14th
Woah another post so soon? That's right folks, I've finally finished the damn game I was going to review.
And now before you scroll past my entry, here's two facts about it to get your attention.
1. A star studded production cast. One of the composers did all the music for this anime, including this iconic song. No less then five JAM Project songs (three by the group and two solos by members Hironobu Kageyama and Masaaki Endoh. Plus an animator who's work includes Full Metal Alchemist movies and the Neon Genesis Evangelion retelling movies.
There's also Norio Wakamoto voicing one of the characters too!
2. This game, or rather visual novel, ranks at the very top of the largest english visual novel database with two thirds of all its votes being a perfect score. Beating out other famous visual novels like Higurashi, Clannad, Umineko, Fate/Stay Night and many more by a landslide. However its popularity ranking is only number 22 on the list, and I find that just sad.
With that, I dive into to my review.
The game, Muv Luv Alternative is an interesting creature. It is a sequel of sorts, of the original Muv Luv (which is package of Muv Luv Extra and Muv Luv Unlimited, two separate games) released in 2006. However, only very recently has a full english patch been released. So now, more people can have access to this amazing game. But one requires an understanding of Extra and Unlimited, so I have written short summaries on them.
Keep in mind that these have minor spoilers. Minor as in, describing the basic premise or of the no shit sherlock variety.
Muv Luv Extra:
Extra tells of the story of a boy named Takeru and his childhood friend Sumika in their final year of high school. Takeru wakes up and finds that a young woman has moved next door, a rich heiress named Meiya who happens to be laying on his bed. Essentially, its generic harem comedy with a couple of mecha and gaming references thrown in and lives and breathes on cliches. You pick between the two girls (or from your extended harem group) and get an ending with them as your lover. Happy ending music plays, and everything is cool right?
NOPE
Muv Luv Unlimited:
Takeru wakes up, supposedly after going through the end of Extra, to another world. This time, the earth is a crapsake world, getting their asses kicked by aliens called BETA, mecha is now the standardized weapon of choice, and the happy fun times comes to an end. The school is now a military base, and Takeru's harem is now a squad consisting of soldiers that get him to man the fuck up or get the hell out. Overall, despite the genre shifts, its mainly military slice of life with some missions and few good scenes here or there. However the most disappointing thing about the game is the ending and that many questions are left unanswered for Alternative to take up the helm. Has a good ending song, but I don't recommend looking that up until you've finished the game.
Click here for the more spoilery synopsis of it
I don't plan on reviewing either of these games, frankly they are average and serve as a baseline and prologue for Alternative.
Now let's get onto the good stuff. First a notspoilery (unless you really squint or paranoid) video to showcase how damn well this game's presentation is for visual novel featuring the game's opening song sung by JAM Project.
With that out of the way, now onto the proper critique
Story:
Muv Luv Alternative's premise is that Takeru winds back to the beginning of Unlimited, with his memories intact. With help from his old memories, he wants to make damn sure that humanity emerges as a victor against the BETA. His true tale of boy to a full grown man begins. Also there's lots of technobabble, politics, time/dimension travel and busting a cap on alien ass.
Truly though, despite the game being both mecha and military game as well as having plenty of great action sequences, the series at its heart is with humanity and will to live. You see the breakdowns, psychologically, and the planning that goes on
The story is really good, everything is explained and accounted for. Absolutely no asspulls are present. The biggest thing to mention is Takeru's character development. Where he starts off as my least favorite character of Extra (and that's an accomplishment in its own I tell you) to screaming FUCK YEAH whenever he's in battle by the end of Alternative. He cries buckets of tears, he sees people die in front of his eyes, he overcomes his (rather well done) PTSD at the end of a rather important arc for him. It's great and done realistically to a T.
I have to give major props for this game having a nearly all female cast, and all of them are badass, important to the plot and go through some character development (though not nearly as much as Takeru) in a setting you would least expect it. However most of their development is confined to Unlimited and near the end of the game, plus during two chapters of the game, you barely see them at all but at least in the first case its justified.
Another good point I like to bring up is the amount of detail put into the story, and that the game doesn't fall on anything idealistic. Compared to Extra, which has Meiya waving around her money like magic. Here, the time and space travel have actual repercussions, and the two world's connections are explained greatly. The game does not hesitate to kill important people and to hit you hard with the twists (so many twists, that the tv trope page for this series has an entire section dedicated for them. To give you an idea, there's a scene after the first BETA appear in the series period that will haunt you for days. For sciency people, they also get into how brainwaves work, and physics, though its toned down into almost layman's terms. Needless to say its a fresh breath of air from idealistic series that handwaves it or chalks it up to magic.
