. Derived from the concept of death from blood loss.
  • A heavy automatic rifle capable of firing many different types of ammunition. Derived from the concept of death from immolation.
  • A gestalt weapon formed from multiple concepts of death shaped like a giant portable ballista.
  • Aside from the above, there is also mention of an unseen armour form, along with forms derived from concepts of death due to collision, illness, insanity and torture.
• Mortality Grey Area: Stuck in a weird limbo between life and death, having inexplicably come back to life after having been killed by Arcueid. This is due to a combination of possessing extraordinary magic potential and having suffered a Demonic Possession by the Big Bad, so as long as he exists, so does she — in fact, since coming back to life, she has enjoyed a Complete Immortality due to the paradox she represents (being both dead and alive and neither of the two at the same time).
• Multi-Melee Master: Especially in the remake which roughly triples her armory from the original visual novel.
• Mutant: She certainly is one by the setting's standards. There have been several cases of mage families slowly dwindling over the years only to suddenly produce an heir with great potential such as Flat Escardos or Touko Aozaki. Ciel on the other hand has no such lineage, no reason why she was born with so much potential. She just is.
• Mutual Kill: In one of the Bad Ends, if Shiki decides to remove his glasses and fight back, Ciel allows him to kill her as she kills him. Shiki realizes it would have been trivial for her to take him out before his blade reaches her, and she lets it happen anyway.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: By virtue of her being the previous incarnation of Roa, yet still being alive despite Roa being in a different form. To avoid creating a paradox from her dying while Roa still exists, the World itself keeps her alive no matter what, excluding Shiki's ability. Fans do occasionally wonder if a few other freakishly-powerful abilities that have shown up in a few later Nasuverse works might do the trick too (like Gilgamesh's Enuma Elish, King Hassan's Azrael, and whatnot) but it's pretty much academic - for the purposes of Tsukihime, Shiki is the only one who could truly kill her.
• The Nose Knows: Ciel has a curious tendency to draw close to Shiki and start sniffing him in public places whenever she suspects he's been engaged in suspicious activities, such as meeting up with Arcueid.
• Naughty Nuns: As Executor she is technically more of assassin working for church than proper clergy, but her outfit is definitely based on a nun habit. She naturally has sex with Shiki in her route (but Nasuverse Catholic Church does not seems to be that insistent on celibacy), and if her scene is of any indication she is definitely not the most prudish heroine of game. In the remake, the scene is cut out but going by their conversation the next morning, they were keeping the neighbors up all night. Considering the fact that she raped her entire village while under the control of Roa but still remembers every detail of it, its not surprising that she's not exactly shy about sex.
• Noodle Incident: In the only "half-true" manga Plus Period, Ciel's love of curry is elaborated to come from her father not liking curry, yet on her first mission as an Executor, she met a Dead Apostle named Curry de Marche who she was supposed to kill, but spared him after tasting his exquisite curry and ultimately concluding Marche was decidedly harmless by Dead Apostle standards.
• Nosy Neighbor: Ciel masquerades as Shiki's nosy but well meaning senior as a way of investigating.
• Not What It Looks Like: Averted late in her route. When she catches Shiki being forcibly kissed by Arcueid, she punches out Arcueid rather than Shiki, and listens to his explanation, despite being seriously pissed at him.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Until Shiki figures out that there's something off about Ciel's presence at the school or confronts her with the fact that he's seen her during his nightly outings, she passes off as an unaware upperclassman at his school.
• Older Than She Looks: Ciel is actually around 24-25 years old, and her body will remain that of a teenager's until Roa dies. She also spent a significant period of time dead, meaning it's likely that she was born even earlier.
• Only One Name: She's only ever referred to as "Ciel". Her name pre-Roa was Elesia, but even then her surname is never given.
• Orgasmically Delicious: She squeals in joy when she encounters the delicious curry from the Messian restaurant.
• Paradox Person: The source of her immortality. Since she served as Roa's host for a time, the World considers her and Roa to be the same person. As long as Roa himself continues his Body Surf, the World will make sure Ciel stays alive as well since Roa cannot be alive and dead at the same time.
• Peaceful in Death: In her Normal End, she gives up her own life to bring Shiki back after he sacrifices himself to kill Roa. Shiki wakes up in her lap, finding her dead and wearing a peaceful smile.
• Power Tattoo: She has a series of religious tattoos on her arms and back that are most visible when she wears her Powered Ciel costume. They're not actually tattoos since any wounds done to her get erased, so she instead paints them onto her body. They are absent in the remake presumably due to the redundancy of her having them in the first place and not being central to her character.

