Jan 20
Muv-Luv Extra, Unlimited and Alternative Review: They Made Me Do It.
“It’s so good,” they said. “It’s the best visual novel ever,” they said. “You just have to get through the first game,” they said. “It’s only a romantic comedy,” they said. “You’ll be fiiiiiiiiiiine.”
That was over two-and-a-half years ago. Why has it taken me so long to get to the point of writing about this now? In the grand spirit of the Muv-Luv franchise, I’ll tell you. Later. Muuuuuuuch later.
I’m a relative latecomer to the visual novel genre, though over the past few years I’ve pushed myself to become more intimately familiar with some of its bigger hits. I loved Steins;Gate, and intend to read the rest of the Science Adventure series one day. I’ve played through Danganronpa 1+2, though I’ve barely scraped the surface of V3. I wrote about the first two routes of Fate/Stay Night and am currently building up the courage to read the third route, Heaven’s Feel. 13 Sentinels was a fantastic VN-adjacent game that I believe everyone should play. Both AI — The Somnium Files games are incredible narrative experiences. The House in Fata Morgana was a beautiful and tragic story that will haunt my dreams for years to come.
Resident AniTAY ero/guro game enjoyer/psychopath Kinksy convinced me to play You and Me and Her (Totono) a couple of years ago, and I’ve never quite recovered from the experience. (It’s like Doki Doki Literature Club on steroids, but with extra porn.) So when he pushed me to play Muv-Luv, I was… um… suspicious to say the least. However, our AniTAY writers’ discord harbours a rabid subsection of Muv-Luv aficionados, and after a while the constant needling of read Muv-Luv… read Muv-Luv… read Muv-Luv… finally got to me. So I read it. In bits.
Before we get to that, though, just what the hell is a “Muv-Luv”? It sounds like the name of a mutant plushie toy or something. Turns out the name is a pun on the Japanese pronunciation of a term meaning “true love”. Huh. So that fits the “romantic comedy” label, then. Before we talk about Muv-Luv itself, let’s consider its historical context.
Visual novel production company âge debuted in 1999 with the dating/romance-themed Kimi ga Ita Kisetsu (“The Season You Were Here”), written by Yoshimune Kouki. Neither the original version nor the 2011 remake has been localised into English. Kouki followed this up in 2001 with the similarly-themed Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (“The Eternity You Desire”). It features characters that go on to play a significant part in later chapters of the Muv-Luv story, while also featuring cameos from Muv-Luv’s main characters. It was adapted into an anime that was localised as Rumbling Hearts in the West, and an English version of the visual novel is reportedly in production. Rumbling Hearts, along with the 3-episode side-story OVA Akane Maniax (also adapted from an un-localised visual novel) both function as non-essential prequels to Muv-Luv that help flesh out some side characters and settings.
The first Muv-Luv visual novel was published, in Japanese, on PC in 2003, as a dual release containing both Extra and Unlimited. Extra requires to be played through at least twice as there are two main story “routes”, and only then does Unlimited become unlocked to play. Then in 2006 came Alternative, a sequel to both Extra and Unlimited, that exceeds the prior two stories combined in length. When people rave about Muv-Luv, they are really raving about Alternative. However, before reading Alternative, you really must read both Extra and Unlimited, for better and for worse. That’s what makes the recent Muv-Luv Alternative anime so baffling. They’re adapting only the third part of a trilogy. Oh well, this is the only time I’ll mention the anime here, I watched the first two episodes and they were… ok, I suppose. I don’t advise watching it without reading the preceding visual novels.
There also exist some spin-off prequel light novels/visual novels, none of which are available in the West, though their anime adaptations certainly are: Schwarzesmarken and Muv-Luv Alternative Total Eclipse. I’ve not seen either of these, but they’re both available to stream on Crunchyroll. Apparently they’re not that great.
For a long time, the Muv-Luv games, despite their enormous popularity in Japan, and top VNDB ranking in the West, were not available legally in English. Back in 2015, a kickstarter campaign to release an English-language Muv-Luv run by developer âge and game publisher Degica was phenomenally popular, raising over $125 million, blowing far past the initial goal of $250,000. This resulted in English PC versions (available on Steam), and glory of all glories, a PS Vita version. (I’m unsure if the promised Android and iOS versions have yet surfaced.)
As a staunch PS Vita fan with a lovingly hacked Vita that I’ve forced to do so many things it was never intended to do, I was delighted to find another excuse to stare unblinkingly into its gorgeous, shiny and sparkling OLED screen for many many hours. And I did not pirate the games. Although I was too late to contribute to the kickstarter, I was happy to part with my cash via the medium of PSN to fund the developers. Anyway, that’s the background over with. Let’s get to the games themselves.
