Schwarzesmarken (Schwarzes Marken)

The year is 1983. The Cold War is in full effect, and humanity is under attack. Strange aliens, given the name "BETA," have descended to Earth with the goal of destroying all life. Soldiers have been tasked with piloting large combat suits called Tactical Surface Fighters (TSF) to repel the alien invaders, but the front line is slowly being pushed back towards the surviving cities.

Schwarzesmarken follows the story of Second Lieutenant Theodor Eberbach and the other members of the 666th TSF squadron, a ruthless unit that values a mission's completion over human life. Stationed in East Germany and led by war hero Captain Irisdina Bernhard, the unit specializes in counterassault attacks on laser-class BETA. But the 666th squadron finds itself with more enemies than just the alien forces when optimistic rookie Katia Waldheim joins the squadron, drawing the attention of East Germany's secret police, the Stasi.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Schwarzesmarken takes place in an alternate universe of the Muv-Luv franchise, following the storyline of the light novels. A visual novel was released on November 27, 2015, and a second was announced for 2016.

Episode Videos

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Adaptation:	Schwarzesmarken
Spin-off:	Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse

Numakura, Manami
Japanese

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Staff

Call, Evan

Producer, Theme Song Composition, Theme Song Arrangement, Music

Satomi, Tetsurou

Producer

Beniya, Yoshikazu

Producer

Nobe, Nobuyasu

Producer

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Opening Theme

"white forces" by fripSide

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Ending Theme

"Kanashimi ga Jidai wo Kakeru (哀しみが時代を駆ける)" by Zahre [Katia Waldheim (Minami Tanaka), Irisdina Bernhard (Nozomi Yamamoto)]

Reviews

Apr 11, 2016

lonelynightm

Recommended

So let me start off by saying "I F**KING HATE THIS SHOW." Really I do. And yet, I can't find myself giving this show any less than a 10.

However, the reason I hate this show is because the writers are dicks and they know it. So this whole show revolves around the Cold War Era. Much like in the U.S. with the Red Scare, there was a struggle in Eastern Germany about loyalty. People selling out their own friends and family for self-preservation. This is the shows main focus. The Mechas and Aliens are really second to the situation.

Well in the first few episodes ...

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Mar 28, 2016

Stark700

Mixed Feelings

Having seen a fair amount of sci-fi related series and mecha as one of my favorite genres, Schwaresmarken stands out as a strange show to me. It’s not because the series is set in the same universe as the Muv-Luv franchise or based on a light novel. Rather, the series is more like a political flair that’s masked by the intense violence of creatures, monstrosity known to their world as BETA.

First let’s get a few things out of the way. The series is a spin-off series based on the light novel. (although a visual novel also exists) Historically, the timeline began around the late 1970s ... when BETA arrives in Eastern Europe. Eastern Germany gets besieged by them and mankind suffers heavy losses. That is, mankind builds the TSF (Tactical Surface Fighters) that basically translates into heavy duty mechanized machines designed to fight them. 5 years later, Eastern Germany is still suffering with its weakened forces and the Warsaw Pact isn’t holding them much longer either. However, they are supported by the infamous Nationale Volksarmee's 666th Tactical Surface Fighter Squadron, also known the “Black Marks”. The story tells of this infamous group as they fight for survival not only on the frontlines against BETA but also within its own forces, political struggles, and national conflicts.

Approaching this series with trepidation, Schwarzesmarken’s storytelling is sometimes decent, sometimes bad, and then sometimes just dreadful. There’s a lot of mixed feelings when diving into such a complex universe. Furthermore, the show is only a 1-cour so terms like ‘rushing’ or ‘butchered adaptation’ can be applied here. To be fair, enjoying this series at fullest would include an understanding of the Muv Luv universe. However, watching this series as a standalone is possible and the experience getting out of the show may be enjoyable. That is, if you really and I mean, really like what it has to offer.

Where to start really? The first episode easily establishes a few factors. BETA is on the rampage in Europe and the show isn’t shy to show death on screen with an immense amount of violence. There’s some emotional storytelling going on as well when we see pilots during their last moments. In essence, it should come to no surprise that Schwarzesmarken is trying to paint the idea of BETA being humanity’s ultimate enemy. Or is it really? Behind the frontlines, there’s a fair amount of political and interpersonal flair going on. You see, West and East Germany haven’t exactly been the best of friends. The show easily makes it clear that the two are only united for the purpose of surviving and destroying a common foe. By historical standards, the Warsaw Pact is a collective defense treaty but in this series, it’s almost like an armistice. West and East Germany have their own ideals so naturally, they can’t really get along. One of the major forces in the series besides the 666th squadron is Stasi, an official security force of German Democratic Republic that’s designed to enforce their laws. Spies, treason, and disobedience are met with punishment including death. Furthermore, they have control of a massive intelligence network that almost serves as this series’ version of Big Brother. Sounds scary right? To be quite honest, humanity’s enemies aren’t just BETA but also making an enemy of themselves. And it’s a sad story when we see the body counts.

