Komaki complains at one point that their government isn’t doing enough to take care of its people, when talking to Kusano about forced evacuations. We also get little glimpses of the politics at play in this world. This episode is more interested in setting that tone than telling a story about these characters. It’s because there’s just so damn many of them, that even the ability of each individual TSF to kill hundreds of BETA seemingly makes no difference in the long run. The reason humanity loses in this episode is not because a BETA is stronger than a TSF – we regularly see each individual TSF kill tens, even hundreds of BETA throughout the episode.
But the battle also helps establish the power balance between the TSFS and the BETA for new viewers. A lot of that means simply enjoying the fight sequences as they unfold, of course. Instead of characterization, this episode focuses on showcasing the actual battle. Komaki is our lead character, and everybody else gets the bare minimum needed to understand how they are related to her, and nothing more.
By having to do all of these things in a single episode, this story more or less gives up on trying to establish its characters to that extent. It seems pretty clear, then, that everybody has been replaced, with Norio Wakamoto only returning as Radhabinod due to the impossibility of finding anyone else who sounds like him.Ĭomparing this episode with the first two episodes of Total Eclipse, what’s clear to me is that, by using two episodes instead of one, Total Eclipse was able to establish its new characters much more thoroughly, by devoting the entire first episode to characterization and world-building and then the entire second episode to battle. Incidentally, none of these three returning characters are voiced by their old actors. I can only imagine that their lives must just be a constant repetition of this exact scenario, hopping from place to place only to keep losing to the BETA. To be honest, seeing them here again, unable to save Sadogashima just as they were unable to save Kyoto, really drives home the despair that permeates this world. They are minor characters from the original game who also made cameos in the second episode of Total Eclipse, where they served the same purpose they do here – to stand around helplessly as another part of Japan falls to the BETA. The only ones who have appeared elsewhere are the naval officers Hisaya Ozawa and Tomohiko Abe. Most of the other characters are new to this episode. Both the manga and the TDA games are now available in English, by the way. (Azusa Maxima, the artist for the Alternative manga, seems over the moon that one of his creations scored the lead role for the very first episode of the anime.) From there, Komaki made her way into a major role in the side game Muv-Luv Unlimited: The Day After. Komaki is a pre-existing character, although she didn’t appear in the original game – she was created for the manga adaptation. Our point of view character for this episode is Sayoko Komaki. This episode takes place roughly 1-2 months after those Total Eclipse episodes – the capital of Kyoto has fallen, as depicted in those earlier episodes, and the BETA have now made their way east to Sadogashima. It inevitably invites comparisons to the first two episodes of the Total Eclipse anime, which did exactly the same thing. Its main objective is to introduce the world of Muv-Luv Alternative and show off an amazing battle between TSFs and BETA. The first episode, as had already been announced, is an anime-original episode taking place 3 years prior to the main story. No matter how things turn out from this point on, this is an exciting moment for us all. 15 years after the game was first released, 5 years after the last related anime episode aired, and 2 years after this project was first announced, today the first episode of the Muv-Luv Alternative anime aired.
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