Changes caused by the new in-universe date
The doujin version was set at the end of the 90s, but looking at TsukiR's latest background CGs, it looks like the date was shifted to the current year...
Nasu: Not exactly. It was changed to be set in the 2010s, not the 2020s. When smartphones were starting to become commonplace, and social networks were slowly but steadily expanding.
I see. And how will this date change affect TsukiR?
Nasu: The biggest difference will be in terms of moral values, I guess. The doujin version was set in the late 90s, when the economic bubble had already burst for all, and everywhere you went felt decadent and everyone was negative in some way, but it was okay to express your
individuality. However, today is a lot more difficult to express your individuality without being any performative. For expressing became easier, at the same time, complying with the norms became all the more important. I assure you I adjusted everything so that nothing in your reading experience feels out of touch with the era it's set on. For that reason, our protagonist, Shiki, losing and gaining some things in terms of emotions. The doujin Shiki feels surprisingly alive even to me who wrote him. He looks like just a basic bookworm, but with a strangely strong-willed side to him. Active and strong-willed protagonists were the trend for PC games at the time, so his emotional range must have aligned with that. We're not living those times anymore, so we some adjustments to
how Shiki reacts to his times while preserving the essence of doujin Shiki.
Even his hairstyle was modernized.
Nasu: Up until he made Fate/stay Night's Shirou, I told Takeuchi to
design our protagonists as generic as possible. I'd tell him awesome guys doing awesome things is a given, but when someone not that different from us fights, that's what makes him a story's protagonist. This might have been the core of the Fate/ series. That's a point I'm very particular about, but even so, I decided that TsukiR's Shiki should be more good-looking. I mean, what other chance will I get to write a
Babel II-inspired protagonist, complete with the gakuran uniform + black hair look? That's my personal reward for all the work...
Arcueid is a character who always felt like the older girl**, but in this game, she looks like she's the same age as Shiki.**
Nasu: When Takeuchi showed me the new design and told me this is what he wanted Arcueid to be like, I did question him, just to make sure he really was okay with her losing her older girl vibes, and he insisted
this is the design he wanted. And so, I started updating Arcueid to match with this look. That said, she's still the same
vampire sunny on the inside as she always was. You might feel like this Arcueid looks too young at first, but once you spend time with her, you'll feel that she's the exact same Arcueid you remembered. That's how it went with me, after all. "Her skirt got quite a lot smaller, but her heart still the same size it were before", you'll say. Meanwhile, Ciel is looking a bit older with her new design, so we're still getting an older girl with us.
But the doujin Ciel was the one who looked the closest to Shiki in age...
Nasu: She did. Her new design and new voice do a lot to solidify her character as
the senpai everyone trusts and admires. Even I am seeing her in a different light.
What about Akiha?
Nasu: Akiha practically didn't have any big changes, aside from the more chic uniform. We did take until the very last second to decide if her skirt should be red or black.
Takeuchi: That's right. Looking back, we thought that Akiha's original red skirt wouldn't blend too well with the backgrounds, but it was iconic enough to make us hesitate on the change. Ultimately, I had to trust my instincts telling me this was better.
And Hisui and Kohaku weren't changed, as far as I can tell.
Takeuchi: I didn't change their base image much, but I did brush up on a few details. The people in the Toono household, Akiha included, are not the kind to change themselves to adjust to the times.
Nasu: They're sorta like old Japanese aristocrats, people detached from time. Them living in the Toono estate makes the life in the mansion a little different from the life in the city. I hope the atmosphere there feels nostalgic to you.
Takeuchi: Also, not something we can bring to the forefront, but we updated the order of the Dead Apostle Ancestors.
Nasu: Back when we established the abilities of the 27 Ancestors, we thought having a certain level of power was enough to make one a top ranker among Dead Apostles. But, judging our dear members of the 27 Ancestors by the post-Fate/stay Night Kinoko Fantasy standards, the ones who are just "relatively amazing" will have to leave... In our current era, having decent strength and abilities doesn't cut for someone trying to call themself a Dead Apostle Ancestor. I'm sorry, better luck next incarnation!
The world of Dead Apostle is in a tough fight for survival...
Nasu: Taking TsukiR's final destination into consideration, I organized which members needed to be laid off, which new members needed to be added, and which pre-existing members needed to be upgraded. That said, it's already been 10 years since I came up with the new Dead Apostle Ancestor lore, so now I regret not having made them a bit stronger.
Yeah, FGO has a series of world-threatening enemies, so the Dead Apostle Ancestors could feel lacking if strong enough in comparison.
