Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse

Mecha anime is sometimes for most of people would avoid this one like me. It isnt about taste matter but sometimes we find mecha anime tends to be boring and repetitive. Like, they always about battle, battle and battle. They just focussing on that matters without leaving characters to develop. But back then, i am being suggested to watch Muv Luv Alternative and i must said, it was a great experience Story (9/10) Muv Luv Alternative Total Eclipse or should i say, Muv Luv. Is one from many anime that taking mecha as their main themes. But the differences between them, is they didnt focus about mechavs mecha like gundam. but its more about Mecha vs Alien. in this anime, we called alien as BETA. The story goes when The "BETA" has invaded on the earth. As the humanity is on the edge, UN and Japanese Imperial make a weapon to against them. Its called TSF. Tactical Surface Fighter or we can say the name for the mecha or robot. Yui Takamura and Yuuya Bridges as the MC must against the BETA who tried to take over the earth, could they did it? At the first glimpse, we can merely imagine this anime would about this giant robot destroying every BETAs easily without any problem with their lasers and moreover, thinking this anime would heavily about mecha battle. Well, you can throw away that perception after watching this. in the first episode we're being served by a really dark atmosphere. Despair, hopeless and emotional moments is blended in this one. I am pretty excited about the first time when i watch this. Well, after some episode It changes. In this anime, It doesnt always about creepy and dark moments like before but also light things like comedy and more even, romance. Though the comedy and romance isnt the prominent things in this anime but its good to balanced with the heavy story on it. Moreover, the romance isnt cheesy and cheap. Moreover, its quite touching and naturally flowing between on each characters. The comedy isnt that bad too, though sometimes it isnt really funny but at least we would get smile by watching it. The pace in this anime is rather slow than any mecha anime that i've ever seen. They have some backgrounds story for some characters and they way how they tells each of something (like BETA and or about the plan) is quite detailed and the word that they are using for explaining things is quite easy to understand. So, it isnt really hard to follow this story. ART (10/10) This is maybe the strongest aspects on this anime, art. Muv Luv is extremely doing it well on this aspects. They way the use 3D art on the mecha is suprisingly good. I mean, look at the movements for the mecha or TSF is so smooth and moreover it doesnt crashed with the 2D background, its feels like they are one. Not just the 3D aspects, the picture in this anime is also vivid, beautiful and sharp. Well,it doesnt so surprising since the producer is satelight which is known for making anime with vivid color like fairy tail. Though sometimes the art in this anime is changing, like when some dramatic or despair scenes comes it turns to more darker and serious tones. Honestly, the changing between it, isnt really matter furthermore, its increasing the atmosphere feels in that scenes. Beside of all that, The most interesing things again about the art is the character design. You will found so many interesting character in design aspects and of course eye-candy for men since we would see so many beautiful girls with tight clothes and moreover, the art in this anime is supporting for making this "view" more delicious. SOUND (8/10) From the sound section, Honestly i love the opening song in this anime "Go to the top" by Kumi Koda is really suitable with the this anime. Electric tunes and slow hip hop beat in this song is really catchy. The animation that appears while the song is played is also great. Its presentating every characters that would appears and of course the great 3D mecha art is still there and for the ED, its doesnt really memorable and honestly the song is a little bit of. Moving on to character sound, the seiyuu in this anime is actually is good. For Yuuya, he is being voiced by Ono Daisuke which is known for his role on shizuo (Durarara) and for Takamura Yui, she is being voiced by Mai Nakahara which known for her role in Nagisa (clannad). Those two seiyuu is the proof for the quality of the sound characters, They are really suitable with the roles that they have. Like Yui Voice when in dere mode, Mai Nakahara can pulling that one off. though sometimes the voice is a little bit off but its still pretty enjoyable to hear their voice. CHARACTERS (9/10) After the art, the most prominent things in Muv Luv is the characters. What i love from this series is the personality that each characters has. Like Yuuya, our main lead. At the first, he is a egoistical characters that only care about himself, he do what he wants to do and doesnt really care about any people, but this negative personality is changing as long as the story goes this characters turns into the one that why this characters deserve as the main characters. Beside Yuuya, we have Takamura Yui. which is at the first glimpse is your really annoying one. since, as the commanders and the leader for the army she is have a harsh and strict personality that makes you want to punch her right on her head but, like Yuuya as long as the story goes this personality is changing and I can safely said Yui would make the viewers fallin in love with her. especially when she is in her dere mode. Beside two of those, Muv Luv have another main characters, its scarlet twins. Like its name, Scarlet twins is consists of two people, Cryska and Inia. Those two people have two big differents in personality. If inia is like your imouto type which is clingy type and sweet, Cryska is more mature and strict like Yui. She is basically just do what she is ordered. The reflection between them is what makes scarlet twins is loveable and wanna makes rooting for them. So, what can i say is all the characters (not just the main characters) in this anime is really enchanting and you will ended up rooting for them, One thing that particulary that Muv Lu lack is some of them sometimes appears just for the decoration like the three girls from UN. They appears without affecting the characters nor the story, they appears Without any use. Its being wasted i think. Beside of it, like i have