• Randomly Gifted: In a multiverse where Older Is Better and mages arrange marriages to breed the strongest possible offspring over the course of many generations, Ciel was born to an ordinary family of Muggle bakers and with an outrageous amount of potential and Magic Circuits, surpassing Rin Tohsaka who was already considered gifted. In terms of numbers, Ciel has over a hundred average mages' worth of energy by herself. Even by the time of the remake, Ciel has over twice the amount of magic power than Clock Tower's record holder McDonell, even if his magic regeneration is unparalleled. It is this unique gift that allows her to wield the Seventh Holy Scripture, which would otherwise consume much greater magical energy than any normal person can be expected to have.
• Sadistic Choice: Forced to choose between killing Shiki, who she loves, and allowing Roa to run rampant, no doubt repeating the tragedy that happened to her when Roa took over her body. She chooses Shiki in the end.
• Self-Made Orphan: Ciel killed her parents when Roa took over.
• Self-Mutilation Demonstration: Ciel slits her own throat to prove her immortality to Shiki.
• Strong and Skilled: She's not as strong as Arcueid, or as skilled as Roa, but by any remotely normal person's standard, Ciel is monstrously strong thanks to a naturally absurd capacity for magecraft, which is only further enhanced by great experience, knowledge and strategy.
• Superpower Lottery: Part of the reason why she is part of the Burial Agency, and also the main reason why she was chosen as Roa's 17th vessel. She had a body potent enough to revive from death 3 years after being killed. Despite having been born from a normal family, she still possessed 5 times the amount of Magic Circuits Tohsaka Rin has.
• Teen Genius: Ciel joins the Burial Agency at an incredibly young age and has since become one of the most powerful member of an already elite group within the Church. Even more so in the Remake, where she is even younger when she joined the Church and her exceptional talents and accomplishments even more pronounced.
• The Peeping Tom: She peeked on Shiki when he was changing while staying over at her place. He was not above teasing her about it after he found out.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Seems to be the chief method of using Black Keys. The manga shows them moving on their own even after they've left her hands, suggesting that either she or the swords have some telekinetic effect to them.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Curry, which is present in all adaptations and sequels except the anime.
• Trauma Conga Line: Ciel definitely got the short end of the stick in backgrounds, she was possessed by Roa at 16 and subsequently massacred her hometown, and after the Church killed her, her body was kept until she became Executor for the Church with her mission of personally ending Roa
• Unskilled, but Strong: Compared to Roa, and only in term of magecraft. Make no mistake, she has an absolutely monstrous capacity for magecraft, and is capable of producing some of the greatest feats ever accomplished by a human. However, as Roa notes, because she has such incredibly high aptitutde, she never learned the needs to be efficient and precise. As a result, her spell can be incredibly wasteful.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Arcueid.
• Was It All a Lie?: Once her true nature as an agent of the Church is revealed. Ciel tries desperately to convince both Shiki and herself that yes, it was all a lie, but in the end relents that she did fall in love with Shiki.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She calls out Arcueid on using Shiki against her enemies and deceiving him. Then Shiki calls HER out on the whole "brainwashed him and his schoolmates". She is rather hurt by him saying that.
• Willfully Weak: Her magical potential is extraordinary high, several times higher than that of a regular magus, but because most of her knowledge in magecraft comes from being one of Roa's previous hosts, she doesn't utilize her magical potential that much, instead utilizing Church-provided armaments. In the Remake, she still hates using them, but will do so when necessary, especially against Roa or Arcueid. In the True Ending, we see how ludicrously powerful her magecraft is when she goes all out.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Her main desire and mission is the elimination of Roa to end her eternal existence.
• The Worf Effect: In Melty Blood, she proceeds to get her ass kicked by around half the cast as their arcade mode's midboss. Poor, poor Ciel.
• Worf Had the Flu: If Ciel loses against Noel in Type Lumina, Noel will be genuinely taken aback in her victory quote and ask her if she was sick or something since she actually lost to someone as weak as her just like that, lampshading this trope.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: In the Remake, Ciel killed at least two Dead Apostle Ancestors and claimed their Idea Blood before the story begins, which she makes use of to enhance her combat capabilities. In her own route, she does this with Vlov and his Idea Blood too.

Far-Side Heroines

Akiha Tohno

Voiced by: Shizuka Itō (JP - Anime), Julie Ann Taylor (EN - Anime), Minami Hokuto (JP - Melty Blood, Carnival Phantasm), Shino Shimoji (JP - remake, Melty Blood Type Lumina)

^{Click here to see her in the remake} 

"Please don't say such foolish things. You are my only Nii-san. Now and back then, even if you forgot, from when we were little —— To Tohno Akiha, you are my only Nii-san, Shiki."

Akiha is Shiki Tohno's younger sister. After their father Makihisa dies, Akiha becomes the new head of the family and invites Shiki to come back to the Tohno family mansion. This is where the game begins after the prologue. Shiki quickly realizes Akiha has changed dramatically from the little sister he grew up with, and has become very focused on etiquette and acting according to her station. She is quick to scold Shiki on numerous things, but he takes it in stride. Circumstances soon cause him to suspect Akiha is hiding many things about the family from him.

Akiha is rather hostile towards Arcueid and Ciel, though she gets along well with the maids. Her family records claim that the Tohno family is of non human origins.