Nasu: FGO introduced a lot of new lore. But FGO's scale is only that large because TsukiR was produced first and laid that groundwork. Without TsukiR, FGO would have ended as a much smaller story. In that sense, pausing TsukiR's production to produce FGO paid off, and we'll get the brand new experience of seeing people learning what those plot points they've seen in FGO were about.
TsukiR completely renewed its cast list. What criteria did you use to choose the new cast?
Nasu: The first and most important thing is fitting the character. The next priority is how each voice balances the other out. Like, if Arcueid's voice is one way, Ciel's can be one other. This balance is a central part of the selection.
Takeuchi: We went mainly with younger actors because we want TsukiR to be a story that continues for a long time.
Nasu: A huge part of the game was already complete by the time we went to record the voices, so the way we recorded the voices this time was quite special. Scripts are normally made of just text, but anime voice actors record watching the video to make it easier to perform. But for video games, the best we can do is filling the text script with images. With that, it takes hours for the actor to properly interpret what the character is feeling in that specific scene and find the right way to express it. Scripts can be encyclopedia-sized, especially for videogames, so the load on the actor can be immense. That's why I made my script include the character's faces in every scene. Something of a lifehack that can only be done because the game was already complete. The actors seeing the character expressions drawn into every line of their script does wonders to lighten their load. I'm confident this will lead to an improvement in quality.
Didn't it take a lot of work to add the facial expressions to every single scene of the script?
Nasu: It indeed made the script very costly to make, but it helped the actors a lot with planning their roles, and consequently, staying focused on the character. They could get it done on their first try. This format was a win-win for us producers and them actors.
Takeuchi: TsukiR has a very considerable amount of sprites, making it easier to tell that the voice acting wasn't matching the sprite's expression, in my opinion. But with all the sprites on the script, the voice acting aligned perfectly with the faces.
Nasu: Oh, but Shiki doesn't have his sprites on-screen, so we had to make the script without his faces. That's why I think his voice, Ryousuke Kanemoto, worked thrice harder than the rest of the cast. For all that effort, we got a mega cool ideal Shiki. Thank you, Kanemoto! You were the best!
A production supported by a high-level staff
With the game's visual department sharing so much with Mahou Tsukai no Yoru, was it any difficult to make?
Nasu: We're thankfully blessed with a great staff, so while things weren't easy, we never reached a stalemate. They make any idea I have come true and draw any image I want. Whenever I say I want a new sprite, it feels like they had already made it before I asked (laughs). We planned for an amount of special scene CGs, but as we advanced, we saw we were doing too little. I couldn't tell them I wanted more because I had already given them a solid number on the meeting... But this always ended on an "Ok, I'll tell them tomorrow!" (laughs).
Takeuchi: We got an amazing number of CGs because this process was cyclical...
Nasu: I feel awful for putting so much work on such a small crew, they always accept it once I explain my reasons. This ad hoc approach and nimble footwork are the main strength of us small companies.
Takeuchi: That said, this is not an anime. We can't make visuals for every single scene. Our bread and butter still are the basic backgrounds with sprites. TsukiR's script and visuals are melded together almost singlehandedly by BLACK, but at the late stages of the development, we had to admit he couldn't do it on his own, so we added Urushinohara to the team.
Nasu: In animation terms, the team making the backgrounds, sprites, CGs and other graphical tools are like the key animators. And the scripters who program the gaps between each image are like the storyboarders, animators, and the photography team. BLACK steadfastly did all this scripting work little by little for years. If you know an experienced scripter, have them play TsukiR and tell them it was mainly done by one person, they would think we're insane.
Takeuchi: It really was an overwhelming workload, but BLACK pulled through, with Urushinohara's support, and now it's finally complete... I think.
You're using some very modern visual tools, like those sprites that are merged with the background in a way that they look like a CG.
Takeuchi: Yes, one example would be that sprite of Hisui leaning her back against the dining hall wall. These kinds of images use assets laid out by our art director (Hirokazu) Koyama. That's what you get when our scripting team takes the baton from him and kneads the assets into a screen. Mahou Tsukai no Yoru was relatively low on the CG count but was still very rich in content because of how clever the scripters were in composing the screens.
Nasu: The scripters are not the only ones responsible for making a classic visual novel look this cinematic. We also have to thank the immense amount of sprites Takeuchi's graphical team made.
Takeuchi: I made a lot, so it'd be easy to see the main heroines on the most varied scenes. Most were done trying to stay one step ahead of the game, on assumptions they might be necessary, so in the end, our team couldn't find a place for all of them.
There are shelved sprites? What a waste.
