Reading Report: 12 April 2026

マブラブ

マブラブ

After roughly 36 hours I finished Muv-Luv... Extra! After finishing up the Sumika route, I started a route intended to swiftly do Miki's route and then pivot into Meiya's route. Quickly said, Miki's route was mostly painless - I only had to favour her in the lead-up to lacrosse. But getting into Meiya's route was another story. I ended up having to start a whole new save heavily focused on Meiya to access her ending (I'm pretty sure the key choice is going on her date because of a certain event that happens during that scene).

Miki's route was pretty fun, and at the times it was melodramatic I enjoyed Miki's dynamic with Takeru better than with the other minor girls (Kei and Chizuru). Miki has to prepare for a big, important archery competition, and Takeru attempts to help her get over her performance anxiety, and... it plays out really well. I liked how the body of the story was told, I liked the competition itself, and I even liked the little twist right at the end. I left Miki for last because her design didn't appeal to me much, but I think her CGs (the static full-art images, like the one at the top of this page) are really cute.

So I eventually got onto the Meiya ending, which is really just a short final sequence with her at the end of her and Sumika's shared route. I like Meiya, but to be honest I thought the end of her route was not amazing. I think the game shows her best parts during the common routes and the ending story arcs.

Finishing Meiya's route unlocked Muv-Luv Unlimited, the other game attached to most releases of Muv-Luv (maybe all of them?), which I'll talk about below. I did start playing Unlimited, but shortly after that I decided I should go back to Extra (the name given to this version of the game after Unlimited is unlocked) and get the last minor endings, so I did that and also did the Common Routes and the Marimo bad ending (which isn't really an ending, it's just a short side-story that isn't very satisfying).

マブラブ Unlimited

Muv-Luv Unlimited is an alternative story that spins off some time after the onsen arc towards the end of Muv-Luv Extra (based on my interpretation of the dream at the start). At least... that's my impression from what I've played so far. There are hints that both version of the story are valid within a single shared multiverse (or something), but I'm too early in the game to really know.

This is a very similar experience to the second major arc of ISLAND... so I feel compelled to spoiler tag everything, but I also don't just want my reports to be big black blocks so I'll spoiler tag this week's report and give a basic warning for all future ones except if the spoiler feels like it might ruin someone's fun within Unlimited.

While Takeru is the boy we know, the world he wakes up into is completely different to the one he's familiar with. Sumika totally absent (no one even knows of a girl with her name), and in place of Hakuryo Highschool is a Japanese UN Military base. Kouzuki Yuuko, the science teacher from Extra, is a military scientist and tentatively accepts Takeru's story, allowing him to join a team of trainees who will pilot robots to defend against an invading alien force, the BETAs. All of the girls are present (except Sumika) with basically the same personalities, but none of them know Takeru, and they're also coloured with a Starship Troopers-esque militarism, which I can only assume will chill out as Takeru becomes useful.

At one point while looking for Kouzuki-sensei, Takeru goes through a hallway near her office. He finds a mysterious, floating brain in a jar (still unexplained) and a quiet girl who he later finds out is called Kasumi. Kouzuki claims to be Kasumi's mother, though their surnames don't match and they look nothing alike. I'm sure this story will end up being clever than I'm giving it credit for, but her name is literally a shuffling of Sumika's name... bring my girl back, damn it!

恋する乙女と守護の楯

Another small but steady progress with this. With the first arc totally wrapped up, this week started focusing on some smaller dramas like Setsuko refusing the confession of another girl and Ren's family drama causing a rift between her and Yukino.

GOLDEN BOY さすらいのお勉強野郎

The last episode was really great. Kintarou works at an anime outfit and helps them make a deadline by calling on the help of every girl he met in previous episodes. I loved seeing everyone come together to make the animation happen, and it was just nice to see Kintarou get a bit of closure as far as his friendship with those women is concerned.

コンクリート・レボルティオ～超人幻想～

I started watching this basically on a whim. It's a bit of a mess of sub-genres and characters at the start, though the semi-episodic formula makes each episode mostly work on their own. I was hoping to finish the whole show in a week, but after my first day watching three episodes I lost steam right away... oops. Maybe next week.

School Days

Instead of ConRevo (above) I just felt like watching School Days again. It's such a fun anime, and even knowing how it plays out I still feel so strongly during some of the heightened scenes. That one moment when Kotonoha wants to buy matching mobile phones with Makoto and he's acting so disinterested... it really is a brilliant story for how well it elaborates on Makoto's whole deal.

めしべのアルバム

I mentioned this and other manga by Kaimeiji Yu in my May edition of RRRRRR (available here) but what I didn't mention there was that, as with a lot of fully NSFW manga, I have a bad habit of not finishing my meal, so to speak. So I thought I might as well report on one of the manga I read from start to finish.

This manga is sort of split into two main stories. The bookend chapters are about a pair of sisters, Carol and Wendy, and the middle chapters are about a mother and daughter without names who are eventually called Papi and Pipi by their owner. The bulk of the middle chapters is about Papi's journey to become a theatre actress. I liked the bookend chapters best, though I think the last chapter of Papi's story is pretty good, because it includes a brief mention that Papi's co-star, Mint, is anxious that her brother might come to her show and he doesn't know that she's a dog-girl. That's just... a very interesting moment that makes me want to know more about her story before joining the theatre.