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• A-Cup Angst: It's very minor in Tsukihime itself with her only worrying about Shiki finding her smaller bust unattractive, but sequels and spinoffs play it up a lot more.
• Aggressive Submissive: A very dominant young woman at first glance, she is actually waiting for Shiki to make the first move and turns into a total sub during the h-scene.
• Aloof Big Sister: Inverted when it comes to her relationship with Shiki, where she, the younger sister, is cold to her older brother. Akiha's icy demeanor towards Shiki initially makes him believe that she hates him for burdening her with the responsibility of being the Tohno head, but it's made clear later on that a lot of what she does is because she loves and cares for him the most. Played straight in terms of her relationship with her younger distant cousin Miyako when she meets her for the first time in the Melty Blood games, with the latter girl disliking her for "stealing" her big brother Shiki away from her while Akiha just brushes her off for the most part.
• Assimilation Backfire: In Kohaku's route. Because she kills SHIKI Tohno by draining his life with her power, Akiha also absorbs his parasitic bond with Shiki Tohno, along with SHIKI's vampiric bloodlust. It results in Akiha leaving the house at night to hunt for victims to feed off of, so she can have the energy to maintain Shiki's life.
• The Atoner: She wants to take responsibility for the many misdeeds her father, Makihisa, had committed when he was still alive, in his place. Her taking custody over Kohaku to protect her from Makihisa's further abuse and allowing Kohaku to scheme her revenge in the years that followed is basically Akiha's way of making up for the wrong Makihisa had done to her.
• Becoming the Mask: In A Story for the Evening, Akiha describes her as a naturally cold and heartless person who acted sociable by emulating Shiki until that warmer side of her became a real part of her personality.
• Berserk Button: In Kagetsu Tohya when Shiki accidentally walks in on her getting dressed and ends up being turned over to Kohaku for some "needle time"
  Shiki: Akiha, your chest is still as steep as a cliff side.
• Big Brother Attraction: She's very clingy around Shiki. While she and Shiki aren't actually related she thinks of him as the only brother for her, yet is probably the one most obviously in love with him.
• Brother–Sister Incest: She's the option you're supposed to go for first in the Far Side routes, though you can do Hisui first. Not that they're really related. Also, the real SHIKI figures that since she's in a relationship with Shiki she must want a relationship with her brother. Meaning him! He's kind of crazy.
• Chaotic Good: Her in-universe alignment for the remake.
• Character Exaggeration: In Tsukihime, Akiha mentions that she's self-conscious about her flat chest during an h-scene. In Kagetsu Tohya, this is turned into a Berserk Button. Doujin authors and other fanworks have since then run with the idea to the point of it becoming an Over Used Running Gag.
• Childhood Friends: Kind of. She and the maid twins grew up together in the Tohno mansion and she at least played together with one of them (Hisui) at the time Shiki was still living with them before his injury, so they're the closest thing she has to childhood friends.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Akiha's jealousy is a part of why she doesn't like Ciel or Arcueid, especially the latter. Or Shiki's male friends, like Arihiko or SHIKI (in the past). She's fine with Hisui and Kohaku. Well, she's fine with Kohaku once she's suppressed Roa anyway. Before that she was going in a severely Yandere direction.
• Evil Laugh: Do Vermilion Akiha's Last Arc in Actress Again to hear this.
• Expy: She shares Azaka Kokutou's Big Brother Attraction and looks from The Garden of Sinners. As far as personality goes, Azaka tends to be much less refined.
• Familiar: She has an innate ability to create Shikigami, however, since Shiki is already using up half her life force, attempting to make any more would probably be lethal to her.
• Fusion Dance: After Akiha absorbs Roa, this seems to be the result. There isn't much of Roa's personality in Akiha unlike his usual reincarnations, but she gained his tenacity and willpower, becoming incredibly greedy to say the least... But she can control her power to a much greater extent than before, so it mostly works in her favour in the canon ending.
• Half-Human Hybrid: The Tohno family descends from onis.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: She doesn't normally drink, but when she does, it's to great excess. She handles her liquor well.
• Hate at First Sight: She hates Arcueid and Ciel immediately. And her true brother SHIKI, since they were young. For Arcueid it seems to be pure clinginess and having really incompatible personalities while with Ciel it's that plus Ciel being a member of an organization that kills non humans like herself if they become dangerous. While when it comes to SHIKI, she found him creepy since she was young because of the demon blood and the fact that he killed Shiki didn't help. Ciel reciprocates and SHIKI seems completely oblivious or simply does not care about it, while it's hard to tell what Arcueid is thinking. At first she seems oblivious to being hated, but in later works her treatment of Akiha descends into what can only be described as trolling. An interview with Nasu and Takeuchi compares Akiha and Arcueid's relationship to that of Shiki Ryougi and Azaka from The Garden of Sinners, indicating that Arcueid seems to be genuinely fond of her while the only thing stopping Akiha short from actually befriending Arcueid is Shiki.
• Hates Their Parent: Possibly. After Makihisa died, Akiha didn't seem to be all too broken up by his death, and many of the things she did once she took over as head of the Tohno family was mostly to overturn a lot of the things he set down, the first of which was her letting Shiki move back to the Tohno mansion after Makihisa effectively disowned Shiki and actively forbid and prevented both of his children from contacting each other for eight years. His misdeeds in life once she learns of them firsthand don't exactly improve her opinion of the old man either.
• If I Can't Have You…: In Kohaku's path only and due to Kohaku poisoning her to insanity.
• I Have No Son!: Sibling example. She immediately disowns SHIKI, her biological older brother, after he killed Shiki eight years before the present day, and doesn't consider him her brother anymore. To her, Shiki Nanaya, now Tohno, is, and always will be, the only brother for her.
• I Know Karate: She apparently picked up a few moves from her friend Tsukihime Souka, as demonstrated in the climax to the side story "A Story For The Evening."
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's cold, standoffish, and aloof, but she treasures the people she's close to dearly all the same.
• Joshikousei: Her uniform is a Sailor Fuku and there is a special version of her wearing it in Melty Blood: Actress Again.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Invoked by herself and very averted. She hates cats. Arcueid is probably responsible for that one.

• Little Sister Heroine: A strong type A Tsundere version of the trope. She's also quite clingy, and finally cites him as the reason she's a tsundere instead of just a horrible bitch in her Kagetsu Tohya sidestory.
• Lonely Rich Kid: At first, but as shown in later sequels, she gets better.
• Ms. Fanservice: Akiha seems to have grown into the role, with a lot of related media going out of their way to feature her like in the Melty Blood X Manga. She gets a considerable amount of artwork in promotional material with Arcueid and Ciel in Type Lumina despite her route not being released and Shiki even explicitly comments about how attractive she is when comparing her to Noel.
• Missing Mom: Makihisa's wife was said to have died from illness a little after Akiha was born.
• Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls: Played hilariously straight in Kagetsu Tohya. Cat-Shiki (It's a Long Story) catches her in the act of writing fan-fiction about her and Shiki about to... well, it gets cut off, but you get the idea.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: In Kohaku's route, she tries to kill Kohaku when she discovers her relationship with Shiki, also invoking If I Can't Have You…. Interestingly, in the Good End Shiki realizes that the reason she didn't suceeed is because she wasn't really trying.
• No Body Left Behind: In Hisui's True End, Shiki mentions in his narration that her body quickly dissolved into nothingness after she died, likely because of her nature as an oni hybrid.
• Not Blood Siblings: Shiki isn't her biological brother. They met when they were seven and six years old, respectively, lived together for two years, and then separated for eight, somewhat short of "growing up together." Akiha knew the whole time that Shiki wasn't her real brother, and Shiki was at least vaguely aware of it.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Akiha realized a long time ago that Kohaku had to be up to something, but felt that since her family has wronged Kohaku to an incredible degree she ought to be at least given a chance.
• Ojou: An elegant and refined young lady who happens to be the current head of a family of wealthy landowners.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: When she inverts, her hair turns from black to red. Though, technically, it would be more accurate to say the black hair is the one being dyed by power, since Akiha uses her power to restrain her demonic instincts, which has the side effect of turning her hair black, when it would normally be red because of her demonic ancestry.
• Prehensile Hair: Her power takes this form — except that it's nonphysical, so only Shiki can see it.
• Psychic Link: Since Akiha is using her life force to sustain Shiki's life as a shikigami, they have one, which can turn into Mindlink Mates.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: If her eyes turn red, it's a sign that she has Inverted completely. That's not a good sign.
• Shipper on Deck: Despite being known for being easily jealous when it comes to Shiki, Akiha is surprisingly supportive in her own way should Shiki choose to enter a romantic relationship with either Hisui or Kohaku in their respective routes.
• SNK Boss: In versions of Melty Blood, when she becomes Giant Akiha.
• Stone Wall: Strangely, she has the highest defense in Melty Blood; however, her Inverted self is a Glass Cannon.
• Taking the Bullet: For Kohaku in Hisui's route, against SHIKI (again). In the True End she dies in a truly heart-wrenching scene; she escapes with her life in the Good End. Subverted in that Kohaku was counting on Akiha doing so and intentionally made an opening for SHIKI for the sake of her revenge. The difference between the endings comes down to whether or not Kohaku can really go through with it.
• Tea Is Classy: Akiha enjoys her English tea, served by Kohaku. In Hisui's True End, Kohaku realizes she keeps bringing tea to Akiha's room, even after she has died. She commits suicide because she caused this.
• Transfer Student Uniforms: When Akiha transfers to Shiki's school in her route, she continues to wear her school uniform from her previous school. She remarks she has no intention of wearing the new school uniform because she dislikes it and the old one suits her.
• Tsundere: She's Type A in the Near Side routes and in her own route, and Type B in Kohaku's route, until she defeats SHIKI and accidentally absorbs him, causing a Yandere fit.
• Uneven Hybrid: In the remake, Dr. Arach comments that Akiha is to all intents and purposes a pure-blooded oni, from before they began interbreeding with humans, the kind of monster you'd see once in every ten thousand years.
• Unknown Rival: Unlike with Ciel, Arcueid doesn't treat Akiha seriously as a competitor for Shiki's affections in spin-off materials where they interact as she seems content to have her as her own little sister by virtue of her relation to Shiki ^note hence the "imouto/little sister" moniker Arc has for her, much to Akiha's annoyance.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Her power is not that difficult to control unless she tries using too much of it, at which point she risks Inverting.
• Yandere: Kohaku route only, after absorbing SHIKI, and consequently Roa's essence.