Takeuchi: To my surprised, most of the ones I made just because I thought the move or the expression would look cool went unused. I wish we could locate a good spot for them. It'd add a nice spice to the game and made my work not have been for nothing.
The next question is about the music. In addition to Keita Haga, your musician for the doujin version, Hideyuki Fukasawa is joining the team. What kind of soundtrack are you making?
Takeuchi: We had Fukusawa as the main composer for this game because Haga was too busy making music for FGO. Most songs are based on the ones Haga composed for the doujin back in the day, so we could say Fukusawa is composing while Haga is setting the direction. The process followed this format for the most part, but the OST does have some tracks composed by Haga's own hands, and some by Mr. Kegani, who we had hired to compose the main theme.
Nasu: All songs included in the doujin version have been improved to sound like the songs in the trailer did.
Takeuchi: At the first phase of production, Fukusawa was struggling a lot to get a good grasp of what TsukiR was supposed to feel like as a game. But during production, we've been slowly solidifying Tsukihime's new image, so he managed to make a lot of tracks that elevate the excitement of a Kinoko Nasu Urban Fantasy Game. TsukiR's OST is an absolute blast to listen through.
Nasu: I had to send Fukusawa the game's complete story file because the story is the only thing we had ready at the time... It took forever before he understood how things would look like. But after this long period of trials and tribulations, every piece he composed was truly wonderful... "Our battle OST rocks! Wait, but it doesn't mesh well with this other battle... Could you please make another one?", rinse and repeat until we ended with over 90 tracks on our OST.
Fukusawa worked on many of the best tracks on Mahou Tsukai no Yoru. Is there any track on Tsukihime that hit your heart as hard, Mr. Nasu?
Nasu: Many. All tracks on both routes are masterpieces. I get to listen to these songs on my way back from work 2 whole years before everyone else can. This is my creator's privilege.
By the way, Mr. Nasu, in TsukiR you're credited not only as the writer but also as the director. What was your role here?
Nasu: Nothing different from what I always did. I talk with the visual department, request songs, supervise the voice recording, etc. It's all meant to improve on the story, so if anything is not doing that, I have to make some minor adjustments. The only thing that changed is that I recently learned that society refers to this role of
seeing everything and taking responsibility as "directing".
Takeuchi: Nasu was the head behind all of Type-Moon's VNs, not only TsukiR. That's what makes Nasu different from a writer who works behind a producer or a director. We have our crew of visual staff, coders, and musicians working very hard on their roles, but despite their efforts, our final product will be
a Kinoko Nasu game. That makes it appropriate to say Kinoko Nasu is the writer and director.
But one thing that allowed TsukiR to rise to this level of quality was this support from the production staff who stayed with you for almost 20 years.
Takeuchi: Yeah. We don't pay much attention since we're always together, but taking this look back at everyone's individual jobs, we see everyone is really high-spec. One thing I felt now that we're TsukiR's last production stages is that we're not experts in one field each, we're all experts in multiple fields. Aside from drawing, an artist also plans the visuals and helps with other people's parts. I'm being reminded that with this level of constant elite support, even the smallest crew can make a hit visual novel.
I believe this was produced in parallel with FGO. Did this point make anything difficult?
Takeuchi: Producing FGO is like publishing a weekly manga, and producing TsukiR was like producing a movie while the whole staff focuses on keeping the manga's weekly release going. Both games mean a lot to us, and we wanted to give them our full attention, without compromises. Without FGO, TsukiR would have been completed earlier, but there are some places we could only reach because FGO happened. I couldn't be more proud of how things happened.
Nasu: That's right. Without FGO, TsukiR would have been out earlier, but we have been a lot less demanding about its quality. I mentioned before that
FGO is the game you play casually while
TsukiR is the game you adjust your posture to play. Making both at the same time was important to keep this dynamic constantly in my mind.
We can throw away the outdated parts and Tsukihime's fundamental appeal will remain
How much of the doujin version of Tsukihime will remain on the remake?
Nasu: Barely anything was kept intact from the source text. Imagine we disassembled the doujin Tsukihime, and then rebuilt it with new pieces. The old pieces were discarded on the spot, but the reassembled object retains the same shape it always had. One writer who playtested for me said
it was an unusual experience. "It's all made of things I know, of things I've seen before, and yet it's all so new. That's a new way to create a remake.", he said. Those words meant a lot to me because that was exactly the kind of game I was trying to make.
Thank you. Mr. Testplayer's words tell us what the game will be like very precisely.
Nasu: The doujin version is a lot less polished than people think. Working on this remake made me painfully aware that the game was the very definition of amateurishness, but the foolhardy power and passion put into were so huge that people look into it warmly enough to overlook that amateurishness. We saw TsukiR's production as 20 years spent gathering experience so that we could revive Tsukihime just for these fans.
