The Many Misfortunes of the Tsukihime Manga’s Official English Release

You’d be hard-pressed to find a manga that’s faced more trials and tribulations than the English language release of the manga adaptation of Type-Moon’s Tsukihime visual novel. From issues as common as poor timing, to as rare as both of its publishers going under, this vampire manga has experienced just about every misfortune under the moon.

Today, it’s been out of print for about 15 years, and is still officially incomplete. Still, the recent official releases of the visual novels Witch on the Holy Night, Fate/stay night Remastered, and Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon- suggest that it’s possible that the tides could turn. After all, those releases felt equally—if not more—unlikely, but against all odds, here they are: proving there’s more of an appetite in the English language market for Type-Moon works than ever before.

So bearing that in mind, it’s worth looking back on the Tsukihime manga, recapping everything that went wrong with its English language release, and examining why any of this matters even today—about 20 years later.

The manga itself

Upon its debut in 2000, Tsukihime was a visual novel by Type-Moon with a total of five routes. This manga, however, is written and illustrated by Sasaki Shonen, and is mostly an adaptation of the visual novel’s Arcueid route (I say “mostly” because it does incorporate some elements from other routes). In its original Japanese release, this manga is 10 volumes long and came out between 2003–10. For reasons that will soon be explained, only the first six volumes were ever released in English, and they were released between 2005–09. In a 2021 interview with Weekly Famitsu, Type-Moon writer Kinoko Nasu would reportedly call this manga the greatest rival to the 2021 remake of Tsukihime’s nearside routes (the Arcueid and Ciel routes), Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-.

So, what is Tsukihime about then? Our central protagonist is Shiki Tohno: a highschooler who had a near-death experience during his childhood that rendered him chronically anemic, and able to see mysterious lines—lines that cause things to be destroyed when they’re cut along. But a red-haired woman gave him a magical pair of glasses that, when he wears them, blocks out the lines. Still, even with the help of these glasses, Shiki’s life hasn’t been easy in the time since. His father banished him from the family mansion following the accident.

But now, it’s eight years later. Shiki’s father has passed, and his sister has called upon Shiki to once again live with her in the Tohno mansion. But on the day of his return, he has a chance encounter with a beautiful woman whom he gets a powerful, but inexplicable urge to brutally slaughter. He dismembers her, but she’s soon able to revive herself. She is, as Shiki would quickly learn, an immensely powerful vampire. Her name is Arcueid, and she’s in town to kill another vampire. And now that she knows he has the capability to kill even a vampire as strong as her, she wants Shiki to make up for what he’s done by helping her.

Even when reading this manga today, it’s easy to see why Nasu likes it so much. It may not be a faithful adaptation in the strictest sense, but when it does diverge from its source material, it manages to do so to its benefit. Probably the biggest feat of this manga is how smoothly it’s able to integrate elements from other routes, so that by the end, it doesn’t feel as incomplete as you might otherwise expect a manga adaptation of the equivalent of about 20% of a visual novel to feel. Prior to the release of Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-, I definitely would’ve called this manga the best retelling of Tsukihime—not that it has much competition. As fun as they are, the Melty Blood games certainly aren’t retellings, and the 2003 Tsukihime anime, infamously, is widely disliked, especially by fans of the visual novel.

So, what went wrong with its release?

Our story begins in 2005. Tsukihime was a hit in Japan, but in the English language market? Remember: the original visual novel it was based on, to this day, has never officially been released in English (to be clear: Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-, which is officially available in English, is the remake that came out several years later).

In 2005, few people in the market would’ve known what it is in general, let alone how popular it was in Japan. The Tsukihime anime DVDs would’ve recently finished releasing by the time the first volume finally came out, but most anime/manga fans in this market weren’t likely to have much of a foothold outside of that. But of course, hindsight is 20/20; it’s easy to call out the ill-advised timing of this manga in 2024, fully aware that it was the eve of the first Fate/stay night anime’s release, which might have helped to further drum up interest. But unfortunately, this misbegotten timing would prove to be only the tip of the iceberg.

Let’s talk about the actual release of the Tsukihime manga in English: the initial plan, posted about on Anime News Network as soon as October 2004, was that ComicsOne would start publishing it in January 2005. Specific, fully verified details about the fate that befell ComicsOne are few and far between, but in January 2005—the same month the first volume of Tsukihime was originally supposed to come out—ComisOne announced in a press release that they were no longer releasing any new manga. And although they asserted in this same press release that they weren’t totally ceasing operations, only two months later ICv2 would report that, “ComicsOne has stopped paying its bills and has disappeared.”

So what happened to all of ComicsOne’s properties then? In the January 2005 press release, ComicsOne said that a fairly new manga publisher called DrMaster would, “take over the publication of newer manga.” It would be March 2005 before they officially acquired those rights, but all the same, they now belonged to DrMaster. Ultimately, DrMaster would go on to release the first six volumes of the Tsukihime manga, although archives of their website where a listing for volume seven can be seen suggests that it’s possible that they did at least some early planning for its potential release (which, to be clear, would never come to fruition).

If specific details about what happened to ComicsOne are few and far between, then information about DrMaster’s end are virtually non-existent. But sometime in 2009, for reasons we can only speculate, they quietly ceased operations. Well, actually, let’s be clear: I say “for reasons we can only speculate” but it’s not like we can’t make an educated guess; 2009 was fresh off the heels of the recession, and a terrible time for the manga (and anime) industry as a whole. Still, there was no official announcement of their closure, no press release verifying that they were going to cease operations, and certainly no news about what, if anything, was going to happen to their properties. Thus suddenly and unceremoniously ended the official English language print run of the Tsukihime manga—which a number of fan translators would ultimately unofficially finish.

Why this matters

Did reading this article make you want to read the Tsukihime manga? Then I hope you can read Japanese, have a time machine, or at least have some money in your pocket. As of time of writing, the Tsukihime manga (in English) isn’t officially available on any digital manga platforms. Meanwhile, the physical copies have been out of print since 2009. And what’s more, it’s pretty rare for secondhand copies of English language editions of manga to rise in price over time—much less rise significantly above their retail price. But if sold listings for this manga on eBay are indicative of anything, then the English language copies of the Tsukihime manga—in particular, the “final” sixth volume—are members of this highly exclusive club.

To be clear: it’s been ~15 years since this manga has been in print. It would be considered largely inaccessible with or without these inflated prices. Still, it’s a hefty dose of salt in the wound, and all but guarantees that the overwhelming majority of its modern readers are pirating it out of necessity.

Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon- and MELTY BLOOD – Type Lumina are officially available in English, and the latter was part of EVO’s main lineup in 2022 and 2023. Tsukihime has never been as popular in the English language market as it is right now. A rescue license for the manga would not only help to make it more accessible, but could also finally give it a full release after all these years. In many ways, it’d be poetic; similarly to how English language audiences can now finally play a Tsukihime game in an official capacity, so too could they now read the manga adaptation of it that’s liked even by Kinoko Nasu—the manga he considered his rival when working on Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-.

I’m not sure why this hasn’t already been done—whether, perhaps, it’s a matter of no manga licenser thinking it’s worth it, if it has a complicated rights situation as a result of DrMaster’s mysterious closure, or something else altogether. But then again, Type-Moon fans had all but lost hope that we’d ever see Type-Moon visual novels officially released in English too, and despite everything, now we have three of them.