TLDR

Shinji got in the robot but it took 35 hours and we had to listen to his every stray thought. This VN is the epitome of tell don’t show. Buy only if you are 14 and think an hour long internal monologue about obeying orders is deep. tbf you’re getting a lot of decent animations and a typical but not bad mecha anime story here, but I wish I could have spent those 30 hours playing a better visual novel that respects my time (the other 10 hours is pretty good tho).

Full Review

Note: contains minor spoilers

MLA is a story about finding yourself. It is set in a post-apocalypse world, one where an alien species has invaded and humanity has been slowly losing a century-long war. Governments must now rely on children pilots because there is no one else left to fight. The game begins with Takeru, the protagonist of the first Muv Luv game, who finds himself back in time in this post-apocalypse. He has been reset in the timeline after the ending of the first game with his memories of the previous game’s routes somewhat intact. I never played the original ML but the game has quite a few flashbacks to help you fill in the blanks.

On paper, it sounds amazing. A story about purpose and determination, about friendship and camaraderie, about geopolitics and self-interest. If written right, it could have taken its place as my favourite story of all time. However the many details of the story reveals a lack of focus. One moment it’s about the horror of war on the front lines, next moment it’s time travel/multiverse hopping, then it returns to romance. As a Jack of all trades it does not truly excel at any one thing, and the different pieces do not really intersect in interesting ways. You could argue that at the center of it all is Takeru, the protagonist, and all the events serve to develop his character and psyche. I would say to wait till my next paragraph, he is where things really falls apart.

Takeru is the main reason I hated my time with MLA. Takeru is biologically a teenager, but because of time travel shenanigans he has enough memories to be considered an adult mentally. The author may have intended for Takeru to be a relatable teenage-aged protagonist but to me he came off as immature and whiny throughout most of the game. If you are like Takeru then you might love MLA (Perhaps that is why the game is so highly rated on vndb, because your stereotypical VN-reading weeb is like Takeru?). It also doesn’t help that we get to hear basically his every stray thought. It’s like if Shinji from Evangelion got in the robot and was having a mental breakdown and we’re stuck inside his head, hearing about how scared he is and how scary the angels are and the implications of the angels being here and what the weather is like today. For 30 hours straight. The writer obviously have never heard of show don’t tell. Everything of minor significance is commented upon with at least 5 sentences by Takeru’s internal monologue. And when we finally get to some dialogue, it’s a lecture from him or he is getting lectured by someone else. Takeru is not an adult, he is what a teenager thinks an adult is like.

Because of that the pacing can drop to a crawl at completely random moments. This is most apparent whenever Takeru decides to stop whatever he is doing and start an internal monologue on a I-am-14-and-this-is-deep topic. For example at one point he spends multiple paragraphs talking in his head about how militaries must have an organizational structure in order to be effective. Here’s a fun party game: take a shot for every non-spoken dialogue box if you haven’t seen a spoken line in 5 minutes. Other characters aren’t as bad, but they all speak in the typical anime fashion where everyone has a 30 minute dialogue in the middle of a fight.

Speaking of other characters, they were a bit of a letdown. When we were initially introduced to them they started off fairly strong with potential for development. The main side characters seems like your stereotypical harem romcom cast (minus the childhood best friend for spoiler reasons), but each come from different politically important Japanese families and each have their own personal flaws. And that’s about it I guess. The game doesn’t explore them that much. All their character flaws were mostly resolved halfway through the game and they don’t contribute much to the second half. There are a couple choices you can make that unlocks variations of scenes with different characters, but they are mostly incosequential. It is somewhat excusable though since (from what I understand) that is more the original Muv Luv’s territory, a more traditional post-apocalyptic dating sim where Takeru gets to spend time and date each of the characters.

Scattered in the game is a healthy dose of political intruige. Throughout the story you get to see how each country experienced the catastrophe in their own way. America is reaping the benefits of not being under constant assault from the aliens, not having to conscript its citizens and instead letting immigrants fight for its cause in exchange for living there (sounds like a pretty good deal ngl). There are different factions with differing ideas on how to handle the aliens, which lead to an interesting sub-plot about an attempted coup. The Mechs and the companies that build them are heavily inspired by real world fighter planes and aerospace companies, providing an avenue of social commentary on the nature of the military industrial complex in war. It’s a shame that that idea was not further developed into anything noteworthy. Overall it’s nothing too spectacular for the military scifi or fantasy genre but it’s one of the few bright spots of the game.

There are too many animations in the game. Animations in visual novels can be good, it helps to break up the monotony of staring at the same couple of character and background sprites. But too much of it and it becomes distracting to the reader. MLA also has inengine cutscenes that emulates the feel of an anime, but I think it just makes it feel cheap. The animator did their best with the sprites they had but the result is something in the uncanny valley between VN and anime. I would have much rather used my imagination to fill in the blanks.

The voice acting is pretty good, but a bit too slow. It would have been nice if there was a way to adjust their voice speed. There are some great tracks in the soundtrack, but most are pretty forgettable even by royalty free visual novel music standards. The opening music is great though. I always let it play fully when I boot up the game, my moment of joy before impending disappointment.

Perhaps this is one of those dinosaur media that was revolutionary for its time, given its highly regarded status. But like Mario 64, it simply can’t compete with today’s standards. Honestly I had the most fun with the slice of life segments, when it doesn’t try to be overly serious and land flat on its Mecha face armourplate.