One of the two complaints I've heard about the story is that the game follows the thought process of Takeru. Some people complain that's distracting, it takes up too much time. But this shows how Takeru thinks and how his actions are justified. By getting into his head, I felt like I was matched up to what he was thinking about, making the surprises and twists hit even harder. The other is the ending, but to avoid spoilers, I'm only going to say I was disappointed at one specific thing about it, and having it as a single ending game with light variations makes sense in context.
My only big negative I have about the story itself is that the pacing is bad. Characters often go off on infodumping speeches and talk like they have all the time in the world during the heat of battle. Fortunately, I wasn't really annoyed at this until I hit chapter 8 of the 10 chapters, which is no action and consists almost entirely of chitter chatter and lectures. I almost fell asleep at points. The only positive spots were the sections surrounding revealing one of the biggest spoilers of the game.
There is also one scene in the game that I felt was shoehorned in and disgusting. But thankfully, they kept it brief and it's almost never referenced again outside of blink it and you'll miss it shots. Trust me, when you play, you'll know what it is.
Graphics:
I wasn't fond of the character art, to be honest and all. It felt generic and not at all stylized. However each significant character gets a lot of expressions and drawings for them. Plus some of the CGs are just gorgeous, I'll dump some of them here.
However, despite the disappointing character art; the mecha art, the CGs and having full motion video during pivotal scenes makes up for the shortcomings.
Music:
As I have listed at the beginning of the review, this series has some of the best composers and singers gathered up to create the soundtrack. And that soundtrack does not disappoint. Let's start with Meiya, which only plays during the character's most important scene at the near end of the game. Beautiful, orchestrated and able to invoke many emotions. Other good tracks include Flame of Life and Original Hive.
From the lyrical music, we have the three songs by JAM Project; Asu e no Houkou (probably my favorite, partly because the lyrics are fitting), NAME～君の名は～, and the recently released for a new port - Metamorphose. There's also the two insert songs for the game, Tsubasa (which I can't seem to find on youtube) and Carry On. Carry On also happens to play when Norio Wakamoto is giving a huge speech, and combine those two and you have pure earsex. And to help more, the artwork spikes through the roof in terms of quality.
However, what keeps the OST from being perfect, in my humble opinion, is that it reuses the same soundtrack from the previous two games. And while it is appropriate during certain sections and scenes of the game (such as flashbacks), I found it a bit too overused, especially when the new OST is so much better. While most of the old OST ranges from meh to okay, it does have its bright spots, like Creeping Anxiety.
Presentation
I cannot stress how good the presentation is. It would be criminal to give it anything less then a perfect score. Alternative blurs the line between actual animation and visual novel. Instead of characters staying a fixed distance and position on the screen, or having slide shows of pictures followed by blocks of text, characters are dynamic, they move, jitter, shiver, go up and down to simulate walking. They can face other characters, turn aside and fall down. The mecha action scenes in this game work great, they actively move around, shooting and cutting up the enemy. It feels like an actual anime during these sequences. All in glorious widescreen with several short full motion videos animated by Yoshinari Koh. To top off, the effects like snow falling, the piloting screens and all the other little details make it perfect.
Other comments:
- This is an 18+ visual novel (there is an all ages version, but I don't consider it to really be all ages when it just zooms/pans around the inappropriate stuff). While it does have two sex scenes in it, they are a combined 20~30 minutes total out of a whopper of a 50+ hour visual novel this is. The first one, I recommend getting it over with as soon as possible (its the "disgusting" scene I mentioned at the end of my story section). The second one is about as vanilla and tame as it gets, but it gives you nice warm fuzzies.
- The English in this game is bad to the point of being hilarious. Here's an example. It even makes a conversation later in the game even funnier. Fortunately (or unfortunately) there's only two instances of this mangled Engrish happening outside of certain images, so it isn't a huge distraction.
- In order to fully understand and have Alternative to make an impact on you, you've gotta play the first two games. The payoff is well worth it, and I figured if some of you can read a novel's worth of pages for Homestuck for it to get good, you can offer the same curtsey for this game. Either that or read this page, which gives you a rundown of all the important and relevant information from Extra/Unlimited, but I wouldn't recommend it.
So why am I doing this review despite this game hailed as one of the best visual novels out there? It's criminally unknown outside of a few visual novel circles and I want to change that, it deserves so much more love then it gets. It's understandable to a point, with the visual novel released in 2006 and only getting a full English translation in March 2011 (which was an accident). Hopefully, with one of its side stories being adapted into an anime, its original will have a proper anime adaptation as well.
