A royal member of the vampire race known as the True Ancestors. After suffering through a traumatic event, a naively innocent side of her was somehow released. She now lives as a free-spirited, almost childish, princess. She is incredibly powerful and, despite being a vampire, is able to survive in direct sunlight. She has no desire to threaten human society, instead hunting other vampires known as Dead Apostles. While pursuing her greatest enemy, she arrives in Souya, where Shiki lives. Although a fateful encounter awaits her and Shiki here, a story of an earlier possibility is about to unfold.
Arcueid is shown to be a whimsical individual who, although knowing the basics of the modern era, does not seem to know about social norms. Both Nasu and Takeuchi think of her “image color” as white because she is pure in terms of appearance and personality. Once, she shows up at Shiki’s school and waves to him from the school rear courtyard, luckily for Shiki only Ciel spots her. Her behaviour is almost childlike, due to the lonely nature of her upbringing, although she is over 800 years old, she spent most of it asleep and knows nearly nothing about the world or how to interact with others. As she works together with Shiki to stop Roa, she gradually begins to enjoy life and starts to like Shiki as more than just a friend.
Brunestud, and has been likened to be the vampire royal family, although this is not strictly true. The True Ancestors were a race of beings copied from Type-Moon, the ultimate being of the moon, also known as the Crimson Moon. Long ago the will of the planet had no defense mechanism against humanity, nothing to keep them in check. Thus the Crimson Moon came down and offered to help the planet make a race of ultimate beings to rule over humanity, thus resulting in them being the “consciousness of the planet”. True Ancestors are alike to occurrences such as earthquakes and typhoons rather than individuals as their actions, while evil and without justification, would come as naturally to her (Arcueid and other True Ancestors) as breathing. However the race was fundamentally flawed, they had a desire to drink blood that their original, the Crimson Moon, had. The True Ancestors needed to use a large portion of their power to suppress this impulse, but as there was no cure, and with passage of time the impulse grew, more and more True Ancestors fell and began drinking blood indiscriminately, while others most likely went into eternal sleep.
Kouma Kishima is the man who eliminated the Nanaya clan under orders of Makihisa Tohno. He is a member of the Kishima clan, a clan which is a sub-family of the Tohnos but with much stronger demon blood running through them.
Kouma himself, however, is a tranquil character, similar to a mountain ascetic aiming for enlightenment in order to find meaning in his own existence. As the Kishima have fallen into decline, Kouma would have been fine if he just quietly faded into obscurity in his forest den, letting the line die out for good.
Kiri Nanaya’s existence has affected Kouma a lot. Before his death match with Kiri, Kouma never felt the sensation of truly being alive until Kiri engrave the “sensation of being alive” into Kouma. But, because Kiri showed fierce resistance to the end and even caused serious wounds on Kouma and made him feel pain for the first time in his life, the mixed-blood recognized the demon-hunter as being the embodiment of Hell.
Kouma was born into the Kishima family as something that shouldn’t have been born. He is the eldest son of the Kishima. As a family of Mixed-Bloods, they continued to mix with Oni while attempting to make their bloodline stronger, and the sin of their several hundred years of work finally took form in their generation. He had preserved the desired purity they had been waiting for when he was born, but even they, who were not normal, realized that he was the path to their destruction. They thought that this is where the bloodlines of all hybrids end, and that they were either just terribly slower than the others or arrived there terribly early.
Calling him a Demon Child, they desperately tried to hide away his existence. He was given a dark, traditional Japanese-style room, and that was all the freedom he was allowed. He was a small child, so he was likely satisfied with the space. He would also often glare at the space as if it were too large, but he would have been unable to voice his complaints in the first place. He didn’t understand people, their behaviors, expressions, or words, or anything else very well. He thought that he must have been a dog rather than a human, and if that wasn’t the case, the severe gap must have meant he had gone crazy.
He was never taught anything, and as no one talked to him in the first place, there was no need to learn words or tell others his thoughts. His eyes could pull out the inner side of people. Most of the people who met him were nothing but terrified, so that is how he learned people were like that. Since they only acted like that, it was natural there was no need to learn words. He would have rather been among the animals in the forest he liked so much, but they couldn’t let the family’s successor, even if only in formality, move around in such a manner. It was likely an embarrassment for them to have the next head wish to live as a beast.
While wild, he wasn’t a fool like they so believed, and he matured very quickly. He learned how to seal his power early during his life, and he never once opened his cage since he was born. He kept suppressing his thirst and the beast called himself, much like a fasting that began right when he was born. It is normal that a hybrid only feels such bloodlust after growing up as a human and finding something in need of protection. The Inversion Impulse of his bloodline destroys a person within a year, even with the mind of an adult. He understood that fact quietly, even though he was a child without words or the concept of a family.