As complex as the show seems, the characters aren’t too difficult to understand once you really see their background stories. Theodor, the main male protagonist has suffered losses in his life including the assumed death of his sister. Irisdina Bernhard, the captain of the squad has been rumored to backstab her own family to get to where she is in the present. Then, we have Katia who tries to desperately appeal to her ideal of “let’s put our differences aside! If we all unite, we can defeat the BETA!” Such an illusion really. The show makes it clear that there’s no genuine friendship between certain nations. Nonetheless, the character cast gives the most prominence for these three characters while the others are mainly supporting players. That’s sad to say as I’ve heard the light novels gave more characterization emphasis on characters like Sylvia, Pham, Beatrix, among others. As I’ve mentioned before, the adaptation serves more of a story to depict the nature of sci-fi warfare. The addition of the military, political conflicts, and personal battles are attempts to create an emotional story. Does it work? In some some ways, yes. However, the majority of the show feels like it tries to stuff down the viewers’ throats with emotions that really is weakly timed. Sure, characters die on and off but it does it really give strong reasons to why we should care about them? The first half of the show has several characters die for mankind’s cause. But to this end, I don’t find their losses to be memorable. It’s not just how predictable how some deaths occur but rather their lack of characterization. The only characters that seems to be relevant in the show are Theodor, Katia, and Irisdina. Later, we also see a surprise character return to the series although I can hardly call it that. In terms of relationship dynamics, that’s hardly anything to take home to. Theodor’s a cold guy who can work with others on a professional level but rarely ever opens up to others. His childhood is tragic and in a way, I guess we should feel sorry for him. Katia’s relationship is perhaps the lightest in the show and also inspires him to fight the good fight. Then, there’s Irisdina, probably the least trustworthy main character because of the rumored gossips about her past. Although on professional standards, she does have a good relationship with Theodor and Katia. The show also seems to establish that Irisdina and Beatrix (a prominent member of Stati) has some sort of history but that’s overshadowed by the actual conflicts going on. I refer to the one about war against BETA.

In terms artwork and design, it’s mostly mediocre level in terms of technical quality although I do give some praise to the studio for portraying the technological aspects of the series. It manages to capture the grim atmosphere with the bloodshed and death scenes. And while the pilot suits are designed to make the women look like eye candies, it is also quite convincing. Character expressions are important so the series did its best to capture their emotions. In retrospect, it did a fair job as every episode seems to make their reactions look and feel real. In addition, the TSF are designed with a decent amount of effort ranging from its arsenal, structure, and capabilities. Action wise, the show is powerful enough to convince us that it’s a sci-fi warfare despite the CGI. On the other hand, BETA’s designs looks silly with the insectoid-like eyes and absurd body proportions. They look like aliens that popped out of some B-movie.

Soundtrack is actually quite important now that I’ve taken the show at a close glance. Remember, the series is grim without much humor but portrayed as a sci-fi warfare story. In other words, the show did its best to portray that atmospheric setting with more melancholic music. Either way, it does seem to work out in that regards when delivering its intentions. However, character voice mannerism is a weak sign of the show as there’s nothing really a character that stands out individually. In fact, Katia’s voice sounds like a child for someone as part of the military. On the other hand, I do like how characters like Beatrix is portrayed with their manipulative nature expressed by voice acting.

After watching Schwarzesmarken, I have to conclude and say that the show is a brave attempt at making this into a memorable war story. But what does it really achieve? A poorly directed and produced series that seems to not be able to connect with itself. The story feels loose while the info dump has a strange pacing. Furthermore, there’s a lack of characterization on most of the 666th squad. I think the show is geared at more of an audience that is very familiar with the Muv Luv universe. To casual fans, the experience isn’t going to be something great and shouldn’t with what it presented.

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Apr 10, 2016

Seppiroth32

Not Recommended

Black Marks
Black marks also known as (Muv-Luv Alternative : Schwarzesmarken) is the new cow to milk out of this franchise. First let me clarify that this is a Light Novel adaption, just like total eclipse, written by YET ANOTHER author. Now, when you adapt something like that into anime you’d expect the script writer and the director to bother fixing the issues that total eclipse’s adaption had, but nope, they did not. They not only managed to make it even worse, they also decided it’d be a ... smart idea to have LIDEN FILMS animate it, now they managed to pull of Arsan Senki fine, even with issues here and there, but as I said in my TE review, you do not give a studio that doesn’t have enough money to produce a 2-cour mecha show without resorting to CG mechs. Considering 80% of what is on screen are mechs and giant aliens, if you have them cg not only does this kill the animation, but the entire fun of the show. Even a poorly done show like A/Z was more interesting, and that was done by A-1 & Troyca with even worse CG.

