Welcome! I’ve been a fan of Muv-Luv since 2003, and I’ve been running this blog since 2012. I started this blog to bring attention to the newly-announced Total Eclipse anime. At the time, it was difficult for English-speaking fans to find information about Muv-Luv, so I hoped to fill that void at least a little. I started out by translating interviews from the Total Eclipse cast and staff, and eventually I began providing my own commentary as well.
Below I’ve highlighted the posts I’ve devoted the most time into writing. I hope you find them interesting.
Today is the 20th anniversary of Muv-Luv – on this date in 2003, the original Muv-Luv game was first released. To celebrate, I thought I’d share my own Muv-Luv collection – my personal journey through 20 years of this amazing franchise.
Games:
The top two rows have the Muv-Luv games for PC. The third row is all the Muv-Luv games released for PS3. And the bottom row is Muv-Luv in English – the Kickstarter PC games and the Vita games.
Game Boxes:
Many of the games came in limited edition boxes. The top row is for PC games, the second row has the PS3 games and the English Kickstarter box. At the bottom is the Age 20th Anniversary Box, a huge tome that collects all of their old games, as well as CDs containing all of their songs, and a bunch of extra goodies.
20th Box Contents:
A picture of said goodies. The games are on the left, the CDs are on the right. Also included are the final two issues (#23 and #24) of their long-delayed fan club exclusive magazine, a CD containing digital copies of all 24 issues of those magazines, and a collection of new artwork from many of the artists associated with them, whether through their games, manga adaptations, anime, or whatever.
Anime:
The top two rows are for Total Eclipse, both Japanese and US Blu-rays, as well as a special DVD with interviews. We’ve also got Japanese Blu-rays for Schwarzesmarken and Alternative (volume 4 of Alternative is releasing next month).
CD (Booklets):
Various CDs I’ve bought for the franchise – I generally keep just the booklet and the CD itself, and I either toss the case or dump it in another box somewhere else.
The top row is for the soundtrack for the original Muv-Luv game – instead of a booklet, it came with a bunch of illustrated cards.
The second row is for game soundtracks. I lost the booklet for Vol. 1 of the Alternative soundtrack a while back, so I had to sub in the actual CD for that one.
The third row has the original JAM Project single CD for Alternative, a couple of song collections for Muv-Luv and Total Eclipse, and the latest CDs I bought – the soundtrack for the Alternative anime and the JAM Project opening theme for the second season. The one on the end is the soundtrack collection from the Kickstarter.
Novels:
The top row has the Muv-Luv novelizations – 2 for Extra, 2 for Unlimited, and 3 for Alternative. (I put them right-to-left because the three Alternative covers form a single picture when lined up that way.)
The second row has the Total Eclipse novels – the six officially released ones, and the special novelization of The Imperial Capital Burns that you get for buying all the Total Eclipse Blu-rays.
The third row has the main Schwarzesmarken novels. The fourth row has the various side novels – 2 Requiem collections of short stories, 2 that came bundled with the 2 Schwarzesmarken games, and 2 prequel novels.
Manga (1):
The 17 volumes of the Alternative manga by Azusa Maxima, and the original side-story also drawn by the same artist.
Manga (2):
I tried to fit all of the manga into a single shot, but there were just too many, so I split Alternative off into its own picture. This one has the rest.
The top row has the manga adaptations of Extra and Unlimited.
The rest is for the various Total Eclipse manga – the first one by Takashi Ishigaki, the second one (Rising) by Rohgun, the adaptation of The Imperial Capital Burns by Shirou Tsunashima, and some 4-koma collections from when the Total Eclipse anime was on the air.
Artbooks (1):
The first shot of artbooks.
The top row has official artbooks for Muv-Luv, Alternative, the side-stories, and Total Eclipse, as well as a collection of Duty: Lost Arcadia stories from TSFiA and an official artbook for the Total Eclipse anime.
The second row has the 6 TSF Cross Operation books, which collect artwork from the original novel serializations of Total Eclipse and Schwarzesmarken, as well as the TSFiA short stories that used to run in Hobby Japan.
The third row has both the Japanese Integral Works and the English equivalent, the Codex. There’s also a somewhat strange book of TSF variations, and the three volumes of the Dengeki Muv-Luv magazine that were released while the Total Eclipse anime was airing.
Artbooks (2):
This second shot of artbooks consist mostly of what are technically considered doujinshi – although they were generally published by the original creators, they were only sold at Comiket rather than through normal stores.
The first row has the three artbooks for Next Answer, the first Muv-Luv social mobile game, as well as written material intended to tease Duty: Lost Arcadia and the mythical Total Eclipse Yui route (to date, neither have materialized yet, so these doujinshi are largely all we have of them).
The second row has the four Allied Strategy books, which collect their earlier Comiket books, the Lunatic Dawn series. At the end are the two Exogularity books, which had replaced the Lunatic Dawn series. All of these were sold at Comiket to offer additional information and tease upcoming storylines.
The third row has a few leftover books – a volume of Gianism magazine that had a major feature on the Total Eclipse anime, a Newtype insert book also featuring the Total Eclipse anime, and a collection of lineart for the anime. Rounding out the row are a couple of random Comiket offerings – a volume of Lunatic Dawn and a collection of art from Age artist Monkey Chop – which I’m pretty sure I picked up during one of Age’s visits to Anime Expo.
By the way, I’m leaving out a ton of other stuff that is, shall we say, tangentially Muv-Luv related. Issues of Newtype and other anime magazines that I bought pretty much strictly for their Muv-Luv content. Issues of Hobby Japan and Tech Gian that have serialized Muv-Luv content that was never collected. There are also stuff like CDs (for example, for JAM Project and Minami Kuribayashi) that have a lot of Muv-Luv related material. Basically, if it didn’t have Muv-Luv content on the cover, it seemed silly to dig it up and take a picture of it for a Muv-Luv anniversary.
Models/Figures (1):
My collection of TSF models and figures. I’m not a big figure person – there are tons of Muv-Luv figures that have been released which I’ve just never been interested in collecting. The two at the top left I bought from Age directly at their booth at Anime Expo 2010. The rest I think I just picked up here and there along the way – for a while, I made it my mission to buy something from any store or convention booth that stocked TSFs, just to show my support for this fairly niche franchise. As you can see, there weren’t many.
I dunno where the actual figures are. They’re in another box somewhere (along with a bunch of Gundam figures), and I’m not going to track them down just so the box looks nicer.
Models/Figures (2):
Mostly a collection of figures and models I got from the Kickstarter. The TSF model on the right is a special version that came with the limited edition of the 2nd Blu-ray for the Alternative anime. A similar special version will be packaged with the 4th Blu-ray as well.
Bonus Goods (1):
Various bonus items that came bundled with some of the other stuff above. Some are from limited editions, some are pre-order bonuses, some just come packaged with them. If you’re wondering what some of those big game boxes from up above are for, they hold all these little trinkets. Some of them are pretty clearly labeled where they’re from, some are anybody’s guess at this point.
Yes, that item at the bottom right is a blood-splattered dogtag with Marimo’s name on it, and yes, that is a little twisted.
Bonus Goods (2):
Some larger bonus items – clear files, pencil boards, wipecloths. The poster at the bottom was included as a store bonus with the 3rd Blu-ray of the Alternative anime, and even though I know they’re just getting rid of excess stock, it’s still nice to have.
Bonus Goods (3):
A couple of wallscrolls. The Yui one is from the 20th Anniversary Box, the Meiya one is from the first season Blu-rays of the Alternative anime. Both are store-exclusive pre-order bonuses. The poster at the top was included with the Integral Works book. There’s a huge picture of a Takemikazuchi on the other side, but I think this side, showing the TSF development timeline, is cooler.
Bonus Goods (4):
Various knick-knacks from the Kickstarter. The jacket on the left is perfect for lazy quasi-cosplaying.
Other Age Stuff:
Originally, I was going to limit this post to just Muv-Luv items (it is, after all, only a Muv-Luv anniversary). But all the KimiNozo stuff was mixed in, so I had to sift through all of it, and at the end, I had a huge pile of other miscellaneous stuff, and it seemed a waste not to include it. So here’s a bonus picture.