The Twins, Hisui and Kohaku

A pair of twins who work as servants at the Tohno family mansion. They are not help hired from outside the mansion, but were raised to be maids there since their childhood. Shiki vaguely remembers them from his childhood, but since all of his memories from that time are fuzzy, he has forgotten their names.

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Tropes applying to both

• Adopt-a-Servant: Hisui and Kohaku were adopted by the Tohno family because of their family, but in the end they mostly ended up as the family maids.
• Childhood Friends: Aside from Shiki, they're the closest thing Akiha has to childhood friends as they all grew up together in the mansion.
• Childhood Friend Romance: They knew Shiki in his childhood before he left the mansion and both twins are romantic options in the game. Shiki remembers he played a lot with the cheerful twin, but wasn't that close to the emotionless one.
• Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo: Kohaku is the bubbly and talkative one while Hisui is the shy and reserved one. Their backstory reveals that when they were children, it was the other way around.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Kohaku is the somewhat clumsy and occasionally irresponsible Foolish Sibling and Hisui is the dutiful and diligent Responsible Sibling.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Hisui and Kohaku knew Shiki when they were younger, though he muses that he never really got to know the quiet one very well. He doesn't remember them very well, though, and can't remember their names at all. This causes a meltdown for Kohaku since she doesn't really realize the Twin Switch she pulled with her sister.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Hisui has jade eyes, wears a bonnet on her head and dresses in a western maid uniform. On the other hand, Kohaku has amber eyes, wears a blue ribbon at the back of her head and dresses in a kimono and kappougi.
• Intimate Healing: A Synchronizer can help bring stability or heal someone through 'sharing of bodily fluids'.
• Meaningful Name: Their names refer to their respective eye colors; Hisui is Japanese for jade and Kohaku is Japanese for amber.
• Meido: They serve as the housemaids at the Tohno mansion. Kohaku wears the traditional outfit of a Japanese maid (a kimono and a kappougi) rather than a more familiar western maid outfit like Hisui does.
• Ninja Maid: They were promoted to this in Melty Blood.
• No Full Name Given: Hisui and Kohaku are only known by their given names. They come from a branch family of the Fujou demon hunter clan, so there's a chance their family name might have originally been Fujou, but the twins were orphaned too young to know. Though, when pressed, Kohaku gives her last name as "Tohno," so perhaps Hisui does the same. Which would make sense, since they were legally adopted by Makihisa Tohno.
• Personality Swap: Originally, Hisui was the cheerful twin and Kohaku was the unemotional one. After Hisui learned Kohaku was being raped by Makihisa Tohno, she locked her emotions away and Kohaku adopted a smiley facade to cope with her trauma. It's the personality exchange what causes Shiki to mistake which sister was his childhood playmate because he only remembers how they acted, not their names.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Kohaku is bright, friendly, and sociable while Hisui is hard to read, shy and withdrawn. Their specialties as maids are complete opposites as well; Hisui is excellent at cleaning but is a Lethal Chef, while Kohaku is a Supreme Chef but terrible at cleaning. It's later revealed that during their childhood, Hisui was the friendly and sociable one while Kohaku was the shy and withdrawn one. They eventually switched each other's personalities to cope with Kohaku being raped.
• Sex Slave: In Kagetsu Tohya's sidestory Flower of Thanatos, it's clearly implied that Hisui and Kohaku live together with Shiki in the isolated Tohno Mansion, where they humbly serve him as devoted maids. And fulfill his every wish. Even if it meant that he began periodically raping them.
• Single-Minded Twins: At the end of the Flower of Thanatos sidestory, if Shiki decides to spend a night of passion with both twins, then we witness how during their intercourse Hisui's and Kohaku's personalities slowly fuse into one leaving Shiki unable to recognize who is who and allowing him to love them equally.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Their mother, as seen in Takashi Takeuchi's sketch of her, is essentially an older-looking version of them.
• Tag Team Twins: Kohaku and Hisui can fight solo, or as a tag team in Melty Blood. Using both maids together entails great skill and dexterity; while they do lose a couple of options in comparison to their solo movesets, they more than make up for it by having an expansive array of attacks that makes them capable of handling nearly any situation, at the expense of boasting a much larger moveset which requires a specific maid to be active at any given time to work.
• Theme Twin Naming: Hisui (jade) and Kohaku (amber) are named after their respective eye colors.
• Twin Switch:
  • Used in Hisui's route and several others. Kohaku dresses as Hisui to feed Shiki poison in the form of medicine. Then she forcibly has sex with him to give him her synchronization power. It's revealed in the Plus-Disc that Kohaku has a special set of contact lenses which allow her to make her eyes look like Hisui's to complete the deception. Every time Hisui says "my sister", it's actually Kohaku. Hisui only uses Nee-san to refer to her sister. Her eyes also become very dull.
  • This also happened accidentally over the years when Kohaku started faking being a Genki Girl and Hisui took her place as the Emotionless Girl without Kohaku really being aware of it. This causes severe issues in the Hisui route.
• Vague Age: Their exact ages aren't revealed, though their character material states that they're "estimated to be 16".

