Shirogane Takeru (白銀 武) is the main character of the two main games of the Muv-Luv franchise: Muv-Luv and Muv-Luv Alternative. He also makes appearances in different media by Âge, from fandisks to anime.
Extra[]
A third-year student in Hakuryou's class 3-B, Takeru is a typical high schooler with a carefree attitude and a love for video games, and in particular, for the virtual reality mecha battle game Valgern-On. Childhood friends with Kagami Sumika, he spends his days teasing and fighting with her, which attracts unwarranted attention from classmates. Despite being fairly intelligent, his laziness sometimes makes him slack in his school duties. As a child, he made a promise with a girl in the local park to one day marry her, that he has since assumed to have been Sumika.
Without warning, a strange girl suddenly appeared in his home, specifically in his bed, and surprised both him and Sumika. Later that morning, the girl joined their class in school, filling the recently vacated seat right next to Takeru, and presented herself as Mitsurugi Meiya. Meeting with Takeru's other friends, Tamase Miki, Ayamine Kei, Sakaki Chizuru, and Yoroi Mikoto, Takeru's days of romance and hijinks began. He must now learn to cope with a new life with two girls fighting for his love.
He's described as good looking by the three young maids who serve Mitsurugi Meiya.
His physics teacher, Kouzuki Yuuko, finds him extremely interesting because she cannot understand why girls are so attracted to him and made it her goal to understand his special ability, the love nucleus theory as she named it, and help her friend Marimo with her love problems.
He can often be brash, playfully calling his ditzy and beloved teacher, Jinguuji Marimo, "Marimo-chan" within school premises (an extremely rude act in Japanese culture) and calling his physics teacher "Yuuko-sensei". He is also extremely impulsive when standing up for what he believes is right (a significant plot point in the BETA universe). One example of this is when he noticed all the problems the girls had during the lacrosse arc in Extra, he shouted at them and gave each and everyone of them a lecture on their faults, while the entire school was watching, something he didn't notice until later that day.
Unlimited[]
At the start of Unlimited, Takeru is listening in to the conversation between Meiya and Sumika in the hot springs, but suddenly he finds himself in his room.
Dismissing it as a dream, he realizes he woke up a lot earlier than before and decides to surprise Sumika. He exits his home only to find out that the world around him is now in ruins. Finding a huge, completely destroyed mech lodged into the side of his house, he becomes happier than ever. Convincing himself that it's a dream, he decides to take advantage of the situation and explore the world. When he arrives to where his school should have been, he is apprehended by guards outside the gate, and is thrown into jail. He is freed by Kouzuki Yuuko, whom he recognizes as his teacher, but in reality is the vice-commander of the United Nations 11th Force's Yokohama Base. There, he finds out about the terrible truth of the state of the world: a race of aliens, the BETA, have invaded Earth and have been fighting against humanity for decades, destroying many nations in the process. Even though he is still skeptical and believes that it is all just a dream, he decides to join the military as a cadet with the help of Yuuko. Soon, he meets many more people that he knew, including alternate versions of all his friends, except for a single important person: his childhood friend, Kagami Sumika.
Integration and Culture Shock[]
With time, he received military training and learned even more about this new world and the people of it, although he is troubled by the fact that he is dead weight compared to the rest of his team. During the Invasion of Niigata, while Yokohama Base was at DEFCON 2, the reality of the situation he was in finally started to sink in and Takeru experienced a panic attack and fainted. His Instructor deemed it a normal occurrence and attributed it to the fear and terror of the possibility of real combat. With some help, he manages to recover and gets back into the flow of things.
Because of the war with the BETA, electronic games are virtually non-existant. As such, everyone spent all their childhood playing retro games such as bag-tossing, marbles, cat's craddle, kendama, shogi to the point where being an expert at such games was the norm. Takeru is given the choice to join the squad for a gameplay session and, regardless of choice, has his poor skills playfully mocked:
- Chizuru and Miki: Cat's craddle
- Kei and Mikoto: Marbles
- Meiya: Shogi
Takeru fares poorly in all games, and later retires to his room to play with his Game Guy. Depending on his choices (which girl he prioritized) during the playing session, he will be interrupted by one the girls who decided to loan him some items to help him become better at the games, but she gets alarmed by the Game Guy.
Chizuru, Kei and Meiya all fly into a panic and confiscate the Game Guy, thinking Takeru stole "Top Secret, Cutting Edge Military Technology", to Takeru's disbelief, and interrogate him about his intentions with it. Mikoto and Miki have the same intentions, but they are much kinder in telling him that he faces a terrible, inescapable fate. Takeru then decides to lend them the Game Guy, telling them that it was a training simulator:
- Chizuru: He gives her a tactical turn based game (a la Fire Emblem)
- Meiya: He gives her a 2D Valgern-On game (She thinks its highly advanced TSFs firing lasers)
- Kei: He gives her an espionage action game (a la Metal Gear Solid)
- Mikoto: He gives her a racing game (a la F-Zero)
- Miki: He gives her a puzzle game (a la Tetris)
After spending seconds playing the game, the girl is blown away by the graphics and game play. She eventually becomes addicted, staying up late playing and avoiding or ignoring her classmates during free time. Takeru is confronted later by either Chizuru or Meiya, depending on which girl he chose, about the problem and Takeru is forced to choose between allowing the girl to continue playing the game or taking it from her. If it's the latter then nothing significant occurs, but if it is the former, an extra scene is played during the Comprehensive Exam where the entire team breaks down and starts piling up on the girl (that was given the Game Guy) until Takeru slaps some sense into everyone.
Turned Tables and Dead Men Walking[]
After passing the Comprehensive Exam, his team is finally allowed to begin their Tactical Surface Fighter training. During their simulator training session, Takeru watches as each and everyone of his squad mates, who all were much more physically fit than him, get absolutely destroyed by the aptitude test. When it's finally his turn, he notices that all the shaking is hardly different from an amusement ride. He was so relaxed during the test that he almost fell asleep. Later however, he once again experiences a panic attack upon encountering a silhouette of a BETA and is unable to hear his Instructor's worried calls as his body enters fight or flight conditions and he starts screaming at the BETA, challenging it to kill him (in the manga Takeru faints).
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Spoiler Alert! | |
| This article contains major spoilers. Do not proceed unless you want to be spoiled. |
Expand to view spoilers regarding Alternative.
In Alternative, Yuuko proposes the theory that the existence of Shirogane Takeru of the Extra timeline may have fused with a part of the existence of Shirogane Takeru of the Unlimited/Alternative timeline. This may have caused Extra Takeru to inherit the fear of being trapped and eaten by the BETA that Unlimited/Alternative Takeru developed during the time he was held captive. This is more likely to be the cause of why he experienced the panic attacks during his training rather than the fear of real combat: Extra Takeru, coming from a peaceful world where war is far removed from his daily life, does not fully understand the terrors of war, much less so the terrors of fighting against the BETA, even mocking Yuuko of the Unlimited timeline when she initially tells him that humanity was waging war against an alien species.
Upon completion of the tests, to everyone's surprise it is revealed that Takeru scored the highest initial score on the aptitude test in the history of Yokohoma base. He is far from happy however and is so upset that his Instructor later takes him aside to talk to him about his panic attacks. She speaks to him with a rare kindness and attempts to lift his spirits by telling him that the base only accepts the best of the best, and among all those people, he came out on top. Takeru then turns the tables and integrates his skills from Valgern-On into TSF piloting, confusing his Instructor and making his squad mates uncomfortable: the "dead weight" of the group had become "the best" at the one thing that mattered in the end.
It was thanks to Takeru's unconventional piloting and aptitude that Yuuko pulled some strings to bring the cadets' training TSFs faster, to further study the boy's skills. After the TSFs are delivered, the squad notices an extra unit, the Type-00 Takemikazuchi, brought in by Lt. Tsukuyomi Mana of the Royal Guard, for Meiya's personal use. Takeru is oblivious to its significance and his squad ignores his questions because they think he was making a terrible joke. Takeru is later confronted by Mana when he goes to have a closer look at the unit. She catches him off guard when she refers to him as "Shirogane Takeru", for that was the first time anyone in Unlimited recognized him. However, Mana interpreted his surprise as an admission of guilt, justifying and reinforcing her fear for Meiya's safety and she proceeded to interrogate him harshly. She surprised him even more when she asked him why a "dead man" was walking. This continued until Meiya intervened and sent them away. Thinking Takeru was feigning ignorance, Meiya reluctantly tells him that she's a "relative of the Emperor" but refuses to go into detail. Though Takeru was shocked at being told that he was supposed to be dead, he got over the surprise quickly and there was no further mention of it.
Christmas Party and the End of the World[]
After he was imprisoned because of his actions during the civilian evacuation operation, he came back to a gloomy base. His squad was told to spend their time as they wish, much to his and his squad's surprise. Noticing that, besides them, everyone was in a rush to do something and Yuuko even pushed him away when he went to see her, he decided to throw a Christmas party to raise everyone's spirits. During the celebration, Marimo breaks down into tears for unknown reasons, making Takeru wonder out loud if she "got dumped again", to Marimo's anger. Takeru heads to Yuuko's office only to find her completely drunk, having consumed excessive amounts of high quality alcohol, and in a state previously inconceivable with her demeanor: bemoaning her fate and the fate of humanity, crying to Takeru about being unable to fit "15 billion semiconductors in the palm of a hand", screaming that she's a genius and everyone else is just stupid and even laughably ordering Takeru to tell her that she's a genius. Depending on certain factors (see Yuuko's page) Takeru will either stay or return to the party.
After the party, everyone exchanges presents, but Takeru, not having anything to give (the game guy was supposed to remain a secret) put a "Do whatever you want to do with Takeru for a day" ticket as a present. While wondering whose present he will get, he gets flashbacks of a girl (the actual girl depends on the player's choice), and he remembers the times he spent with her in the Extra world, but for some reason he cannot recall what happens after the sports festival. He then gets a present depending on the girl he though of:
- Chizuru: A strange looking hand made doll. She carefully stitched it together with materials she gathered, including strands of her own hair.
- Meiya: The hand guard (tsuba) of her sword.
- Kei: A "Eat lunch with me ticket". Takeru immediately recognizes the owner, since he can't think of another person who would do such a "half-assed present" besides him.
- Mikoto: A pair of boots.
- Miki: The flowers she carefully grew. Their name in the flower language translates to "a small love".
While he immediately recognizes Meiya, Ayamine and Tamase's presents, he doesn't find out about the others until the remaining cast come one by one to hand over the presents they got because they think "it was meant for him". Takeru confronts the owner of the present he first got and she eventually talks him into realizing that the entire squad had fallen in love with him. Takeru responds by saying he did notice something, but he didn't want to be egotistical and think that such people would fall in love with him in the first place. He eventually accepts the girl's feelings and the two spend the night together.
Everyone is recalled into the classroom by Marimo's voice over the intercom. There, Brigadier General Paul Radhabinod, the base CO, makes his first appearance. He tells the squad they were secretly part of a military experiment, Alternative IV, and that the plan had now officially progressed to its next phase, Alternative V. He thanks them for their efforts and tells them that their efforts weren't in vain before departing. Takeru impulsively stops the CO and asks him about Alternative, but the CO kindly tells him that he is nothing but a pawn, and if it weren't for Marimo's request he never would have told them any of this information.
The game then skips two years ahead in time, during which the details of Alternative V were revealed and the squad was promoted to 2nd Lt. with Takeru earning the position of a squad Leader. However, since some of his squad mates were still important political hostages (depending on which girl he courted), they were only piloting Type-77 Gekishin's instead of Type-94 Shiranui's and put on guard duties, far away from the front lines.
Certain details are also revealed depending on the girl Takeru is closest with:
- Chizuru: it is revealed that her father, the Prime Minister of Japan, was disposed off due to his support for Alternative IV. It is not mentioned if he was killed or not.
- Meiya: it is revealed that everyone in the Imperial family, starting with the Emperor, "tossed their boarding passes" through the window. The exception to this was the Shogun of Japan, who had her boarding pass sent to Meiya. Meiya then in turn had her boarding pass given to Takeru.
- Miki: it is revealed that her father, the Undersecretary of the UN, was killed because of his support for Alternative IV.
Before the last shuttle is launched, Takeru either convinces his pregnant girlfriend to leave Earth or loses heart and decides to stay with her and breaks his boarding pass. As they return to their squad, they find out Kasumi is missing. Takeru rushes to floor B20 and tries to persuade Kasumi to board the shuttle, but she evades him and then shocks him when she screams "You wouldn't understand Takeru-chan!". Takeru eventually persuades Kasumi to leave. He decides to fight for this new world, even giving his life if necessary. In a world that has lost hope, with humanity that has decided to leave Earth, he chooses to stay and fight to the bitter end.
If Takeru had convinced his girlfriend to leave, an after credits scene shows his girlfriend and his child staring at a star in the sky on a wide green field. The mother tells her daughter that the star in the sky is called Earth and she tells her about her father and how he is fighting for their sake. The little child, in her innocence, starts happily shouting "Good luck father!" multiple times, causing her mother to silently break down into tears.
The universe then diverges into an infinite amount of outcomes: two possible paths are shown in the Muv-Luv Alternative manga and Muv-Luv Unlimited The Day After. The one in the manga shows Takeru piloting a Type-77 Gekishin during a battle where his unit is overrun by the BETA. He is then overshadowed by a Fort-class and starts to fire his weapon, and continues firing even as his TSF is ripped apart by the BETA. It is implied he was killed after that exchange as he wakes up and enters into the eventual "Alternative" loop.
Another variation is shown in The Day After, and it tells the story of the people that were still alive after the mass G-bombing plan of Alternative V. For more information, please see The Day After section below.
End Game Speech[]
I had a dream.
A dream of innocent people, brought up in a world that never knew the meaning of peace.
I had a dream.
A dream of people who risked their lives for the sake of those they wished to protect.
But the only thing that separates dream from reality, is whether it feels real to you upon waking up.
As for what's real and what's not... God only knows.
And yet... I still feel like there must've been something I could've done.
I feel like that has to be the reason why I was brought to this world.
If this was future was truly unavoidable, then what was the point of me being here at all?
Sad farewells... The fate of mankind...
As well as my own destiny... I don't think any of this was set in stone.
If I'd had a strong will to protect this world from the beginning...
Then maybe I could've accomplished something no one else could. That's what I think.
Which is why... Which is why, from here on out, at least...
I'll live on, and survive... and try to protect all of this.
I want to protect this abandoned world to the very end. That's what I want.
Those who've been left behind... All the memories that remain... And... the woman I love... I'll protect them with all my life.
There must be something I can still do. I know I have the strength to do that much.
Mankind isn't going to lose. We'll never, ever lose.
Not while I'm here...
Not while I'm... still here...
Alternative[]
Once again Takeru wakes up in his room, this time believing that the events of Unlimited were just a dream. However, he quickly notices that something is wrong: he has been sent back in time to the beginning of the events of Unlimited. Instead of letting humanity abandon earth once more, he decides to do his utmost to prevent that outcome. The solution: helping to complete Alternative IV.
He shares his knowledge of the events of the Unlimited timeline with the vice-commander of Yokohama Base, Professor Kouzuki Yuuko, and though initially met with suspicion, he convinces her to give him an opportunity to prove himself. He joins the military as a cadet once more; however, unlike last time, he is equipped with the knowledge and the physical fitness he gained during the years he spent in the Unlimited timeline. Excelling at everything, he rushes through training, pulling his comrades with him, always looking for a way to change the future positively.
Soon, the future does start changing, but not necessarily in the way he had hoped. After witnessing incredibly tragic events firsthand, he is diagnosed with PTSD and becomes depressed, to the point where he had almost given up hope. But after finally regaining confidence in both himself and his mission, he gets back on track with the help of Yuuko and his comrades.
Learning many things about humans and how the world works in the way, maturing both as a person and as a soldier, Takeru gives everything to complete his objectives, losing many important things in the process, but also regaining others, always believing that the future he will obtain will be a precious one for Earth.
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Spoiler Alert! | |
| This article contains major spoilers. Do not proceed unless you want to be spoiled. |
Expand to view spoilers.
The fate of Shirogane Takeru of the Unlimited/Alternative timeline is revealed towards the end of the game. Both he and Sumika were captured by the BETA and held in a "concentration camp" somewhere in the Yokohoma Hive prior to the deployment of G-bombs. Part of a large group of humans, he struggled to keep his sanity as everyone around him was dragged away by the BETA for unknown reasons. Eventually, only he and Sumika remained. A soldier class BETA then attempted to drag Sumika away as well, but Unlimited/Alternative Takeru attempted to fight them off barehanded and was quickly ripped apart and eaten in front of his friend. Although he faced a pitiful death, his sacrifice caused a powerful shock to Unlimited/Alternative Sumika and was a major contributing factor in allowing the Shirogane Takeru of the Extra timeline to cross dimensions.
Existence as a Causality Conductor[]
In Unlimited/Alternative, Extra Shirogane fuses with Unlimited/Alternative Shirogane to form a causality conductor. He is formed as a flawed combination of all past Shiroganes from the previous time loops, giving him experience and (flawed) knowledge of the future. The memory retention between loops isn't perfect, if Shirogane learned something critical on his second loop he will not remember it on his third or fourth loop, but he needs to experience the same event many, many times for him to remember it, Yuuko hints at this during her ending in Unlimited.
Interestingly, this effect carries on to his body as well, for Shirogane's accumulated muscle memory also carries on with into each loop, this is shown in Alternative where Shirogane is extremely fit for his age, and extremely experienced with a variety of weapons (especially TSFs). This means Shirogane also retains his sex skills during time loops, meaning that by the time of Alternative, Shirogane's skills during sex should be on the same level as his skills as a soldier given all the practice he's had with the court-able characters in Unlimited. Yuuko confirms this in her ending when she praises Shirogane's skills.
Logically, this process of accumulation of mass with each loop should have increased Shirogane's brain mass as well, leading to a very sharp increase in his intelligence, however, as Alternative shows, Shirogane remains nothing more than a slightly intelligent teenager. What this means is brain mass doesn't accumulate in the same way as muscle mass, Shirogane wasn't very bright to begin with or the author deliberately limited Shirogane's intelligence for plot advancement reasons.
The Day After[]
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Spoiler Alert! | |
| This article contains major spoilers. Do not proceed unless you want to be spoiled. |
The Day After revealed that shortly after the Migrant Fleet left Earth, Takeru was deployed in Operation Iceberg, the equivalent to Alternative's Operation 21st, to destroy the Sadogashima hive through the use of G-bombs. Takeru is one of the few, if not the only survivor of this operation based on testimonials of other characters who observed the event. This had a major effect on Takeru and his psyche going into the future, past Operation Babylon, and after when he is inducted into the Imperial Royal Guard and served Makabe Sukerokurou and Ikaruga Takatsugu.