What do you believe to be the core part that makes Tsukihime good? The one thing that makes it stay Tsukihime even after all the old pieces were discarded?
Nasu: Upon a thorough examination, I'd say it's how no matter incident happens, you're always face-to-face with the heroine. In many games nowadays, the heroine's presence just isn't very important. Most of them are pursuing a story, and the heroine never gets to be anything more than a component that exists just for the plot's benefit. That might be a big current trend, maybe even the mark of an era. Tsukihime and Fate/stay Night, on the other hand, treat their heroines as
the center of the story. We solve the case because we must, but the heroine in front of us is a lot more important. Even I, when I first played the complete versions of Arcueid's and Ciel's route, reminded myself after 20 years: "Ah... I wasn't trying to make a romantic game, but that was way more romantic than I expected..."
Love blooms better in extreme situations.
Nasu: Yes. I think playing a route will make you fall in love with its heroine. I can't hide that I fell for all of them... The art and voices were so intense I went out for the wool and came home shorn... I finished Arc's route thinking "I see... I've lived my whole life just to meet this Arc... Hehe, how cute...", and then I went to play Ciel's route, the speech changed to "I can't believe this... Ciel is my waifu...". And when I returned to my senses, I remind myself that I'm too old to be saying those things (laughs).
(laughs) It's great that things can feel this new with someone you knew for 20 years already.
Nasu: I have to comment on how great Takeuchi's new Arcueid and Ciel look. And not only that, but their voice acting is also wonderful. The girls from the original can't compete with that.
By the way, I heard the news that after TsukiR's release, a two-player fighting game titled Melty Blood:Type Lumina (shortened as MB:TL) will be released. What are you aiming for with that?
Nasu: You'll know the details of this project in your
interview with the developer duo from French Bread. TsukiR tells the story of the Near Moon, so I still have to make the Far Moon, and the players must know about one more thing I'd want to show. Finishing TsukiR will leave you satisfied, but not full. I approached French Bread in hopes of satiating this hunger with a fighting game.
Where does MB:TL's story happen in relation to TsukiR?
Nasu: An what-if event happening 10 days before TsukiR's starting point. I wanted MB:TL to show a bit of what I couldn't fit inside TsukiR.
What part TsukiR players should pay attention to?
Nasu: We included a lot of battle voices on this one. We tried to do it like Granblue Fantasy VS, where the dialogue changes a lot for specific pairs of characters. For example, when a character takes a hit, they say "You're good!", but when they fight a character they already know all too well, this damage line changes to "Stop!" or "You're annoying!".
I had a lot of fun testing all the different character combinations on that game.
Nasu: When you stop to think about, Shiki fighting Arcueid saying the same things he says to every other vampire he fights feels very wrong. That's why I made MB:TL with a lot of different voice sets to enjoy. For example, Shiki vs Arcueid will feel less like a life-or-death battle and more like a lovey-dovey couple having some fun. When Arcueid's combo lines change from "This will finish you!" to "Of course! Absolutely! I'm a lady!", you see she's having a bit too much fun, even.
Takeuchi: The barks on every attack change? That's amazing, but isn't it a lot of dialogue to make?
Nasu: Yeah. I started doing it just because I felt like it, but I realized this will be the death of me... That said, every bit contributes to the fun. If you try MB:TL after playing TsukiR, it'll feel like the best dessert imaginable.
We talked a lot about many aspects not only of TsukiR but also of MB:TL. Give one final message to the fans eagerly waiting for the release.
Nasu: I had you all waiting for a lot longer than I should, due to miscellaneous problems, pausing the development once, and my own incompetence. However, I finally finished the game and I can proudly say that
everything that happened helped us reach where we are now. Hold on a bit longer until the planned release date, August 26th.
Takeuchi: I must first apologize from the bottom of my heart for the huge gap between the game's announcement and release. The doujin version of Tsukihime was composed of the stories of the 3 main heroines Arcueid, Ciel, and Akiha, and of the two sub-heroines Hisui and Kohaku, but TsukiR is being first released with only Near Moon side, containing Arc and Ciel's pair of main heroine stories, so I must apologize even harder to the fans of the remaining Far Moon heroines. Please wait just a little longer for their stories. We asked ourselves for a long time what we wanted to after releasing Mahou Tsukai no Yoru, often considered the peak of the traditional visual novel genre, and it feels like we finally have a solid answer: a game filled with all the technology, passion, and heart that Nasu's Type-Moon staff can provide. Please look forward to the release day.
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