[Anime] Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse

Animefreak.tv should have the uncut version.

Ok, so I'm somewhat pissed.

I hate these type of episodes. Everything shown in the last two episodes could have been taken care of with 30 seconds of wall of text or 2 minutes of a military briefing scene.

I just know that somewhere around episodes 8-10 they are going to rush something, but wouldn't have too if they hadn't wasted two episodes worth of space in the beginning.

However, I'm not sure I'm going to make it to episode 8 to get pissed off. Tight fitting outfits and cute character design aside, I've seen nothing to grab my interest at the moment. The mechs are slow and stiff. I like my giant robots agile and pop with a wow factor. The aliens have an uninteresting design and really whats fun about watching a battle against an ant hill?

I have a feeling that I'm going to enjoy the fan art / art book much more than actually watching the show.

They went with the two ep flashback route to try and establish the setting and tone for newcomers, none of that was in the LN this is adapting, all anime original content.

Apparently it's going to be two cours so rushing probably won't be a problem, though I don't know how much content there is to actually adapt.

The mecha shown henceforth should be better since aside from the Takemikazuchi at the end of the second episode we've mostly seen shitty grunts using Zuikakus which are just slightly upgraded versions of the very first TSF produced, which is already about 30 years old.

From this point it'll be about Ace pilots testing state of the art 3rd gen TSFs so they should be at least a little more impressive.

I don't know what to expect since the Light Novel isn't translated (or finished) yet, but I don't think fighting the BETA will be a common occurence (aside from simulations and the end), maybe it'll descend into harem antics interspliced with mock battles for a while, presumably the only thing they'll need to worry about censoring in the near future is nudity.

Not alot of boobs are showing right.

You know...these things really aren't that hard to kill in hindsight.

I don't even see a need for the mechas, just good ol' armor and missile strikes should have been able to sweep those things up. They got what? Some squishy as fuck Anti Air and rushers only shielded in the FRONT that mindlessly zerg rush?


Some threat to humanity...doesn't help that even the trained pilots were retards shooting the FRONT shielded ones in the FRONT rather than the squishy, soft, very so much NOT bulletproof backsides of them and failing to GET THE FUCK OUT when they get in close or being 2 seconds too late.

These guys aren't humans, they're lemmings that took on the form of humans but none of the brains.

I'm gonna assume that 99% of that post is skimmed from Frodos on /a/.

I'm not sure if you're serious but no, artillery and missile strikes wouldn't be able to sweep them all up, because the Lasers (squishy though they may be) are pretty much anti-everything they can see, and they can see pretty fucking far.



They can intercept artillery shells and missiles.

It's true though that the other BETA classes are not that hard to kill individually, but then that's kind of the point, there's a fuckton of them and they're protected from the most effective tactics you could use against them (air, arty, and missile strikes) by the Laser class. When there were no Laser class at the outset of the war, China, the EU and the Soviets were holding them off and actually pushing them back with conventional forces and air superiority, then the BETA adapted to the situation and introduced the Laser Class which turned the tide in their favour.

As for the way the Eishi acted in this episode, especially the ones who got charged by Destroyers and just stood there firing harmlessly at their armour, yeah, they were pretty retarded at times, blame the director, he's overruled the franchise's creator Kouki on a number of things it seems. Kouki tweeted that Yui should've had a Carbine as a PDW when she ejected, also you can eject from the TSF cockpit in a powered exoskeleton but the Director obviously wanted to set a certain atmosphere for that scene so pistol/flashlight and on foot it is.

A number of things have been handled poorly in this adaptation, for one thing when those ships eventually gave up hope of preserving the city and started their artillery strike it just fucking worked straight away as if the Lasers weren't even there, they didn't even need to use anti-laser shells.

Also the TSFs in this show get destroyed by a single pulse of laser which just hits them and then they explode a second later, when actually the TSFs detect the Laser when it first warms up targeting them and have about a second to evade automatically, if they aren't able to get out of the Laser's line of sight and are exposed to the full power Laser they have a few seconds before the exposure melts through their armour completely, also in the ep you see the lasers are clearly travelling a lot slower than light.

Oh yeah, and the studio keeps fucking up in other ways, like every time we see crowd shots of civillians, the gender split is pretty equal, and there are a bunch of perfectly fit men standing around. The only reason they've had to start drafting women/girls is because after 30 years of war this isn't the case, men who've escaped the draft should be a minority, but they didn't explain that and failed to show it too.

Was the pistol even enough to kill some of the softer ones if you aimed right? Just curious as to why they wouldn't give people something a little tougher (as you said) if it was for anything other than "shoot yourself in the face before they eat you"

Hmm...if the laser ones are the most accurate threat, wouldn't they have been safer fighting somewhere with a lot of terrain (like the city) rather than FLAT farming field?

