Shingetsutan Tsukihime (Lunar Legend Tsukihime)
Family secrets

// Synopsis: Shiki is a high school student that recently moved back to his family's home after the death of his father. He has been gifted with the ability to see the Death Lines in any person or object. One day he happens upon a beautiful girl and in a haze murders her. But she comes back to life and is apparently a vampire hunting other vampires. In the course of helping her, more terrifying secrets about his family's history that he has no memories of are revealed.

// Review: If there are vampires in it, I'm there. At first I thought this was shaping up to be an Inuyasha type anime where they kill vampire du juor, and then move on to the next one. But in this short 12 episode series, there is really very little action and most of the time is spent on character exposition.

/ The over-arching storyline involves Shiki and the vampire princess Arcueid hunting down some other badass known as Roa that continually reincarnates. But surrounding Shiki is his very peculiar younger sister and their maids who are identical twins, and a cheery but suspicious female classmate. During the course of the anime, each of their secrets are unraveled.

/ I found myself constantly intrigued by the storytelling, but the last half of the episode's romantic/harem sub-plot became a little suffocating. But this anime is based off of a dating sim game so it's not that surprising. Disappointingly though, like a lot of anime, the lamest character was the main one. I guess most of this stuff is targeted towards emasculated, unconfident, shy teenage boys, so the main characters are always created in that mold to make them more relatable and marketable. It also doesn't hurt that impossibly gorgeous girls find those pathetic qualities irresistible.

/ The original content birthed a couple video games, manga and this anime series. But since it's only 12 episodes I recommend following up watching this with a stop on by Wikipedia to fill in the plot holes.

// Wrap up: This is a mature series that thankfully doesn't get too gratuitous with the drama. With a little bit of action and a generous amount of romance, 12 episodes is just right.

Entertainment rating: 3