Type-Moon resources
Getting into Type-Moon
Type-Moon is a multimedia company known primarily for the Fate/series, originally a doujin circle consisting of writer Kinoko Nasu and artist Takashi Takeuchi, and in present day arguably one of the most influential names in Japanese pop culture. The company's main products are visual novels, video games, and light novel series. Most works share roughly the same world, with characters and setpieces being reused between them, but do not follow any strict chronology or reading order. Type-Moon works frequently receive adaptions, with most works having an anime, a manga, or both.
Common themes in Type-Moon works are rebuilding one's identity in the wake of devastating trauma, man vs nature and the will of the planet being something different from the will of humanity, and the way a dichotomy of "good" and "evil" makes it very easy to horrifically dehumanise people on both sides of this arbitrary line. It has a way of writing viscerally raw emotion that no other series has been able to replicate for me.
With so many entry points, the series is both easy and hard to get into. Type-Moon works have a turbulent history regarding translation, with only the spinoffs and anime adaptions getting official localisations while the original works remained untranslated, and fantranslation projects passing through several hands across several years or just sputtering out before finishing the job. Until very recently the question "how do I get into Type-Moon" required pulling up a powerpoint, with many caveats depending on how comfortable the asker is with downloading pirated games and installing fan-made translation patches.
However, we live in a golden age, and the answer to that question is now simply "read the visual novels."
Read the visual novels
Visual novel localisation is still considered an uncertain market, and it's only in the wake of Witch on the Holy Night's financial success that the other two were localised. Please try to obtain these games through official means if possible.
All of these games feature heavy violence and gore and blood and dismemberment and gruesome death and such.
Fate/stay night
Available worldwide on Steam and Nintendo Switch.
Fate/stay night is the starting point of the Fate/series. It follows Shirou Emiya, a teenager wrecked with survivor's guilt, as he is dragged into a supernatural conflict where mages summon heroic figures from history to fight for ownership of the Holy Grail, which can grant any wish. Shirou's dream is to become a hero, but the shadow of the past looms over the ritual in more ways than one, and must be reckoned with before anyone or anything can be saved.
The original 2004 release featured several sex scenes. These were replaced by non-explicit content in the 2007 release for PS2 and later PSVita, which also added voice acting and updated some of the visuals. Another new release in 2024 further updated the game from a 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 and added English and Chinese translations.
The game depicts several attempts at sexual assault, and one character's history as a sexual abuse victim is crucial to the plot.
Witch on the Holy Night
Available worldwide on Steam, Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch.
Witch on the Holy Night, also known by its Japanese name Mahou Tsukai no Yoru or abbreviation Mahoyo, is technically a remake of the unpublished first novel Nasu wrote. It's the prequel to Tsukihime on the same technicality, but both can be read independent of each other. Aoko Aozaki tries to balance her human life as a student with her responsiblities as heir of a line of mages, but her coming of age story is interrupted by the appearance of transfer student Soujuurou Shizuki, a boy who grew up so isolated in the mountains that the marvels of modern 1980's Japan might as well be magic to him.
Witch on the Holy Night originally released on PC in 2012 and received a console release with English and Chinese translations in late 2022, which was then ported back to PC in 2023. It's the first part of a triology, the second and third of which have yet to be made.
Tsukihime
Available worldwide on Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch. A PC release is supposedly in the works.
Shiki Tohno gained the ability to see the "death" of all things after his own near-death experience. Despite the constant weight of entropy he lives a somewhat normal life, until one day he encounters a mysterious woman and instinctively cuts her into pieces. Her reappearance the next day irrevocably drags him into the world of the supernatural, and he is forced to question everything about both the world around him and his own history.
I actually didn't read Tsukihime yet tehepero 
Everyone I know who read the original Tsukihime attests that the remake perfectly captures the feeling of the original, except for the parts which sucked before and are awesome now. Tsukihime is split between what's called the near side routes and far side routes, and the remake only covers the near side so far. It's the far side routes that really cemented Tsukihime as a cult classic that rewires people's brains, so there's still plenty reason to read the original Tsukihime too.