At the top center, we have the KimiNozo anime – the DVDs released in America (back when they would sell single DVDs) and a nice chipboard box to hold them, as well as the Japanese Blu-rays. Also up top is the KimiNozo PC game, and a concert DVD featuring the cast of KimiNozo, as well as JAM Project.
In the middle, there are various artbooks (including one for the old version of KimiIta), as well as physical editions of the children’s books featured in KimiNozo.
At the bottom are some CD booklets for various Age CDs, as well as the 2-volume novelization for Owarinaki Natsu, Towanaru Shirabe.
Something Personal:
To close out, some stuff that’s a little more than just merchandise.
The boards on top are specially drawn shikishi that I bought from the Age booth at Anime Expo 2010. On the right is one by Kyousuke Himukai, artist on Owarinaki Natsu, Towanaru Shirabe and The Day After. At the time, all I knew from him was Owarinaki Natsu, Towanaru Shirabe, so I asked for a drawing of Ai, my favorite character from that game (she’s very much in that Mitsuki/Sumika/Marika mold that Age seems to like). Chronicles 01 came out just a month later – if that game had come out before the convention and I had had a chance to play it, I almost certainly would have asked for a drawing of Lilia instead. Such is life.
The left one was done by Sou Miyata, the then-current artist on Total Eclipse. I actually didn’t commission this one – I saw them put it on sale on the last day of the convention as they were packing up to go home, so I shrugged and bought it. I can’t remember why I didn’t bother commissioning my own. It may be that Miyata had taken over for the original artist on Total Eclipse (Tasuku Iizuki) not that long ago, and I still wasn’t used to Miyata’s art. I also wasn’t nearly as big a fan of Total Eclipse back then as I am now. When I look back now, I really kick myself for not getting a picture of Yui when I had the chance.
Lastly, a couple of items that I felt were appropriate for an anniversary. The first is the obi from the JAM Project CD for Alternative that I showed above. I already included it in this showcase, but I wanted to make a special mention of it, because this CD, containing the songs Asu e no Houkou, Tsubasa, and Carry On, was the first piece of Muv-Luv merchandise I ever bought. It came out in 2005, before Alternative was released (it was actually supposed to come out at the same time, but they wound up delaying the game for almost a year). At the time, you could describe me as more of a JAM Project fan than a Muv-Luv fan. I enjoyed Extra and Unlimited, and I was looking forward to Alternative, but I mostly bought this CD because of JAM Project. But after Alternative came out and blew me away, I had a feeling I would be sticking with this franchise for a while, so when I happened to find this obi sitting in the corner of my room, I decided to hang onto it on a whim (I usually throw these things out). Looking at it again reminds me of the early days, of going through the transition from a casual fan to a hardcore devotee. In a sense, all of the merchandise I showed above can be traced back to buying this one CD.
The last item is particularly special. It’s a receipt from a store in Akihabara, where I bought actual physical copies of the Muv-Luv trilogy (the same ones you can see in the first picture above). I’d like to say I flew all the way to Japan for the sole purpose of buying Muv-Luv – but no, obviously I’m not that crazy. But it just so happened that the all-ages versions of the games came out just a few months before a trip I had already planned, so I knew they should still be available without having to look too hard. I was already a huge fan by that point, so this was probably number one on my list of things to buy on the trip. There was something special about buying the games in an actual store in Japan. I hung onto the receipt because I knew this was something I would want to remember.
One of my favorite Muv-Luv memories doesn’t really have anything to do with the game itself. It happened several years after Alternative came out, when series creator Kouki Yoshimune one day tweeted out:
“Hey, ever since the weekend started, people have been reaching out to me with stuff like ‘Marimo CHOMP’, what happened all of a sudden?”
Well, what happened was the 3rd episode of Madoka Magica had aired that Friday, and a lot of people were making comparisons between Madoka’s Mami and Muv-Luv’s Marimo. Yoshimune had mentioned before that he doesn’t really watch anime anymore, so he had no idea. I like the image of him scrolling through his Twitter feed, wondering why so many people seemed to have spontaneously decided to tag him about a game that came out years ago.
Anyway, this episode.
What always strikes me about that final scene is how shocking it is. Now, by that I don’t mean how sickeningly gruesome it is (although it is). And I don’t mean how it suddenly comes on without warning (although it does). What I mean is that it preys on the audience’s expectations about how a story is supposed to flow. We’ve all seen a ton of stories, and we get used to the typical ebb and flow of it. We get used to how a story transitions from a happy “high” point to a tragic “low” point, and then back again. The coup arc was, on the whole, a “low” point where the characters are put through the wringer. It’s then followed up by the events of the previous episode, where Takeru goes back to his world, gets the formulas that will save the world, and meets Sumika again. We’re definitely swinging back to a high point here. It’s followed up by the graduation, another happy high point for everybody, and it continues on with the XM3 trials, which Takeru and his team are crushing. So when the BETA attack, it’s a surprising twist, but it’s one we’re prepared for – we’ve spent enough time on a high point that we instinctively understand it’s about time for another low point.
And it is a low point. Takeru is brought down lower than he’s ever been before. This is, by a wide margin, the worst low point he’s had yet. So after he’s been put through such an ordeal, we understand Marimo’s speech to Takeru as the start of another high point, transitioning him past his failure during the last attack. That’s why Marimo’s death is so shocking: because it is very carefully targeted to take place at the exact moment when we least expect another low point. It betrays our instinctive understanding of how stories “should” work. And it works precisely because Takeru has just experienced his worst low point ever. He’s already been taken down lower than we thought possible, given how the story has worked up to this point, so we just can’t conceive of the idea that he could be taken down even lower so quickly.
This effect is, if anything, even more amplified in the anime, where we not only perceive highs and lows in terms of the overall story, but also in terms of individual episodes. Takeru failing in the XM3 attack is the “theme” of the episode; it’s what the episode is about. By the time Marimo is comforting Takeru, we already perceive the episode as over – even if we aren’t watching the clock specifically, we all have enough of a sense of how long an episode is that we know there’s no more time left to do anything else. And again, because Takeru has already been brought so low, we instinctively assume that the final minutes of the episode will be dedicated to wrapping that plot thread up.
There are a few points about the big scene that I find interesting in terms of the choices made. The first is the speed at which it happens. The game lingers on that fateful moment for quite a few lines. In the anime, the BETA comes in and does the deed almost instantly, and the whole thing is over before Takeru can even process what happened. I think that’s an intriguing choice that plays on the strengths of an anime – you really can’t convey that kind of speed in any other medium, be it game, manga, or novel. There’s something a little terrifying about that kind of speed, that a person can simply be alive one moment and dead the next. I’ve seen a number of people play through the game who stop at that moment, trying to understand what is happening before clicking onward – the game doesn’t move forward until the player chooses to. The anime, left alone, moves forward regardless of whether the viewer is ready to or not.
The second thing I want to mention is, somewhat ironically given my first point, how the anime stretches the moment out. The game acts like the BETA gives it one good chomp and it’s over. The anime actually depicts this fucker CHEWING on it for a while afterwards. That’s the part that really disturbed me, watching this episode.
The last thing I want to note is how Takeru witnesses the act. In the game, he hears it happening behind him, and when he turns around, it’s already in progress. In the anime, he turns around first, and sees the whole thing happen from beginning to end. From Takeru’s perspective, that just seems much more traumatizing – to see Marimo smiling, and then to watch the whole thing play out afterwards.
Ugh. I don’t feel so good. Can we talk about something else?
I mentioned before that Takeru is brought down to his lowest point during the attack during the XM3 trials. And he really is. In fact, in watching this episode, I started to feel like you don’t really see a lead character brought this low in anime anymore. Too much of anime nowadays is steeped in wish fulfillment – fans want to see themselves in the main character, and they definitely don’t want to see themselves taken down to this level. (I’m reminded of a tweet – which I sadly can’t find anymore – about someone who met Yoshimune at Anime Expo, and told him they loved the world of Alternative and wanted to be part of it, and his response was, “What are you, a masochist?”) Even when a lead is wrong or makes a mistake, they still retain a level of dignity that makes people want to be them. But Takeru has no dignity at the end of this – he’s reduced to curling up in his cockpit, wetting himself, screaming that he doesn’t want to die. It feels like something from another generation. And well, that’s because it is. But that never really occurred to me until today.