He was trying to protect his family even without knowing, even without understanding how such things as a father, mother, or siblings are related to him. He still suppressed himself to protect them, likely because he knew that returning to soil peacefully someday after being forgotten was the right thing. It didn’t last long, and the one who put an end to it was someone other than him. Receiving the curse, “You were out of your mind since you were born.”, he was shot in the head with a bullet. The words were true, as he was different since he was born, which is why he was able to suppress the blood longer and didn’t go crazy like them. The boy who had been out of his mind since he was born was unable to even die from such a thing as a bullet.
After the mansion burned down and the clan was slaughtered, only he was left. However, because the Kishima family itself has already died out, he is treated as the family head. It was easy for him to end something like a family because he was unable to understand it in the first place. He possessed no regret, emotion, remorse, or feelings, and he was a living being who could only exist that way from the beginning. The head of the Saiki family arrived afterward, and they eventually took him into their mansion. Barely ten years old, he was chained by both his arms and legs while being covered in wounds. He encountered Kiri Nanaya during his slaughter of the Saiki family, and he had his eye crushed due to Kiri’s unconscious idea that it would let him defeat Kouma later in life. His head simply dropped down without a scream, and Kiri left the room while the dripping blood stained the floor.
Due to Makihisa Tohno orders, he slaughtered the Nanaya clan. The last man standing was Kiri Nanaya and Kouma faced him to a death match, the gap between him and other humans was finally solved due to meeting the same type of person as him. Since Kiri was just a human, the outcome of the fight was decided from the beginning.
He spared the life of the young Shiki Nanaya due to having felt that the two would meet again in the future. After the Nanaya clan massacre, Kishima voluntarily distanced himself from human society and lived as a hermit in the mountains until 3 years prior to the events of Tsukihime, when he was allowed to reside in the Tohno mansion as the head of the Kishima family. Even while living in the Tohno mansion, he was rather quiet and distanced himself from the other residents. Kohaku notes that whenever she called him ‘young master’, he would give her a cold look and leave. When Akiha requested that he and the other residents leave the mansion (due to her calling Shiki back), he apparently went back to living in the mountains.
Shiki is in fact not a real member of the Tohno family, is not Akiha’s biological brother, and is not Makihisa’s son. While the Tohno family is a family with demon blood, Shiki’s real surname is Nanaya, a family of powerful demon-slaying assassins. It is revealed in Kagetsu Tohya that he is the son of Kiri Nanaya. The Nanaya clan lived in a secluded mansion in the mountains, but was one night destroyed by the Tohno and Kouma Kishima. Shiki was the only survivor of that attack. In a moment of amused irony, Makihisa spared and adopted the boy because his name was homophonic with the name of Makihisa’s eldest son, Shiki.
Shiki lived in a small Japanese-style building on the grounds of the Tohno’s western-style mansion for a time, learning to accept and be accepted by his new siblings. Although he was lonely and unwilling to leave his room at first, eventually he warmed to the cheerful red-haired girl Hisui who would come every day to ask him to play, and in turn lead his shy and often-nervous sister outside as well. He, his sister, his brother, and the red-haired girl would play together frequently.
Eight years before the start of the game, he was involved in a life-threatening accident, which led to anemic symptoms and left him with a large scar on his chest. Due to these symptoms, he suffers from frequent collapsing and fainting. Eight years before the beginning of the game, everything changed. Although Shiki did not know it, the Tohno family’s demon blood led to inhuman urges in all its members; every descendant eventually became insane from its effects, a process called “inversion impulse”. When this happens, the person loses all ability for conscious thought and becomes a monster with only the mind to kill and consume others. One hot summer day as Shiki played with his brother SHIKI and sister Akiha, SHIKI inverted without warning, and immediately attacked Akiha. Shiki managed to shield Akiha at the cost of his own life; the wound that SHIKI caused by piercing him in the chest became the large scar that Shiki would bear from that day forward.
It is the duty of the Tohno’s family head to police demon activity in the area, and specifically to execute any Tohno who underwent inversion so that he or she cannot do the sort of damage that such inhuman beings inevitably do. Makihisa arrived on the scene immediately and, without a second thought, killed his own son. However, neither Shiki nor SHIKI died that day. Although Shiki did not know it then, his sister Akiha provided him with half of her own lifeforce, keeping him alive. In turn, SHIKI instinctively stole half of Shiki’s borrowed lifeforce to avoid his own death. It is this lack of energy that causes Shiki’s anemic tendencies.
