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According to the official website, age's spin off novel & manga series "Muv-Luv Alternative Total Eclipse" was announced to get a TV anime adaptation. It will be aired in 2012.

Muv-Luv AL TE Anime official website
Video Announcement
Total Eclipse novel official website

Muv-Luv Alternative is age's adult PC game released in 2006. Its manga adaptation has been serialized in Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh since 2007. Total Eclipse is a spin-off novel of Alternative.

Yoshida Hirohiko (Yoshimune Koki), the President of age, posted on his twitter that he wanted to animate the original "Muv-Luv" and "Muv-Luv Alternative", but it's relatively easier to find the sponsors of "Total Eclipse" and another spin-off "Euro Front".

Source: Yoshida (Yoshimune)'s twitter

News credit: Socom

Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse on MAL

I'm stoked even though I know nothing about it.
All I care is that the characters are sexy.

Looks like I gotta get to reading the VNs.

I've been meaning to for a while now.

Are my eyes deceiving me? A TE anime without the original trilogy?

Hopefully they make enough money off of this to animate the actual Alternative storyline, that would be glorious.

interesting... but why doesnt the normal muvluv get one? or did i miss something...

Yes, a bit strange they don't adapt Muv-Luv and Muv-Luv Alternative but still it's a good news. Kimi Nozo was adapted well and I still like Akane Maniax adaptation

And most funny that VN is still only trial while LN for now just compilation of short-stories

Alternative f-ing where?
But it's still good news, I suppose.

I hope this does well. Not having the original trilogy animated is a damn shame.

Anime page is up.

Looks awesome. I'm down.

OMG!!! FINALLY!! BUT WHY IS TOTAL ECLIPSE GETTING IT?? Why not the original Alternative or Unlimited? Ah well better plots and story materials anyways. At least one does not need to understand the original Muv Luv universe to enjoy an anime adaptation of this one.

How will it function without the original. I am interested to see.

Hmm, this one seems pretty interesting...

why do the spin-off gets the anime adaption

I guess its ecchi ... and i am gonna watch it xD

That's great!

I can understand why the original trilogy will not be adapted, they are really long and you need to read MuvLuv before reading MLA. But you can understand Total Eclipse without MLA and it doesn't need to be 52 episodes long.

It's understandable due to the length but at the same time, there are factors that make it baffling as to why the trilogy hasn't been adapted. The franchise has been popular in Japan since the release of Extra/Unlimited and Alternative has been rated at the top of the charts for years. age knew that they had struck gold with the Alternative universe; that's why Chronicles and Total Eclipse exist.

I wonder if I'm grossly overestimating its value to sponsors but I really don't think there's any way it couldn't sell to the masses. Appealing mecha designs, a likable cast of characters, a convoluted political setting, emotionally wrenching tragedies, etc. It just seems like a formula for success in anime form. It's somewhat comparable to Geass, which was successful, except it doesn't devolve into a trainwreck.

Awww.... so it was true. Hoping they adapt all novels and do it good. But if someone'll tl the vn version i'll sooo read it.
But w/e, animated Yui. <3

I had always assumed that the main deterrent from an anime adaptation would be Extra and Unlimited, which have absolutely nothing to do with your second paragraph. They may be popular among age's fanbase and the visual novel crowd, but I can see very little saleable qualities in them for anime watchers.

Extra is a below average harem/romance comedy that has absolutely no unique factors to it besides being extremely over-the-top in some areas. I know Japan often likes this crap, but it's been done better in anime form many times in the past and still not done too well in terms of BD sales. Unlimited is essentially the same thing once you finally get past the fascinating scenario they present you with but never actually expand on.

So essentially you'd be relying on the visual novel fans at that point, which often doesn't directly translate into BD sales... especially if they don't like the adaptation. If you look at it from this perspective, testing the waters with a Total Eclipse anime is a great idea.

On a side note, it'd be interesting if they manage to make Extra and Unlimited better if they do adapt it. It's not like that would be hard...

There are a couple of reasons why animating Muvluv is a bad bad idea.

Muvluv Extra SUCKS. A LOT. It's not THAT important, but still. Especially the "main"-routes suck a lot, and those would be the ones they animate, leaving the only good character out anyway.

Muvluv Unlimited is important but still not that good. Well, it has mostly the same weak characters, but is generally better than MLE. It mostly traded the stupid harem-elements for infodumping and trainings-plot. (Although the harem-elements come back, and then it becomes pretty bad as well because of some other things)
Adapting it is a bit hard. It doesn't have too much interesting stuff going on, however leaving out the other stuff would completely destroy the "this is your training" aspect. MLA wouldn't have as much "impact" without MLU.

Adapting those two parts need at the very least 26 episodes and that would already make the experience much worse. Given that MLE is far from good and MLU is maybe "barely" good... the anime would suck.


Then comes the highly praised MLA, mostly because it has superb special effects and presentation. An anime would obviously heavily suffer from "normal" animation and would need a HUGE budget. Combine that with the length (and thus "epicness") of MLA and you have another problem. I'm not sure if even 50 episodes would be enough for a good adaption. It also has some pacing problems which is less of a problem in the VN, but in the anime it would suck if you have 3 episodes of infodumping going on.

Some things just don't work as an adaption. You can animate highly praised VN, like http://myanimelist.net/anime/9922/Oretachi_ni_Tsubasa_wa_Nai . But look at the rating. That happens if you don't have the budget and episodes to make it work for those who don't know the VNs. And MLA can't even be adapted without adapting mediocre stuff before.
So with a normal budget you can only animate something as fanservice. I think they made a good choice.

Apparently Japan didn't think so, as it sold terribly. This would presumably be due to the anime's main viewerbase, the VN fans, hating it for being a terrible adaptation.
(Or were you referring to Total Eclipse only being adapted?)

Well, visual novel adaptations sucking is nothing new. I still think Extra and Unlimited could work if the animation studio did some heavy editing... but I guess a VN adaptation being better than the original is unheard of.
Yes, not even the renowned adaptation masters named KyoAni could pull it off.

> but I guess a VN adaptation being better than the original is unheard of.

Yes. Most of VN adaptations sucks but I'm still laugh than VN-fans saying that ALL VN adaptations sucks. It looks the same as people saying "book is always better than it's adaptation". Just understand that source and adaptation are different things. If plot and characters were adapted quite good that's enough to see adaptation as good one cause it has some advantages, which VN did not.

And any good adaptation could m,ake people read the VN