mention before, the characters developments in Muv Luv is really handled very well. Every thing that happen between them is affecting their personality, like Yui that gradually have an interest with Yuuya. Anyway, We dont just see the battles but also the drama within it and what makes them changed especially in the personality like Yuuya or Yui does. OVERALL (9/10) in the end, i must say i satisfied with what i have watched. spending nearly for 8 hours just for watching this series is really pays off. I even didnt realize that i had in the last episode. The art, story and the characters is the one why i can sitting down quietly watching this anime. Honestly, Mecha isnt my things. But this one is different, i felt this one is totally different from what i expect from mecha anime. The harem and romance aspects is probably the one that surprise me a lot from this series. Well, who knows that harem+mecha is turn out into a great combination? Anyway, i really recommend this anime if you seek for pleasure and great anime. *Feedbacks are needed, thanks!*

Aliens, known as the B.E.T.A, invade our planet in the year 1973. They mindlessly attack humans and devour us like food. There is no way to communicate with these B.E.T.A , so our only option left is to fight them. To do so, we humans invent giant humanoid machines called Tactical Surface Fighters (or TSFs). Pilots are trained to man these machines and fight in the front lines against the B.E.T.A forces; however, this is not a story about those who fight in the front lines. This is a side story about the test pilots who make sure the TSFs are suitable for use onthe front lines. A side story...most people lower their expectations when they hear this. Side stories are usually not as good because they are simply a tool used to promote the main series. This is pretty much the case for Muv-luv Alternative: Total Eclipse. It is a spin-off of the original Light Novel series, Muv-Luv Alternative. With that in mind, i walked into this anime with lowered expectations. I advise you all to do the same. It all started out fine. The B.E.T.A invades Japan, and our heroine Takamura Yui fights them off with her friends. They are in turn horribly massacred by the B.E.T.A, and Yui is forced to watch as her friends get eaten alive right before her eyes. A dark and bloody atmosphere is built by the third episode... but then that atmosphere gets destroyed almost instantly. It becomes extremely obvious a few episodes later that the first two episodes were a trap. Total Eclipse switches from that dark and brooding atmosphere to a beach episode in just a few episodes. It almost becomes a sort of romance/slice of life anime later on. The story then starts to become more and more inconsistent. They go from people getting eaten alive in Japan to a military base in Alaska. From there they go to a beach resort and then another military base in Russia.They eventually even end up in a hot spring somewhere and somehow. By the time we get to the halfway point of the series, almost no traces of the feeling gotten from the first two episodes remained. The inconsistency of the setting makes the plot a jumbled mess, and it becomes increasingly difficult to understand where it is going. I have mixed feelings towards the characters in Total Eclipse. I don't hate them, but i do not exactly like them either. Our main hero,Yuyaa Bridges is pretty much your average day superman. Nothing can get pass his thick, thick Plot Armor. He gets surrounded by hundreds of B.E.T.A? He cuts them down and leaves with a nearly broken machine. He gets surrounded by a group of other TSFs? Gets off without a scratch. It becomes harder and harder to believe that this man can get so lucky. You would think that his luck would run out near the end, but it does not. Somehow, out of nowhere, this guy manages to create a Harem during the last few episodes. There is almost no prior development with any members of his harem except Yui. They all flock to him for simple generic reasons like, "he is a nice guy", or "he is super talented". It looked like the writers just wanted to mix in as many genres as they possibly could. The romance looked really force and it in turn made most of the characters look very shallow. That is not to say i hated the cast of characters. I personally found them amusing to watch despite being very generic and boring at times. By generic i mean they all fitted specific stereotypes. Yuuya was the all powerful main character. Yui was your text book example of a tsundere. The artwork in Total Eclipse can be very deceiving. A majority of the scenes would be drawn and animated very well. This puts up the appearance that the series' artwork is actually well done; however, there would always be a handful of scenes where the animators got extremely lazy. In these scenes, the characters would look like weird blobs with a face and clothes. Said scenes were done very poorly and degrades the overall quality of the anime. I have always been very lenient on mech animations. I like them all no matter what, and Total Eclipse was no exception. The TSFs artwork and animation were impressive, but there was one problem. All of the TSFs looked the same. The only difference was a variety in colors. Everything else about them were so similar that it was hard for me to tell which was which. A team of TSFs would all look exactly the same, so telling them apart was nearly impossible. Music was the best aspect of this series for me. I loved every track from the first opening and ending to the second opening and closing song. The first opening "Go to the top" took a unique and different approach. It was a nice and catchy rock song that went surprisingly well with this anime. The second opening, "Doubt the World" gave me shivers with its epic final battle sort of feel. It was an appropriate song for the last few episodes. The ending theme, "Revise the world", has probably become one of my favorite ending songs. It had such a sad and intense feel to it. A wonderful song for an epic climax and conclusion to a story. Now if only the ending to Total Eclipse was not so anti-climatic ... It might seem like i really hated this series, but i actually quite enjoyed it. A sort of guilty pleasure was what it was. Total Eclipse was obviously something along the lines of sub par, but i found it enjoyable all the same. After all, nothing beats aliens, giant mechs, and hot girls in tight suits.

