Muv Luv

The nationalism just didn't seem to serve much of a purpose apart from maybe world building. There are a lot of little flaws like that, but in the end the only ones I feel really hurt the story are Sumika and the pacing.

You know what makes the Unlimited ending worse in retrospect? Takeru's kid is Retgoned out of existence once he dies.

I do think that the Japanese "death for the country" mindset ties in to the bigger theme of the game (to have meaning in your death). I mean, when you're fighting a hopeless battle, there's nothing left to do except to take your enemy with you.

I didn't really care about the Unlimited ending, especially at how cut-short it was. And not even Takeru knew about his kid anyway.

Well, it felt kinda author tracty to me.

The Unlimited ending was pretty sudden. All I really remember is that they they had a party and then suddenly poof you failed Takeru.

I don't mind author tract as long as it doesn't break the story's flow, or it doesn't go against what the game should be saying. And yeah, that's kinda why I was mad at Unlimited. I thought Unlimited was doing pretty well until that part.

edited 22nd May '12 11:51:39 AM by LiberatedLiberater

Well, I suppose. I can take a lot of Author Tract from, say, Heinlein, but it just didn't work this time.

What was the arc that preceded that anyway? The volcano?

Edit: Argh stupid trope repair shop. It's making me think of the main squad in terms of a five man band. It kinda works apart from Mikoto not having a role.

edited 22nd May '12 12:18:43 PM by Arha

Hmm. I didn't really mind the ending in Unlimited as I was treating Unlimited/Alternative as a somewhat continuous narrative. It's like an introduction chapter to Alternative, bridging the shift in tone to Darker and Edgier and I think it did admirably. I wasn't expecting any success at that point since a) it was heavily foreshadowed that everything had gone to hell and b) the story of the crapsack world was only at the halfway point. The two year timeskip annoyed me somewhat though, because it was really lazy and had wasted potential. The pacing was otherwise fine. I loved the worldbuilding parts and the idea of Extra Takeru living in and coping with the crapsack world.

I like sci-fi a lot and the Alternative ending really disappointed me when I was expecting more sci-fi developments off the BETA creator plot point. As for 00 Unit, I think I could have liked her if I had just known of her role in the plot earlier and if there had been more time for her to interact with the other characters. She seems different enough from Extra Sumika for me to consider her a discrete character but in the end, I didn't get to see much of her behaviour.

edited 22nd May '12 1:18:38 PM by Thrombin

I think my biggest thing was just how... insane it seemed compared to the western concept of 'Death in Wartime'. The West glorifies death in battle too, it's just a completely different context and set of implications: The European tradition of the heroic death is to fight until the very end, then use your last act to spit in the enemy's eye. By contrast, the Japanese tradition seems to be to fight until survival is no longer plausible, then try to find the most significant death you can.

Compared to, say, the story of Roger Young, or of the American pilot who was shot down, and then downed the Zero who got him with his M1911, it doesn't feel... right, or natural somehow. I mean, had, say, Walken been in Meiya's position at the end, I could easily imagine him using the suicide dick as a grenade - then punching out and using the armored exoskeleton until that too got trapped, then using his sidearm, his pocket knife, and finally his teeth until he would literally have been ripped to shreds.

edited 22nd May '12 6:19:56 PM by HighVelocityPointyThings

More gag articles.

I like this list.

Really now, the editors are just taking advantage of the lack of oversight to write whatever they want.

I have a brilliant masterplan for humanity. Ignore the Moorcock-Lechte drives. Put particle cannons on everyone's TSF. Or at least on the amphibious units.

So is anyone else planning to watch the Total Eclipse anime this summer? It's probably going to be the only side material we'll get in English (barring that Schwarzmarken-whatever novel) since no one wants to deal with rUGP. From what I heard, it's going to have some info on Alternative III.

edited 9th Jun '12 8:41:24 PM by LiberatedLiberater

As I've just finished the main games these last few weeks, I'm looking forward to the Total Eclipse anime quite a bit. In the meantime, I'm reading the Chronicles using a text extractor and several machine translators, which sorta works.

Yeah, I'll watch it unless it turns out to be terrible.

