Following on from the stories told in
Kimi ga Nozomu Eien and
Akane Maniax, the
Muv-Luv franchise takes things into a wide and growing range of, one might say,
Alternative directions!
The stories of
Muv-Luv are spread over a range of timelines and settings. The first of the two universes shown in the original game is
Extra - which starts the day after the events of
Akane Maniax finish. In this reality, things seem somewhat normal, or at least as 'normal' as a Japanese high school setting in anime seems to be...
Yet, it is the second half of the original game,
Unlimited, where things really start to get interesting. Rather than the relative peace (in Japan, at least) which one found in
Extra, this world has been slowly ground down by a full-scale alien invasion, launched by a collection of life forms known to humanity as BETA. It is here where the Senjutsuhokousentouki (or Senjutsuki for short) - i.e. the mechs which help to define the franchise - are introduced.
The next game,
Alternative, jumps to a second war-ravaged timeline. This is the world which has formed the basis of the range of spinoff stories - for example, while
Alternative is mainly set in Japan,
Total Eclipse is set in Alaska, while
The Euro Front is, as its name suggests, in Western Europe.
After
Alternative comes
Altered Fable, which goes to a timeline which looks more like the peaceful world shown back in
Extra. So far, unlike
Extra/
Unlimited and
Alternative,
Altered Fable does not seem to have an all-ages version, though I could be wrong (and there may or may not be such a version, if you'd want one, along sooner or later anyway.)
Included with
Altered Fable, however, is the introduction to one of the side-stories previously mentioned -
Total Eclipse. This story has been running in
Tech Gian and published as a series of novels for a while now, and shows no sign of stopping.
The second notable side-story is
The Euro Front - which has been updated in
Hobby Japan each month. One of the notable aspects of this world is the range of Senjutsuki shown here, as opposed to those elsewhere on the planet. (In this setting, many of the mechs are named after 'real' warplanes, and are intended to echo them design-wise.
TEF includes units based on the real-life Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale, compared to the craft of Japanese, Russian and American origin elsewhere.)
There are a few other side-stories, too - some of which are previewed in
this video - though it seems that TE and TEF are the ones to watch in terms of future development.
There's been a range of other merchandise released, too. Mitsurugi Meiya, one of the leading ladies of
Muv-Luv, has been released in
Figma form.
Her signature mech, as well as a load of others from
Alternative,
Total Eclipse and
The Euro Front, have been made by Volks, in their
A3 line. (Damn, I wish that
black EF-2000 wasn't an exclusive...) Plus, there are a few background books, not least
Integral Works - which
looks pretty neat...
Oh, and there's a Japanese-language
wiki for the
Alternative timeline, too. (On the
TE page, it says there will be an all-ages release of that story released in 2010, but I'm not sure where the source for that comes from, so...)
And one other thing: Both the original
Muv-Luv game (incorporating
Extra and
Unlimited) and
Muv-Luv Alternative have an English
translation project in the works.
So, have you already acquainted yourself with the
Muv-Luv multiverse (Muv-tiverse?), or are you still wondering what all the fuss is about?