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*1
Hideyuki Kikuchi The end-all of Japanese fantasy fiction writers as far as TYPE-MOON staff is concerned. His representative work is of course, 「Vampire Hunter D」, and the 「Demon City」 series.
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*3
Pen-and-paper RPG
An RPG played on a tabletop with multiple players and one called a game master. For those that aren't familiar, think of it as an advanced version of "pretend." In his student years, Nasu spent his days creating his own world and playing with his friends in it.
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*5
Comiket
"Comic Market." It's Japan's largest doujin sale event, held twice a year in summer and winter. TYPE-MOON currently has a booth there now. Please come visit!
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*7
Funky Sun A name that sends shivers down people's spines, and most likely would have changed TYPE-MOON's history for the worst.
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Part One - The Night Before Tsukihime
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"He was the one I asked to lend me an eraser. (Laughs)"
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Editor
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I'd like to start off by asking you two how you became friends.
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Nasu
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It's not a very interesting story, but we went to middle school together. I was a very forgetful kid, and I forgot to bring an eraser to the new classroom I was going to be in. So I looked at the kid next to me and said "Sorry, but can you lend me an eraser?" He was the one I asked. (Laughs) And that tied our bonds for life...
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Takeuchi
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All I remember is at the time he had asked me "Can you lend me an eraser?" so fast that at first I couldn't tell what he was saying.
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Editor
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But you were still only classmates then, right? Or was there something already between you?
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Takeuchi
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I read a lot of novels when I was young. I tried to recommend some to Nasu, but...
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Nasu
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I didn't really read that much. As I hung out more with Takeuchi, I found that we had similar tastes in manga, so I gradually got interested in reading. Then one day, he lent me 「Alien-Treasure Street」 by Hideyuki Kikuchi (*1). That sent me over the edge. And as I kept asking him to lend me more novels, I started to get interested in writing them myself.
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Editor
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So you're saying that Hideyuki Kikuchi inspired you to write novels?
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Nasu
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Yes. There's no other author that's influenced me more than he has.
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"We began by making shounen-centric works."
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Editor
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Before you created "TYPE-MOON," what kind of things did you two make in your circle?
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Nasu
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Before TYPE-MOON, we were in a circle called "Bamboo Broom" (*2). I guess that was our start.
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Takeuchi
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It wasn't in any sort of circle, but in middle school we got together with our friends and played pen-and-paper RPGs (*3). I think that has to be the oldest example. I got a job in Hiroshima for a bit at one point, and one of my friends there was doing doujin work, so he invited me to start as well. Then I invited Nasu. We started by creating shounen-centric works for Comitia (*4), but after about a year we started TYPE-MOON up.
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Editor
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So all your work before TYPE-MOON was focused around Comitia?
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Takeuchi
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Yes, Comitia and Comiket. (*5) We started out working with another circle, but split up along the way.
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Nasu
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Until we started TYPE-MOON, we had been working together with them. They were really busy, though, and didn't want to work on making games. And once we started making 「Tsukihime」, we weren't able to do anything else. So we figured it was a good place for us to break off, and that brought us to where we are now.
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"He said it was going to be short and easy to read..." (Takeuchi)
"I thought it would be a turning point for myself." (Nasu)
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Editor
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So you published Takeuchi-san's original manga and Nasu-san's original novels at Comitia?
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Nasu
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I was writing one novel a year for magazines back then, but I would always go over the page limit, and then I would end up not being able to publish them at all. It's a pain to go back through and cut everything, and my general attitude was "I wrote it, and it's finished, so it's done." That's when Takeuchi came back from Hiroshima, saying he was going to start a homepage, and that he wanted me to do something for it. I said "Well, I could write a serial novel," sort of offhand, and that was the start of 「Kara no Kyoukai」. That was just before Takeuchi first went to Comitia. When we got into Comitia, he wanted me to bring my stuff there too, so I had to fiddle with getting it all together for that.
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Takeuchi
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I was hoping people would come to our homepage to read Nasu's novel there. And of course, there were people who did... but a novel on the web is sort of hard to read. And we didn't really hear any especially good comments when we sold it at Comitia. Although, I told him before we began the serialization, "make sure it's something short and easy to read!"
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All
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(Strained laughs.)
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Nasu
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Well, the reason it ended up like it did was because I knew I'd run out of stream if I had to keep writing short stories with totally different settings each week. I figured it'd be better for me to just cut up a big story into episode-sized chunks. And if each episode was self-contained, then it'd be easier to write, too. That's how I started out. Of course, once I got about three episodes in I really got attached to the story, and thought "this could be a turning point for me." That's when I really started putting a lot of effort into it, and it went out of control...(Laughs) And that's the jist of it.
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"We thought up our circle name in five seconds. (Laughs)"
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Editor
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I heard that Nasu thought up the name "TYPE-MOON," but what does it mean?
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Nasu
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Well...nothing, really. (Laughs) When we had to think up a name, we started throwing out really stupid names to one another, and just couldn't come up with a good one. At that time, the story (*6) I was working on had a hidden character in it called "Type Moon." We thought that was perfect, so we decided to make that our circle's name. It took five seconds. (Laughs) We thought that we were only going to use this circle to make 「Tsukihime」, so we didn't really worry that much about it. Everyone just kept thinking up such stupid names, there was no other way for us to decide. Names like "Funky Sun." (*7) I figured TYPE-MOON would be simple and easy to remember, and even a bit pretty.
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Takeuchi
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I wanted to have it connected to the moon (tsuki) somehow, so I liked the name too. Now that I think about it, I'm really glad we didn't go with something stupid. (Laughs)
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Preface
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Part 02
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*2
Bamboo Broom (Take Houki)
A doujin circle started by Takeuchi and Nasu. After TYPE-MOON became a company, this circle's activity sort of slowed down.
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*4
Comitia
Unlike "Comic Market," Comitia only accepts doujin authors of purely original works. You can find a lot of masterpieces here, surprisingly.
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*6
the story Nasu was working on at the time was a short story called 「Notes.」 that appeared in the doujin "angel voice." It's the story of a battle that happens on a ruined earth. Type Moon is one of the "Aristotles," mankind's most feared enemies.
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