Going going hikari e Going going shinjite himeta omoi ima tsuyosa ni kaete do it Going going mirai e Going going mukaou akenai yo wa nai aratanaru yoake oGoing, going, going to make my review now, waaaaaa ENOUGH! So this is one of studio Satelight's anime for the last part of 2012 eh? So this 24 episode anime is something which was combined with "Starship Troopers" with the usual Jap mech, for me the plot was good, but I really don't like this anime's setting where the BETA onslaught begun in 1973 and it continue 'til 2001?????? I guess the first director, Takayuki Inagaki seems to be shitting us audience. Also, I kinda hate the scenario where the cold war seems to be on, except here the coldwar is a 4 way stand-off between the USA, Imperial Japan, China and USSR instead of the realistic 2 way. Though their animosity among the superpowers may have been put on hold due to the BETA onslaught, there is still that distrust the exist between them, and as much as I hate to say it this anime is more focus on man's distrust with one another rather than the invader, it was very obvious as the BETA's here are more like a calamity than an enemy and the battle of the TSF against the BETA's are more of a side show than anything else. The romance and the harem element did provide a good mood as this anime's filler, but it was rather disappointing that the man's battle with the BETA's ended in a cliffhanger and so as the Yuuya's harem, instead it ended with man fighting against man , if one ask me who would I like Yuuya to be his love interest my choice is split between Cryska and Yui. About the TSF, well unlike other anime's with a mech genre, this one at least in this anime's illustrator's point of view was a bit lame, e.g. why can't those TSF take off vertically? Why don't they have any energy weapons? Why is it that they don't use medium thermonuclear rounds against those bigger BETA's? Also, though the TSF design differs from country to country, the differences are too minimal that one can't tell which is which, seems like the illustrator was more focus on the TSF's art than the mechanical aspect and the same goes for the flight suit that those so called Eishi used ( Why couldn't they just be called pilots?) in which it was design as a body hugging outfit that makes them eishi's look like that they were wearing nothing, then gain it does look good on the girls especially those with big boobs. The character are pretty much way predictable at least from episode 3 up to the end, which is safe to say that episode 1 and 2 was all on Yui, Yuuya character's is quite unique since he was portrayed as an underdog first by Yui then by the soviets and in the last episode he's now the big shot, for the most part Cryska and Inia are more like romantic teasers for Yuuya. To be honest, I can't say much about this anime since part of me says that it's overrated and one part of me tells me that it's good, but I guess it's up one's self as how he finds all the "U-turns" that comes with this anime. My rating for each category: Sound, character, enjoyment and overall: Fair 6. This is because there are episodes that I find enjoyable, and there are episodes the where underrated. Story and art: Good 7. thought the execution were a bit off the story and the plot are still good, and as for the art the 7 rating is for female character's fanservice and the way they wore their flight suit.