Muv-Luv Extra
It’s funny going back to that opening sequence (linked above) now that I’ve completed the trilogy. What initially appears to be a jaunty romance story opening song now triggers an acute PTSD-episode of melancholic tears via the use of post-hypnotic musical cue-suggestion or something. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Extra was supposedly deliberately written to be an ultra-generic slice-of-life romance story with stereotypical situations and characters. Well, they succeeded. I hated almost every moment I was forced to endure of this story. I’ve got a low tolerance for high school romance hijinks, and this just pressed all my irritation buttons.
Takeru Shirogane is an uber-dense, archetypal-generic exemplification of the self-insert romantic comedy protagonist — the ur-potato-kun, if you will. He’s as charismatic as a plank of wood, and about half as insightful. One October morning he awakens to find a beautiful and mysterious purple-haired woman sharing his bed, which is unfortunate timing, as his loud and persistent next-door-neighbour, childhood friend and primary love interest Sumika is in the process of breaking down his front door in order to drag his sorry arse out of bed in time for school. Yes, the opening scene is ultra-contrived to generate heightened drama and screwball humour from the get-go, and the story barely lets up from there.
If you enjoy repetitive anime where the personality-bereft male protagonist is continually berated, beaten, and victimised by an aggressive harem of terrifying girls for merely existing, perpetually accused of being perverse, and completely unable to grow a backbone, then Extra sure is the visual novel for you! Can I ask who broke you?
For me, Extra is like an unending session of Chinese water torture. I dislike the slapstick humour, especially its repetitive nature. Takeru and Sumika seem to mostly communicate via violence, and I just don’t find that funny.
What I do enjoy is some of the more absurd humour, especially in regards to the plot surrounding purple-haired and stupendously wealthy interloper Meiya. She obviously had a sheltered upbringing where money could buy absolutely anything — except for social skills and common sense. Her solutions to problems are… unconventional and extreme to say the least, for example using her parents’ money to purchase the entire neighbourhood only to bulldoze it overnight in order to provide privacy for her and Takeru. That sort of absurdity I can get behind.
While we’re on the topic of absurdities, can I just mention the insane hairstyles sported by each of the main characters? Muv-Luv may not have invented the concept of “hair vents” but it almost certainly perfected it. In particular I can’t see how tiny pink-haired cat-girl Tama’s hair can sit in such a bizarre rigid design without the use of industrial quantities of hairspray, or perhaps cement. Also Sumika may wear the most aggressively huge hair ribbon known to man. I found these designs incredibly distracting throughout.
As with any standard romance visual novel, there are multiple “routes” the reader can follow, chosen by selecting certain dialogue responses that favour one female character over another. Each of the main female characters are potentially romanceable, though only either Meiya or Sumika are classed as the “main” or “canon” routes. Both stories have good endings that I enjoyed, but I found the supporting cast insufferable and gave up reading the other routes partway through. I swear if I ever have to read about bloody LACROSSE ever again, I am going to scream. In fact I hated the side routes so much that I put the game down in disgust and took over two years to finally return to read Unlimited.
Muv-Luv Unlimited
I’m honestly not sure what pushed me to start reading Unlimited after such a long break. I suppose it had nagged at the back of my mind for a couple of years, especially as I hate leaving things unfinished. (Yes, I will return to Fate/Stay Night, honest…) Also Kinksy said I had to finish Muv-Luv if he was going to play 13 Sentinels like I asked him to. The ball’s in your court now, you degenerate.
Anyway, I’ve had a horrendous time at work the last couple of months, and with around ten days off over the festive period, I felt I needed a proper rest. What better way to relax than to lie in bed all day with my PS Vita reading a nice relaxing visual novel? (Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…) I like to try and devote a good amount of consecutive time to these things, rather than stringing them out over weeks and months. So I mainlined Unlimited over a few days. It’s… a somewhat different experience to Extra, mostly for the better.
VERY MILD SPOILERS FOR UNLIMITED FOLLOW
Takeru Shirogane once again awakens in his room on the very same October morning he awakens in Extra, but this time there’s no Meiya in his bed, and no Sumika breaking his door down. Upon leaving his house, he finds his neighbourhood a war-torn wreck, and his school has become a UN military base. Inexplicably, Takeru has crossed worlds (or been isekai-d, to use the vernacular) and nothing is quite the same as he knows.