The hell of it is, Marimo is kind of right when she says he didn’t do too badly out there. Speaking solely about the results of his actions, he doesn’t have a lot to be sorry about. If he were just a regular newbie soldier, his performance would be pretty commendable. The problem Takeru has is, he got it into his head that he is much, much more than a regular soldier. His experience, both in his original world playing video games, and in the previous loop undergoing training, made him an exceptional surface pilot. His understanding of those video games allowed him to conceive of the XM3 operating system. His knowledge of the previous loop allowed him to predict the future. And his ability to travel between worlds allowed him to obtain the formulas that will help complete the 00 Unit.
And so he started thinking he was much better than just a normal soldier – he operated on a different level than them. He was even starting to throw around terms like “humanity’s savior” with a disturbing certainty. And all of that was building up to this moment, the moment when he first encounters the BETA in a real battle – and he discovers, far too late, that none of that shit really matters in a battle, and all of those normal soldiers he looked down on were far more experienced and useful than he was. It’s a terrifying thing to learn about yourself, after having spent so long believing your own bull.
Poor guy. Hard to believe that wasn’t even the worst thing that happened to him this episode.
As I mentioned before, I’m transitioning back to doing arc-based posts, because it’s easier for me to write about the themes of an entire arc – it’s hard for me to write about the theme of an individual episode while trying to avoid spoiling later episodes of the arc. I made an exception for this episode, since it’s, well, this episode, but starting next episode, I know the show is going to return to being difficult to write about in one-episode segments, so I’ll see you guys in a few weeks.
I started this post off with a tweet, so let’s close out with another tweet. I’ve been watching reactions to this episode all day (the phrase “Marimo-chan” actually entered the top 10 trending topics in Japan for a couple of hours!), and my vote goes to this guy:
“After finishing THAT scene in Muv-Luv, I put on the latest episode of Golden Kamuy, and at the start of the episode, this kid goes ‘You guys eat moss balls (Japanese word: Marimo)?’, and well, I just couldn’t help but laugh.”
The new season of Muv-Luv Alternative is here, so it’s time to share a few thoughts on it. The actual episode is pretty straightforward, but let’s start by talking about the new theme songs, since there’s where a lot of the interest in the new season is coming from thus far.
The new opening theme is, of course, the topic that everybody’s excited about. It’s a collaboration between JAM Project and Minami Kuribayashi, the two main singers associated with the original Muv-Luv trilogy. Just the fact of their involvement is exciting enough for existing fans of the franchise, but it also helps that the song is, as expected, an absolute joy to listen to. The lyrics are written by Masami Okui, who is famous among Muv-Luv fans for having played through the entire trilogy back when she first got involved with the franchise. She’s a big fan of the franchise (she’s a particularly big Meiya fan), and she even showed up on the live stream where the opening theme was announced to help promote the new season. It was an especially nice moment for her since she was basically cheated twice – not only did JAM Project not get to work on Season 1, but Okui didn’t get to work on the Total Eclipse anime, despite doing the theme for that game as well.
What’s especially frustrating about the way JAM Project and Minami Kuribayashi have been treated is, Lantis (the label that they belong to) was involved in this anime since Season 1 – Stereo Dive Foundation, the project responsible for the first ending theme, is a Lantis project as well. Since Avex owns Anchor – meaning they essentially own Muv-Luv – I could understand if they wanted to use their own artists for the entire anime. But there’s no reason to bring Lantis into the mix unless they intended for the original artists like JAM and Kuribayashi to be part of the anime from the beginning. So it seems pretty clear to me that this was the plan from the start – use Season 1 to promote their newer acts, then bring on JAM and Kuribayashi for Season 2. And that’s disappointing, because Lantis is usually better than that about retaining the original singers, despite their age – JAM Project did the theme for Getter Robo Arc last year, while Minami Kuribayashi came back to do the theme to Season 2 of The Devil is a Part-Timer just last season.
…Look, I am not a purist by any stretch of the imagination – my track record clearly shows I like it when adaptations do new things. I was sad that Masami Okui didn’t get to do the Total Eclipse anime, but I was perfectly fine with Kumi Koda’s opening theme song. I feel like I gave Season 1’s theme songs a chance to win me over as well. Ultimately, what’s important is that the theme songs set the right tone. Somebody should be able to listen to the opening and ending themes and end up with a good sense of what sort of show they go with. And the theme songs for Season 1 completely fail to do that – they are far too light-hearted and upbeat. Watching them open and close the coup episodes was a painful experience in tonal whiplash.
Which is why I’m happy to report that Season 2’s ending theme is a winner as well. It’s done by V.W.P, the same group that did Season 1’s opening theme. But unlike that season’s chipper, bubblegum sound, their new song is an emotional ballad that’s perfect for closing out this season’s episodes. I wish they had put in a similar effort to match the show’s tone back in Season 1, but I’m glad they got a chance to redeem themselves.
Since we’re on the topic of V.W.P, we might as well talk about the Sadogashima girl, an original character who is voiced by one of their members. She showed up as a civilian in episode 1, the anime-original fall of Sadogashima, then reappeared at the end of Season 1, apparently as a member of the Isumi Valkyries. This so-far unnamed girl appears in both the opening and ending sequences this season, where her status as a member of the Valkyries is pretty much confirmed – she appears alongside the Valkyries in both sequences, and a shot of the full Valkyries team in their TSFs during the opening sequence depicts an extra unit that presumably belongs to her. Adding a new member to the Valkyries is an odd move, but this season is the time for the anime to show what they plan on doing with her. As I said, I enjoy when adaptations try new things, so I’m interested to see what kind of story they have planned with her.
The opening and ending themes are not the most important thing in an anime – plenty of really strong, top-tier shows have been burdened with lousy theme songs, and overcome them. But nevertheless, watching the new opening sequence illustrates just how good it feels when the theme song matches the show. It instantly puts you in a better mood, and makes you more receptive to the show itself.
OK, that was a lot of talk about a 90-second opening and 90-second ending. What about the other 20 minutes of the episode? Well, it’s a fairly slow first episode that covers two main plot threads – the first half shows Takeru returning to his original world to retrieve the theory that he asked Yuuko for on his last trip, while the second half shows Takeru’s unit graduating and becoming commissioned officers. What’s strange about the episode is, both plot threads were already shown in the final scenes of episode 12, which closed out Season 1. Although I thought it pretty unlikely, those scenes did make me worried that they might intend to skip over this episode entirely and start Season 2 with the events of the next episode.
It’s a good thing they didn’t go down that path, then, because this is a good episode that does a lot, both for the story in general, and for this anime in particular. For the story in general, this episode reiterates the stakes involved in a compelling manner. The first half shows Takeru interacting with his old world much more thoroughly than during his first visit, and emphasizes the difference between the two versions of his squad members, as well as clearly depicting his ultimate desire, to return to this world for good. The second half shows Takeru accomplishing the immediate goal he set for himself back in the beginning of Alternative, to graduate as soon as possible and make himself and his squad ready to contribute to the fight against the BETA. These are strong emotional beats for Takeru, and I’m glad the anime didn’t decide to skip over them.
As for how this episode benefits this anime in particular, one important aspect is that this is a slower, easily digestible episode that helps reestablish the world, the characters, and the current status quo for people who might not have thought about Muv-Luv since Season 1 ended last year. But perhaps even more importantly, this is a good focus episode that fleshes out some of the characters more. Obviously, in the original game, we would have spent a ton of time with these characters by now, and we would know and love them deeply. The anime has no chance of doing that, so rather than trying to judge the anime based on how well it replicates the feel of the game, it’s more useful to judge the anime based on its own merits.
From the perspective of the anime only, Takeru’s 207th squadmates all received a lot of welcome characterization during the previous coup arc, with each of them getting a distinct plotline to themselves. This episode does the same for the character of Sumika. Sumika hasn’t had much of a presence in the anime thus far, appearing in only small bursts of flashback, and an all-too-short appearance in the story itself during Takeru’s first trip to his old world. This episode is the most in-depth look we’ve gotten at her so far, and we get to see their relationship play out in a way that we’ve only heard Takeru describe before. I think it does a great job of illustrating why Takeru considers her such an important part of his life.