Hisui

Voiced by: Yumi Kakazu (JP - Anime), Kate Higgins (EN - Anime), Miyu Matsuki (JP - Melty Blood, Carnival Phantasm), Kana Ichinose (JP - Remake)

^{Click here to see her in the remake} 

"Good morning, Shiki-sama."

On Shiki's return to the mansion, Hisui is assigned to be his personal servant. Hisui is quiet and submissive by default. In the mansion, she takes care of the cleaning because her sense of taste is completely at odds with anyone else. She refuses to accept help from Shiki with her chores, or to talk with him less formally. She personally wakes him up every morning and waits for him to return from school at the front entrance or, after he complains, inside the lobby.

---

• Blade Enthusiast: Despite being an awful chef, she has a fascination that borders on a Fetish for bladed weapons, up to and including cutlery. In her original route, it mostly manifests in discussing the particulars of his knife, which indirectly gives him the clues to start looking into the dark side of the family.
• Broken Bird: Hisui was a happy little girl in her childhood until she learned her twin sister was raped by their master. Ever since then, Hisui lost her ability to smile and Kohaku is playing the role of the cheerful sister until Hisui can smile again, which only makes Hisui suppress her emotions even more.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: At Shiki's welcoming party, she's the first casualty since she rarely drinks even though she was drinking less heavily than anybody else. It eventually leads to a What Did I Do Last Night? moment for her and Shiki when he wakes up in bed with her. It turns out to have been perfectly innocent.
• Cheerful Child: She was the happy and playful twin in Shiki's memories.
• The Comically Serious: Several comedic scenes rely on the fact that she's straight laced and takes her job as Shiki's servant very seriously.
  Hisui: "...from now on, please refrain from sleeping while talking about the smallness of someone's chest, or the wideness of their foreheads, or other characteristics of their body. It makes my duty to wake you up a little more difficult."
• Cuteness Proximity: She finds Miyako adorable in Type Lumina, and her story mode is basically just her propping herself up as some badass to make herself look cool in front of Miyako in an attempt to impress her.
• Deadpan Snarker: Surprisingly, despite her general passivity and stoic demeanor, she can be really snippy when she wants to be. She sometimes takes jabs at either Shiki or even Akiha at certain points in time while she snarks at Kohaku's antics in Carnival Phantasm. She's rather passive-aggressive towards Akiha in particular in some of her quotes for her in Type Lumina:
  Hisui (to Akiha): An evaluation for a possible raise? Understood.
  Hisui (victory quote): Please accept our apologies, Lady Akiha. A little use of force is necessary while on strike.
• Developer's Foresight: In Type Lumina, her Last Arc normally ends with Akiha kicking her from behind in a silhouetted scene. If Hisui's opponent for that match is Akiha, Kohaku knocks her down instead.
• Does Not Like Men: Hisui reacts badly to Shiki trying to touch her hand at one point. It's eventually revealed she reacts this way because she wanted to keep herself "pure" in honor of her sister's sacrifice for her.
• Emotionless Girl: Shiki initially has a lot of difficulty telling what she's thinking, but as he gets to know her better he becomes able to read her better and realizes that she's expressive enough in her own subdued way.
• Fetish: Hisui has an Oral Fixation and really likes sucking on Shiki's fingers.
• Giant Poofy Sleeves: Her maid outfit has poofy shoulders.
• Hates Being Touched: She doesn't like to be touched by men, though as noted below she's rather reclusive in general.
• Hikikomori: Hisui hasn't actually left the Tohno Mansion grounds in years since she learned the truth of Kohaku's abuse. When she does so in Kagetsu Tohya, she's clearly very uneasy in crowds.
• I Feel Angry: She can say this when she gets up in Melty Blood after being knocked over in her typical deadpan tone of voice.
• Interface Screw: Her Last Arc in Melty Blood does negligible damage, but reverses an opponent's controls for about ten seconds.
• Joke Weapon: Hisui fights with a feather duster, frying pan, explosive sandwiches, and even a chair in Melty Blood.
• Katanas Are Just Better: On the other hand, in her Type Lumina Last Arc, she brings out a katana. Which quickly turns out to pretty much be one of Muramasa's evil swords, turning her into a red-eyed, bloodthirsty sadist that inflicts Vergil-levels of Blade Spam upon the opponent before Akiha thankfully boots her out of her corrupted state.
• Lethal Chef: Due to her skewered sense of taste she can't even taste test her cooking as it always seems okay to her. She's also rather forgetful about people's preferences: Shiki tells her he hates plums but likes their smell and she makes him a sandwich made entirely of them. In Melty Blood she can place a picnic and it acts as a landmine!
• Long-Range Fighter: In Melty Blood, she can throw ornaments very well, making it difficult to get close to her.
• Morality Pet: To Kohaku. She's the only person Kohaku does not want to die.
• Mythology Gag: Her Last Arc in Type Lumina is a reference to a chapter in the manga gag series Take Moon, where Hisui gets possessed by a katana formerly owned by Makihisa that's imbued with strong demonic energy and rampages with it. She even snaps out of it the same way when Akiha literally kicks her from behind to get her back to her senses.
• Neutral Good: Her in-universe alignment for the remake.
• Nightmare Fetishist: In a Take Moon chapter, Hisui is revealed to have a fetish for cutlery with her caressing a knife rather suggestively and being really pleased by her finding a demon katana Makihisa snatched during his heydays. The incident is referenced in the intro to Carnival Phantasm and her Last Arc in Type Lumina, meaning that it is more than an one-off joke.
• Not So Stoic: Shiki makes her go from Emotionless Girl to Shrinking Violet in no time.
• Only Sane Woman: The only one of the main cast who doesn't go insane at some point of the game.
• Shrinking Violet: A lot of Shiki's perception that Hisui is emotionless stems from the fact that she's actually quite shy. When he remembers her more clearly in her route, he tries nudging her to open up more.

• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: She gives the impression of being an Emotionless Girl, but actually Hisui is a kind, loving and emotional girl who pretends to be emotionless for her sister's sake.
• Undying Loyalty: She is completely devoted to Shiki. This is because she has a massive crush on him.

Kohaku

Voiced by: Kana Ueda (JP - Anime), Kari Wahlgren (EN - Anime), Naoko Takano (JP - Melty Blood, Carnival Phantasm), Yuuki Kuwahara (JP - remake)

^{Click here to see her in the remake} 

"Yes. I liked this Kohaku the best, too."

Akiha's personal servant. She is very cheerful and upbeat in contrast to Hisui's stoic demeanor. She agrees to call Shiki -san, instead of -sama when he asks, and also lets him help her with her chores as long as Akiha doesn't find out. She was also trained as Tohno Makihisa's personal doctor and holds a license to practice pharmacology.

Unlike Hisui, Kohaku is a very good cook and has taken over that role in the household. While rather cheerful overall, she has a slightly morbid sense of humor.

---

• Ascended Extra: Kohaku originally wasn't supposed to have her own route but one was added at the last minute. This is why she only has one ending instead of two like all of the other heroines.
• Batman Gambit: The entire plot of the Far Side routes is shown to be the result of multiple gambits made by Kohaku, from Makihisa's death to Shiki killing SHIKI, and her plan to take revenge on the Tohno family succeeds in Hisui's True Ending. Contextually, Arcueid and Ciel are both Spanners in the Works because they keep Shiki away from the mansion. She would have failed if Akiha didn't feel really guilty about how her father treated Kohaku.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Became interested in Shiki due to him always looking up at her when she was trapped in the mansion, and giving her a slight amount of hope she could leave at some point. Which later becomes one of the driving factors in her motivations for revenge.
• Becoming the Mask: Outside of Tsukihime, such as in Melty Blood, her cheerful facade becomes very much her actual personality, with the Broken Bird underneath it all nowhere to be seen. Whether this is thanks to versions of the events seen in her route, such as Shiki remembering his promise to her and so on, is rarely clarified.
• Beware the Silly Ones: One such example is her interaction with Roa during her arcade route in Actress Again. Immediately upon facing him, she interrupts his evil speech, mocks him by telling him that he isn't cool enough to be a final boss, tells him that he looks too much like a pianist, and despite Roa claiming that Kohaku is the one person who should know his name, she calls him Nrvnqsr "Nero" twice, and then corrects herself and refers to him as Nrvnqsroa "Ne-Roa" instead. Roa's Freak Out, followed by Kohaku's sinister victory quote against him implies that she truly does hate his guts.
  Kohaku, after winning: "Winning through ability or biology... Such standards mean nothing to us. Fufufu~ My body remembers the hierarchy we established during those years in the underground room all too well. ♪"
• Big Bad: The closest thing there is to one in the Far Side routes. The central focus of Far Side is Kohaku's plans to get revenge on the Tohno family for the abuse they heaped on her for years. Michael Roa Valdamjong is killed rather quickly in these routes and it turns out SHIKI was largely controlled by Kohaku the entire time.
• Big Sister Instinct: She's the older twin between her and Hisui and shows a great deal of care for her. She even bore the brunt of Makihisa's abuse as a child to ensure that he doesn't use Hisui the same way. Hisui is also the only person Kohaku makes sure is unharmed in her revenge plans against the Tohnos.
• Broken Bird: Behind her cheerful smile, there's an emotionally and mentally broken girl as a result of years of horrific sexual abuse.
• Casting Gag: This isn't the first time her remake voice actress has voiced a quirky maid with a dangerous side.
• Character Exaggeration
  • In Tsukihime, it's revealed that Kohaku is the only person with a television in the house. In Kagetsu Tohya, it's revealed Kohaku owns a PlayStation 2 with several games for it including Bloody Roar 3, Grand Theft Auto, and Paperboy, as well as giving her a penchant for Cosplay as her alter egos ''Mister Chin'' and ''Broom Girl Magical Amber''. Some doujin authors have run with this and depicted Kohaku as an outright Otaku or Hikikomori.
  • Not to mention the Twin Threesome Fantasy erotic scene in Kagetsu Tohya, where Kohaku quite happily volunteers to prepare Hisui while Shiki recovers. Considering her sexual tendencies elsewhere and her history, there's some actual logic behind her actions, but doujin artists tend to grossly exaggerate this into flat-out incestuous obsession.
  • Later works also tend to turn her into something of a crazy, hyperactive mad scientist. She is even the original lead of the official parody manga Koha-Ace alongside Akiha, only being slowly replaced by the Koha-Ace original cast as the characters started to pile up.
  • Her true personality and dramatic aspects of her horrific backstory as well as her very dark reaction to it that helped set most of Tsukihime's Far Side routes in motion are completely overridden by her hyperactive, cheery, and mischievous personality in later works. She at least kept her scheming nature intact however, albeit watered down compared to her original self from the visual novel.
• Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Especially in Melty Blood, where she wears or takes off her hood is a split second, and her Arc Drive has her change into a cheongsam then back to maid uniform in a flash.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: As could probably be expected from her rather carefree demeanor, she's a little klutzy and is thus not allowed to clean very often.
• Death by Despair: With Akiha and SHIKI dead at the end of Hisui's route, Kohaku loses the only thing that keeps her going — the need for revenge — and commits suicide afterwards.
• Despair Event Horizon: Kohaku went through this when SHIKI first raped her, and she realized even after Makihisa died, SHIKI would still be there to abuse her.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Despite everything she does, she actually feels no malice whatsoever towards the Tohno family. Rather, she has so much in the way of bottled up emotions and has no idea what to do that she picks up a revenge plot as a way of coping. Because that's what a normal person would do right?
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Despite everything she does in the Far Side of the Moon routes, she really is nothing more than a maid.
• Driven to Suicide: In Hisui's routes. In Hisui's Good Ending, she survives, but loses her memory. It's implied she lost her memory on purpose.
• Emotionless Girl: She's not emotionless, but she's highly inexpressive and tends to bottle things up, which led to her sacrificing herself for Hisui and then just continuing to pile up stress until she snapped.