Immediately drafted into the UN forces, Takeru discovers that most of the female characters from Extra who were formerly his high school classmates are all now military cadets. His beloved childhood friend Sumika is the only one missing (and there is no parallel version of Takeru either) — even his school teachers are now military commanders. Now this is where Extra starts to get clever. Each of Takeru’s former friends retain the same (or similar) personalities, but they’re all much more serious, and focused on survival rather than comedy shenanigans. The human race now numbers only one billion souls, following a calamitous invasion by mysterious alien invaders known as the BETA. Takeru is soft and useless in comparison to his compatriots, and takes a long time to even start to catch up to them in terms of emotional control and general proficiency. His nature as a generic potato-kun is continually used against him, and he must grow up quickly to become less dangerously useless.
Despite the new military setting, Unlimited is still (mostly) a romantic comedy at heart, as Takeru can still romance almost every female character, including one who in the previous world used to be male. Unlike in Extra, you can’t reach an ending without romancing a character, and this will become relevant later…
It’s worth mentioning here that Muv-Luv was initially released as an 18+ PC game with multitudes of H (hentai) scenes. Obviously, the PS Vita and steam versions remove these, and much like with Fate, I don’t think the game misses them. It’s obvious from context where these scenes would have gone, but I honestly don’t need to see naked Takeru humping a flat-chested, genital-baring pink-or-blue-haired child that looks like they’re ten-years old, nor witness him gratuitously spewing his semen all over them. Yes, I looked up the uncensored images via an online Muv-Luv CG library and now I worry I’m on some kind of international watchlist.
Although Unlimited is most certainly an upgrade in terms of storytelling compared to Extra, it’s still too long, especially where it concerns Takeru’s insufferably repetitive and self-absorbed internal monologues. I think you could probably remove up to a third of the game’s ancillary text and it would still make sense. Sometimes I found my eyes glazing over as Takeru examined his motives and actions for the fourteen-billionth time.
There’s also a fair amount more technical/sci-fi jargon introduced, as befits the setting, and it’s mostly interesting and fine, but anything involving details about the mechs the characters use to fight is honestly snore-inducing. I don’t care about the differences between different models. I don’t care about piloting techniques. I’m aware there are plenty of people out there who do care about such irrelevant minutiae, but there’s world-building and then there’s bogging your story down in soporifically tedious shite. I like a good dissertation on obscure quantum mechanics as much as the next guy, but ram your story full of sub-Gundam trivia and you’ll lose my attention and struggle to recapture it.
Unlimited’s story ramps up nicely towards its end, though it keeps many details about its world close to its chest, and by the conclusion there are multiple unanswered questions — lampshaded by Takeru’s closing thoughts that “there must have been something I could have done”. Yes, Unlimited ends on one hell of a downer. It’s truly this trilogy’s Empire Strikes Back moment. Although there are 11 different endings (one of which is really just a fun/depressing extra), they’re all variations on the same thing. Takeru must make a heartbreaking choice that affects whichever female character he has chosen, and the reader is left choking back disbelieving tears. There’s no way you can get to the end of Unlimited and not want to read Alternative immediately.
Muv-Luv Alternative
So Unlimited was pretty good. Alternative is where shit gets real. I’ll try to avoid major spoilers if I can, but it’ll be very difficult, and if you’ve not read Alternative yet, I suggest you:
TURN BACK HERE, SPOILERS INCOMING, SERIOUSLY, DON’T READ THIS.
Once again, it’s back to October 2001 and Takeru Shirogane awakens in his empty room, alone, in his war-torn neighbourhood. The first few hours of Alternative very closely mimic Unlimited’s, and you’d think this would be boring. But it’s not. Takeru’s not the same person he was during Extra, or at the beginning of Unlimited. He’s not only matured in experience and outlook, but he’s haunted by his failure at the end of the previous story. Now that time has looped for him, Re:Zero style, he has a chance to change events using his foreknowledge. This adds extra tension to the story, and it’s a little sad to see a more serious, driven Takeru react more stiffly to his former friends, and their relationships become very different. There’s no opportunity (or desire from Takeru) to romance his team-members this time. No, not when there’s a brutal civil war to fight and horrifying toothy monstrosities to survive.
Unlimited’s BETA enemies were omnipresent in the background, but were never even visualised once during the story. Alternative remedies this, and how — but not until much later in the story. Muv-Luv as a whole has been intricately and methodically plotted, and Alternative starts to cash the cheques written by its two not-as-superfluous-as-expected forebears. What seemed like plot holes or forgotten storylines or even throwaway conversations are all paid off in magnificent fashion here, as long as the reader has patience. Yes, this even includes the seemingly brain-dead Extra. Seriously, the level of planning involved in setting up this story is incredibly impressive.
