Hisui and Kohaku (EntityTopic, 13)

From Compile Worlds

Kohaku is a cheerful and energetic (sometimes even hyper) maid at the Tohno mansion where she serves as Akiha's personal maid. She has a younger sister, who is also a maid at the mansion, but other than that no known family. Both Kohaku and her sister are Synchronizers, meaning they have the ability to share energy with people through the transfer of bodily fluids. Hey, just because it has an awesome story, great characters and is very well written, it's still a H-game...

To date, she has appeared in the visual novels Tsukihime, Kagetsu Tohya, the Tsukihime Plus Disc and the 2D fighting games Melty Blood, Melty Blood: ReAct, Melty Blood Act Cadenza and Melty Blood Actress Again. She also made a cameo appearance in Fate/Tiger Colosseum Upper as Magical Amber.

Oh yeah, and a myriad of fan made MUGEN games... >.>

Tsukihime

In Tsukihime Kohaku is seen around the mansion always smiling and laughing, in direct contrast to her sister Hisui, who is almost completely expressionless. She spends her time helping out Akiha and is in charge of cooking in the mansion, and is known to make quite delcious meals. Unfortunately, she is not allowed to clean anywhere inside the mansion, perhaps due to her overly energetic approach which tends to break things and generally leave the place looking as if a tornado had hit it, but she is allowed to sweep up leaves outside. In addition to these, she is also very skilled with medicine and is trained to be a doctor despite only being about 16 years old.

In the Near Side of the moon story routes (Arcueid and Ciel), Kohaku doesn't really play a big part at all. She mostly goes about her jobs as Akiha's maid and chef. In the Far Side routes (everyone else), she begins to play a much larger part of the story.

There's supposed to be a spoiler tag here, so ignore this part.

Although Kohaku is always smiling, laughing and joking, in actuality she's pretty much dead inside. Kohaku and Hisui were brought to the Tohno mansion when they were roughly 7 years old by the then head of the family, Tohno Makihisa, in an attempt to retain his sanity in the while his demonic blood was causing him to start undergoing an inversion impulse, where he would become somewhat insane and probably go on a murderous rampage. On her eigth birthday Makihisa called her to his room, telling her that he had a 'present' for her. Although both the sisters were there, Kohaku convinced him to only use her and to spare her sister. The only way Kohaku had to survive the constant abuse day after day was to kill her emotions and feelings, becoming a mere doll, wearing a smile as a mask to the outside world. She's even completely unresponsive to physical pain anymore, as shown when cuts herself pretty deeply while cooking and doesn't even realize it.

This would normally come as quite a shock, if you didn't just read here before playing the game, as throughout the whole game until you learn this, you would always just assume that Kohaku is the happy, cheerful one and Hisui is the cold, emotionless one, but it turns out it's the exact opposite.

In Hisui's route in the game, Kohaku could really be considered the villain, I guess... She orchestrates the death of a few characters and turned SHIKI into a killer. Near the conclusion of Hisui's True Ending, Kohaku explains the reasons behind her doing this. Mainly just that she needed a reason to move, since a doll can't move on it's own. Since by this point her plans are complete, she has nothing left and stabs herself in the heart with a small knife. As she dies in the Shiki's arms, she gazes endlessly into the deep blue sky with her hollow eyes, not with a fake smile, but with a very sad and quiet face.

In Hisui's Good Ending though, nobody gets killed except SHIKI, who nobody cares about anyway. Kohaku still confesses everything she had done, despite Shiki not wanting her to say it so everything could go on as normal. Instead of stabbing herself, she this time swallows some poison. As she lies dying, Shiki kills the poison in her body using his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, even though the strain of doing this causes him to pass out become blind for a few days. Kohaku survives, but she has absolutely no memory of her past, not knowing who Shiki is or even her own sister. She says she doesn't think she ever liked the name Kohaku and so Shiki and Hisui give her the name Nanaya. It'd make more sense and have a bigger impact if you played the game and got the whole story, rather than reading random wikis to get the story.

In Kohaku's (only) ending, nobody (important) dies, everyone is happy, and Kohaku is off growing sunflowers or something. Yay!

This is where the spoilers end, so you can look again.

Melty Blood

In the Melty Blood games, Kohaku is playable either on her own or as a tag-team with her sister. In the game, she seems very childish and playful and a lot of her attacks are quite strange or comical. She carries a broom which she uses to whack unsuspecting vampires or heads of households in the face with. Her broom also conceals a sword, which is almost as deadly. Aside from these, she mainly attacks with plants and molotov cocktails, though she does boxing glove which she can use to uppercut. Her Arc-Drive attack involves her changing into Mr. Chin (putting on a china dress), charging at the enemy unleashing a barrage of punches before kicking them a few times. If this attack misses, she charges forward and hits the side of the screen, causing her to fall down a picture of her with a dazed face and cat-ears pops up for a few seconds.

Story-wise, Kohaku is able to do all of these things due to the influence of The Night of Wallachia (probably), who also gave her mechanical engineering ability, which she uses to build Mech-Hisui.

She also what I guess you can call a secret animation if during any match you hold the down key for 10-15 seconds. She'll start to laugh and brush end of the broom will start to wag as if it were a tail. Which is awesome.

Magical Amber

Broomstick Girl Magical Amber, or just Magical Amber as her friends call her, is the magical girl version of Kohaku. She wears kemonomimi, a hooded cloak, her normal kimono-y apron, knee high stockings and what appears to be a fox tail. She carries her broom and syringes full of... who knows.

It's unknown exactly what Magical Amber does, besides being awesome and occasionally trying to win the Tiger Cup, but I think it's safe to assume she's what keeps us safe at night.

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