(No, not that kind of insanity.)
highly amused by how the ANN summer animethread is one half people pretending to know about muv-luv and one half grognards.txt about muv-luv—
parody image of che (@jpmeyer) July 02, 2012
@R042 @quattro_maeda it's kind of hard to go in cold to a show that's spin-off of a sequel of a sequel which is an AU spin-off of a spin-off—
parody image of che (@jpmeyer) July 02, 2012
@quattro_maeda @R042 or, a large part of why i like it is because it's so sperg, which also makes me understand that it's an acquired taste—
parody image of che (@jpmeyer) July 02, 2012
The first episode of Muv-Luv Total Eclipse actually had far less text dumping than I had feared it would have. I was expecting something egregious on the level of the first episode of Horizon on the Middle of Nowhere which exposition going over the end credits in a vain attempt to scratch the surface of the world. Instead, we got a cold open and a short classroom scene which didn’t really tell us much beyond the fact that mankind has been fighting aliens named the BETA for the last thirty years.
You have to understand that Muv-Luv is a series that consists of endless segments like this:
You will be constantly bombarded with mission briefings, xenobiology lectures, armament loadouts, quantum mechanics theories, alternate history lectures, and so on in the game. Huge, huge portions of this stuff isn’t at all necessary in order to tell the story of mankind at the brink of extinction, but it adds tons of worldbuilding (or tons of minutiae, depending on your perspective) and jumping-off points for the enormous number spinoffs, prequels, and sequels set in the universe.
I’d been following the franchise since 2005 (my original blog’s title was after all “a tale of love and courage”), so I’d forgotten huge portions of my own initial response to the series. After reading people’s reactions to Total Eclipse I quickly remembered how important much of that exposition is.
Everything starts going fine for a few minutes until you think “why are they all girls?”. Then a few minutes later, “the capital is in Kyoto?” And the most important of all: “Why are they practically naked?”
At this point, it’s easy to get derailed from enjoying the show and instead end up fixating on all the weird stuff that appears “off”. Rather than focusing one’s attention on the giant robots and the giant breasts, it’s all “you know, why are they using mecha and not combined arms?” all the way down.
In other news, is it just me or is this show’s cast every anime’s cast circa 2005?
I kept reading those twitter remarks as telling me that muv-luv included and/or was a spinoff of a sequel of a parody image of che. Then I got confused because I didn’t remember anyone wearing hats in the show.
This show’s cast is every anime’s cast about 2005, and it’s a nice change I think. There’s no reason why that is an issue or anything :3
It’s great! I can finally say “Oh sweet, I know who everybody is and what they’ve been in before!”
I think that the second episode’s strong enough that it’ll sell people on the show even if they can’t really keep up with all the glazed exposition.
Well, I’m hoping so, anyways.
Interesting argument; I think being a mecha fan I’m prepared to accept spurious justifications for robots (Laser-class seem to show the inherent failure of air power against light-based weaponry) and child soldiers (coming onto ML from the back of Yamato, the idea of humanity being close to extinction so trying to get as close to 100% conscription as possible seems justifiable) but what irked me was the silly uniforms which might have been attractive had the cast not looked so bland.
Really there’s very little I felt in ML that wasn’t logical or at least acceptable if you knew anything about mecha anime or “man versus horde” SF (and having read Heinlein, played 40k and watched a lot of real robot shows I was well up). However, this ultimately meant it failed to stand out as a real robot anime for the same reasons. Everything about it, divorced from its setting, was so standard that it would be easy to switch off.
Everything in the episode which I noticed that people were confused about was meticulously justified in the games, and not using the kind of silly “it works because magic and the magic only works on 14 year old Japanese girls with no pants on” sort of justification. It’s also not exactly easy to shoehorn those random statements into this episode without sounding ridiculous.
The silly uniform justification is that 1) only the cadet uniforms are silly (pilot uniforms are generally a dark opaque color) and 2) the reason they are silly is to reduce one’s self-consciousness and de-individualize one during the whole training process in hopes that it’ll get you working on pure muscle memory.
I’ll admit the setting seemed as well set out in terms of pseudoscience and logic as something like Gunbuster, which does it very well (and also has a klutzy schoolgirl as the lead character, fighting a horde of incomprehensible alien invaders).
I’m not writing the show off yet, after a whole episode of buildup of how awful the BETA are and how screwed everyone is I at least want to see a fight.
but but… if they are half-naked, wouldn’t they be more self conscious? And think of impact injuries! And what happens if they have to emergency eject at high altitudes? Does the principle the less cover, the higher rating of armour apply? Or is it just fanservice? Many years ago someone and I had a discussion about EVA’s plugsuits and that connectivity would be better if they were naked in FCL rather than have a barrier between skin and liquid. Despite the argument that it was made to improve connectivity, the skin to whatever is still the rate limiting step, be it skin to plugsuit or skin to FCL. The discussion went quite deep.
Since someone mentioned 40k, now armour like THAT is what people should be wearing into combat. All round protection. Lets not get into the Titans. Hmm… maybe that should be made into anime… For the Glory of the Emperor!
Great points. I’m still wondering why they didn’t adapt MLA instead? Isn’t that the thing most people want to see?
My biggest issue with the episode actually was when arrogant hime cut got beat up, she became an instant BFF!
re: silly cadet uniforms
Um… what. Guess I’ll just play the game, huh.
What bugs me is that in the war for survival not every dude was drafted…I saw loads of dudes going the wrong way. If it is to be the end of the world then every man and woman should be fighting, fixing something, or making weapons. I guess even in a war for survival they couldn’t think of a draft.
@Crusader
The problem is that I THINK this episode was backstory added in for the anime. The games take place a few years later, and by that point the Japanese army is primarily made up of women because huge portions of the male population were killed in previous fighting.
Then again, there’s also the alternative history stuff going on so I don’t know if the men had already been drafted to fight in China and Korea years before. Or if the characters in the first ep were joining the military simply because they are GLORIOUS NIPPON SAMURAIS and whatnot.
so… does muv-luv have more exposition than horizon? is it easier to get in to?
The game itself has enormous amounts of exposition, but most of it doesn’t REALLY matter in the sense that not knowing how many weapon hardpoints are on a Gekishin vs. a Shiranui won’t leave you scratching your head.