And now before you scroll past my entry, here's two facts about it to get your attention.
1. A star studded production cast. One of the composers did all the music for this anime, including this iconic song. No less then five JAM Project songs (three by the group and two solos by members Hironobu Kageyama and Masaaki Endoh. Plus an animator who's work includes Full Metal Alchemist movies and the Neon Genesis Evangelion retelling movies.
There's also Norio Wakamoto voicing one of the characters too!
2. This game, or rather visual novel, ranks at the very top of the largest english visual novel database with two thirds of all its votes being a perfect score. Beating out other famous visual novels like Higurashi, Clannad, Umineko, Fate/Stay Night and many more by a landslide. However its popularity ranking is only number 22 on the list, and I find that just sad.
With that, I dive into to my review.
The game, Muv Luv Alternative is an interesting creature. It is a sequel of sorts, of the original Muv Luv (which is package of Muv Luv Extra and Muv Luv Unlimited, two separate games) released in 2006. However, only very recently has a full english patch been released. So now, more people can have access to this amazing game. But one requires an understanding of Extra and Unlimited, so I have written short summaries on them.
Keep in mind that these have minor spoilers. Minor as in, describing the basic premise or of the no shit sherlock variety.
Muv Luv Extra:
Extra tells of the story of a boy named Takeru and his childhood friend Sumika in their final year of high school. Takeru wakes up and finds that a young woman has moved next door, a rich heiress named Meiya who happens to be laying on his bed. Essentially, its generic harem comedy with a couple of mecha and gaming references thrown in and lives and breathes on cliches. You pick between the two girls (or from your extended harem group) and get an ending with them as your lover. Happy ending music plays, and everything is cool right?
NOPE
Muv Luv Unlimited:
Takeru wakes up, supposedly after going through the end of Extra, to another world. This time, the earth is a crapsake world, getting their asses kicked by aliens called BETA, mecha is now the standardized weapon of choice, and the happy fun times comes to an end. The school is now a military base, and Takeru's harem is now a squad consisting of soldiers that get him to man the fuck up or get the hell out. Overall, despite the genre shifts, its mainly military slice of life with some missions and few good scenes here or there. However the most disappointing thing about the game is the ending and that many questions are left unanswered for Alternative to take up the helm. Has a good ending song, but I don't recommend looking that up until you've finished the game.
Click here for the more spoilery synopsis of it
I don't plan on reviewing either of these games, frankly they are average and serve as a baseline and prologue for Alternative.
Now let's get onto the good stuff. First a notspoilery (unless you really squint or paranoid) video to showcase how damn well this game's presentation is for visual novel featuring the game's opening song sung by JAM Project.
Click to view
With that out of the way, now onto the proper critique
Story:
Muv Luv Alternative's premise is that Takeru winds back to the beginning of Unlimited, with his memories intact. With help from his old memories, he wants to make damn sure that humanity emerges as a victor against the BETA. His true tale of boy to a full grown man begins. Also there's lots of technobabble, politics, time/dimension travel and busting a cap on alien ass.
Truly though, despite the game being both mecha and military game as well as having plenty of great action sequences, the series at its heart is with humanity and will to live. You see the breakdowns, psychologically, and the planning that goes on
The story is really good, everything is explained and accounted for. Absolutely no asspulls are present. The biggest thing to mention is Takeru's character development. Where he starts off as my least favorite character of Extra (and that's an accomplishment in its own I tell you) to screaming FUCK YEAH whenever he's in battle by the end of Alternative. He cries buckets of tears, he sees people die in front of his eyes, he overcomes his (rather well done) PTSD at the end of a rather important arc for him. It's great and done realistically to a T.
I have to give major props for this game having a nearly all female cast, and all of them are badass, important to the plot and go through some character development (though not nearly as much as Takeru) in a setting you would least expect it. However most of their development is confined to Unlimited and near the end of the game, plus during two chapters of the game, you barely see them at all but at least in the first case its justified.
Another good point I like to bring up is the amount of detail put into the story, and that the game doesn't fall on anything idealistic. Compared to Extra, which has Meiya waving around her money like magic. Here, the time and space travel have actual repercussions, and the two world's connections are explained greatly. The game does not hesitate to kill important people and to hit you hard with the twists (so many twists, that the tv trope page for this series has an entire section dedicated for them. To give you an idea, there's a scene after the first BETA appear in the series period that will haunt you for days. For sciency people, they also get into how brainwaves work, and physics, though its toned down into almost layman's terms. Needless to say its a fresh breath of air from idealistic series that handwaves it or chalks it up to magic.