Unless the lasers can penetrate multiple buildings with ease you could just stay back there and kill the close range types. Sure it'd take a LONG FUCKING TIME if that works because they'd be more spread out, but casualties would have been lower. Hell, the train tunnels and canals would have been perfect for getting the close range ones into a confined area to just mow down.

Or even the mountain area right next to them. Again unless that laser can slice through parts of mountains like nothing which they seemed pretty likely to do.

And they should have had more defenses up...well ANY defenses at all. Like premtive minefields or set fire to the entire area if shit got really bad, all they really had were the mechs.

The pistol would be effective against Warrior Class BETA (which we didn't see in the episode) but they're apparently very fast and agile so hitting them in the first place would be difficult.

I'm guessing it'd work on the Soldier Class (Ripped Walking Vagina Ballsacks that ate annoying-glasses-revenge-tan) if you aimed for the head.

The red Tank Class BETA that ate Yamashiro were probably pretty well protected from those rounds though (at least one of Yui's frantic failed mercy kill shots hit one and it didn't seem to give a single fuck).

But like Kouki said, if it wasn't for the director she would've had a Carbine.

The Laser Class are the only ranged threat, but they never fire at their own allies and are rarely out in front so the BETA Vanguard of Destroyers and Grapplers acts as a wall of cover for the TSFs anyway, though sometimes they'll start to break apart and make a window for the Laser classes which is an Eishi's cue to get the fuck out of the way and make sure there are BETA between them and the Lasers.

Having buildings as cover might seem like a good idea (and the Lasers won't fire so long as you're not in their line of sight) but since you can't do an awful lot to the Destroyers from the front and they can rip through the buildings like cardboard you're pretty much forcing yourself into a close quarters battle with less room to manuever.

Also, through all of this, ammo is a serious problem, the TSFs run low pretty fast and unless you're a real badass the sword should be your last resort.

You could place your forces on the mountain area, but the objective is to protect the capital and if you don't stand in the BETA's way they'll just steamroll through it, it's not as if you can bombard them from there either because at that altitude if you have line of sight on your targets then the Lasers will have line of sight on you too, and indirect fire like artillery is just going to get intercepted.

They do use minefields to slow BETA advances but slowing is all they do, the BETA have the numbers to clear them out russian style. The Soviets and Chinese used nukes to slow them down, but the BETA can operate unshielded in space and are pretty much immune to radiation so for them it's simply a matter of sending out thousands more BETA once the dust has settled.

In this case though, the Japanese in this world are very stubborn and proud, a scorched earth policy was never going to fly, they wanted to Protect the capital and didn't take all the measures they could have if they'd prioritised stopping the BETA (Artillery with anti-laser heavy metal clouds would usually be the first step but the Navy held off until the city was all but lost). They were also pressed for time since the Mainland that'd held for so long suddenly fell and the BETA advanced on/through Japan much faster than expected, still their stupidity as a society was a big problem here.

I mean in MLA they fight a civil war amongst themselves over a bunch of bullshit regarding the Shogun's authority being circumvented, they still have Samurai families and ridiculous nepotism to the point where access to the best TSFs is reliant on bloodline rather than actual piloting ability.

It wasn't just TSFs though, the director did a poor job of showing it in this ep but the war is a combined effort of TSFs, artillery, missiles, Tanks/armoured vehicles and infantry (would not like that job), Navy and in cases where they manage to neutralise the Laser class or they're simply not present they can bring in air support like attack helicopters. There are also orbital divers/bombers but they're more suited for assaulting Hives than defending cities.

If the Japanese weren't willing to go to every extreme measure possible to prevent annihilation they deserve everything they got.

And I could never for the life of me understand how building a giant robot man is a good idea for a weapon? Especially when they're so ill-equipped.

A big gun and a sword, whoop de doo. They could just attach giant bayonets to their tanks and have the same effect. Why weren't their newer weapons built in a way that doesn't have LIMBS THAT CAN BE TORN OFF? Why not just a giant death machine on treads with VTOL capabilities? It wouldn't have to worry about losing an arm or leg and being useless when it has about 7 giant ass guns with heavy caliber rounds and NO SWORDS and just mows down everything but has air mobility to GTFO when the stampede comes. Just GUNS and STEEL. DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA


...sorry I've never seen mecha as a smart or practical form of warmachine.

*place oversized banana peels everywhere*

*dogpile on each robot that slips*

Now I'm certain you've been skimming those Frodo threads.

You're right, Humanoid Mecha are incredibly impractical as an actual combat weapon in real warfare and if we had the technology to build them we wouldn't because they'd be soundly defeated by conventional weapons. Congrats for pointing out something that everyone knows or should know.

But people enjoy giant humanoid robots and this is a Mecha franchise, in fact the only reason this show even managed to get (its meagre) funding is because the studio was convinced it'd make money through TSF figure sales.