Tsukihime originally released in 2000 as Type-Moon's first visual novel, and is now abandonware. A remake project was announced in 2008, the first half of which released in 2021. The remake removed the sex scenes of the original, but retains its 18+ rating for graphic depictions of violence. The original Tsukihime was never officially translated, but the remake received an international release in 2024. The first half of the remake is called A piece of blue glass moon, and the upcoming second half is called The other side of red garden.
Tsukihime is a horror game, and is the only one to get an age rating for how graphic its depictions of violence are. The viewpoint character is constantly gaslit throughout the plot. The original is a turn of the millennium horror eroge with all the sexual assault content warnings that entails, and one character's history of being physically and sexually abused is the catalyst for most of the far side routes.
Fantranslations
Due to the decades it took for the visual novels to get official translations, many long-time fans will have read a fantranslation before or instead of the official one. Translation is a nuanced and subjective art, so it's always good to have multiple different translations to compare.
The fantranslation project for Witch on the Holy Night was never completed before the official translation released.
Mirror Moon
Mirror Moon was the first dedicated Type-Moon translation group. They translated the original Tsukihime in 2006 and Fate/stay night in 2008. Mirror Moon translations have a reputation for being quite clunky, and while they got the job done, Fate/stay night has multiple better options now and I would not recommend reading its Mirror Moon version today except as a piece of history. However, Mirror Moon's work remains the only way to read both the original 18+ version of Fate/stay night and the original Tsukihime in English.
FBates Fate/stay night retranslation
FBates set out to do a complete from-scratch retranslation of Fate/stay night in 2021. The most recent update in 2023, which is linked here, covers around three quarters of the game. The official translation was announced before the project was finished, and I don't know whether FBates intends to finish their own translation at this point.
Tsukihimates
Tsukihimates did the fantranslation for A piece of blue glass moon.
Other Type-Moon stuff to check out
There's way too much Type-Moon stuff out there to bother listing it all, especially when I haven't even read all of it myself. Instead I will offer some of my personal favourites as recommendations for continuing your journey after reading one of the visual novels.
Because so many Type-Moon works have so many adaptions, there are many different ways to approach a given entry. Type-Moon anime adaptions are categorically an okay-ish adaption that at least looks nice at best to outright dogwater that completely misunderstands and misrepresents the source material at worst. However, the manga adaptions are generally extremely good. In most cases only the anime adaption is officially available in English, but in most cases I recommend looking up fantranslations of either the original or the manga adaption instead.
It's natural that a series known for long segments of introspective narration is better suited to another text-heavy medium like comics than to animation.
The stuff that's directly related to Fate/stay night
Fate/hollow ataraxia
A visual novel from 2005 that takes place half a year after the events of Fate/stay night. One half slice of life and one half timeloop horror, it delves into characters that were footnotes in the first game as they struggle for the right to a second chance.
The PSVita port from 2014 added voice acting and replaced the sex scenes, similar to the FSN port. The English fantranslation of the PC version can be found here and includes a patch to add the voices, but I'm not aware of any patches that port the new scenes from the Vita version back into the PC version.
Fate/Zero
A prequel light novel series from 2007 written by Gen Urobuchi. It details the events 10 years before Fate/stay night, when the ritual for the Holy Grail was last held. In line with Urobuchi's reputation, the tone is somewhat darker and one might say edgier than Fate/stay night and Fate/hollow ataraxia, something people tend to either love or hate.
Lord El Melloi II Case Files and it's successor Lord El-Melloi II Adventures
A light novel series written by Makoto Sanda, starting in 2014 and still ongoing. It's a detective series set around the time of Fate/stay night, featuring one of the characters from Fate/Zero as protagonist. Its textual themes of being left in the shadow of real protagonists and heroes come paired with a lot of loving attention for side characters, concepts, and details that never saw the limelight in other Type-Moon works, which gives it a pleasantly grounded feel.
Fate/Apocrypha
A light novel series by Yuuichirou Higashide published between 2012 and 2014. The setting is only loosely connected to Fate/stay night and its associates, but several of its plot beats rely on knowledge of the events of Fate/stay night and Fate/Zero to really land. The Yggdmilennia clan of magi has declared war on the Mage's Association, and the conflict will be fought out in an expanded Holy Grail War with two factions. A nameless homunculus in service of the Yggdmilennia tries to escape in the chaos, and two of the faction's strongest players sacrifice themselves to save him, derailling the conflict before it even starts in a way neither side would have ever predicted.