In addition to the physical problems, the accident also caused Shiki’s eyes to develop a peculiar ability, the ability to see lines superimposed on objects and people. If Shiki traces these lines with a sharp tool, the object immediately falls apart along them regardless of the amount of force used. Upon discovery of this ability, Shiki understood how destructive it was and how fragile the world around him could be. Because his eyes would not return to normal, the realization began to gnaw at him.
Fortunately, a few days after his time in the hospital, he ran outside and met Aoko Aozaki. Aoko (whom Shiki decided to call Sensei) comforted him during the next few days. Shiki was eager to impress Aoko, thus he demonstrated the ability of his eyes by destroying a tree. Aoko reprimanded him by slapping him and explained to him that what he had done was unjust. Aoko later provided a pair of magical glasses which, when worn, removed the lines from sight.
When Makihisa realized this convoluted state of affairs, he concocted a ruse to deceive the outside world. As the head of a publicly important family, which held an influential position in business, he could not allow others to know that the eldest son of the family had become inhuman, died, or disappeared. To conceal this, Makihisa locked SHIKI away and hypnotized Shiki into believing that he was the Tohno’s eldest son instead, erasing the details of that day from the boy’s mind. After installing Shiki in SHIKI’s place as eldest son, Makihisa then sent Shiki away to live with the Arima family branch under the pretext that a boy so dreadfully injured, and who could die at any time from a fragile constitution could not be the heir to the Tohno house. Despite the necessity of making Shiki believe in his new identity as a Tohno, however, Makihisa retains an antique knife inscribed with the name of the Nanaya clan, and later bequeathes it to Shiki, although the ambivalent nature of Japanese kanji causes Shiki to misread the inscription as “Nanatsu-Yoru”, or “Seven Nights”.
Because of his poor health, Shiki was removed from the Tohno household by his father, Makihisa Tohno, despite being the eldest son of the family. Instead, he was sent to live with a distant branch of the Tohno family named Arima. He frequented the practice of doctor Sougen Jinan during this time, and once had his first sexual experience with his daughter, Tokie Jinan. At the start of the game, Shiki was called back to the Tohno mansion after eight years of absence due to Makihisa’s death, called back by his younger sister, Akiha Tohno. Although he had not seen his sister in those eight years, she has grown into a proper lady of a high-class family, and after removing all of the family residents and servants of the mansion except for a pair of maids, had chosen to invite him to return.
Melty Blood: Type Lumina will retail digitally at $50 for the standard edition. A $70 Deluxe Edition will include a digital guidebook to the series, along with a music player loaded with tracks selected from the entire Melty Blood franchise. Melty Blood: Type Lumina, will leap back into the ring as soon as September 30, arriving on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and has also been newly confirmed for PC (via Steam).
Play with your favorite characters in this single player mode. Enjoy each character’s story, take on score attack challenges, and more.
Versus
Battle against other players or the CPU and view replays in this mode. Here you have the freedom to choose the characters, stages, and more.
Network
Battle other players online in this mode.
*Please note that an internet connection and an online account for the platform you’ll be playing on will be required to access this mode.
**Cross-platform battles are not supported.
Training
Thoroughly practice character moves in this mode.
Master the game mechanics and improve at playing the game through free training, tutorials, and missions.
Gallery
Head on over to Gallery Mode to view character profiles and pixel art, and to listen to character voices, unlocked by meeting certain conditions in the game.
■ Systems
Rapid Beat
Press attack buttons in rapid succession to execute this simple but hard-hitting combo!
Shield / Shield Counter
Use Shield to block your opponent’s attack, and then press an attack button to follow up with a Shield Counter!
Magic Circuit
The gauge shown at the bottom of the screen. Once filled up, it can be spent to use EX Specials, or trigger a Heat status!
Special / EX Special
Specials are high-power moves. Spend Magic Circuit gauges to dish out the even more powerful EX Specials!
Heat / Blood Heat
A heat status gives you a boost to your abilities, recovers HP and enables you to use Arc Drive. In a Blood Heat, you’ll be able to use Last Arc!
Arc Drive / Last Arc
Arc Drive is an extremely powerful Special that uses three full gauges to perform!
Last Arc is a super Special that dishes out incredible damage at the cost of four full Magic Circuit gauges, but is also usable under Blood Heat status!
Moon Skill
Moon Skills are powerful Specials that can be unleashed by consuming the Moon Icons that appear next to the Life Gauge.
They deal greater damage than regular Specials, and are not only powerful but easy to activate with simple controls using combinations of the directional buttons and attack buttons.
Moon Drive
A power-up that can be activated by using all of your Moon Icons any time you have more than one half full.
It temporarily boosts your Moon Skill, increases your Magic Circuit or number of possible Jumps/Dashes, as well as providing various other effects.
