[DezoPenguin]

I guess I'll christen this thread...

Eps. 1-2 together function as an introduction to the Muv-Luv franchise and Total Eclipse specifically. As someone who never played the games (or really even knew what they were) before this anime series came along, it's nice to have them here. To be dropped directly into the main story without any idea of what BETA are or humanity's dire situation would just leave me scratching my head, and the alternative would be to stop adapting the LN events now and again for pointless infodumping to keep from losing the newbies. If the point of the Total Eclipse anime is to raise overall awareness of the franchise in the public and draw positive attention, the last thing the show would want to do is present itself as "Hey, here's this mecha show that doesn't make a damn bit of sense unless you've been following the franchise for years."

So the question is, then, does it work as an introduction? Largely, it does. That is to say, after two episodes, I'm now aware that BETA are really scary and ick, that death is a brutal reality anyone can face at any time, and that there's a reasonable in-universe reason why "real-world" military machinery has been replaced with mecha. Similarly, I'm now aware that there are significant differences between Muv-Luv's Japan and RL Japan. And Episode 1, while it's not immediately obvious, helped to show off some of Yui's steeped-in-Imperial-samurai-warrior-culture background that we've already seen the significance of in her character interactions in Episode 4, alongside the more brutal experiences in Episode 2.

That doesn't mean it's a flawless introduction, though. There are plenty of things that happen on-screen that make the newbie (me) wonder "Why?" For example, just what is up with a girls' school of mecha-pilot-trainees? That's a question that's never adequately explained--and worse yet, thanks to AS, I was able to find out that in Muv-Luv there's actually a simple, yet reasonable answer to that question (and moreover, one that isn't some silly hand-wave like "only women can operate the Applied Phlebotinum that make the mecha work!"). Similarly, the political history of Imperial Japan (or more accurately, "just why the hell is there an Imperial Japan?"--this universe is clearly not just "our real world history with BETA's arrival as a point of divergence) and the rest of the world's interactions with BETA are passed over, which left me groping until, again, I sought out spoilers of my own accord. Those kind of gaps--particularly, when we see things on-screen that raise the question, but aren't given the answers, despite the fact that the answers do exist (it's one thing to ignore that in a series where no one's taken the time to think up explanations, but where there are in fact specific, underlying world-building facts involved...), and when the questions are about basic world-building rather than the kind of thing that we're supposed to have teased out for us in the story and then have resolved as plot points, is a flaw in an introduction.

But ultimately, the first two episodes of Total Eclipse did their job: they made me interested in seeing more, and convinced me that the show is a lot more than the fanservice fest its eroge roots could have made it (or which a lazy adaptation could also make it). If these episodes weren't as interesting as they were, I'd probably have wandered away from the show instead of sticking around and getting pulled in.

I'll leave it up to others to critique the animation. Frankly, I don't notice that, anyway; the quality of the art will almost always catch my eye and distract me from the technical merits of the animation, unless there are huge mistakes.