The episode also arguably does something similar for Marimo. We’ve seen a lot more of her in the anime, mostly as a hard-nosed instructor, but occasionally showing a softer side. The final scenes of this episode show clearly how much affection Takeru and his squadmates hold for her – and now that she is no longer responsible for training them, she’s allowed to show how much affection she holds for them as well. Even in the game, this is a very memorable scene that did a lot to transform Marimo into a highly-beloved character, and the anime does a good job of bringing that to the screen.
As I’ve said before, I think this anime adaptation’s great weakness is “faithfully” adapting the original game (and the manga) without putting much thought into how it plays for a new audience. So I actually think that much of what I described above is kind of “on accident” – that they didn’t put too much thought into how this episode works as the first episode of a new season, and they basically got lucky that this is a good point in the story to accomplish all of the things I mentioned. But that doesn’t change the fact that this is in fact a strong first episode for anime viewers. Indeed, it helps illustrate that, now that we’re past those first awkward setup episodes, “faithfully” adapting the game is more of a strength than a weakness, and we should be in for a second season that is significantly stronger than the first.
In some ways, I hesitate to write a comprehensive piece about this arc, because it is fundamentally a piece about Japanese internal politics. It is an exploration about Japanese identity, targeted towards a Japanese audience. So I’m sure there is a lot about the themes of this arc that escape me – I simply lack the context of being a Japanese citizen necessary to understand them.
Luckily, the creator Kouki Yoshimune has offered up a few places to start our examination. In an interview included with the Muv-Luv Alternative Codex, he presents perhaps the most important piece of information necessary to understand this arc: in writing the story of Alternative, he positioned the Yokohama UN forces as being analogous to the modern-day Japan of our world, and the Japanese Empire as being analogous to the old Japan. The coup arc can thus be understood as a clash between modern-day values and traditional values. This arc is sometimes accused of being heavily right-wing, but that ignores the fact that the “right-wing” characters – the coup forces – are depicted as the enemy, who are then defeated by an allied force consisting of America and modern-day Japan (who those same right-wing forces accuse of having subjugated themselves so completely to the Americans that they are now little more than puppets of the US). The fact that it is our POV characters, the UN forces, who emerge triumphant in this arc shows that the story’s sympathies ultimately side with the more progressive, internationally-minded Japan.
Of course, while TSFs trashing each other is good entertainment, the meat of the arc is in the philosophical conflicts between the UN and the Empire – in other words, between modern Japanese values and traditional ones. Here, it’s not quite as simple as declaring modern values the winner simply because Sagiri died. The bulk of this arc is about our lead characters, particularly Takeru and Meiya, being confronted with the traditional values embodied by Sagiri and the coup forces, and seeing the end results of those values. Throughout the course of this arc, they come to understand and sympathize with the intent of those values, even as they reject the method of implementation chosen by the coup forces. I believe this is an attempt to ask a question of the Japanese audience: what should the modern Japanese citizen make of these old values? Which should we preserve, and which should we discard? Is there anything from the old ways that is worth taking with us into the 21st century? If Muv-Luv is at all “right-wing”, it is in the fact that it seems to believe that the answer to that question is “yes”. While it rejects Sagiri and the overall philosophy he embodies, it suggests that there may still be value in the patriotism, the love of country, that Takeru comes to learn about – that there may still be something there that is worth incorporating into the modern philosophy embodied by our heroes.
Takeru is an intriguing character to place in the middle of this conflict. As pointed out numerous times in the story, he is not a citizen of this Japan, and he lacks that love of country that every other Japanese character in the story exhibits. That makes it difficult for him to understand the others at first, but it also makes him the only truly neutral character in the arc. Even a character like Yuuko, who is ostensibly working to save all of humanity, is still a member of this Japanese society, and when the chips are down, there is still a part of her that is loyal to the Japanese Empire and wants it to come out on top. Takeru is the only person who has no such loyalty – he is the only person who can say he cares only about humanity defeating the BETA, and truly mean it. That puts him in a position where he can judge the claims of each side without preexisting bias. That makes it particularly interesting when Takeru states that he finds himself very sympathetic to Walken’s American insistence that this entire conflict is a complete waste of time.
Walken himself occupies a very interesting position as well. Yoshimune states in the same Codex interview that the original writer, Hayato Tashiro, had a very difficult time writing Walken’s character – he kept coming off as an arrogant foreigner blowhard who talked big, then died when it was time to put up. This is one of the reasons why Yoshimune himself took over writing much of Alternative (the original idea was that he would develop the story itself, while other writers like Tashiro would write the actual text – this is largely how KimiNozo and the original Muv-Luv were written). In the final version, Walken comes across as a surprisingly sympathetic character, which is how Takeru can find himself agreeing with him. His inclusion in the story helps to illustrate the divide between the more relatable, likeable American soldiers, and the more shadowy American faction that is revealed to be driving the coup d’etat from behind the scenes.
One of the most shocking elements of this world, I find, is the way this American faction is depicted. I’ve given a lot of thought to how fans use the word “dark” to describe certain shows. What I’ve come to realize is that a show is not necessarily “dark” just because it depicts bad things happening – I judge the darkness of a show based on the overall morality it depicts in its world. So a show that includes bad things happening may still be a fairly light show overall, if the morality it depicts is one in which the good guys win in the end, and in which evil can be defeated. I find Alternative, then, to be a brutally dark work, because the “evil” represented by this American faction is not depicted as one that should be defeated. None of our characters – not Takeru, not the other members of the 207th, not Yuuko, not Yuuhi – come out of this arc feeling that the Americans who orchestrated this whole thing need to be dealt with in some way in order to make the world better. Rather, the existence of this American faction is treated as a truth of this world, an irrefutable fact that must simply be accepted.
Yuuhi, the major character that we meet in this arc, helps lay out this story’s view of morality. As she tells Takeru, there is not always a “correct” choice, so people cannot be simply divided into good and evil depending on whether or not they make the correct choice. That, she emphasizes, is why it is so important that the people who have been given the authority to make those choices must also take responsibility for the results of those choices. And so we come to understand that even the American faction pulling the strings are not “evil” in a storytelling sense – they are fellow human beings who have made different choices about how best to deal with the situation humanity finds itself in. The same is true of the Japanese coup forces themselves, the American soldiers who were caught up in the battle, and even forces like the Japanese traditions that keep Yuuhi and Meiya apart. That’s why this arc does not end with our lead characters vowing to take down or change any of these organizations or values, as a more traditional good-vs-evil story might. Rather, it ends with them understanding that the things they have seen and learned throughout this arc are simply a part of this world, and all they can do is accept that and move forward.
Let’s end by talking a little about the anime adaptation for this arc. It’s clear to me now that this anime, like many anime adaptations these days, intends to stick closely to its source material (both the game and the manga adaptation), for better or worse. In the early episodes, it was most definitely “for worse”, as it utterly failed to account for how the anime audience will experience the story differently. But this arc illustrated this approach “for better” – since it has almost no ties to events from earlier chapters, it requires almost no alteration to be accessible to a new audience. And the end result is a very strong series of episodes. If there’s a weak spot by that metric, then it’s the inclusion of the Valkyries in episode 10. Although it’s a huge crowd-pleasing moment for existing fans, for new fans it’s an entire new group of characters taking a major role at a moment when the show is finally fleshing out its main characters. But otherwise the arc is a great showcase for the anime’s direction in staging its major fight scenes – something the anime has lacked until now – while pairing them with strong character drama. The end of episode 9 is a good showcase for that, using strong direction (along with its special insert song) to create a memorable moment out of a scene that, to be honest, was not all that special in the original. For me, I’ll always think of the anime version now whenever I revisit that scene in the game.