• Expy: Of Fujino Asagami from The Garden of Sinners. Both women belong to families in the Demon Hunters' Association, both have gone through the same horrible experience, and both Feel No Pain though for different reasons. Their stories' Shikis also end up killing "something bad" within their bodies using their respective Mystic Eyes of Death Perception: Fujino's terminal appendicitis and Kohaku's ingested poison.
• The Fake Cutie: Shiki once notes that he thinks Hisui could use some of Kohaku's cheer. Her faked personality isn't revealed until you get to the second to last route of the game, though there are hints beforehand. However, it actually appears as though she's been faking her personality on accident and out of habit.
• Feel No Pain: She says that so long as she imagines the pain happening to someone else it doesn't really hurt. Just pretend a doll got damaged or something! When she stabs herself, she claims it doesn't hurt at all.
• Gadgeteer Genius: In Melty Blood. She creates a robot-version of Hisui. And an entire factory to mass produce them. It's implied that she doesn't actually have the skill to do this, but since the TATARI is around...
• Genki Girl: In contrast to Hisui, Kohaku is very bright and active most of the time, leading her to end up breaking stuff when she tries cleaning instead of just cooking like normal.
• Guest Fighter: As Magical Amber in Fate/tiger colosseum.
• Hidden Buxom: Her maid outfit obfuscates her chest, while wearing a china dress she shows it off for all to see
• Hope Is Scary: She tells Shiki that he is the only person she has ever hated because of him instilling a bit of hope into her back when she was being used by his adoptive father; which terrified her. Though Hisui denies this, and claims that it wasn't hate she felt but love, though it isn't hard to imagine why she would mix up the two in her mind.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: One of her first slip ups is when she is talking to Shiki about The Promise he thinks he made to Hisui. She suggests that he goes to the tree they made the promise under to help Hisui remember it. This later confuses Shiki because he realizes he never mentioned the fact that the promise he made was under a tree, and only the people involved knew about where they met.
• Joke Weapon: Kohaku fights with plants, molotov cocktails, and a sword hidden in her broom in Melty Blood.
• Kansas City Shuffle: Most of Kohaku's Gambits rely on providing someone with disinformation, or revealing a real piece of information at the right moment, so they will play directly into her plans by trying to prevent the non-existent plans her information tricked them into believing.
• The Lady's Favour: Just before Shiki left the mansion to live with the Arima family, Kohaku gave him her favorite ribbon and made him promise to return it.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Sequels not only don't hide her plotting nature, they greatly exaggerate it.
• Lighter and Softer: Pretty much every other Type-Moon work featuring her completely side-steps her incredibly dark backstory in Tsukihime to focus more on her insane hyperactive sidekick persona, given the seriousness of the topics involved don't fit very well in a story unless they're the focus of it.
• Lightning Bruiser: She has amazing speed and devastating attacks in Melty Blood. Hisui had commented on Kohaku being like a tornado when she went on sweeping duty, making this a BrickJoke.
• Love Hurts: Implied to be the reason why she activities tries to push Shiki in other directions. He makes her feel something in spite of her belief that she is just a doll, which terrifies her.
• Mad Doctor: While her main job is to be a maid, she was also trained to be Makihisa Tohno's personal doctor and has a pharmacology liscense. As a result, she has a lot of medicinal knowledge which she sometimes uses to rather worrying ends.
• Matchmaker Crush: Even in her own route, there are times where she tries to push Shiki towards either Hisui or Akiha rather than herself. Most likely because of her self-imposed rule that if he gave back her ribbon, she would immediately stop her plan of destroying the Tohno family.
• Must Make Amends: At the climax of her route she goes off on her own to confront Akiha to make up for her actions up to that point.
• My God, What Have I Done?: She is affected by Akiha's death in Hisui Normal Ending. Even though she caused it.
• Mythology Gag: In Melty Blood: Type Lumina, one of Kohaku's fight initiating animation for round 2 is her conjuring a Saint Quartz and crushing it, mirroring how the team revival mechcanic works in Grand Order. She also has an variant to this animation with a golden apple, which is the highest AP/stamina replenishing item in the Grand Order mobile game.
• Odd Friendship: With Kouma Kishima.
• Playing with Syringes: In Kagetsu Tohya. "It's needle time!" ^_^
• The Promise: She made one with Shiki when he left the mansion to return her favorite ribbon to her. Becomes a major factor in her route.
• Rape and Revenge: She's plotting to kill everyone in the Tohno mansion except Hisui and maybe Shiki as her revenge for the years of sexual abuse she suffered at hands of Makihisa Tohno.
• Rape as Backstory: Synchronizers like Kohaku can transfer energy through sex. Because of this, Kohaku was constantly raped by Makihisa Tohno and then SHIKI. Kohaku was eight when it first happened, and her abuse continued for years.
• Stepford Smiler: Kohaku's cheerfulness is a mask for a completely shattered, emotionless psyche due to years of horrific sexual abuse at the hands of Shiki's stepfather/Akiha's father.
• Sunny Sunflower Disposition: The final shot of her True Ending, with her waiting for Shiki in a sunflower field with outstretched arms and with a bright smile.◊
• Supreme Chef: She sucks at cleaning, but is a wonderful chef.
• Sword Cane: In Melty Blood, she has a sword hidden inside her broom that she quickly draws out in some of her attacks, most prominently her Last Arc.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Kohaku's reaction to any hint that Shiki has taken advantage of Hisui.
• True Neutral: Her in-universe alignment for the remake.
• Walking Spoiler: There is much more to Kohaku than meets the eye, and you’re not gonna learn any of it until you’re late into the Far Side routes
• When She Smiles: Her route ends with her giving Shiki a genuine smile from her heart and not as an empty doll.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Kohaku has become so emotionally broken that she thinks of herself as a doll and has no idea how she really feels about anything. Oh, and she's plotting the deaths of Akiha and SHIKI, is implied or perhaps stated to be involved in Makihasa's death, and may view Shiki as a target as well, though she doesn't succeed there in any path. It's okay if everyone dies except Hisui. Oh, and she's indirectly behind all the serial killing going on in the Far Side routes.
• Yandere: She has shades of this especially towards Akiha. She fully becomes one during Hisui's route when she puts her plans into motion.
• Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: She has amber eyes and she hides a twisted nature behind her smile.