Fate/Apocrypha has an absolute dogshit anime adaption that guts every single character of every shred of nuance in favour of squeezing out maximum surface level marketability merch sales. I swear this thing was made by people who only half remembered the tvtropes page. I'm repeating myself becasue it's important, don't fucking watch this anime as your intro to Fate/Apocrypha I am so so so serious you can listen to the ost but that's IT. The light novel fantranslation was never finished because Type-Moon translations are cursed but the manga adaption is godlike AND it's done. Read the manga.
The Fate/EXTRA games
Fate/EXTRA and it's sequels, colloqually known as Extraverse, are all set in the distant future of 2030, in a digital world created by a supercomputer on the moon after earth became largely uninhabitable. They share some returner characters with Fate/stay night, but are otherwise independent.
Fate/EXTRA
A PSP game from 2010 that is now abandonware. The protagonist Hakuno Kishinami (gender selectable by the player) finds themselves enlisted in an 128 man death tournament for rights to use the Moon Cell to change reality, with no memory of who they are or why they joined. Together with one of three Servants, they have to fight for survival and their own identity.
It's the first Fate game to be localised, and one quirk of that is that a lot of its terminology doesn't match how fans had been translating things for years already, which later localisations did try to match. In present day we have the fanmade Fate/EXTRA Perfect Patch, which adds subtitles to voice-only lines, and has the option to change localised terms to be in line with the standard. The game's combat system is pretty frustrating, which is another reason to play it on emulator so you can just abuse savestates to get to read some of the best character writing in the industry.
A remake called Fate/EXTRA Record was announced in 2020, with a planned release for 2025.
Fate/EXTRA CCC
An abandonware PSP game from 2013. Set in a pocket of time near the end of Fate/EXTRA, Hakuno and their associates are transported to the far side of the moon, the trash can of this supercomputer, by a malignant AI called BB. They have to make their way back to the near side before BB takes over the system, and set aside their preconceptions about BB, their companions, and themselves long enough to realize why that is.
CCC is the most localised game of all time, by which I mean it's the only extraverse game that was never localised. The fantranslation was infamously troubled and finally completed in 2023, featuring the same subtitles as the Fate/EXTRA Perfect Patch and a choice between official localisation names and the fan names that took hold in the period between CCC's release and its characters appearing in works that did get localised.
The game features a lot of Huge Tits And Half Naked Anime Bitches, moreso than the games that have actual sex scenes. These serve a point about the false equation of sexuality with emotional maturity, but they're still half naked anime bitches that have severely impacted the localisation status of this game.
Fate/Extella and Fate/Extella Link
A set of musou games from 2016 and 2018 respectively, available worldwide on Steam, Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch. The conflicts on the moon have settled down, and it's ready to start hosting new life. But who created the Moon Cell in the first place, and for what purpose? Who gets to decide what is real or not?
These are, frankly, not good games. The gameplay is a powerful narcotic, the story being told isn't suited to the style of game it's being told through, and they're unusually short compared to other Fate games and feel rushed as a result. But they're still Type-Moon games, and two thirds in you'll realize they still got you again. I don't recommend paying more than like €10 for these games, but I highly recommend looking up the story segments on youtube.
Fate/EXTRA Last Encore
A studio SHAFT anime from 2018. This is the exception to Fate anime adaptions being mediocre-to-bad, because it's actually an anime original story instead of an adaption. A thousand years ago Hakuno Kishinami lost the final battle of Fate/EXTRA, and the Moon Cell ceased all operations. But something is preventing the shutdown process from being completed, and from the dredges at its bottom comes a new life, rising past the things the few remaining humans have desperately clung to as the end of the world got stretched out over a thousand years.
It has bad reviews because it's very different from other Fate anime in that its storytelling is pretty abstract and it's really more like watching a visual novel, which is awesome and makes it the ultimate Fate anime.
Fate/Grand Order
A mobile game that first started service in 2015, with the English language server going live in 2017. The progatonist was the least qualified applicant for an organisation meant to protect human history, but when the organisation is betrayed they end up the sole remaining person available to do the job. They travel to patches of time that deviate from true history to fix the cause of the deviation and hopefully prevent the future from being erased.