One of the greatest strengths of the original Muv-Luv trilogy is that it “feels” like a real novel – it has a concrete beginning, middle, and end, and it builds its story and its themes throughout its runtime, so that once you reach the end you can look back and see how all of the different pieces come together to form a coherent whole. But it’s also one of the great weaknesses of the anime adaptation, both because the decision to start at Alternative took away those opening chapters, and because the decision to split Alternative into different seasons means it’s impossible to finish Season 1 and understand how the pieces are supposed to fit together. So I’m looking forward to seeing how Season 2 handles these challenges – if it’s learned to make its references to earlier chapters more accessible, and if the direction is able to introduce and bring together more of the pieces of the story.
The 2nd season of the Muv-Luv Alternative anime is almost upon us, so I guess it’s time for me to dust off this blog and get back into things. Sadly, I’ve been very busy with work and personal matters for the past year, and haven’t had time to write about the many Muv-Luv topics I would like to. To be honest, I’m still very busy, and I don’t really have time to write about Muv-Luv even now. But Season 2 waits for no man, so I’ll make the time.
So, the plan:
Number one, on Tuesday I’ll put up a combined blog post for the coup d’etat arc from Season 1, which I never got around to doing last year. I’ve generally written about the various Muv-Luv anime in arcs, allowing me to explore that arc’s entire story rather than having to address the story piecemeal, episode by episode. It’s extremely difficult for me to write posts for individual episodes, as it’s only in examining the purpose and themes of an entire arc that I find topics interesting to write about. I made an exception for the early episodes of Alternative Season 1, as I found each individual episode fascinating in the decisions made for the adaptation, their strengths and their flaws. But after the show settled in, I regret not switching back sooner to posting by arc rather than by episode. The coup arc simply made the problem I have with writing posts about individual episodes more obvious. I already have the post for those episodes ready, and I found it much easier to slip back into covering an entire arc, rather than attempting to write a post for each episode as I attempted to do last year.
Number two, once Season 2 starts, I’ll continue to write arc-centered posts for the season. I’ll likely have a separate post for the first episode of the season, episode 13, so that we can talk about the new season in general. They’ve already released the preview and summary for episode 13, so I can be confident that it’s a generally self-contained episode. I’ll probably make another post for the episode after that, episode 14, since that will likely also be a major episode with lots to discuss. But after that, my plan is to switch entirely to arc-centered posts, likely covering 3-4 episodes at a time.
Number three, after Season 2 ends, I’ll hopefully have time then to write some posts about Total Eclipse, which came out on Steam earlier this year. I’ve been very open that Total Eclipse is my favorite of the Muv-Luv spinoffs, and I’ve waited a very long time to be able to discuss the game with people who have also played it (almost 10 years!). I’m so sad that I don’t have the time to talk about it right now, but hopefully that just means more people will have had the time to finish the game by then.
In the meantime, to kick things off on that front, I highly recommend reading this post I made back when the game first came out. In it, I lay out what the story of Total Eclipse means, and how its three leads each contribute to the themes of the story. It is by far the longest, most detailed post I’ve ever made, and it’s the one I’m proudest of. At the time I wrote it, the visual novel industry was in a very different place, and there was essentially no hope of the Total Eclipse game ever being translated into English. I wrote the post knowing that almost no one would ever have the correct context to understand it – so I wrote it largely for myself, and for the few people who would also have been able to read the game in Japanese and yet would read an English blog afterwards. It is now 8 years since I wrote it, and with Total Eclipse now officially available in English, I hope many more people will be able to get something out of it.
If I have time, I’d also like to maybe write some things about The Day After, which I’ve also never really written about in detail since it was released. Maybe even Photonflowers/Photonmelodies as well. But that will definitely be in the future. Right now I’ll be keeping my eyes on Season 2.
This episode wastes no time in taking us deep into our first truly serious storyline of the show, a full-on coup d’etat by a rogue military faction within the Japanese imperial forces. And I really mean it wastes no time – it launches straight into the story without any lead-in from the previous episodes. At the same time, though, it also pulls together many of the strands of foreshadowing that have been laid throughout the series. It brings back into the foreground the hints of dissatisfaction with the way the civilians have been treated by the government, which had been seeded in several episodes. It also brings back both Undersecretary Tamase and Chief Yoroi, and pays off the shady hints involving Kei over the last few episodes. Indeed, as Yoroi notes, all five of Takeru’s teammates are now deeply connected to this incident. That all gives this episode an extremely dark feel, in contrast with the relatively more lighthearted feel of the series so far, especially the last few episodes which have focused heavily on Takeru’s return to his original world.
But then, that’s the entire point of doing the episode this way, to shock Takeru – and the viewer – with a sudden, darker shift in tone. That’s how the story has always depicted Takeru’s growth – each time Takeru has matured as much as he can in his current status quo, the story exposes him to an even darker truth hiding beneath the surface. That’s what happened when Takeru was originally transported from his original world to this world, a world under attack by the BETA. And it happened again at the start of Alternative, when he was brought back to the beginning of this timeline, this time with the knowledge that the world was operating under a strict timeline, counting down to December 25 and the end of Alternative IV, which he had no idea about his first time around. And the launch of this coup d’etat is the next step in that process, as Takeru is exposed for the first time to the deep political divisions that govern this world, as well as the fact that his interventions in the timeline can have negative repercussions as well as positive.
Longtime readers of this blog will know that the complex political conflicts of this world are one of this franchise’s biggest draws for me, so it’s no surprise that this is exactly the kind of episode that I love. However, while Total Eclipse focused more on international relations, and Schwarzesmarken on the state of Cold War Germany, Alternative is set in Japan, and this political arc centers on Japanese domestic politics. Perhaps what’s most surprising to me is the extent to which the anime is being allowed to portray this storyline at all. Age has suggested before that the heavily political nature of this arc had scared off some of the previous potential sponsors for an Alternative anime. Just the very concept of a modern-day Japanese Empire is already fertile ground for potential controversy. So when the story also adds in a Japanese nationalistic coup d’etat attempt clearly inspired by similar real-life Japanese nationalistic coup d’etat attempts, you can see how people might get squeamish.
In that context, what is most important to this arc is Takeru’s position in the story. This particular episode, despite featuring a bloody coup, is actually really light on action. Instead, this is a very talky episode, dedicated mostly to laying out some of the philosophies of the various factions. You of course have Naoya Sagiri’s faction, the people responsible for the coup. The story also brings in Lieutenant Tsukuyomi, representing the Imperial Royal Guard, part of the upper echelon of the Japanese forces, which opposes the coup but is also fiercely loyal to the Empire and opposes outside intervention in the conflict. And you have the UN forces, who are not part of the Imperial forces and whose objectives may differ.
But Takeru stands apart from all of them, as he is not a true member of this country. Even the UN forces of Yokohama Base are largely Japanese. Meiya, of course, is the one who expresses the most sympathy for the rebels’ stated grievances. But even someone like Yuuko, who is supposed to be working for the greater good of the entire planet, can’t help but express her opinion in this episode as a Japanese citizen. Only Takeru is different. As Tsukuyomi notes, it’s inconceivable to her that a Japanese person could be so indifferent to outside intervention after seeing what America has done to Japan. But Takeru wasn’t around to experience any of that, so he’s incapable of seeing things from that perspective. Takeru is only concerned with saving the entire world from the BETA. He doesn’t understand or care about the political implications involved. When dealing with such a sensitive topic, it’s crucial that the audience come into this conflict through Takeru’s more neutral viewpoint. This will become even more important as the political arguments develop over the course of this arc.
This will probably be a short one. After a fairly rocky start, this show has settled into a much more consistent and predictable level of quality, so I don’t feel like I have as much to say from episode to episode as I used to. This week’s episode is fairly straightforward, so we can get through it pretty quickly.
The majority of this episode belongs to Kasumi. After Takeru returns to the Alternative world, Yuuko reveals the secret to Kasumi’s backstory, which then allows Takeru to understand her better and grow closer to her. In fact, with this anime having been so fast-paced for so long, what stands out most is just how much time this episode is allowed to devote to Takeru and Kasumi’s long conversation. It’s the longest conversation Takeru has been depicted as having with anybody, not counting the largely expositional conversations he’s had with Yuuko. It’s yet another good sign that the anime is slowing down now that it’s through its setup phase, and is allowing scenes to play out a little more.
