Outline
Tsukihime (月姫, lit. "Moon Princess") is a Japanese adult visual novel created by the doujinshi circle Type-Moon and story by Kinoko Nasu.
The story is based on an adventure game style, with different routes depending on the player's choices. In each route, the heroine changes, and there are multiple endings.
It shares the same world with Kara no Kyoukai and Mahoutsukai no Yoru, which also started out as coterie biography novels, and some of the main characters have been adapted directly from their settings.
Later, a fan disc Kagetsu Tohya was released in 2001, and after 2002, a fighting game MELTY BLOOD series was produced in collaboration with another circle, French-Bread.
It is famous as the first work that TYPE-MOON released to the world (or rather, it is correct to say that TYPE-MOON is the coterie circle that was originally formed for the purpose of creating Tsukihime), and it boasted record sales through word of mouth as a coterie work with a level of quality comparable to commercial works, which was very rare in the coterie game market at the time. As one of the few examples of a doujin work entering the media mix, it is said to have had a huge influence on the way doujin works were produced before and after Tsukihime.
However, as TYPE-MOON became more commercialized, they ended their activities as a doujin circle with Tsuki-Bako (月箱, "Moon Box") a compilation of their past works, and stopped reselling them.
As a result, illegal copies of the game have been circulating, and even today, official copies are sold at a high price in the used market.
