Autumn 2021 First Impressions – Muv-Luv Alternative

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 12

Source: Game Series

Episode Summary: In 1973, aliens launched an offensive from the moon. The BETA as they came to be called, have since slowly spread out across the planet, killing humans and erecting hives in their wake in order to facilitate more destruction. Military units across the world have done what they can to try to hold back the BETA forces, but the aliens’ strength seems only to increase and the human population continues to diminish. The Western half of Japan has slowly been taken over by BETA, and in 1998 they are now in danger of taking over the rest of the country.

An evacuation order has already been issued as the Japanese military begins to detect movement at the bottom of the ocean near the city of Sadogashima. Because of their loss of life, they’re forced to use rookie pilots to man the Tactical Surface Fighters – mechanical armor that allows close-combat. Unfortunately, despite the passion of the soldiers, the sheer number of BETA, including several fortress-class entities with the power to break down the giant walls protecting the people inside, overwhelm them and they’re forced to evacuate. Sadogashima becomes the site of the 21st BETA hive.

Impressions: I vaguely recall having watched and reviewed a first episode of a previous Muv-Luv adaptation back on one of the older iterations of S1E1, but even poking around using the Internet Wayback Machine has left me unable to find it. What I remember is that it really seemed to reflect the franchise’s origins as an adult visual novel, with some weird romantic comedy elements and some truly epic boob-sock uniforms. Well, the boob socks were retained here for Alternative (though I have to give props to the fact that the couple of male pilots we see are wearing something similarly stupid), but in all honestly that’s a very minor distraction from what’s actually a very effective and compelling opening episode.

This episode feels very self-contained and cinematic, eschewing a typical OP and ED and spending the time it gets back from that establishing its dire setting and dealing with the immediate aftermath of the confrontation that takes up most of the rest of the episode. There’s a real focus on the horrors of a war with enemies that completely outclass our protagonists, as well as how quick and brutal the loss of human life can be. There are characters we’re introduced to early in the episode that don’t seem to make it to the end, and grotesque, inhuman alien beings that stretch our perception of what intelligent life looks like.

On the other hand, this is a very action-focused episode during which there’s very little time to get any sense of who the characters are. The CG battles are well-rendered and the mecha armor is cool to look at, but the sense of loss when people die is greatly diminished by the fact that we don’t really know anything about most of the characters, including Komaki, who’s sort of the POV character for the majority of the episode. She and Kusano, ostensibly her wingman, are really the only characters shown having any type of interaction, and then Kusano ends up being killed in a pool of acid (or some kind of acidic alien goo… I guess it doesn’t really matter other than that it would be a horrible way to die). I expect that this brings us back to square one for episode 2, and this certainly isn’t the first anime (or story in general) to pull that sort of bait-and-switch with its characters. And yet… it’s a bit disorienting. The desire to care about what’s happening is at odds with the fact that the people we’re meant to care about don’t exist within the story yet.

But despite that lingering ambivalent feeling I have, I enjoyed this episode a lot more than I thought I might. I have no idea if future episodes might stick a little bit closer to what I originally expected, but this episode is so self-contained that it could probably be watched on its own in spite of whatever happens later in the narrative.

Pros: This episode does a good job of striking a very serious tone. When dealing with such bleak circumstances I think it can be difficult not to stray too far into either abject horror or inappropriate levity. This episode feels dark without lingering too fully on the blood and gore that comes along with blowing up aliens (having just come away from viewing Platinum End and regaling my spouse about the ridiculousness of the sexualized violence in that episode, this feels like an appropriately-grotesque breath of fresh air).

Most of the combat animation, including the Tactical Surface Fighters and all of the aliens, are rendered in 3DCG and looks really good. It provides a nice amount of detail and its use doesn’t detract from the 2D character animation.

Cons: Aside from the aforementioned lack of surviving characters (not a huge detriment, but it obviously makes this episode feel very separate from anything that might come afterward), I’m just not all that interested in military tactical stuff, and this episode leans hard into that at certain points. There’s definitely something to be said for understanding the military POV in a series that deals directly with combat, and yet the small snippets we get of the lives of the civilians who stayed behind after mandatory evacuation orders were issued were definitely more interesting to me.

Content Warnings: Violence, including gore – decapitations, visible human entrails, and gore-y alien murder.

Would I Watch More? – This is the type of series where I tend to wait and see how others react to it, mostly because I know that subsequent episodes are likely to be different from this one.