Prelude Muv-Luv is a franchise well known amongst westerners as “the best” visual novel ever made, and has a surprisingly big fan base. But most don’t know that the Visual Novel franchise is actually based on a Light Novel series, which no one has probably read outside of those who read Chinese translated books or Japanese…The reason why everyone liked the whole game was because it takes itself seriously and the characters have actual motifs for their actions, not feeling like dolls that can be played around with. And thus, it became what it is today, but I’m not here reviewing the Visual Novel, but theanimated adaption of the side Light Novel. Review Part: Intro Presentation Total Eclipse is set in the year 2001 where humanity is on the verge of extinction due to encountering an unkown species, which later are named to The Beings of Extra Terrestrial origin which is Adversary of human race or shortly put (BETA). The first character to die halfway in the first episode with the phrase “eh?” which she states after a character blatantly warns her 5 seconds earlier that she should watch out. And you’re support to be like “OH NO! WHY?!” or the scene where her friend tells her “Shoot me!” but she misses every single shot with her dying in vain, crying like a baby, which afterwards she gets saved by plot convenience to extend her role in the story, pretty bold if you ask me. Review Part: Characters The characters in Total Eclipse are a mix of all types of anime stereotypes sexualized to the point of no return. Of course, there are a few exceptions. But the main dish just feels uneasy on the eyes or distracting to focus on the story or character motives, because you’ll be staring at their huge melons or the weird spandex suit. The characters themselves are barely memorable as well. We have the MC being that arrogant pro who can’t do anything because he hasn’t mastered the ways of Japanese Tactical Surface Fighter, as different countries build them based on different uses. Americans brute force, Russians Maneuverability and power, Japanese mostly Maneuverability so it can jump around like Mario. The rest of the cast are there to help him change his view on how he should use them. As they pretty much can’t afford to lose trust between themselves. Seriously, the characters were so forgettable except one or two that I’ll end up missing them entirely. VG is a notable character who cracks/does perverse jokes but has an attitude which actually hits the soft spot. Especially his Dub actor, he did an outstanding job to portray him. Bridges is your Eren Jaeger who has no personality or reason at all except being there causing drama or dumb plot-twists that will make you raise a brow or scratch your head. Takamura is the main female lead that is a literal tsundere, nothing much to note on her, throughout the course of the story she doesn’t change. And no, her relationship with the Bridges doesn’t go anywhere. Cryska and her sister are pretty much the equivalent of little sister loves MC, elder one doesn’t but eventually falls in love. Yes folks, it’s a love quadrangle. She’s an emotionless killer who turns into a yandere because plot called it. There are of course. Much more characters, but I hardly remember what they wanted to do or their motives in the show, which leaves a very poor example of the show. Review Part: Storytelling & Arcs The story telling is led by a predictable outcomes and unconving reactions to be taken seriously. It constantly changes to unrelated topics about the show and its characters. First it’s a training drama about surviving the beta attack and helping humanity in further developing TSFs to improve their chance of survival then all of a sudden we go to a Beach arc about how the MC is treated as shit because he’s Half-Japanese I mean seriously? Oh and it gets better. Another few training sessions come in, but focus mostly their back stories which is good, but when the story does nothing so you can remember these characters you just don't want to care either way. The pacing changes from fast to slow at random, throughout the first 5 episodes where they build on relationships with characters and their motives they change to drama about going to the girls hot spring then all of a sudden into a the-military-does-not-respect-us-civilians drama. The whole testing pilot thing literally stays true for only ¼ of the series and no more. Presenting multiple plot holes and nonsensical reasonings which of course mean nothing in the long run, because it ends up being a shonen-style storytelling where the power of believing will make the day bright again. Technically after the arcs could’ve been made way better by expanding on the series for more than 26 episodes and actually do something with its themes and characters and not end up in just another forgettable cash-in. Review Part: Production values and music Animation Oh boy, here is the thing where it made me want the show to have been done by Sunrise and not Satelight. For a war drama that focuses mostly on robot fighting, the robot themselves are Computer-Generated meaning that half of the animation just dies, which not to say that it had any spectacular animation to begin with. So the drop in quality is quite high regardless of what you’rewatching…The PowerPoint presentation walking or running animation is distracting, so to save budget they mostly sit around doing nothing and talk for an eternity, even the enemies are CG it really fell flat here, there was nothing redeemable about it. Character Designs The character designs are one note and pretty basic, you have short hair mid length hair short hair differences. One note backgrounds, and semi-post apocalyptic landscape here and there. Nothing special really, they didn’t even try improving the already existing designs or backgrounds. Music and usage The music is mostly forgettable, but fits the scenario pretty well. Considering most of the times nothing specific happens, and the overall action scenes are little. There was one insert song by Granrodeo which was a good insert song that played twice. And one at the end of ep 4, the rest is either reenacted from the VN ost mixed with anime original, and it’s pretty poorly used. The 4 action scenes that actually played those 2 insert songs was nice to listen to while the fight was going in the background but in the end, it fell off the rope and went straight down the lake. Conclusion: In conclusion it’s a below average production that really has nothing for you to bother wasting your time with, I have a dim recollection of the characters exactly 7 days after I finished it. Of course, it may only be worth it if you want to break it down.

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