One thing I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet is just how much smaller Kasumi seems in the anime compared to the game. She’s remarkably shorter than I imagined her to be, but her face and her proportions in general are all smaller as well. She’s also a lot more expressive in the anime as well – while she still talks in the same somewhat monotone voice as in the game, she shows many more facial expressions in the anime. She’s pretty much always staring straight forward in the game; I can’t imagine her shifting her eyes like she does in this episode when she claims she’s not trying to make fun of Takeru. I actually think I like her more in the anime than in the game – she certainly feels like the only character that the anime has put a lot of thought into how to depict, beyond simply following the game.
This episode is also Sumika’s debut appearance outside of flashbacks, but with the episode’s heavy focus on Kasumi, and on the possible connection between Kasumi and Sumika, Sumika herself winds up feeling a little like she’s in Kasumi’s shadow this time around. It’s still a good scene that gets across how important Sumika is to Takeru, but by its very nature, it’s a very short scene where Takeru struggles to recapture his old relationship with her, having seen so much in the three years since he last saw her, so we don’t get to see much of what they’re usually like together. It’s a scene that, as far as the anime is concerned, is more relevant for how it affects Takeru than for actually introducing Sumika herself into the story.
The final section of the episode is devoted to setting up the show’s next major storyline. It starts with a few cutaways to characters within the Imperial Japanese Army, including Sayoko Komaki, the lead character from the anime’s first episode. Along with Komaki, these scenes also bring back the hints of unease with the Japanese government’s actions, which had been developed during the first episode as well. The scene of them walking through the refugee camp is a striking one, particularly because the images of the camp are original to the anime. While the manga (which the anime continues to follow fairly closely) first introduced this scene, the anime portrays the camp with far more detail and impact.
The episode then ends by setting up some of the major conflicts within Takeru’s Squad 207B, and the major one is between Takeru and Meiya. We’ve seen throughout this anime that Takeru’s goal is to change the future and push his own squad’s training forward, so he is elated by the news that a group of civilians has been evacuated from Mount Tengen. His internal monologue indicates that he and his squad were part of the evacuation team during the previous timeline – the anime doesn’t go into much more detail than that, other than a couple of quick flashes. That’s probably for the best, since I’ve been saying constantly that the anime needs to minimize those kinds of references – what actually happened in the previous timeline is not as important as the simple knowledge that they didn’t go on the mission this time. Meanwhile, we’ve seen glimpses of Meiya’s own concern for the welfare of the Japanese civilians during the BETA alert in episode 4, and this time around, she’s worried about the implication that the civilians may have been evacuated by force. That sets up a fight between the two of them over the righteousness of the evacuation. The argument itself goes by fairly quickly, and as this plotline is only introduced in the final minutes of the episode, it will obviously be followed up on in more detail later. In that sense, these last minutes of the episode can be considered more of a preview for where the next episodes are headed.
With this episode, we officially move into the next stage of Muv-Luv Alternative’s story. We are now past the part of the story where Takeru retraces events he experienced during his last time through this world. Starting this episode, Takeru is now experiencing events that he has no prior knowledge of, and it immediately gives this episode a different feel from the ones that came before.
Perhaps appropriately, we kick things off with the introduction of Mikoto’s dad, who proceeds to list all the ways that Takeru has already changed this timeline, notably intervening in the BETA attack from Sadogashima and the HSST drop that coincided with the visit from Miki’s father. Seeing these events laid out at the beginning of the episode almost feels like the anime itself signaling to the viewer that it’s time to start expecting that these changes to the timeline will start affecting how the anime plays out.
The introduction of Mikoto’s dad is one of those things that will simply play differently between the original game and the anime. In the game, we’ve already had plenty of time to get to know Mikoto’s personality, and receive all sorts of hints about what kind of person Mikoto’s dad is. He’s an unseen character throughout the earlier chapters, and his reveal here is the payoff to a long series of insinuations about him. In the anime, not only have we not heard of him before, we haven’t even gotten to know Mikoto well enough to see how her dad reflects her own personality.
Instead, her dad’s introduction is more important in the anime for what it suggests about the future. We’ve heard before that all of the other members of Takeru’s squad have complicated family situations. The show then introduced Miki’s dad (a UN undersecretary) last episode, and it follows up by bringing in Mikoto’s dad (an Imperial intelligence agent) this episode. It is definitely a sign that the show is beginning to follow up on that thread, and that we’ll continue to explore those family situations in the upcoming weeks. And then, of course, there’s the message that Mikoto’s dad actually brings, the vast majority of which is currently incomprehensible to Takeru (and the viewer), but which is obviously foreshadowing for future events.
The rest of the episode is dedicated entirely to the storyline of trying to send Takeru back to his original world. And the way this storyline plays out in the anime helps illustrate just how much better the show flows now that we’ve moved past those early episodes. Before, the episodes were forced to juggle numerous storylines at once due to the fast pace at which it was trying to introduce the major elements of the story. Those storylines were also heavily dependent on Takeru’s knowledge of the previous timeline. Now that all of that early setup is complete, though, it’s able to build new storylines based on the existing knowledge that has been established within the anime, rather than knowledge from the previous timeline, making it much easier for the viewer to follow the story.
The actual return to Takeru’s original world is another moment that is built up to much more in the previous chapters of the game than in the anime, but unlike the introduction of Mikoto’s dad, I think the anime itself has laid enough groundwork that the moment still lands effectively. The show has used flashbacks to his relationship with Sumika to establish his nostalgia for his old world, and we can sympathize with his desire to return, even if we haven’t actually seen much of it. His talk with the Yuuko of the original world also makes clear how different she is from the Yuuko of the Alternative world – she’s much more friendly and encouraging, whereas Alternative Yuuko is more calculating.
Now that we’ve reached the halfway point of this first season, I think it’s fair to look back and evaluate how the anime has gone so far. My sense of it is that the anime has focused, for better and for worse, on being a good adaptation rather than on being a good show. When the source material works well, the anime has generally delivered a good rendition of it. But when the source material has needed adjustments (mostly due to having started with Alternative rather than the earlier chapters), the anime has generally failed to make those adjustments. It has consistently erred on the side of staying true to the original work, rather than trying to make the show more accessible to new viewers. As I’ve mentioned before, I think a lot of it is due to a fundamental belief within anime nowadays that fidelity to the original material is good, and changes to the original material are bad. I see that philosophy at work in this show’s early episodes – a philosophy that says that they only need to concern themselves with getting the original material onto the screen, without worrying about how it will play in the eyes of a new viewer.
The bad news is, that philosophy overwhelmingly affects the first few episodes (episodes 2-4), which are the episodes that make the most reference to the previous chapters of the game – and those are the episodes that will most affect a new viewer’s perception of the show. But the good news is, if you’ve managed to stay interested in the show through those episodes, then you’re over the hump. You’ve probably felt that the episodes that came afterwards (episodes 5-6) have been enormous improvements, and that’s not a coincidence. Now that the show’s setup phase is complete, it becomes far less important to adapt the story’s structure, and far more acceptable to simply put the original material onto the screen – and that’s playing much more to this anime’s strengths. So there’s every reason to think that this show is only going to improve even more from here, especially as the original material’s story is about to ramp up as well.
The 5th episode of the Alternative anime is a milestone episode in some important ways. As I mentioned last time, the previous episode was the last to introduce a lot of characters and concepts from Takeru’s old experiences, which was a major factor in those early episodes feeling rushed and unsettled. Although this episode still focuses on events that mirror those of Takeru’s previous timeline, it is largely able to root them in terms of his present-day context, which goes a long way towards allowing the viewer to stay on the same page as the show itself. The result is that, for the first time, it feels like we’re watching an episode of the Alternative anime that flows the way it should, rather than getting bogged down in flashbacks and references to unseen events.
The first part of the episode focuses on the visit from Miki’s father, the UN undersecretary. It largely follows the same flow as the equivalent event in Unlimited (the previous chapter), meaning it’s basically the Alternative anime’s only look into Unlimited’s much more light-hearted sense of humor. Alternative itself generally doesn’t indulge in quite so broad comedy, and the anime seems to relish its one chance to go this over-the-top. Again, even though this event mirrors the one from Unlimited, the anime doesn’t play into that connection too much, allowing the scene to unfold solely based on what has already been presented in this timeline. The result is a much more enjoyable scene for new viewers.
