As a longtime fan of Type-Moon and Nasuverse series, Witch on the Holy Night was like re-experiencing the first time I became enthralled with the fascinating world-building, writing, and characters the series is known for. Initially released in 2012 for Japan only, the Witch on the Holy Night visual novel was re-released with every aspect of the original release enhanced such as full voice acting from an all-star voice cast, enhanced visual presentation, and most importantly for me, an official English translation so I could finally experience the story for the first time. It’s no exaggeration when I say that this visual novel is the new gold standard for VNs moving forward where every aspect of this remaster is top of the line in production quality. Combined with its story, the final product of Witch on the Holy Night serves as a perfect entry point even for fans new to the Nasuverse.
Witch on the Holy Night centers around Aoko Aozaki (CV: Haruka Tomatsu), a fledgling mage who faces her problems head-on. She tends to be more selfish than you would expect from a heroine, but her resolve is her strongest trait as she finds her life caught in between the world she once knew and the magical world that is now expected of her. While Aoko comes from a family of mages, as the youngest sister, she was not expected to inherit the Aozaki family magic. So, her life up until this point was originally going to be relatively normal until she is thrust into the position of inheriting the magic, and with that comes the responsibility of learning the magecraft and her new responsibilities. Aoko lives in the Kuonji Mansion on the edge of the sleepy town of Misaki City with her housemate Alice Kuonji, (CV: Kana Hanazawa) who comes from an extremely wealthy magical family. Alice knows all about mage society since birth and is quite attuned to the magical world’s morality code, and Aoko and Alice enjoy a relatively tension-free sort of working partnership rather than friendship until that is uprooted with the arrival of Soujyuro Sizuki (CV. Yuuske Kobayashi), a new student to Aoko’s high school who originally came from the mountain villages and is completely new to the modern world. He unfortunately learns of the secret existence of magecraft, which is forbidden by outsiders and punishable by death in mage society.
One of the reasons why Witch on the Holy Night is such an accessible entry point for newcomers is the way that Aoko and Soujyuro are both used to explain the world of magecraft and to carefully guide the reader through the steps of worldbuilding without having to resort to lengthy exposition. While Aoko is initially familiar with magecraft from her family but lacks experience as a mage, Soujyuro is completely lost even in non-mage society, much less mage society, which might as well be the same for him based on his upbringing. This does lead to some hilarious misunderstandings between Aoko and Soujyuro because Aoko is the type of person who would signal indirectly but firmly of her annoyances due to her direct nature, but Soujyuro is the exact person who would not understand the social cues due to his previous life as a mountain man. With respect to the magical world, the story uses these characters to explain a lot of common Type-Moon vernacular that gets tossed around frequently in other series that could be understood by long-time fans, but might sound like jargon to others.
One other strength of the story is that the story scale is relatively small within the universe, which allows breathing room for the needed exposition to tie everything of importance together. While the first few hours are not nearly as ‘magical’ in events as the later parts of the story, the writing in these portions is snappy and filled with plenty of hilarious and entertaining moments that give amazing depth to every character involved and adds to the story’s boiling points and emotional climaxes. There’s so much I could talk about in the story that had an impact on me, from the way that the story relates the sleepy quiet town of Misaki City as an allegory to the state of the mage society itself, to the absolutely vivid emotional spectrum I felt going from the tense action scenes and touching character moments to near total emotional devastation throughout this story.
Looking past the incredible writing and story, this remake has many updates to the visuals, sounds, and voice work that really elevate this story beyond any visual novel for sale today. From the visuals in the action scenes to the incredible voice work, the production spared no expense in almost making this nearly twenty-hour story filled with full voice acting, unique CGs, music, and animations that really show how much money was poured into this visual novel. The voice work is world class with numerous famous voice actors, and I’m so excited for the announced upcoming anime production, but I would also like to make the argument that the writing and the visual presentation itself present such a high bar that I do not envy those taking on this awesome project. I would also like to thank the localization teams that translated and captured Nasu’s writing style and would like to advocate for the English localization of the Tsukihime remake series. Witch on the Holy Night serves as a prequel to the main Tsukihime story while still maintaining its own identity. In the past, we’ve heard rumblings that Witch on the Holy Night was intended to be its own separate series. I think that with Witch on the Holy Night, the localization team should be given praise for their work and hopefully we can see work to bring a lot more of these unreleased stories to a wider audience, especially adding platforms such as PC where many visual novels are thriving.
