Tech Gian later serialized Schwarzesmarken (シュヴァルツェスマーケン Shuvarutsesumāken, nonstandard German for "Black Marches", the correct version of which would be "Schwarze Marken"), which was illustrated and featured character designs by CARNELIAN. Schwarzesmarken is a prequel spin-off to the series detailing events in East Germany 18 years prior to the setting of Muv-Luv Alternative. The novel was compiled into seven volumes following a 41 chapter run from 2011 to 2014. In addition, a visual novel adaptation by âge was announced and will be released in late 2015, which was followed by an anime adaptation by ixtl and Liden Films. Crunchyroll picked up streaming rights in January 2016.
Plot
The visual novel Muv-Luv is divided into two parts. The first part, titled Muv-Luv Extra, features playable character Takeru Shirogane (voiced by Takeshi Aiba in the Windows version and Soichiro Hoshi in ports) who wakes up one morning to find a beautiful young woman sleeping in his bed, just as an infuriated Sumika Kagami (voiced by Hiroko Taguchi, credited as Rika Fujiwara in the Windows version), Takeru's neighbor and childhood friend, comes to wake him up that morning. The young woman, Meiya Mitsurugi (voiced by Aki Okuda in the Windows version and Kazumi Okushima in ports), is the heiress to a financially powerful family and is determined to be Takeru's bride. As the story progresses, both girls compete for Takeru's affections while Takeru has recurring dreams about a marriage promise he made to a girl long ago. At first, he believes the girl was Sumika, but eventually realizes that it was actually Meiya. At the conclusion, Takeru must choose between which of the girls he truly loves. In addition, the player may also make decisions to choose between one of the three main supporting cast: Chizuru Sakaki (voiced by Masayo Kurata), Miki Tamase (voiced by Hitomi), and Kei Ayamine (voiced by Nagashima Yuuko).
The second part, Muv-Luv Unlimited, starts with Takeru Shirogane waking up in his bed, reminiscent of the start of Muv-Luv Extra; however, Takeru quickly realizes that neither Meiya nor Sumika come to wake him that morning. Upon leaving his house, he finds his neighborhood destroyed and Sumika's house crushed under the wreckage of a large mecha. Takeru later learns that he is in an alternate world to Extra, where aliens called BETA (an acronym for "Beings of Extra Terrestrial origin which are Adversary of the human race") have invaded and mankind fights back against the alien aggressors with mecha called Tactical Surface Fighters (戦術歩行戦闘機 Senjutsuhokōsentōki), usually referred to as simply Senjutsuki (戦術機).
Muv-Luv Unlimited explains that the BETA first arrived on Earth in 1973 (in China and Canada) after arriving on the Moon in 1967 and being spotted on Mars in 1958. Subsequent battles with BETA resulted in the global population dropping to 2.4 billion with most of mainland Eurasia having been lost, by 2001. Displaced nations find refuge in the remaining human-controlled areas. Notably, the Soviet Union (which has persisted in this reality) has been driven into the Kamchatka Peninsula and now leases Alaska from the United States of America. Japan was invaded in 1998 by the BETA, and subsequently lost thirty-six million people (approximately 30% of the Japanese population) within a week before the invasion was halted.
Most of the major characters from the Extra timeline are present in Unlimited, notably excluding the Unlimited world's Takeru, who is said to be dead, and Sumika, who does not seem to exist in the Unlimited timeline. The characters are mostly identical to their Extra counterparts, with the notable exception Yoroi, Takeru's best friend in Extra who, for reasons unclear, is a girl in this reality. By the end of Unlimited, Takeru is unable to change the course of the war as the United Nations vote to implement the fifth Alternative Plan. Alternative V's goal is to send 100,000 select survivors to a habitable planet in the Alpha Centauri system, while the remaining forces on Earth make a possibly suicidal offensive against the BETA in the hopes of driving them out completely.
In the sequel Muv-Luv Alternative, Takeru wakes up three years after the beginning of Unlimited to find himself back in his room. Although he first thinks that the events of Muv-Luv Unlimited were a dream, he soon feels that something is wrong, and leaves the house to find that he has been sent back in time to the beginning of the events in Unlimited. Unwilling to accept the events at the end of Unlimited, he decides to help professor Kouzuki save the earth and mankind by bringing Alternative IV, a secretly planned assault on the first BETA hive, to fruition.
Muv-Luv Alternative Total Eclipse is a spin-off story set parallel to Muv-Luv Alternative, which focuses on the development of experimental TSF craft and the relationship between Yuuya Bridges, a Japanese-American test pilot and Yui Takamura, a leading figure in the development of a new generation TSF, which may able to change the course of the war.
Schwarzesmarken is a series set in the Germany of the Alternative universe, during the early years of the BETA invasion in 1983. The protagonists are the 666th TSF squadron of East Germany, who fight both the BETA and opponents from the corrupt Stasi (Ministry of State Security). Schwarzesmarken replaced the Muv-Luv Alternative Total Eclipse serialization in the Tech Gian magazine. The series is written by Hiroki Uchida and illustrated by CARNELIAN. The series was followed in Tech Gian by its prequel, Bernhard im Schatten.
Gameplay
The gameplay in Muv-Luv requires little player interaction as most time is spent reading the text that appears on the lower portion of the screen, representing either dialogue between characters, narration, or the inner thoughts of the player character. Every so often, the player will arrive at a "decision point", and be required to choose between multiple options. Gameplay pauses and depending upon the player's choice, the plot will develop in a specific direction. There are multiple plot lines that the player can follow, one for each heroine in the story, and there are nineteen possible endings. To view all plot lines, the player must replay the game multiple times. The game can end in failure if the player makes the wrong decisions. When this occurs, the player can return to a previously saved spot to try again.
Muv-Luv is divided into two segments, or story arcs—Extra and Unlimited—which serve as different phases in the overall story. Initially, only the Extra arc is available to play, but once the player has completed the Extra scenarios for the two main heroines, Sumika Kagami and Meiya Mitsurugi, the Unlimited arc becomes accessible.