The next part of the episode brings back the ticking clock that has been relegated to the background recently, the December 25th deadline. It also introduces a major new plot element, which is that the Yuuko in Takeru’s original world (the world of Extra) appears to have solved the very problem that this Yuuko is struggling with. Again, the episode seems to have decided to root the scene in terms of its implications to the current timeline, keeping the flashbacks to the relevant scene in Extra to a minimum. This is the section of the episode that feels a little too rushed, considering the weight of the revelation being presented. I would probably have spent a few more minutes on this scene, but the anime staff may have decided that they can spend more time on it later, since, as should be obvious from the importance of what was revealed, the show will double back to this plot point later.
The final part of the episode, which ends up forming the bulk of the episode, is the TSF mock battle between the members of 207B. It’s a definite highlight of the episode, being the first time we get an extended TSF sequence with our main characters. The first episode had a big TSF fight as well, but that episode depicted a huge battle which switched perspectives constantly. This fight scene is both longer, and focused on a smaller number of units. It’s a great showcase for Graphinica, the CG company working on this series.
What’s become clear, watching these early episodes, is that the anime has heavily de-emphasized characterizations for Takeru’s squadmates. For instance, in the game, the events in this episode had space to get to know Miki during her father’s visit, and Chizuru and Kei during the mock battle storyline, but the anime instead focuses more on the comedy in the former, and the TSF battle itself in the latter. Unfortunately, that may simply be an inevitable consequence of moving through the early plot so quickly. These first episodes clearly struggled to fit everything in, so the anime needed to figure out what to focus on and what to cut. In these last few episodes, what the anime has mostly chosen to focus on is Takeru himself, and the story revolving around his attempts to change the timeline. As a result, his teammates in 207B wind up getting pushed to the side. And the unfortunate reality is that if the anime is really struggling to include both in its limited runtime, then the correct choice is indeed to focus on Takeru, at the expense of his teammates.
Not all of that is the anime’s fault, though. The truth is that much of this is the result of the original Alternative game itself doing the same thing. In the game, Takeru’s teammates receive most of their character development in the game’s first two chapters, Extra and Unlimited. Having done so, Alternative then largely shoves them to the side, effectively demoting them from starring characters to more of a supporting cast, hoping that the player’s existing knowledge of them will carry them through without having to spend too much time on them in Alternative itself. In a very real sense, then, there isn’t much the anime can do with them, since the original Alternative game doesn’t leave much space in this section of the story to do anything with them.
So, this episode could have included some of the characterization that the game had, but it wouldn’t have brought those characters up to the level they were at in the game. Maybe a really strong anime adaptation could have gotten around this by modifying the early episodes even more to include more characterization moments, but those sorts of major changes seem beyond this anime. This anime seems to have decided to follow the Alternative game’s lead in demoting the lesser members of 207B to supporting characters, similar to Marimo, for example, or the Valkyries (who we got to see a little more of this episode). Like those other supporting characters, Takeru’s other teammates will continue to get their own strong emotional moments as the story goes on (particularly as this season concludes), but they are definitely not intended to be on the same level as the show’s actual main characters: Takeru, Meiya, Yuuko, Kasumi, and Sumika.
Speaking of Sumika, I’m actually warming up to how she works in this anime. In the game, she’s a character we already know and love, and we can’t wait to see her return. In the anime, she comes off a little differently. Now she’s a character we’ve seen brief glimpses of, enough to know that Takeru is close to her, but as the anime continues to stretch on without her, we start to look forward to her entering the story properly, so we can see exactly what kind of character she is. It’s a different kind of anticipation, but I actually think it’s starting to work. The brief moments we get with her, like Takeru remembering her at the tree on the hill at the start of this episode, do wonders in keeping people interested in her.
That scene, like several others in this episode (like Miki’s Haruhi pose, and the Valkyries scene), comes from Azusa Maxima’s Alternative manga adaptation, which I keep mentioning every week. In many ways, Maxima faced the same challenges in his manga adaptation that the anime does – while there were technically manga adaptations of Extra and Unlimited, Maxima didn’t draw them, nor were they particularly in-depth adaptations to begin with. So his Alternative manga also had to deal with the idea that there was no good way for a manga-only reader to have the correct context before reading it. I think scenes like the vision of Sumika at the hill were his way of trying to establish that context within the manga itself. In that sense, then, it’s a very wise idea for the anime to stick close to adapting the manga, since they can pick up on these sorts of ideas that Maxima put in to make the story work better without Extra and Unlimited.
Project Mikhail, the customizable TSF action game, is now available on Steam for Early Access!
. . . That’s not the point of this post.
What I really wanted to talk about was how the official website has now updated with the cast of the game. The Japanese cast is the same cast as the anime, meaning we can use the cast list to determine the new voices for characters who have yet to appear in the anime. The Japanese cast is:
However, even more interesting, to me, is the fact that the game is completely dubbed into English! The English cast is:
Takeru Shirogane – Stephen Fu Sumika Kagami – Lindsay Shepard Meiya Mitsurugi – Kira Buckland Chizuru Sakaki – Brittany Lauda Kei Ayamine – Elizabeth Maxwell Miki Tamase – Emi Lo Mikoto Yoroi – Sarah Williams Kasumi Yashiro – Lindsay Shepard Marimo Jinguuji – Daisy Guevara Yuuko Kouzuki – Elizabeth Maxwell Irina Pyatkh – Maureen Price Mana Tsukuyomi – Natalie Van Sistine Michiru Isumi – Morgan Laure Mitsuki Hayase – Corey Petit Haruka Suzumiya – Carrie Savage Misae Munakata – Michelle Rojas Touko Kazama – Michelle Rojas Akane Suzumiya – Leah Clark Haruko Kashiwagi – Tia Ballard Surface Pilot 1 – Matt Shipman Surface Pilot 2 – Emi Lo Surface Pilot 3 – Michelle Rojas Surface Pilot 4 – Matt Shipman Asfana Shepsut – Kristen McGuire Isfana Nepherte – Brittany Lauda
Although the website doesn’t list this information, the English cast members have been tweeting about their participation in the game, and it sounds like it was recorded at Studio Nano, a newer dubbing studio located in Dallas-Fort Worth. Obviously, they use a lot of local talent associated with Funimation, but like a number of newer studios, they are also able to record a lot of LA-based actors online.
Interestingly, they managed to get back Carrie Savage as Haruka and Leah Clark as Akane from the old KimiNozo dub. That’s a pleasant surprise, particularly Carrie Savage. I had the impression she wasn’t doing much anime/game stuff anymore, but maybe she’s still up for reprisals. It seems like they couldn’t get Colleen Clinkenbeard back as Mitsuki, which is a shame, since they were already going 2 for 3.
I don’t know how anybody can hear about Project Mikhail game being dubbed and not immediately wonder: could this mean the Alternative anime is getting an English dub as well? So let’s go over the points for and against that possibility:
Against:
Crunchyroll hasn’t announced official numbers or anything, but I think most people would assume Alternative is probably not doing great numbers for them.
Studio Nano hasn’t done any dubs with Crunchyroll yet, to the best of my knowledge.
For:
Well, they literally just launched a game with an English dub, right? Usually it’s the other way around – if there’s an anime and a game being released in America, it’s much more common for the anime to be dubbed and the game to be left in Japanese.
According to the show’s end credits, Crunchyroll is on the production committee for the anime, so it would seem to me like they might have a greater-than-normal interest in producing a dub for the show.
Despite having announced a slate of dubs for the fall season, Crunchyroll seems to be suggesting at the end of the above article that they might have more dubbing news at Anime NYC. So maybe they’re not done announcing all their dubs yet?
Of course, I hope we get a dub for the show eventually – just like with the anime itself, I like to see different takes on the same material, regardless of whether it turns out good or bad.
