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Muv-Luv is a sprawling continuity involving multiple parallel worlds, giant robots and unstoppable aliens. It begins looking like an intentionally clichéd harem romance with Muv-Luv Extra before dropping the protagonist, Shirogane Takeru, into the apocalyptic land of Unlimited and Alternative. It started out as a spinoff of Rumbling Hearts, a dramatic visual novel/anime from âge, and has become the company's current major franchise. It also shares loose relations with their first game, Kimi ga Ita Kisetsu.

With the setting of Alternative encountering unexpected popularity, âge began putting out works which further flesh out that world, starting with Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse (which got animated in Summer 2012), followed by the various sidestories collectively called Muv-Luv Alternative Chronicles, and the light novel Schwarzesmarken, which finished serialization in 2014. In addition, there is a serial photonovel called Tactical Surface Fighter in Action (TSFIA), which contains short vignettes from the Alternative universe, and a chronological sequel of Unlimited, called The Day After. There is also the booklet series Exogularity, containing side materials and more importantly, details of Alternative universe's future.

Works in this series:

Below are tropes pertaining to works in the franchise that have not yet had pages made for them or other things that do not fit neatly onto any existing pages.


  • Adjustable Censorship: The Steam releases of the trilogy censor the sexual content, but an optional "Director's Cut" DLC is available for purchase from Denpasoft.
  • Anti-Air: Laser-class BETA essentially have the role of artillery pieces. They're strictly line-of-sight weapons and are very vulnerable in close combat, but are so destructive they essentially ended the use of airpower by humanity: TSFs, which have a low flight ceiling, are the only aircraft commonly in use anymore. The US and Soviet Union still maintain fleets of strategic bombers, but they're virtually irreplaceable and only see action if there aren't any Laser-class around.
  • Fun with Acronyms: "BETA", for "Beings of Extraterrestrial Origin Which Are Adversary to the Human Race".
  • Harder Than Hard: In the two turn-based strategy game spinoffs. What is more difficult than Hell Mode (which outright tells you that winning is impossible), you ask? Why, Real Mode, of course! And the second game's Real Mode is even harder than that of the first!
  • Hero of Another Story: There's the occasional stories about the main casts of Alternative, The Euro Front, The Day After and Total Eclipse.
  • Horde of Alien Locusts: The BETA, which mine any and all available resources wherever they go, including humans. Eventually justified in Alternative when it is discovered that they're actually nonsentient deep-space mining drones created by an extraterrestrial civilization, and don't have the capability to recognize humans as living beings.
  • Hotter and Sexier: Strike Frontier, a gacha game, has (unvoiced) H-scenes for SR girls, including pre-existing characters such as Yui (in her adult and younger versions), Yuuhi, and various others.
  • A Mech by Any Other Name: Tactical Surface Fighters (TSFs) typically stand about three to four stories tall, and have a tactical role akin to attack helicopters on steroids: even though they can fly, they're treated mainly as close air support vehicles rather than high-flying aircraft, since their flight ceiling is relatively low even if Laser-class BETA aren't around.
  • Latex Space Suit: The series iconic Fortified Suits are both thin, shiny and very form-fittingly skin tight that would make any latex suit manufacturer green with envy. The main way they defend their wearer is thanks to them having non-Newtonian properties, hardening on impact. And in spite of how thin they are they still manage to be loaded with various other survival functions and utilities.
  • Number of the Beast: Two examples in sidestories.
    • The number designation of the unit the main cast of the Unlimited/Alternative prequel/sidestory Schwarzesmarken belongs to: the 666th TSF Squadron.
    • The standard military code for "impending G-Bomb deployment" is CODE666, which is first seen at the aptly-named Operation Lucifer.
  • Self-Deprecation: "Chicken Divers", which refer to pilots who have survived a second orbital drop, is a Gallows Humor title they applied to themselves, as "cowards" (chickens) who ran away from death twice.
  • Storming the Beaches: Seen on multiple occasions from the defensive side. BETA can't fly or swim, but they can travel underwater for relatively short distances (e.g. narrow straits, yes, deep ocean, no), so human defenders get a lot of scenes trying to hold them with prepared and mobile defenses... and usually bloodily losing against their sheer numbers. One notable exception is the offscreen defense of the Suez Canal in Muv-Luv Alternative, which succeeded and kept the BETA from getting into Africa (at the cost of eastern Japan falling because their American allies had to redeploy to Africa to hold the line).
  • Super Not-Drowning Skills: BETA appear to be capable of holding their breath for several hours, enough to ford narrow seas and straits by walking across the seafloor: in the anime of Muv-Luv Alternative, they're shown first crossing into Japan via the seafloor of the Korea Strait and the East China Sea, and then coast-hopping their way around the secondary defensive line in the center of Honshu, while Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse shows them attempting the same tactic through the Sea of Okhotsk to get around the Red Army's defensive lines on the Kamchatka Peninsula. However, they either can't hold their breath long enough to cross areas of open ocean, or the water pressure is too high. This is the main reason the Americas remain BETA-free: the only potential crossing point is the Bering Strait, and the United States is quite happy to use the Nuclear Option against attempted orbital insertions. Though they've also somewhat inexplicably been kept out of Africa so far despite overrunning Europe decades ago.
  • We ARE Struggling Together: A key theme and source of drama in the works set in the alternate universe. Even with the Bug War going on, various powers, and factions within those powers, are making plans to come out ahead in a hypothetical postwar period. Said plans involve such things like under-the-table deals, false flag operations, backstabbing "allies", and a TSF which is future-proofed against both PvE and PvP. Word of God has remarks on the absurdity of the situation.

 
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TSF versus Fort-class

"The State of the World". The gigantic Fort-class BETA assaulting the Imperial Japanese Army fortifications on Sado Island are invulnerable to the Type-77 Gekishins' 35mm chainguns, so Alpha Squadron targets the joints with 120mm armor-piercing shells and are able to bring down several before Kusano Tetsuya makes a mistake and is trapped under a falling Fort-class at the inner defensive wall.

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