Remake Heroine

Satsuki "Sacchin" Yumizuka

Voiced by: Kaori Tanaka (JP - Anime), Carrie Savage (EN - Anime), Omi Minami (JP - Melty Blood, Carnival Phantasm), Minami Tanaka (JP - Remake)

^{Click here to see her in the remake} 

"Tohno-kun, will you come and help me when I'm in a pinch?"

Satsuki is Shiki's classmate and has watched him from afar all throughout the year. Her crush began when her sports club was trapped inside a room after-hours in the winter, and Shiki freed them by 'killing' the lock. She liked him from that moment onward, but he never noticed her. One day she finally worked up the courage to walk home with Shiki, and convinced him to promise her: "If I'm ever in a pinch, you'll come and help me, right?" They soon part ways.

In the Near Side route, she vanishes. In the Far Side routes, the vampire in town gets to her and she goes berserk. Shiki is forced to kill her. In the anime and manga, Satsuki makes it out unscathed. Finally, originally she did have a route planned out, but due to several issues it was cut from the game. She is alive in Melty Blood and has formed the "Back Alley Alliance" with Sion and Riesbyfe. The reason she is alive still is unclear. The remake is slated to include her route in The other side of red garden.

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• Ambiguous Situation: In addition to her appearance in the Near Side being entirely up to the player, she stops appearing partway through the story, leaving it ambiguous about what exactly happened to her, if she still became a vampire like the Far Side Routes, and whether she even died. In Moon Princess the same disappearence from the plot occurs, however she returns unexpectedly in Rainbow of the Night, with the explanation that her father kept her home from school, further complicating matters.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Some games romanize her last name as "Yumiduka".
• Butt-Monkey: In the original Tsukihime she was a tragic character. In side material, she's mocked mercilessly, mainly due to her not having a route of her own. She regains some dignity in Melty Blood X.
• Chaotic Neutral: Her in-universe alignment for the remake.
• Character Exaggeration: Later adaptations make fun of the fact that Shiki is oblivious to her feelings or that she is treated as the ignored one. He can't even remember her name!
• Covert Pervert: Implied. Her victory quote over Shiki Tohno in Act Cadenza amounts to "You are unconscious, and nobody is watching. I am gonna take a little liberty here!"
• Cute Ghost Girl: In the not-really-canon Drinking Dreaming Moon side story.
• Cute Little Fangs: VERY visible during Tsukihime and Kagetsu Tohya, but downplayed in Melty Blood.
• Disc-One Final Boss: In the Far Side of the Moon routes Shiki believes at first that Satsuki is the vampire stalking the town. He's proven wrong when the incidents continue after he kills her.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: She initially was an average school girl, however after being bitten she turned out to be quite a powerful and dangerous Dead Apostle.
• Girlish Pigtails: Of the "two side up" variety.
• Hypnotic Eyes: Along with everything mentioned in Super Power Lottery, she also has the Mystic Eyes of Enchantment. How in the hell did she become the series Butt Monkey again?!
• Just Friends: In the manga she manages to get promoted to Shiki's friend and avoid being vampirized. She's still not even a blip on the radar.
• Kiss of the Vampire: In Melty Blood she can use this as a Grapple Move as well as heal herself this way.
• Odd Friendship: With Sion and Len — the "Back Alley Alliance".
• Psychological Projection: One interpretation of her talk about Shiki's murderous dark side is that she's projecting her own mental issues on him, and just happens to be, if not right, then not particularly inaccurate either.
• Randomly Gifted: Just like Ciel, she was born with a lot of magic potential despite coming from an ordinary family.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her normally brown eyes turn red upon becoming a vampire. The in-game sprites show this inconsistently.
• The Reveal: Satsuki is revealed to be a vampire when she lifts up her arms from behind her back, revealing they're soaked in blood.
• Secret Diary: Revealed to have possessed one in Melty Blood X. Apparently it was mostly composed of her descriptions of what Shiki was doing, and what her feelings for him were. For the kicker, she made it before becoming a vampire, proving she was a little off from the beginning. Why else would she be attracted to Shiki?
• Spared by the Adaptation: Zigzagged in -A piece of blue glass moon-. While Satsuki still vanishes in Arcueid's remake route, she pops up several days into Ciel's remake route, implying that she managed to avoid being attacked somehow and is still a normal human in that particular route.
• Superpower Lottery: Satsuki just so happens to not only be one of the rare people to possess a psychic ability, but said ability just so happened to be a type of ESP that lets her leapfrog several stages of vampirism and instantly became a rather powerful Dead Apostle, though the rapid change caused her some fairly severe pain. The odds of anyone even surviving to become a full vampire is 1/10000 (in the original) and is supposed to take years. In her unreleased route and Melty Blood she even has a Reality Marble called Depletion Garden that destroys mana in the air around her, once again jumping way up the ranks of the dead. To sustain her new body, she doesn't even need that much blood. Just to emphasize how literal the lottery part is, there are only 30 people in the entire world with the same aptitude that she has for being a vampire.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Her endings in the more recent Melty Blood games have things looking up somewhat for her, such as coming to terms with and even accepting her status as a Dead Apostle in Act Cadenza or welcoming Riesbyfe in the Back Alley Alliance in Actress Again. She is also slated to have a proper route in the remake, finally allowing her a chance to become a love interest to Shiki. In the current version of the remake, she also returns to school seemingly un-vampirized in Ciel's story.
• Tragic Monster: In the Tsukihime routes that were actually released, she either vanishes or Shiki is forced to kill her since he can't cure her.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Due to winning the Super Power Lottery out of nowhere and being such a gentle person throughout her life she lacks any real technique or hand to hand ability, instead relying on her instinct and raw power by throwing clumsy punches, grabbing her opponents and tossing them, or jumping into the air with them and slamming them back into the ground.
• Vampire Refugee: In her apperances in Melty Blood she does what she can to be a heroic Dead Apostle, even recruiting Sion and Riesbyfe into "The Back Alley Alliance" to help clean up the streets.
• Yandere: After her becoming a vampire, she's way too cheerful sounding when describing the acts of violence she's performed on random people. She also tries to make Shiki her vampire servant so he can't leave her. Given a chance to gain some stability, she eventually calms down, especially after meeting Sion.