The basic fighting unit of the extraterrestrial invasion stands at 2.5 meters in height with a flexible trunk that can effortlessly twist off a human head. It possesses no other special weaponry or armor and is easy to dispatch with conventional weaponry, but runs and leaps with incredible agility on its two rear limbs.
Fantastic aesthetic, right off the bat. The torso is like a fat, squashed grubworm, possessing six tiny claw-like limbs and an abdomen that ends in a hook, but it teeters on two legs that look a bit more like a pair of arms, with swollen beefy biceps and wrinklier, spindlier forearms, each ending in two unsettlingly humanlike toes. The head resembles that of an opabinia, but with fifteen eyes, the aforementioned three-fingered hand, and a cranium that flares back a bit like a hornles ceratopsian. If it were friendly, it would be huggably adorable, like a baby elephant, but since it runs around instantaneously tearing heads off, it's only "admire from a distance" adorable, like a grown up hippopotamus.
Written by Jonathan Wojcik
Anime Monster Reviews:
I HAVE NEITHER SEEN NOR PLAYED "MUV-LUV" BUT THESE ARE THE BAD GUYS I THINK
Written by Jonathan Wojcik
For many years, I knew nothing about "MUV-LUV" other than the fact that it had some stellar creature designs I saved to my hard drive and thought maybe, some day, I'd talk about on my website about creature designs. I wasn't even sure if it was a manga, an anime or a video game, though as it turns out, it's all of those things as well as a pronornomography, sort of. That is, it began as an "adult" visual novel, but its popularity grew until there were official licensed kid-safe(ish) versions released on major consoles and an anime adaptation without all the naked stuff. Weird. Did that ever happen before? I mean, there are PG-13 edited-down versions of more mature media, and there are lighter adaptations of more adult media, but I'm not sure full-blown smut typically gets a more general-audiences adaptation, even in the anime industry.The series also, apparently, starts out as nothing but a "light romantic comedy" about the usual dating-sim struggles of a teenage boy with multiple love interests. It even "concluded" that way, at first, until it turned out to only be part one of a trilogy, and by part three, I guess maybe things have escalated a little from romantic comedy.
JUST a little!
WARRIOR CLASS BETA "BARRUS NARIS"
Scientific Name - Agilisis: Naris prolix
SOLDIER CLASS "VENATOR"
Venarius: Caput grande
Whoops! Can't show THAT on a bogleech.com! "Soldiers" are slightly smaller than "Warriors" and not as strong, but are deployed slightly later into the war and function strictly as "anti-personnel" units, which is to say they specialize in hunting and killing humans one by one.
The most disturbing design by far, a soldier has a round, bloated stomach that drags on the ground, with an orifice up the front that looks exactly like...well, it's a puffy pink slot, okay, the function of which is mercifully unknown. Flanking this weird potbelly-crotch combo are a couple of equally swollen round "thighs," like a pair of...well, it's a pair of two big sac-like lumps, okay, though each one has a bunch of little stubby legs sprouting out of it. Sticking straight up between these is a grotesquely muscular humanoid torso, with almost totally human arms, but its toothy, gummy mouth opens up right on the front of its long, thick, shaft-like neck, and its head is just a bulbous flaring sac on top, like a mushroom cap, with simple black divots for eyes.
It still seems to be impossible for me, for whatever reasons, to feel any kind of revulsion towards the shape of any creature, real or hypothetical, but this thingy is about as disquieting to me as an organic being can get by visual factors alone, even without the part I had to censor, and I don't know how big a spoiler this is in the narrative since I learned it off the wiki, but these things are also literally made out of people. Not like they're genetically grown from human DNA or anything, but like the BETA are "processing" people into raw organic material and making stuff out of it. Stuff like this. Like with maybe a big play-doh mold kind of system.
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The most disturbing design by far, a soldier has a round, bloated stomach that drags on the ground, with an orifice up the front that looks exactly like...well, it's a puffy pink slot, okay, the function of which is mercifully unknown. Flanking this weird potbelly-crotch combo are a couple of equally swollen round "thighs," like a pair of...well, it's a pair of two big sac-like lumps, okay, though each one has a bunch of little stubby legs sprouting out of it. Sticking straight up between these is a grotesquely muscular humanoid torso, with almost totally human arms, but its toothy, gummy mouth opens up right on the front of its long, thick, shaft-like neck, and its head is just a bulbous flaring sac on top, like a mushroom cap, with simple black divots for eyes.