In other news someone's modified the Aral Trans text hooking system to work with external script files and rUGP, and another one's translating Altered Fable.

Aral Trans looks less messier than using AGTH/Chii Trans. Plus, those fluent in Korean will find J—>K machine translations (via plugin) more comprehensible as they have very similar grammatical structures.

A bit messy to work with, yes, but it removes a major hurdle to potential translations of the rest of the franchise.

Oh, neat. Altered Fable probably sucks but I want to read it anyway.

Yeah, this is some pretty nice news. It takes away one of the biggest hurdels for translating material made using rUGP, âge's engine of choice for visual novels. While it isn't truly hacked, this allows people to replace the ingame text with other text, like a translation, without having to manually hook up all those lines. There's still the biggest hurdle of actually having someone translate, but this is pretty encouraging.

Finally, age's PV for their 10th anniversary (2010) has been subbed. It's been thrown around for quite some time as containing teasers for events contemporaneous to Alt's last phases, and some post-Alternative material. (Total Eclipse spoilers) In other PV variants, the speeches at the end by Yui and Cryska also throw up massive death flags for them.

Translation status for Altered Fable is around 5% in all, and another translator has joined the project, though details are still being ironed out between the two.

TDA 00 (a different translator) is up to 50%, too.

edit: And translation for Schwarzesmarken is about to start in earnest, as the Full Metal Panic translator has got his hands on all three released volumes.

edit 2: Have some TSFIA (Tactical Surface Fighter In Action) side stories someone translated over at /m/: http://www.mediafire.com/?aede07s9bngiyiw

edited 12th Aug '12 6:29:37 PM by HithertoAnIPAddress

I split the Muv-Luv page as well as the character page for it.

oh so it was you!

I noticed it was different recently and I honestly like it the current way better.

edited 23rd Oct '12 8:41:09 PM by superangelo128

I just finally finished Alternative less than twenty minutes ago. I think it is by far my favorite visual novel. I remember months ago playing Extra and thinking it was pretty boring, but still sticking through, and then Unlimited was pretty interesting, and I just loved Alternative. Anyway, I'll stop saying stuff right here, because any words I use will probably be the wrong ones that wind up making the game seem less awesome than I think it is.

Also I heard bad things about the anime, so I'm scared of watching it and possibly ruining my memories of the VN

the anime is just a spin-off with a different cast

What.

Well that does it, then, I guess I won't watch it if it has no Sumika

Muv-Luv Alternative Chronicles 01 (the bulk of it) has finally been translated.

http://alternativeprojects.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/chronicles-01-translated/

Contains cleaned-up translations for Chicken Divers and Rain Dancers, as well as the translation of the prologue (Episode 00) of Muv-Luv Unlimited: The Day After.

The only untranslated segments are the Faraway Dawn 2 demo and this short segment involving... let's say, experiments, on an anthropomorphized Ruitare (called BETA-tan in the fandom).

edit: Also, from an /m/ thread, a first translation patch for TDA Episode 01 (in Chronicles 02): http://www.mediafire.com/download/8d2foyp932uj6ep/TDA+01.rar

This is still under TLC, though..

edited 16th May '14 2:40:06 PM by HithertoAnIPAddress

Altered Fable just got a partial patch as well.

So, I've been playing Muv Luv Alternative, and I've got a question; namely, how close I am to the ending. Spoilers, of course. Our heroes just managed to barely fight the BETA out of their homebase, and are getting ready to attempt to take down the original hive. You would think that this would mean the game's almost over, but I'm not so sure. The BETA have quite a few more resources on Mars, the Moon, and wherever they came from in the first place. If humanity somehow manages to blow up the hive, it would stand to reason that the Beta could just send countless more troops down to Earth and eliminate humanity altogether. Because of this, I'm just not sure if the game will end with the assault on the original hive; the only way I can see this ending with the world and humanity still intact would be if humanity could somehow communicate with the BETA. Otherwise, they seem screwed. With all that said, I'd just appreciate an estimate of how much there is left, if possible. (Awesome VN, by the way. Ultimate was... okay. And Extra was a steaming pile of crap, IMO. It Gets Better indeed.)