One of the two complaints I've heard about the story is that the game follows the thought process of Takeru. Some people complain that's distracting, it takes up too much time. But this shows how Takeru thinks and how his actions are justified. By getting into his head, I felt like I was matched up to what he was thinking about, making the surprises and twists hit even harder. The other is the ending, but to avoid spoilers, I'm only going to say I was disappointed at one specific thing about it, and having it as a single ending game with light variations makes sense in context.
My only big negative I have about the story itself is that the pacing is bad. Characters often go off on infodumping speeches and talk like they have all the time in the world during the heat of battle. Fortunately, I wasn't really annoyed at this until I hit chapter 8 of the 10 chapters, which is no action and consists almost entirely of chitter chatter and lectures. I almost fell asleep at points. The only positive spots were the sections surrounding revealing one of the biggest spoilers of the game.
There is also one scene in the game that I felt was shoehorned in and disgusting. But thankfully, they kept it brief and it's almost never referenced again outside of blink it and you'll miss it shots. Trust me, when you play, you'll know what it is.
Graphics:
I wasn't fond of the character art, to be honest and all. It felt generic and not at all stylized. However each significant character gets a lot of expressions and drawings for them. Plus some of the CGs are just gorgeous, I'll dump some of them here.
However, despite the disappointing character art; the mecha art, the CGs and having full motion video during pivotal scenes makes up for the shortcomings.
Music:
As I have listed at the beginning of the review, this series has some of the best composers and singers gathered up to create the soundtrack. And that soundtrack does not disappoint. Let's start with Meiya, which only plays during the character's most important scene at the near end of the game. Beautiful, orchestrated and able to invoke many emotions. Other good tracks include Flame of Life and Original Hive.
From the lyrical music, we have the three songs by JAM Project; Asu e no Houkou (probably my favorite, partly because the lyrics are fitting), NAME～君の名は～, and the recently released for a new port - Metamorphose. There's also the two insert songs for the game, Tsubasa (which I can't seem to find on youtube) and Carry On. Carry On also happens to play when Norio Wakamoto is giving a huge speech, and combine those two and you have pure earsex. And to help more, the artwork spikes through the roof in terms of quality.
However, what keeps the OST from being perfect, in my humble opinion, is that it reuses the same soundtrack from the previous two games. And while it is appropriate during certain sections and scenes of the game (such as flashbacks), I found it a bit too overused, especially when the new OST is so much better. While most of the old OST ranges from meh to okay, it does have its bright spots, like Creeping Anxiety.
Presentation
I cannot stress how good the presentation is. It would be criminal to give it anything less then a perfect score. Alternative blurs the line between actual animation and visual novel. Instead of characters staying a fixed distance and position on the screen, or having slide shows of pictures followed by blocks of text, characters are dynamic, they move, jitter, shiver, go up and down to simulate walking. They can face other characters, turn aside and fall down. The mecha action scenes in this game work great, they actively move around, shooting and cutting up the enemy. It feels like an actual anime during these sequences. All in glorious widescreen with several short full motion videos animated by Yoshinari Koh. To top off, the effects like snow falling, the piloting screens and all the other little details make it perfect.
Other comments:
- This is an 18+ visual novel (there is an all ages version, but I don't consider it to really be all ages when it just zooms/pans around the inappropriate stuff). While it does have two sex scenes in it, they are a combined 20~30 minutes total out of a whopper of a 50+ hour visual novel this is. The first one, I recommend getting it over with as soon as possible (its the "disgusting" scene I mentioned at the end of my story section). The second one is about as vanilla and tame as it gets, but it gives you nice warm fuzzies.
- The English in this game is bad to the point of being hilarious. Here's an example. It even makes a conversation later in the game even funnier. Fortunately (or unfortunately) there's only two instances of this mangled Engrish happening outside of certain images, so it isn't a huge distraction.
- In order to fully understand and have Alternative to make an impact on you, you've gotta play the first two games. The payoff is well worth it, and I figured if some of you can read a novel's worth of pages for Homestuck for it to get good, you can offer the same curtsey for this game. Either that or read this page, which gives you a rundown of all the important and relevant information from Extra/Unlimited, but I wouldn't recommend it.
So why am I doing this review despite this game hailed as one of the best visual novels out there? It's criminally unknown outside of a few visual novel circles and I want to change that, it deserves so much more love then it gets. It's understandable to a point, with the visual novel released in 2006 and only getting a full English translation in March 2011 (which was an accident). Hopefully, with one of its side stories being adapted into an anime, its original will have a proper anime adaptation as well.