Much of this is tied up in the central role of the previously missing Sumika. Absent throughout the entirety of Unlimited, her (eventual) return is complicated, emotionally upsetting, and viscerally horrific in places. I can’t see how some of the more powerful scenes could evoke such primordial responses in a reader unfamiliar with Extra. I’m not necessarily convinced that this lets âge off the hook in terms of wasting multiple hours of my life reading through Extra, but in so thoroughly recontextualising many of its irritating character interactions, they have my respect, possibly even admiration. I understand why everyone insists you must read Extra and Unlimited now, even if in retrospect I still see that as an enormous ask. Alternative provides many unexpected and compelling rewards to patient, exhaustive readers that almost makes it all worthwhile.
Central to my admiration is the way that Takeru Shirogane changes as a protagonist. In Extra, he’s a wet blanket of a nobody, coasting through life, inexplicably attracting female attention through no obvious effort of his own. Unlimited starts to grind him down and forces him to mature, and then Alternative comes along with its repeatedly brutal emotional trauma, PTSD and punishment for poor choices, and poor Takeru is essentially broken down into his component parts before he can even consider rebuilding himself again. He is a tortured protagonist, and the narrative twists the knife again and again and again. And it’s not only Takeru that suffers — no-one is safe, and that’s one of the things that makes Alternative so grimly propulsive. It’s difficult to think of anything else when reading this. There were days when I read this for more than twelve hours straight because I needed to know what happened next.
It’s not all balls(boobs)-to-the-wall action and misery though. Even in its impossibly grimdark second half, Alternative takes time to revel in its very -well developed characters, before introducing a whole heap more. This is where familiarity with the preceding works of Yoshimune Kouki would probably have been helpful, as Takeru and his friends join the “Valkyries”, a mecha-pilot unit populated by the cast of Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. I admit I struggled to tell some of them apart, and when the reaper inevitably came for many of them, I didn’t feel too gutted regarding their loss (my blackened heart has been numbed by Muv-Luv’s endless war). It almost seems like the cast was expanded mainly to inflate the body count, and exacerbate Takeru’s trauma even further. This isn’t a story where one can get too attached to any character — the death rate is spectacularly high, which, of course, fits the tone of a story about the desperate last-ditch military campaign to save the exhausted remnants of a nigh-destroyed mankind.
Much more successful is the story’s exploration of its multiple themes. Foremost in my mind is Muv-Luv’s examination of why soldiers continue to fight. It’s not for lofty principles, or love of country, or even a sense of duty. It’s to protect their comrades, the men and women they’ve experienced hell with, become closer to than family members or friends. Through forcing the reader through the hell of Extra and Unlimited, Muv-Luv surgically attaches its main cast to your heart, and when they (inevitably) suffer and die tragic, heroic, self-sacrificing deaths, I defy you not to shed a tear. For by that point, it’s not merely Takeru Shirogane’s pain, but your own.
SPOILERS END
This profound emotional engagement, coupled with an incredibly, intricately planned and almost impossibly compelling narrative makes Muv-Luv a gaming and reading experience like almost no other. What starts as a staid, eye-rollingly trite and clichéd romcom becomes a visual and aural tour-de-force that does things with its multitudinous sprites, 3D CG backdrops and fully animated sequences that I’ve never seen in a comparable visual novel. Once the war erupts, the action barely lets up and the visuals become so impressive and absorbing that you barely even realise you’re reading through reams of text desperate to find out who survives, and to discover why any of this is happening.
Alternative’s denouement is breathtaking in its narrative efficiency, with fantastic payoff and a satisfying explanation for everything that happens, from Extra onwards. There are no plot holes, any nagging doubts I had about the structure of the plot were impressively dispelled. There aren’t many stories involving time travel and parallel universes that can say that. I almost want to go back to Extra now, armed with the knowledge of how the Muv-Luv multiverse works. But that’s crazy talk. My life is valuable, I’m probably never doing that again.
What I will do, is read the spinoffs — many of which are now available on Steam. There are the short story collections Photonmelodies and Photonflowers, plus a series of Unlimited-timeline-following games (The Day After parts 00–03) that look fascinating. Developer âge promised a few years ago to release a sequel tentatively-titled Muv Luv Integrate, and who knows how the hell that will work, considering Alternative’s very definitive ending. Anyway, come the next Steam sale, I’ll be snapping up as many of these as possible.
Muv-Luv as an experience will stay with me for a long time. It’s not perfect, it’s far too long, but it’s also brutally powerful, and powerfully beautiful. For once, I will concede that Kinksy et al were right. Next on the list: Heaven’s Feel! Because I haven’t suffered enough.
