Anime: Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse

Review
Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse (Total Eclipse for short) is, surprisingly, a mecha show. One can say that if you look at some of the promotion art, but most of the stuff you can get from the name "Muv-Luv" and the girls within it is a certainty that this is a cheap ecchi for all that is worth it.

Crafted by the guys behind Satelight, we really don't have much to expect about the show besides some cheesy typical otaku stuff like ecchi scenes, sexy outfits, weak and shallow cast, and a even more nonsensical plot. But hey, Fullmetal Panic had a similar sort of premise and it was damn good. Even the poor Chrome Shelled Regios had something to entertain. Can Total Eclipse be something more as well?

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1. A surprising start
   Total Eclipse tells us about a world haging by the neck. Monsters called BETA have swarmed Earth, destroying nations and overwhelming half the planet in their mindless crawl. To counter such threat, humanity built giant robots, of course, and even with these they can hardly last more than 8 minutes in battle against these vicious monsters.
   
   This typical premise doesn't surprise us, but could be enhanced easily as many other shows did. Total Eclipse starts strong, with a darker color contrasting with the cute girls and lots of brutal deaths within the first two episodes. It shows a brutal world where a mecha can't do more than increase the survival time of a human being. That's definetely nice! But...
   
   Remember the "Muv-Luv"?
   Cute girls aside, Muv-Luv changes its perspective in the third episode, jumping three years and giving us one of the most stupid protagonist, one that follows the books of idiotic anime-main-harem-lead to the core. Joining him is the downfall of the half-protagonist presented in the first two episodes, Yui. You thought that she would grow to be a traumatized baddass soldier after watching all her friends die? Not so fast.
   
   It doesn't take long to see Yui is your typical damsel in distress, and that Yuuya (oh fu**ing similar names, this is the protagonist guy) is her love and make her all horny and tsundere in an instant. From here we are shown to so many typical ecchi girls that I lost count. Each of those is more stupid and predictable than the other, and you can be surprised by how much the show falls in about three episodes. We even have not one, but TWO beach episodes to show us the girls in swimsuits and please the horny teeangers out there.
   
   Nice mechas though
   If you want mecha action, however, Total Eclipse has a quality in this department. The mecha design is quite nice and the merging CGI and 2D artwork is defintely superb and seamless. What we have here is a very robust job in giving us nice mecha action sequences, with top-quality production in this department as well. The character art and animation doesn't keep up with the mechas though, and, while the girls are cute and all, it doesn't help at all.
   
   Aliens? Nah, boobs
   Sadly, the mechas and BETAs are not as the focus as you'd want. This is no Gundam, it is just another mecha crap japanese industry is quick to give us, and the focus, like 90% of the shows out there, is to give fanservice to the softporn fans scattered around the Japan and the world. Character development is nearly zero regardless of hundreds of minutes dedicated to them, this is easy to understand because all the time they are usually wearing cosplay, swimsuits, or the most bizarre pilot suits I've seen. All to show their boobs probably. At least the show doesn't go all the way to the ecchi/harem genre, but gets near it many times.
   
   The plot is damn slow to progress, and while the characters in the show claim the protagonist "changed", it's hard to tell that from the outside. He is the exactly same dick as he was from the start, he only gained a love affair, although he still approach this as a typical japanese teenager (as far as anime has taugh me).
   
   It had potential
   Regardless of all the terrible execution and your usual choice of putting "boobs" in front of seriousness, Total Eclipse has glimpses of nice moments. Its nice combats, rare well timed comic moments, great mechas, and great CGI could be the basis to a very solid show. Sadly it all ends up as boy-meets-girl and we have a dating-sim behind the scenes. Much like Linebarrel of Irons, Guilty Crown, and dozens of other shows out there.
   

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Comments
I've watched the first episode right when it aired, it surprised me so I kept it under my radar until it ended. Unlike Guilty Crown and Accel World, I didn't hate it. Perhaps because it was fated to be just another soft-ecchi with mechas and it does a nearly decent job in that, or perhaps because it was never hyped so no fans were bragging about it in the internet. Anyway, Total Eclipse is yet another of those with a big start and nothing more. It may please someone who is looking for ecchi scenes and nice mecha fights like I was when I've watched it, but in everything else it's a very poor work.

"Muv-Luv", despite its name, is not an ecchi show. It's mecha!!!:shock: Go figure.

Art & Animation: 4/10

DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP.

The show gets an absolutely abysmal score from me for being so dirt cheap 90ies in terms of anime quality. The first episodes leave an okay overall impression, but if you go on... Lots of still shots, VERY shoddy lineart because of which characters might look slightly different each time you see them drawn, and the only thing they paid great attention to were swimsuits that pilots are wearing while piloting mechas. (Note that this anime is based on a game where these suits are transparent but as it's not the case in the anime, I don't see the point in this.)

The aliens and mechas are all 3D CGI, not too bad looking, but it's probably because they weren't made for this dirt cheap anime, looking very much like the models they already used for the old game this anime is based upon. Just that the shading is different.

So how cheap does it cost to make an anime which looks like it was done cheaply 20 years ago with MODERN technologies? You tell me.

+- 3D CGI that isn't bad but then again, they're probably reusing 10yo game models from the original game

-- many still shots
-- bad character animation quality
-- bland character expressions all the way
- discrepancy of cell shading style. They sometimes use classical cel shading and sometimes Macross-style blur between tones which never looked good on its own, anyways
- plug-er, swimsuits... well drawn but where's the boobs!?

Sound: 6/10

I liked the first seconds of ED and the OP melody, but not the OP sequence together with its visuals themselves. BG music is also mostly fitting to the setting. So there was stuff I liked.

But the voice acting is horrible. Even if it wasn't, the lines all of the voice actors have to read are SOOO retarded that it's not possible to make it sound good. And if a wild genius would appear and read it all with glory and grace in front of us, it would be such a waste of his/her talent for such a show.

+ OP melody (not visuals)
+ ED melody is also fine
+ BG melodies are fine

- The voice acting.

Story: 2/10

It is about aliens from moon invading Earth. As if the premise is not retarded enough, the plot itself seems to be written and choreographed by teenagers - it tries too hard to pretend to be all serious while the mentality of those who made the scenario is clearly stuck at a generic shounen manga level. Important stuff will be "hinted" to you 10-15 times throughout the course of several episodes until it's not secret to anybody anymore. Most of characters dialogues can be skipped and you won't miss anything.

One thing they didn't have, though, which surprised me - gratuitous and out-of-place fanservice, considering this is based on hentai. There was some but it seemed like they wanted to make this anime look like "srs bsns" and leave out the ecchi stuff it was originally composed of. Just one thing - they forgot to change the name. "Muv-Luv Alternative". Muv. Luv. Yeah. A completely serious anime. -.-

In other words, this show will bore the hell out of you with its colossal fillers, reminding of Dragon Ball Z uncut edition which was 300+ eps long. And will not contain any of the ecchi stuff you were waiting for.

tl;dr: It's like a Dog Days version of Infinite Stratos. You have been warned.

+ Consistent setting

- the silly premise
-- character shield depending on how important a character is, absolute in case of protag
-- the tries too hard to be serious and fails plot
- inconclusive ending
--- FILLER TALK AAARGH >_<

Character: 1/10

Well what can I say? The story starts be introducing you to the fact that most adults and boys have already gone to war with aliens and are DEAD, so what we're left with is mostly UNDERAGE FEMALES...

...thus explaining why most of the mech pilots are UNDERAGE FEMALES and A NO GOOD BROWN SPIKY-HAIRED PROTAGONIST.

So why such a mark? Why 1/10? Well, first of all, you'd imagine soldiers to act and be like soldiers. Females included. Here, they act like datable dating sim girls. Because they are originally characters from a dating sim. Making scenes, being tsundere, everybody loving the same faceless protag, etc.

As for the protagonist, you'd expect him to at least be a man for all that female attention, cus he's not the only one male left on Earth in this scenario. So, he's supposed to be Japanese-American and grown in US so he kinda acts all tough (probably what Japanese expect noisy foreigners to be like), yet when he's


^I don't think any comments are needed after this.

-- All female characters are dating sim girls and act that way, even though they're supposed to be soldiers
- Bad and cliche secondary characters
-- Stiff and unnatural dialogues, no plausibility in it
----- Fail of a man protagonist

Value: 1/10

Cheapest production values imaginable, and your lifetime is worth more than this thing.

Enjoyment: 1/10

None, even if there were some battles they were DBZ-dragged out AND all 3D CGI, you cannot expect me to fully enjoy any of that now can you. I was going on writhing in convulsions waiting for the last episode to finally come so that I drop this sh*t for good. :brickwall:

THE STAFF
- Animation is done by studio Satelight. Besides Noein I didn’t like any of their other numerous shows. Their budgets are average to good but they never try too much to create quality shows and anything they do is usually nothing more than dumb fun.
- Directing is done by Inagaki Takayuki, who is a bit known for his work in Desert Punk and Rosario + Vampire. You can easily tell he likes fan service and shits on plot, so you can pretty much guess right away what the show is going to be about.
- Based on the Total Eclipse light novels. Which in turn are side stories in the setting of the action/war/mecha visual novel titled Muv-Luv Alternative. Which in turn again is an alternative setting of the plain titled Muv-Luv visual novels, which were typical school romcoms. Amongst the visual novel fandom Muv-Luv Alternative is considered to be the best of what science fiction and action can offer in the genre. I have watched a few scenes of it and I must say it does a fine job for a show based on static pictures and pseudo-motion. Now before you get too excited by reading all that and have thoughts of running to play and read everything in this franchise, let me warn you that they include a lot of erotic foreplay, dating, and occasional sex, plus some really gross rape scenes. But hey, how would it be so famous if it wasn’t like that? This is Japan we are talking about; being deviant is a must.

SCRIPT

Although it appears at first to be an exciting war drama / mecha action / alien invasion tale, in practice the story is as generic as it gets. In fact it is more about girls in sexy uniforms and cool robots doing silly stuff with a harem lead than trying to save the planet from total eradication by aliens. The presentation lacks a lot in terms of pacing, as way too many things happen in the first two episodes, followed by very little happening thereafter. Even storytelling is sloppy and exposition occurs in most lazy and amateurish ways.

For example, it has this explanatory documentary of how the war began and boy, it felt like it was written by a little kid. I mean the aliens attack during the 60’s and mankind supposed tried to fend them off for the first time on the moon. HOW THE DEVIL DOES THAT WORK??? Back then we barely had the technology to send a rocket fuelled contraption with an 80% of failure and now all of a sudden we have a whole army of space mechas? Skip that, why the hell would we waste countless resources to create and send a whole army on the moon, just so to fight on an environment that is not native to ours? And what exactly would we defend there, the rocks? And damn, if the aliens can travel through planets do you think they will give a rat’s ass about the moon? Their goal is to destroy humanity so they would obviously attack the planet directly. And how come there are sounds in space? And why the hell does the show begin by revealing all the backdrop story with a dull monologue instead of gradually showing it through the plot?

You know what, it would all feel a lot more natural if this was taking place in a fictional planet and not Earth. And sure, it obviously is fictional to begin with but they keep mentioning dates and places to constantly tell us this is Earth. Plus they never attempt to explain how in this reality mankind had mechas since the 60’s or why you can hear sounds in space. This totally ruins the plausibility.

So anyways, just like the stereotype dictates all high schoolers in Japan need to learn how to pilot huge robots while still studying history and algebra. Yeah, that is exactly what you are supposed to be doing if mankind is one step away from extinction; we wouldn’t want to survive without being able to solve complicating equations and theorems, right? It would look bad if later on we need to find a proper desk job in those completely devastated cities.

In a similar fashion the whole first episode is spent on getting familiar with the setting by having every single line of dialogue being used to lazily break the fourth wall and explain stuff to us in the dumb style of “Oh you mean Jason of the Tomson family who have their own line of factories and who lives in the northwest of the city, and whose favorite color is blue?” PEOPLE DON’T TALK LIKE THAT!

Also, only the first two episodes and the last ones are actually following the theme of the series, while all the rest are just slice of life with military officers where nothing much happens. Besides the fan service that is.

PRODUCTION VALUES

On a basic level the show looks good. The mecha are cool, their motions are rather fluent and the girls are cute. And let’s not forget the most vivid detail; CHECK OUT THOSE BATTLE UNIFORMS! Are they really used for piloting robots or for cosplay orgy parties? I mean DAMN SON I would gladly fail all my tests if I would get to spend my life in high school protecting humanity and peeping at girls that look like a walking wet dream. A very motivational show for all students out there. Other than that, there is nothing out of the ordinary in terms of animations or artwork. In fact, the whole thing is just a flashier rehash of Sakura Wars.

It occasionally makes some use of its setting and offers cool mecha action. The organic aliens look rather lame but the way the metallic robots fight is close to great. It even has a few hints of battle tactics, although it still boils down to random laser shots and last moment saves by super robots. Plus the pilots constantly forget that their robots can fly, something that leads to them being surrounded by aliens who don’t fly.

As far as voice acting and soundtrack goes, the show is just ok. Nothing amazing in overall, since it never tries to be too serious or deep.

CAST

The show doesn’t hold back in the death count, as it kills many characters in a usually violent and gorish manner. You kinda feel the dread of what is going on to the world and the sadness of having your country and relatives shred to pieces. And I say “kinda” because it’s still not doing it in a great way as earlier titles I know of. Just look at the first five seconds after we see the first characters; they immediately try not to show their pantsu by a gust of wind. Yeah, the first thing they do in order to make us get attached to them is telling us to pull out your peckers. And there is no reason to expect character development by any of them because they are killed off pretty fast.

But then we are introduced to the second cast, which don’t die right away and most of the show is about them training in mecha action so they can defend the planet. There are a lot of scenes where they interact and show various facades of themselves. On a basic level they are all fleshed out. Sadly the characterization is very thin and eventually pointless, since you are never made to believe this is a war setting. They all behave like they are in high-school, worried about their next test instead of having the serious composure of veteran military officers. They are hardly acting like their world is in the brink of destruction. Even later on when mankind starts having internal conflicts, it still feels stupid since you have absolutely no reason to like a bunch of idiots who kill each other instead of teaming up in order to defeat such a major crisis.

Sadly, the show took the route of so many others before it (Gunparade, Regios, Freezing, and Lagrange) and uses some generic alien invasion just to flavor a boring date sim. You get your usual blunt male pilot surrounded by chicks and they constantly find excuses to do dumb things. Just try to count how many bath and beach scenes are crammed in each episode just for the sake of fan service.

LEGACY

Although the first two episodes make you think it’s going to be amazing, it quickly loses steam and turns to another forgettable mediocrity with cheap character fleshing out and lots of tired ecchi plots. It was the action people liked and after a good second episode the whole thing turned into a harem with some aliens and robots in the background.

As boring as Blue Gender may have been as an anime, it still did a fine job at showing what true dread and hopelessness are all about when monsters are taking over the world. And no freaking schools on sight! Also who can forget the amazing complexity of games like Xenosaga? Or the emotional attachment with the characters in Gunbuster? You barely get all that in a show that is mostly about schoolgirls with revealing outfits and miniskirts.

Disappointing! It is impossible to take it seriously and I never watch non-hentai anime to jerk off. So, it’s a failure of a show.

And now for some excused scorings.