The fifth volume of Lunar Legend Tsukihime is a slowing-down and a summing-up, a way for both the creators and the audience to catch their collective breaths. There’s nowhere nearly the level of action found in the previous volumes, but now that I think about it, LLT’s action has always been relatively sparse. A series this dark under the skin benefits from being slowly paced; a lot of bang-bang back-to-back action would just make it rushed.

To that end, the only real action in the whole of this volume is right at the end, with most of the book taken up by two things: Tohno delving into a key portion of his childhood, and he and Arcueid spending a day together and growing that much more … well, if not close, then certainly empathetic. If it weren’t for the fact that one of them (Tohno) carried inhuman powers courtesy of his bloodline and the other (Arcueid) was a centuries-old vampire, they’d be out on a date—something Arcueid and Tohno both realize during the course of things. Maybe it wouldn’t be all that hard for either of them to pretend everything was normal, and just live as if nothing was different …