Anyway, that was a lot of talk about English dubbing, so let’s close out with another, more esoteric topic. See those names at the bottom of the cast list, Asfana and Isfana? They’re original characters in Project Mikhail (whose role in the game I don’t know – I haven’t actually played the game yet, sorry). But they sounded very familiar, so I thought and thought and thought, and finally I remembered: their names are, I believe, references to characters in Age’s old game Kaseki no Uta. For those who don’t know, Kaseki no Uta takes place on a distant planet in the distant future. Age and Kouki Yoshimune have also hinted that the game may or may not actually take place in the far future of Muv-Luv Alternative’s timeline. There are certain words and terminology that they chose to include in Alternative to hint at the possibility of such a thing.
The name Project Mikhail is itself a reference to Kaseki no Uta – Mikhail is a very mysterious and important word that appears in the game. Does this mean that Project Mikhail is heavily related to Kaseki no Uta? There was an interview with one of the developers where he basically said, not really, it was just an Easter egg since he was a fan of Kaseki no Uta. You’re free to decide how much you believe him – personally, I haven’t made up my mind yet on the subject. I will say that the apparent premise of Project Mikhail is not a million miles away from the truth behind the Mikhail of Kaseki no Uta.
Kaseki no Uta also had two other characters named Astana and Isphana – those names don’t match the Project Mikhail characters directly, but they’re obviously close enough that they must be intentional references. That said, the Project Mikhail characters look (and presumably act) completely different from the ones in Kaseki no Uta, so that I really could buy as just an Easter egg with no greater significance.
If Project Mikhail winds up actually having some plot significance with Kaseki no Uta, I’m sure I’ll end up explaining the context. For now, I guess we’ll just have to see where its story goes.
Posted by type94 
Type-94 
Muv-Luv Alternative: The Animation 14
October 13, 2022One of my favorite Muv-Luv memories doesn’t really have anything to do with the game itself. It happened several years after Alternative came out, when series creator Kouki Yoshimune one day tweeted out:
Well, what happened was the 3rd episode of Madoka Magica had aired that Friday, and a lot of people were making comparisons between Madoka’s Mami and Muv-Luv’s Marimo. Yoshimune had mentioned before that he doesn’t really watch anime anymore, so he had no idea. I like the image of him scrolling through his Twitter feed, wondering why so many people seemed to have spontaneously decided to tag him about a game that came out years ago.
Anyway, this episode.
What always strikes me about that final scene is how shocking it is. Now, by that I don’t mean how sickeningly gruesome it is (although it is). And I don’t mean how it suddenly comes on without warning (although it does). What I mean is that it preys on the audience’s expectations about how a story is supposed to flow. We’ve all seen a ton of stories, and we get used to the typical ebb and flow of it. We get used to how a story transitions from a happy “high” point to a tragic “low” point, and then back again. The coup arc was, on the whole, a “low” point where the characters are put through the wringer. It’s then followed up by the events of the previous episode, where Takeru goes back to his world, gets the formulas that will save the world, and meets Sumika again. We’re definitely swinging back to a high point here. It’s followed up by the graduation, another happy high point for everybody, and it continues on with the XM3 trials, which Takeru and his team are crushing. So when the BETA attack, it’s a surprising twist, but it’s one we’re prepared for – we’ve spent enough time on a high point that we instinctively understand it’s about time for another low point.
And it is a low point. Takeru is brought down lower than he’s ever been before. This is, by a wide margin, the worst low point he’s had yet. So after he’s been put through such an ordeal, we understand Marimo’s speech to Takeru as the start of another high point, transitioning him past his failure during the last attack. That’s why Marimo’s death is so shocking: because it is very carefully targeted to take place at the exact moment when we least expect another low point. It betrays our instinctive understanding of how stories “should” work. And it works precisely because Takeru has just experienced his worst low point ever. He’s already been taken down lower than we thought possible, given how the story has worked up to this point, so we just can’t conceive of the idea that he could be taken down even lower so quickly.
This effect is, if anything, even more amplified in the anime, where we not only perceive highs and lows in terms of the overall story, but also in terms of individual episodes. Takeru failing in the XM3 attack is the “theme” of the episode; it’s what the episode is about. By the time Marimo is comforting Takeru, we already perceive the episode as over – even if we aren’t watching the clock specifically, we all have enough of a sense of how long an episode is that we know there’s no more time left to do anything else. And again, because Takeru has already been brought so low, we instinctively assume that the final minutes of the episode will be dedicated to wrapping that plot thread up.
There are a few points about the big scene that I find interesting in terms of the choices made. The first is the speed at which it happens. The game lingers on that fateful moment for quite a few lines. In the anime, the BETA comes in and does the deed almost instantly, and the whole thing is over before Takeru can even process what happened. I think that’s an intriguing choice that plays on the strengths of an anime – you really can’t convey that kind of speed in any other medium, be it game, manga, or novel. There’s something a little terrifying about that kind of speed, that a person can simply be alive one moment and dead the next. I’ve seen a number of people play through the game who stop at that moment, trying to understand what is happening before clicking onward – the game doesn’t move forward until the player chooses to. The anime, left alone, moves forward regardless of whether the viewer is ready to or not.
The second thing I want to mention is, somewhat ironically given my first point, how the anime stretches the moment out. The game acts like the BETA gives it one good chomp and it’s over. The anime actually depicts this fucker CHEWING on it for a while afterwards. That’s the part that really disturbed me, watching this episode.
The last thing I want to note is how Takeru witnesses the act. In the game, he hears it happening behind him, and when he turns around, it’s already in progress. In the anime, he turns around first, and sees the whole thing happen from beginning to end. From Takeru’s perspective, that just seems much more traumatizing – to see Marimo smiling, and then to watch the whole thing play out afterwards.
Ugh. I don’t feel so good. Can we talk about something else?
I mentioned before that Takeru is brought down to his lowest point during the attack during the XM3 trials. And he really is. In fact, in watching this episode, I started to feel like you don’t really see a lead character brought this low in anime anymore. Too much of anime nowadays is steeped in wish fulfillment – fans want to see themselves in the main character, and they definitely don’t want to see themselves taken down to this level. (I’m reminded of a tweet – which I sadly can’t find anymore – about someone who met Yoshimune at Anime Expo, and told him they loved the world of Alternative and wanted to be part of it, and his response was, “What are you, a masochist?”) Even when a lead is wrong or makes a mistake, they still retain a level of dignity that makes people want to be them. But Takeru has no dignity at the end of this – he’s reduced to curling up in his cockpit, wetting himself, screaming that he doesn’t want to die. It feels like something from another generation. And well, that’s because it is. But that never really occurred to me until today.
The hell of it is, Marimo is kind of right when she says he didn’t do too badly out there. Speaking solely about the results of his actions, he doesn’t have a lot to be sorry about. If he were just a regular newbie soldier, his performance would be pretty commendable. The problem Takeru has is, he got it into his head that he is much, much more than a regular soldier. His experience, both in his original world playing video games, and in the previous loop undergoing training, made him an exceptional surface pilot. His understanding of those video games allowed him to conceive of the XM3 operating system. His knowledge of the previous loop allowed him to predict the future. And his ability to travel between worlds allowed him to obtain the formulas that will help complete the 00 Unit.
And so he started thinking he was much better than just a normal soldier – he operated on a different level than them. He was even starting to throw around terms like “humanity’s savior” with a disturbing certainty. And all of that was building up to this moment, the moment when he first encounters the BETA in a real battle – and he discovers, far too late, that none of that shit really matters in a battle, and all of those normal soldiers he looked down on were far more experienced and useful than he was. It’s a terrifying thing to learn about yourself, after having spent so long believing your own bull.
Poor guy. Hard to believe that wasn’t even the worst thing that happened to him this episode.
As I mentioned before, I’m transitioning back to doing arc-based posts, because it’s easier for me to write about the themes of an entire arc – it’s hard for me to write about the theme of an individual episode while trying to avoid spoiling later episodes of the arc. I made an exception for this episode, since it’s, well, this episode, but starting next episode, I know the show is going to return to being difficult to write about in one-episode segments, so I’ll see you guys in a few weeks.
I started this post off with a tweet, so let’s close out with another tweet. I’ve been watching reactions to this episode all day (the phrase “Marimo-chan” actually entered the top 10 trending topics in Japan for a couple of hours!), and my vote goes to this guy: