Despite being based on what was originally an erotic PC game, Muv Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse (yes, this is a weird title) is INTENSE. It looks great, there's lots of suspense, and it kicks butt. It's about a variant time-line where Earth is invaded in the seventies by aliens called BETA who eat people like so much soylent green. So, of course, humanity invents giant mecha called TSRs (so, of course, they are piloted by young people) to fight back.
The art is well-animated with pleasing character and serviceable (if not distinctive) mechanical designs. The characters here are all attractively rendered and represent a multinational group...we have a Japanese American guy along with another white American dude, a Japanese chick, a Swedish chick, a Tibetan chick, an Italian guy, a male Turkish commander, and a bunch of assorted Soviets and Chinese. There is a number of minor characters from other places of origin, but the point is that this is something that's not so common in anime. And going back to designs momentarily, there's a fair amount of fan-service due to the pilot uniforms being skin-tight and light on the armor, but I got numb to this early on. There was a topless shower scene early on and a couple beach episodes at the usual juncture (typically around episode 7), but given its source material, that was pretty restrained.
The characters form a team fairly reliably, with the main characters seeing growth over time. The production did a pretty good job of not making the characters easy to hate, which is why I found it suspenseful. After the first two episodes, you really don't know what to expect, as they horribly kill off nearly everyone you've met up to that point, with the lone survivor not even going on to be the main character. So it's not so predictable as you typically expect, which got me sort of on edge when it gets really hairy. And it really got hairy at a few points. The enemies are actually pretty terrifying to me, for some reason...probably because of the absence of normal sets of eyes and disturbingly human-like mouths and appendages attached to decided alien and ferocious creatures. Quite fugly and cruel...there's not a ton of gore so far aside from the first couple episodes, but when it's there you can expect body parts to fly around while the BETAs eat 'em up like convicts.
I've gone on at greater length than usual for a show I'm just past halfway done watching, but it's been amazing. I hope the last half keeps me this engaged.