Muv-Luv photonflowers*

我喜欢你

I'm admittedly not the hugest fan of the original Muv-Luv Trilogy. I think it's overall good but heavily flawed. Despite Muv-Luv Photonflowers having a lot of side stories, I only really cared about one: Sumika's after story from the Extra universe specifically. This is because I thought Sumika was the only heroine—especially in Extra—that had any actual real chemistry with Takeru. I thought it was one of the better cases of childhood friends to lovers that could feel like they were actual childhood friends before they got together, even with their mutual abuse. I admittedly wasn't expecting that much since Muv-Luv Extra specifically didn't exactly have the best comedy or melodrama, but I was admittedly kind of pleasantly surprised the ending focused a bit on graduation, which is a surprisingly underrated part of adult high school-focused stories in anime and visual novels. If I cared about any of the characters besides Sumika, this part could have been emotional for me, but I do appreciate that they at least intended to make the other characters relevant even though this is supposed to be Sumika's after story. Another thing this fandisc focused on was actually showing the flaws of childhood friends going into lovers and the potential issues of childhood friends getting closer in a romantic relationship. I liked the message in theory because, especially in moege, it feels like there are very few relationships that show what could happen when there's real fights between a couple. Unfortunately, not even the writer could get this part right in Sumika's after story. A lot of it started from what the official translation called “Saucegate,” where Takeru and Sumika fought over what was the proper sauce to have with katsu/cutlet. The fight itself was stupid, but this is at least something that could have potentially happened in a relationship in real life when personal preferences over “small” things can lead to big fights when there’s deeper underlying issues. I did like the idea of this “fight” in terms of Takeru learning to take the relationship more seriously, even if I think he was only partially at fault for the fight with him just stoking Sumika's anger unnecessarily. And his solution to wait until the end to resolve the issue felt like an excuse to drag the little melodrama on a bit too long, on the excuse he’s “too dense.” Unfortunately, the BIG issue of this “fight”, and why it didn’t work for me, was Sumika herself. As stated above, Sumika is the only character I thought had any chemistry with Takeru and therefore was easily my favorite character in the Muv-Luv series by a lot. Sadly, this sauce drama in my opinion was almost 100% her fault. Her forcing her opinions on Takeru was extremely immature, and brought down my opinion on her. The story tried to make her intentions “deeper” (spoilers: it really wasn't), since it ended up being about her thinking long-term of their relationship or something. But her solution of both forcing Takeru to eat the sauce she prefers and eventually not telling him the apparent real reason why she was angry at him was extremely immature since it all fell on Takeru to develop and literally 0% of the character development fell on Sumika. The whole message about the beginnings of a relationship of the two learning about give and take just falls flat when Sumika literally does zero of the give and take. If she at a minimum apologized for her forcefulness and THEN went on to the long-term relationship angst, that would have been fine, possibly even great if done right. However, the execution just felt like a lame “flawed male needs to grow up” and “female is too perfect and doesn't need to change” stereotypes that can happen in fiction and even in real life. So despite the messages about learning to give and take in a relationship as well as an emotional graduation with the whole cast… it all just falls flat when the supporting cast is one I don't care about, especially when the humor around most of them suck. AND the one heroine I do care about, Sumika, was still somehow the worst part of the VN because the writer apparently was not willing to have her develop for a supposedly give-and-take relationship. Disappointing. Somehow one of the worst fandisc routes I've read despite its potential to be one of the better ones.

The Epilogue to Extra is alone the only reason you should have for buying this game. The rest of the stories are quite short besides Isumi's, about 30 minutes to an hour, but on sale, this is another must-buy!

居然连个bgm鉴赏都没有

simply put, if you played muv luv... play this as hope

我们需要中文翻译。 We need Chinese。 中国語の翻訳が必要です。

"Before the Cherry Blossoms Bloom" is really bad and nonsensical. The rest, though, is pretty damn good.

first timeline stories are so full of forced ♥♥♥♥♥♥ drama, alt stories are kind of eh, didn't pull me in

Before the Cherry Blossoms Bloom... Such a heartfelt conclusion! I am both utterly moved and eclipsed as a pathetic loner with tears streaming from my eyes and snot running down my nose by the sheer beauty and captivating authenticity of true Romance! I thank you, Sumika, Takeru, and Muv-Luv... For satiating my craving for what truly holds meaning in life...!

A collection of well-written short stories set in the worlds of Muv-Luv. I enjoyed them