Muv-Luv

(Played on Steam Deck in Japanese. 30 hours to see credits roll in Meiya routes of both Extra and Unlimited)

One might say that it’s rash to review a visual novel after the playthrough of only one route out of several. But I wouldn’t have been here if I believe that, since reviewing a visual novel after only one route was pretty much how I began.

Video games are usually separated into genres by this tricky thing we call “mechanic”. Take a cinematic action scene of firefights. Even the whole affair take place in real-time, it can be separated into first-person, third-person, top-down or side-scrolling by perspectives alone. Yet, mechanic does not always tell us the kind of story a game tells. Muv-luv is mechanically a visual novel, telling its stories through words, sounds, sometimes animated character sprites and standstill background art. Yet the product one can buy on Steam now tells two very different kinds of stories.

The first portion subtitled Extra did a good job mimicking romantic comedy comics for boy, while Muv-luv Unlimited as the cornerstone the whole franchise built upon is a very different beast. While it is “a story than will challenge you in ways few works of fiction dare attempt” as advertised, I am simply reminded of different books I’ve read before rather than blew my mind.

Double Starship Troopers

I had written about most of my thoughts on Extra. So, I am just going to keep this piece mostly on Unlimited. Hearing the whole premise being a dystopia created by a forever war, I thought Unlimited would be like Starship Troopers, the Heinlein novel not the 1997 movie, and it is. Though I was surprised to see how Unlimited resembles an even earlier Heinlein novel, his first Hugo winner Double Star.

For starters, this is a story about a man working himself into a shoot. The dumb boy point-of-view character Takeru Shirogane wakes up in his home on a late October day and finds his neighborhood a war-torn ruin. He thinks he is in a dream as the tone for slapstick in Muv-luv playing on the background.

The laughing matter ends after he visits his high school, finds it to be an Untied Nation military base and is detained due to lack of identification. With the woman in charge of the base being the counterpart to his physics teacher, he is somehow released for satisfying her curiosity and enlists in a mech pilot training program. There, he gets to know 5 girls, also counterparts to someone he met in Extra minus the childhood friend, and starts to care about the apparently doomed world.

While visual novels do always tell different stories, the usual direction of main event to sequel or sequel like fan discs is from dramatic to comedic. The direction from Extra to Unlimited is reversed. Guess the subtitle “Extra” somehow tells one that it plays for laugh while Unlimited is true main event. It’s not to say that Unlimited lacks comedy. Our pov character being a softy growing up a middle-class Japanese family is just the only one butt for jokes while other comedic relieves in Extra have their counterparts being all about serious business in Unlimited.

Take Marimo for example, she is the sweater wearing English teacher in Extra, consistently made fun of by the physics teacher and her friend at least from college days Yuko. Then she is the tough but fair drill segreant in Unlimited, who is not completely lack of warmth when dealing with the softy of a pov character. Then there are Meiya Mitsurugi’s maids dubbed “three stooges” in Extra, their counterparts in Unlimited just might kill you with their bare hands before you make in that second o in stooges.

To be fair to Extra, it has enough flair for the dramatic due to something yours truly would love to call “the third act problem of most rom-coms”. As the drama regarding “Will they? Won’t they?” heats up, the whole tail end simply stops to being funny or even entertaining. Though one sad woman telling the male player character the sadder story of another woman did get some laughs of yours truly, since MGS3 lifted that format for its tragic ending as well. Some Like It Hot and the Department sure are rare examples of keeping the life of farce going through and through.

All are fair in love, war and cadets’ lives

While one basically has variety of “hanging out with the one you fancy” in the leisure of high school life in Extra, a military cadet’s life in Unlimited is more er, limited. One gets about one option to get attention of the one they fancy here before the four main story arcs take over in Unlimited. Those arcs or set pieces provide almost equal chances for the five potential love interest to shine. One gets to know them all, only one of them biblically.

While the cadets never meet a BETA (the full name of which just feels like a long and roundabout way to say “those alien bastards”) in combat, the toll a forever war took on life can be felt deeply. There is the graduation from basic training that is more about survival than combat. Then there is a big bomb dropping on their training facility. A pair of pilots needs to trust each other even though they don’t like each other. Finally, there is people attached to their land who must run from certain doom. The second and fourth of those has short fully animated cut scenes to go with them, since the words, sounds and still arts cannot do them justice.

The entirety of Unlimited being about bootcamp is what makes it feel like Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, the book that is cornerstone for military science fiction. “Tutorial” almost became a dirty word it comes to video game criticism for the last 2 decades, or else Soulborne would not have caught on. Yours truly is not immune to that since they put down Persona 5 Royal after a dozen hours in realizing the game’s tutorial is not done by that point.

Yet, boot camp, the “tutorial” of a soldier’s life, is essential to military science fiction. Starship Troopers the book has that in two-fold, one in grunt training, the other in courses taught in Officer Candidate School. So, a visual novel all about boot camp can be seen as a better homage to Heinlein’s influential and controversial book than say the entirety of Mass Effect trilogy can ever be.

Devils in the detail

The world of Muv-luv Unlimited being a dystopia can be seen mostly in the details. For starters, the pov character’s more happy-go lucky-do style of speaking Japanese is like a dialect to the girls living under a highly militarized Japanese Empire. And why is this unit all girls? Well, boys and men are all sent to front already in this forever war.

The “ancient” institution of Xeno-conquering/Power Politics Shogun has been reacted for the alien invasion. The comedy those girls know is an educational-first puppet show on tv starring its butt for jokes. For better and worse, no one knows what “anime” is here. Last but not least, the epilogue has a Maggie’s Gift situation of pov character and the conferred love interest pulling strips to get their lover out of this hell on Earth. If that does not scream how fouled up the world is, I don’t know what does.

Some other details are not as considered though. The pilot suit female officers wear has some funny color choices. I am using “funny” the way it was used during the first hour of 2005’s King Kong mind you. Oh well, the game is rated M in North America and CERO D in Japan after all. I embraced myself for violent stuff but I guess those were saved for the sequel subtitled Alternative.

Saying “See you” not “Bye”

By the last of image Muv-luv putting in front of me, I felt rather satisfied. Without going to the details, let’s just say that those filthy thieves at Bioware stole it for the dumbest possible ending of Mass Effect 3, one included in the “we fixed the ending” Extended Cut DLC. I know there is a sequel that people fell head over heels for, and there are many unanswered questions, But for now I am going take the suggestion of the base commander (“It’s all need-to-know basis and you don’t need to know. Military, son!”) and just be happy that the woman our pov character loves is out of harm’s way.

Muv-luv is overall a well put together page turner that had me read it through until two in morning. It’s rather well-paced compared to some or one of its contemporaries. Characters, while stereotypical have room to develop. Even the dumb boy pov character went through a fulfilling arc by the time credits roll in Unlimited. It’s well-received for good reasons.