He is first mentioned by Jinguuji Marimo at the very end of Episode 01 as she reminisces over the past and her failures. His first actual appearance happened in the last minutes of Episode 02, and before that Meiya remembered him and said in her thoughts that she would continue to move on.
Episode 02[]
Takeru as an Imperial Guard
Towards the end of TDA02, Shirogane makes his first game appearance. He joined the ranks of the Imperial Royal Guards and is a subordinate of Ikaruga Takatsugu as of the year 2005. He displayed considerable apathy as he participated in an Imperial Guard briefing, given his blank stare and lack of interaction with the other members present.
Episode 03[]
Takeru is seen serving under Makabe Sukerokurou, a bodyguard and retainer of the Ikaruga house. Takeru followed the orders given to him faithfully and with almost robotic efficiency, first seen when he participated in the NORAD recapture operation and reinforced the IJA and American units deployed there. Under the callsign Horn-3, Takeru led a detachment of 00A's and 00'Cs into battle against the French and Canadian forces to devastating effect, where he slayed numerous Rafale and Tornado TSFs. Takeru acted as a lone Strike Vanguard in his formation and operated far ahead of his unit, fighting with two Type-74 blades in either hand.
Despite being a member of non-nobility, Takeru's skills and experience with a TSF offered him unique recognition in the ranks of the Imperial Guard. More than once, Takeru has been seen leading groups of Type-00A's and 00C's into battle. He has only taken direct orders from members of the Ikaruga house and their direct subordinates. His rank is First Lieutenant, offering him field command over at least a flight of TSFs.
Later, he participated in the arrest of Major Jinguuji Marimo after she was summoned to his superior's office. After she refused a direct request from a member of the Guard to divulge information relating to Kouzuki Yuuko's post-Babylon report, Takeru was ordered to apprehend her by Makabe. He showed little concern when Marimo pulled her sidearm against him and refused to move, despite her pleas. Marimo proceeded to surrender, unable to kill her old student; she was then officially detained and sent to Hawaii to face charges of "ration embezzlement".
Takeru later served as part of Takatsugu's Horn battalion IRG detachment sent to participate in the JFK Hive Operation, where he helped Tatsunami Hibiki destroy the JFK Hive Reactor with an S-11 SD-SYSTEM. During the run to the reactor, he cleared a path for Hibiki to advance and ordered him to charge forward and plant the nuclear device. He loudly declared that he would find a way to return home to his old world and avenge his fallen friends, no matter what.
During the Hive infiltration, Takeru and the others came across preserved remains of the JFK's human crew. He witnessed Lilia Kjellberg's destruction of said remains and did not agree with the notion of stopping her, since the pods had no value and the emotional weight they had would have negatively effected Lilia if nothing was done. He found one such pod unscathed and, upon remembering the one he had interacted with in Yokohama, crushed it out of sympathy.
He later showed a considerable amount of emotion during the destruction of the Hive Reactor and the aftermath of the battle, as he was once again reminded of his old world and of Yokohama base. Takeru began to cry as he held a set of dog tags, all the while wondering how he could still feel so much pain despite the time that had passed.
Quotes[]
ALTERNATIVE: "I'll never run away again!"
Etymology[]
- Shirogane means "white silver" (白銀).
- Takeru means "military, martial" (武).
Trivia[]
- Shirogane has a bad habit of spacing out and ignoring everyone around him. Sometimes this causes him to speak his thoughts out loud without paying attention.
- Extra Takeru's favorite GR from Valgern-ON is Kaizer.
- Shirogane currently holds the record of most appearances as an âge protagonist, having appeared in three games of his own series, as well as good number of its related spin-offs.
- In Episode 03 of The Day After, Takeru is seen piloting a Type-00C with a reversed sword Strike Vanguard loadout. This is in contrast to his Alternative loadout in the Valkyries, where he served as a Storm Vanguard.
- He is 175cm, making him the shortest of the three mainline protagonists,
