My sense of it is that the anime has focused, for better and for worse, on being a good adaptation rather than on being a good show. Now that we’ve reached the halfway point of this first season, I think it’s fair to look back and evaluate how the anime has gone so far. His talk with the Yuuko of the original world also makes clear how different she is from the Yuuko of the Alternative world – she’s much more friendly and encouraging, whereas Alternative Yuuko is more calculating. The show has used flashbacks to his relationship with Sumika to establish his nostalgia for his old world, and we can sympathize with his desire to return, even if we haven’t actually seen much of it. The actual return to Takeru’s original world is another moment that is built up to much more in the previous chapters of the game than in the anime, but unlike the introduction of Mikoto’s dad, I think the anime itself has laid enough groundwork that the moment still lands effectively. Now that all of that early setup is complete, though, it’s able to build new storylines based on the existing knowledge that has been established within the anime, rather than knowledge from the previous timeline, making it much easier for the viewer to follow the story. Those storylines were also heavily dependent on Takeru’s knowledge of the previous timeline. Before, the episodes were forced to juggle numerous storylines at once due to the fast pace at which it was trying to introduce the major elements of the story.
And the way this storyline plays out in the anime helps illustrate just how much better the show flows now that we’ve moved past those early episodes. The rest of the episode is dedicated entirely to the storyline of trying to send Takeru back to his original world. And then, of course, there’s the message that Mikoto’s dad actually brings, the vast majority of which is currently incomprehensible to Takeru (and the viewer), but which is obviously foreshadowing for future events. It is definitely a sign that the show is beginning to follow up on that thread, and that we’ll continue to explore those family situations in the upcoming weeks. The show then introduced Miki’s dad (a UN undersecretary) last episode, and it follows up by bringing in Mikoto’s dad (an Imperial intelligence agent) this episode. We’ve heard before that all of the other members of Takeru’s squad have complicated family situations. Instead, her dad’s introduction is more important in the anime for what it suggests about the future. In the anime, not only have we not heard of him before, we haven’t even gotten to know Mikoto well enough to see how her dad reflects her own personality.
He’s an unseen character throughout the earlier chapters, and his reveal here is the payoff to a long series of insinuations about him. In the game, we’ve already had plenty of time to get to know Mikoto’s personality, and receive all sorts of hints about what kind of person Mikoto’s dad is. The introduction of Mikoto’s dad is one of those things that will simply play differently between the original game and the anime. Seeing these events laid out at the beginning of the episode almost feels like the anime itself signaling to the viewer that it’s time to start expecting that these changes to the timeline will start affecting how the anime plays out. Perhaps appropriately, we kick things off with the introduction of Mikoto’s dad, who proceeds to list all the ways that Takeru has already changed this timeline, notably intervening in the BETA attack from Sadogashima and the HSST drop that coincided with the visit from Miki’s father.
Starting this episode, Takeru is now experiencing events that he has no prior knowledge of, and it immediately gives this episode a different feel from the ones that came before. We are now past the part of the story where Takeru retraces events he experienced during his last time through this world. With this episode, we officially move into the next stage of Muv-Luv Alternative’s story.