Type Moon

Note to self, never attempt to review a whole company worth of products at once again.  

All right people, after some drama at home, I decided to review some of the products of one of my personal favorite companies, TYPE MOON.

First off is the visual novel Tsukihime.  In this novel, you are Shiki Nanaya, and 18 year old who survived a near death experience, and left him with something called the 'mystic eyes of death perception'.  These eyes allow him to see lines on objects, that if he cuts the line, he cuts the object in half.  Recent attacks in his home town have made things rather strange, and it's up to Shiki to get to the bottom of things.

Over all storyline wise, this is probably one of TYPE MOONs better stories, so if you ever get the chance, I'd defiantly suggest it, however there are scenes in it that I would NOT suggest to younger children.

Another warning, if you get Arcueids 'true' end, and do not cry a little, you have no heart.

Next off is another visual novel, FATE/ STAY NIGHT.  Here, you follow Shiro Emiya, and his journey in the war for the Holy Grail.  In this war, each one of seven magi gets a heroic spirit to fight the others.  This spirits are heroes from legend, like King Arthur, Heracles, and the enigmatic spirit Archer.  Here Shiro will do what ever it takes to become a hero, and make everyone happy.  

This novel came out after Tsukihime, but it was my first TYPE MOON series, so I have fond memories of it.  The default, "FATE" arc gives a general introduction the story, while the "Unlimited Bladeworks" route is in my opinion the best route.  The final route, "Heavans Feel" feels like just a bunch of random stuff thrown together in an attempt to make a story.  

Just like Tsukihime, I would not suggest this to a younger audience.

Next up is Kara no Kyoukai, which is a 7 episode long series animated by ufotable.  Were as ufotable did an amazing job with the animations, the series it's self is confusing.  Even if you watch the series in the order that you're supposed to, it is still an incredibly confusing series, that if you miss even one little thing you'll be left wondering what in the world is going on.  Really, I'd only suggest episode 5 of this series, because that one makes sense on it's own, otherwise you'll just be confused by everything.

The fate/ stay night anime is up next.  Also done by ufotable (which does all type moon animations), this series runs into a different problem form Kara.  Namely, the visual novel that this series is based on has multiple routes, that do not work well together at all.  This anime attempted to mush them all together, with horrible results.  Really the biggest plus of watching this was seeing the archer vs berserker fight, which is one of the coolest fights in any anime I've seen yet.   

Speaking of fights, Fate/ unlimited codes is a fighting game for the PSP that features playable characters mostly from fate/ stay night.  You start off with all the characters but one, and to be honest the characters are not balanced at all.  Assassin in this has a combo that hits for around 2100 damage.  Berserker has a combo that is just as long, and does 2100 damage about three hits in.  The AI in this game is also for the most part so easy, I had no trouble beating it on hard first time through as all the characters.  It's a fun little game, but only if you don't have to pay to much for it.

Speaking of fights AGAIN here's Unlimited Bladeworks.  Beautifully animated, but really lacking story wise, the creator of the movie has basically flat out stated you're supposed to read the book before you attempt to watch this movie.  It is a animation of the most popular route from Fate/ Stay Night and be confusing if you haven't read it before.  Really this movie was made just for the amazing fight scenes, and not to much else.

Fate/ Zero is the prequel to Fate/ Stay Night, taking ten years before.  Unlike the other stories so far, this is just a story written, with very little pictures and no extra arcs.  Overall, I like the heroes in this war far more then I do in Fate/ Stay Night.  You'll see a few familiar faces here, but for the most part this is a stand alone novel 4 acts long, with each act having about 10 chapters.  This is defiantly one of my favorite books that I have read, and I'd really suggest you read it.

and here's carnival phantasm, one of the flat out silliest things I have ever seen.  Type Moon has taken all of the main characters from Tsukihime and Fate/ Stay Night and thrown them into wacky and flat out silly situations.  There's only 4 episodes out so far and that's the whole first season, so really you have no reason not to watch this insanity at it's finest.

Finally we come to the Fate/ Zero nime, the most recent addition to the Type moon family.  This anime only has one episode out right now, and it's in such high quality my laptop has rendering problems (and my laptop plays portal 2, and starcraft 2 perfectly with no lag).  In this first episode it's really all exposition, setting up for the rest of the anime which so far has followed the original novel perfectly.  I have high hopes for this series, but you really can't base a anime off the first episode.

Now, I'm sure that I missed a LOT of series (I know I missed all the branches off of tsukihime and the mangas made), but this was taking long enough as it was and I didn't want you guys to wait any longer.