Books: Lunar Legend Tsukihime #4

The fourth volume of Lunar Legend Tsukihime answers a few of the sticky questions that opened up in the previous volume, but it also leaves us with about as many new ones. The more we learn about Shiki Tohno and his strange family, the vampire-girl Arcueid he’s fighting side-by-side with, the clutch of abilities he has at his command, and the bizarre array of underworld denizens he’s pitted against, the more we worry about him. We don’t worry about him being killed, but rather we fear that he will simply switch sides to make life easier for himself. Better to be a predator and discard all fear, than to hunt other predators and never stop living in fear.

Let’s start with his family. From the opening battle that features Tohno’s sister pitted against a strange intruder in the house — it’s actually Ciel, Tohno’s “exchange student” classmate — it’s clear that Tohno’s family will go to any and all lengths to protect their secrets. Tohno’s sister has a gallery of powers of her own, something she has thus far concealed from her brother, but that secret will not remain bottled up for long — especially not after the battle that sprawls across the opening chapters of the volume. Ciel, too, ends up confounding Tohno more than a little: as you may have guessed by now, she’s no mere transfer student, and when she takes her leave of Tohno and his classmates (for now, anyway), she thoughtfully erases all traces of her presence there … except with Tohno.

Article originally written for AMN. Click here to read full text.