On top of that though, in this particular war situation, they actually play a plausibly useful role, it's a situation that'd never occur in real life but no, a Tank would not be able to take on BETA in close combat as well as a TSF can (and attaching a bayonet to a tank wouldn't work at all, that's nonsensical), Fighter Jets have been rendered useless, and infiltrating hives is something TSFs are better suited to do than the other vehicles.

Now the tech to actually make these TSFs as they are does not exist and quite possibly could never actually exist, but it's sci fi, you suspend your disbelief, assume they found a way to make it happen in the universe and worry more about internal consistency than whether it's definitely truly possible. Otherwise there'd be almost no Sci-Fi that you can enjoy, even just ruling out stuff with (as far as we know impossible) FTL travel alone gets rid of more than half the stuff that's out there.

The swords are given more focus with Japanese forces, again because of the traditional culture, but also because ammo goes empty fast and some BETA classes aren't really worth wasting ammo on, there is a genuine need for CQB capabilities, the Soviet Terminator TSF that'll show up later has retractable chainsaws, US forces typically don't include close combat in their combat doctrine because their relatively safe and less desperate compared to most other nations, but they do have knives as fallbacks.

As for your giant VTOL tank thing with tons of weaponry, there are some major problems, the first being that it'd be massive and incredibly expensive laser-bait that'd be destroyed before it even got close enough to return fire at the Laser class, another being that'd it'd need a ridiculous amount of fuel for chemically propelled VTOL.

Now if only they could go some way to solving some of these problems perhaps with super science fueled by Alien materials recovered from the enemy Hives.

Spoiler:

Honestly it's just the facts that TSFs have LIMBS that can come off and leave you with an expensive brick. Sure a tank could have it's damn cannon yanked out but it'd probably take more work.

If the swords and guns were the actually arms rather than something that could be held AND potentially dropped I'd think they'd fair better because what's the point of making the dang things have to reload a clip like a person? They could drop them if they get smacked around, something like that should be internally operated if the left or right "arm" was the gun itself rather than an arm holding a gun. The gun could probably have larger rounds and larger clips because of this. Same for a close range weapon. Though it'd always be better to ROLL THE FUCK BACK and keep shooting because I'm sure a sword can only slice one at a time...which is bad when you're fighting a HORDE of them.


But I can understand what you're saying. I'll enjoy the ride if it keeps up, this is just my "MECHAS DON'T MAKE ANY SENSE" bias talking.

One big reason they have limbs and handheld weapons rather than weapons mounted to the TSF would be to fit the popular mecha aesthetic, I mean it doesn't really need a head either, but walking boxes with cannons attached to them don't sell so well.

In universe justifications would include the limbs usage as a self-righting mechanism. Their use as fully capable manipulating arms to perform lifting, or other more precise tasks than shooting stuff until it's dead. CQB melee flexibility. Having disposable and modular weaponry can have its advantages too, being able to swap out on the fly for different functionality, and recover weapons and ammo from fallen comrades or supply drops with relative ease.

Again it can be boiled down to the need to look the part, but there are some embedded advantages too.

All mech anime suffer from the rule of cool. If it looks cool, impractical in real world physics or not, it will find itself animated.

I'm just surprised no ones trying to do what the Salarians did to the Krogan but this time it would a virus to kill not control numbers. Or maybe they're saving that solution for the ending or something.

so can i watch this before playing the game or should i play the game first? or would i be dissapoint?

I really hope jap-kun and annoying-Chan dies I really don't like him. If he doesn't die I'm gonna have to drop this. Also lol at someone from Bangladesh calling someone a country hick.

I'm enjoying it so far, but it definitely has its issues, in a lot of ways. But considering the VN isn't getting a PC version, which all but kills the possibility of a translation (still no translations for any of the Chronicles) I'll happily take this.

Hoping for a decent amount of combat with real BETA.

I was expecting a pretty meh series but I'm surprised to admit I actually like it so far. Especially the second episode was really good, the whole desperation thing after being thrown into a war with minimal training was handled masterfully.

Challenge accepted.

Sadly, I'm going to let this series go. The characters are just uninteresting. I feel I gave it a good chance at 5 episodes, but the telling fact is this.

I went out of town and away from internet for 5 days. I downloaded 7 shows as soon as I got back. Muv luv was the last one I watched, mostly because I didn't feel that excited about it and was much more interested in the other shows.

I also feel no anticipation for the next episode. I guess this one is just not for me. Too bad because I like most of the female character designs.

I'm really hoping for a decent amount of actual combat. If it's gonna be twenty episodes of testing and the final two or three are the only ones with any fighting, I'll be pretty disappointed.

TopgunUK wrote:

Challenge accepted.

I thought of you when I saw that! lol

Beach episode.

Oh boy.