- SECTION 1 ART & ANIMATION -

As mentioned above, the animation mostly consists of CG mechs, regardless how fluent it is, it feels out of the place and unnecessary, even the action scenes feel weak in comparison to Total Eclipse, which was way worse in terms of production budget. Actual drawn scenes have okay animation as in they don’t do any drastic movements, lazy, but nicely covered.
The art designs and character design is decades better than TE, but then again it suffers from the exact same issues as the previous title did. Dull and repeating backgrounds that offer little variety and mostly covered in white because of the snow, which at this point pretty much shows that they were trying to save as much budget as they can from this so they can produce Arslan S2 with minimum production issues, which is sad to see as they could’ve handled it much better. Character designs look almost identical, just change the hair color and you’re done.

- SECTION 2 DIRECTING & SCRIPT –

The directing in this show is all over the place, the guy thought it would be a smart idea to have the characters take their setting and outcomes so seriously that that it makes attack on titan look like the little baby in comparison, there’s usually a level of how much the voice actors have to get immersed to make you feel like you’re really there, like you understand them. However, if you have them take it WAY to seriously, they’ll come out ruining the moment or being too noisy. For example Attack on Titan was a nicely animated drama, it had top tier direction and immersion, but the voice actors tried too hard to make it sound like its life or death, which led to the most anticlimactic outcome for me. However, for short stories it worked, like Levi’s ova’s, so you’d expect it to work here as well, no chance bud.

Script writing is almost average… As in, they managed to get it to the setting properly, but still feels uneasy to read through, there are very weird moments example where she sleeps with her brother because she felt depressed because no one trusted her, like WHAT?! During action scenes and crucial moments it’s below to average at best, having melodramatic characters and ideals that seem extremely out of place for what this is, it’s even a political drama as well as an alien war drama because NATIONALISM! And REASONING! Corruption and such, so when he tries to make the script for one scene it comes out even worse in the next, so you’d expect the director to even it out, but no it didn’t happen. He was over blowing the scenes with characters trying to make it seem like hell when you can’t even relate to them.

- SECTION 3 PRODUCTION VALUES & MUSIC –

Production values aren’t even on the norm to be considered decent. As 80% of the show is CG, and the animation is at a minimum the voice acting over done and script thrown out of the window, there is almost no satisfaction in terms of watching it, the designs are forgettable and basic; uniforms are standard with no unique touch to them.
The music is even more forgettable, it’s better than Total Eclipse that’s for sure, but I cannot recall any specific track, maybe the one that played during episode eleven, but damn, it seems to be very difficult to hit the proper score for this, I mean, the Visual Novel adaption of the Alternative Light Novels had 30 tracks, but mostly used 5 of them on certain sections, the others were so played for less than a minute so you’d forget them, what I aim to say with this is that, it had almost no music being played, and yet. Was more memorable and better directed and presented than this misery, if you so want to see Schwarzesmarken for yourself, I’d suggest you turn off your brain if you want to get past episode 4. Or read the Novels it is based off, as they are most definitely better.

- FINAL SECTION ENJOYMENT –
Having liked the Alternative VN, I wanted to give this a go to see if it’ll be as interesting as I expected it to be, but was disappointed severely with it’s production and presentation, it seems these kinds of stories need at least 20 episodes to be something more or a long running 10-15 novels (50 hour if it’d be a VN) to flesh out and finish it the story. However, with the budget it got and timeslot it had to run through, it couldn’t be more than a mere distraction. I disliked the series after the 2nd episode and it started getting on my nerves towards the end. I highly suggest you look elsewhere if you want a war drama; it’s slightly better in terms of production than TE, but worse in terms of script and direction, so it fails to deliver the expectations and would leave you wanting this to be much better.

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Poll: Schwarzesmarken Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Mar 27, 2016	173 replies	by CrazyButNot4U »» Sep 25, 2023 8:10 AM
Poll: Schwarzesmarken Episode 11 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Mar 20, 2016	78 replies	by CrazyButNot4U »» Sep 25, 2023 7:58 AM
Poll: Schwarzesmarken Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Mar 13, 2016	176 replies	by CrazyButNot4U »» Sep 25, 2023 2:14 AM
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Poll: Schwarzesmarken Episode 6 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Feb 14, 2016	76 replies	by CrazyButNot4U »» Sep 23, 2023 6:11 AM

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