Fate/Grand Order is probably the most famous Fate work by now, and features contributions from many different artists and guest writers, some of which are renowned industry giants. I played it diligently for years and even maintained accounts on both Japanese and English servers for a while, and I consider several of its chapters to be some of the best the series has to offer, but in current day I cannot honestly recommend starting it as a new player. It's a story heavy game that's incredibly obtuse about letting new players access old event stories, yet new event stories happily build upon the old as if everyone read them anyway. Each of its chapters and event stories can easily be found on youtube, and I link another fantastic story resource at the bottom of this page. This page gives an overview of what parts of the game form its core storyline, and which parts are more optional.
Melty Blood
Melty Blood is a series of fighting game spinoffs of Tsukihime made by French-Bread. While technically a sequel to Tsukihime, it focusses on new characters and stands on its own fairly well. The original Melty Blood (2002) and its updated version Melty Blood Re-ACT (2004), Melty Blood Act Cadenza (2005), and Melty Blood Actress Again (2008) are all direct sequels of each other. Melty Blood Type Lumina (2021) accompanies the Tsukihime remake and is essentially a reboot of the series, with no relation to the previous games.
Melty Blood follows Sion, a sheltered and socially inept alchemist from the Atlas Institute, on her quest to hunt a vampire known as the Night of Wallachia, which has the ability to bring malignant rumors to life and cannot be permanently killed as long as there are rumors for it to spawn from. The Night of Wallachia was originally an ancestor of Sion and she is the sole survivor of its last appearance, where it claimed to spare her life because they are kin as it tried to turn her into a vampire as well. Its next appearance is scheduled for the night the first game takes place, and it's her last chance to kill it and retake her humanity and the honor of her bloodline.
The original Melty Blood tells its story across branching paths determined by whether you win or lose a match. It has eight different endings, two of which require getting the six other endings first. The manga adaption is incredibly good, it synthesises the plot beats of the different routes into a coherent whole and its deviations only serve to enhance the story, making it in my opinion the best way to experience Melty Blood.
The games before Actress Again are all abandonware. Actress Again is a great lightweight fighting game that is available for cheap on Steam, but the default netcode sucks, so everyone who plays it buys it once to support the game and then uses the community version instead. Type Lumina is also on Steam and probably other places, but honestly I don't care about that one because they don't have Sion or any of the characters I played in MBAA 
Kara no Kyoukai
Also known as The Garden of Sinners. A light novel series originally self-published from 1998 to 1999, making it the first work published under the Type-Moon name. It's a supernatural mystery told out of chronological order, exploring the relationship between Shiki Ryougi, a taciturn girl who can see death, and her boyfriend Mikiya Kokutou.
I'm actually mainly mentioning this one to give a warning about the light novel translations: Kara no Kyoukai has a long and particularly troubled history of translation, with the first translator outright admitting they changed and left out huge chunks of text, and many attempts to re-translate it falling flat. A full proper set of fantranslations wasn't finished until 2024. Refer to this tumblr post for the more recent translations.
Information resources
I recommend staying away from the Type-Moon wiki, as it's a decades old ever-changing monstrosity with spotty sourcing for any of its claims. Try to stick only to source texts or their direct translations for your information.
Fate Translations Compendium
A spreadsheet attempting to collect as many Type Moon translations as possible.
TMdict
A collection of all official material book entries, showing both the original Japanese text and translations into English and Chinese.
CHALDEAの記録 (Chaldea Records)
An offshoot of TMdict collecting translations of FGO material book character profiles.
Tsuki-kan
A fansite featuring translations of various old interviews and bonus booklets.
Atlas Academy DB
A datamine dump for Fate/Grand Order. It covers all the data in the game, including gameplay information, story scripts and item descriptions, image assets, audio files for voice lines, and so on, in every language that the app is available in. It's run by the same people as the Rayshift FGO translation project, and offers both the official English script and their own fantranslation if it's available.
Beast's Lair
The oldest still active Type-Moon forum. Many translation projects start here, and it's a good place to find experienced loreheads or translations of really obscure side material.
Read Tsukihime
A site explaining where to read Tsukihime, both original and remake, and its related works.