It still seems to be impossible for me, for whatever reasons, to feel any kind of revulsion towards the shape of any creature, real or hypothetical, but this thingy is about as disquieting to me as an organic being can get by visual factors alone, even without the part I had to censor, and I don't know how big a spoiler this is in the narrative since I learned it off the wiki, but these things are also literally made out of people. Not like they're genetically grown from human DNA or anything, but like the BETA are "processing" people into raw organic material and making stuff out of it. Stuff like this. Like with maybe a big play-doh mold kind of system.
TANK BETA "EQUUS PEDIS"
Manderium: Ungulam crus
4.4 meters long, so somewhere around the size of a typical pickup truck, I think. I don't really know trucks. The tank beta is built for a balance of heavy weight and extreme speed, barreling into things to attack with its limbs and mouth, which is strong enough to devour metal! Against actual man-made tanks it apparently just latches on like a big tick and keeps eating until it gets to the machine's gooey center.
The "equus" in what's supposed to be its "common name" (but these really just sound like alternate scientific names, for a lot of them) obviously refers to it having what look like swollen horse legs. The body is just a big lump of muscle, while the egg-shaped head has no features other than lots of little black eyes. It has two huge human arms that jut out of the front, and the huge mouth, which is somewhere between a human's and a horse's, is on its underside.
One thing I like is that most of the eyes are clustered around the top of the head, but there's two extra down lower. We humans tend to look for a pair of eyes to zero in on and "relate" to, so even if something has a bunch of them, it'll feel just slightly more like us if two of them happen to be isolated or distinguished in any way. And when you look at those two eyes in particular, two little dots down so low on an otherwise featureless ball, it's an incongruously innocent "face" for this design, almost infantile. And speaking of eyes being more relatable in pairs:
The "equus" in what's supposed to be its "common name" (but these really just sound like alternate scientific names, for a lot of them) obviously refers to it having what look like swollen horse legs. The body is just a big lump of muscle, while the egg-shaped head has no features other than lots of little black eyes. It has two huge human arms that jut out of the front, and the huge mouth, which is somewhere between a human's and a horse's, is on its underside.
One thing I like is that most of the eyes are clustered around the top of the head, but there's two extra down lower. We humans tend to look for a pair of eyes to zero in on and "relate" to, so even if something has a bunch of them, it'll feel just slightly more like us if two of them happen to be isolated or distinguished in any way. And when you look at those two eyes in particular, two little dots down so low on an otherwise featureless ball, it's an incongruously innocent "face" for this design, almost infantile. And speaking of eyes being more relatable in pairs:
LASER BETA "LUX"
Luxcius: Duo oculus
CUTE!! THE CUTEST!!! 3 meters tall (9 feet), this is the first beta equipped with any kind of weapon other than its brute strength, both eyes capable of emitting concentrated light beams. It can target from incredibly far away, too, picking aircraft out of the sky with one shot, and apparently has a "perfect record" of never accidentally hitting a fellow Beta.
Lux is by far my favorite of their designs. Its body is a warty, bubbly blob of flesh with an open bottom, like a hollow bell, covered in extremely long sensory whiskers. Two very humanlike legs emerge from the "bell," and so does a pair of huge wrinkly eyestalks, fused together like a single "neck" and binocular-shaped "head," while the laser eyes are just these perfectly round, gigantic blue-black orbs. Any head or face consisting of JUST two giant eyes seems to be the most sympathetic thing of all to us, like what made Wall-E so cute, and why we love owls so much. Besides its cuteness, I also just find this anatomical plan extremely appealing to look at. Eye-head stalk, tumor blob shell, legs. That's it! That's all you need!
Lux is by far my favorite of their designs. Its body is a warty, bubbly blob of flesh with an open bottom, like a hollow bell, covered in extremely long sensory whiskers. Two very humanlike legs emerge from the "bell," and so does a pair of huge wrinkly eyestalks, fused together like a single "neck" and binocular-shaped "head," while the laser eyes are just these perfectly round, gigantic blue-black orbs. Any head or face consisting of JUST two giant eyes seems to be the most sympathetic thing of all to us, like what made Wall-E so cute, and why we love owls so much. Besides its cuteness, I also just find this anatomical plan extremely appealing to look at. Eye-head stalk, tumor blob shell, legs. That's it! That's all you need!
HEAVY LASER CLASS "MAGNUS LUX"
Magnus Luxcius: Unioculus
When the Beta need a BIG gun, a hive apparently produces a single enormous Magnus Lux, which looms 21 meters in height and can shoot down enemies over 20,000 kilometers away to even target approaching spacecraft or orbital satellites. It has to charge its beam for a while, though, and it can be killed if its eye is destroyed. Watch out, big guy!!!
While not quite as cute or quite as novel in design as the regular-size laser class, it's still very charming and very interesting in its own right. It still stands on two humanoid legs, supporting a blobbier, flabbier body with a single huge eye on top, surrounded by a handful of tinier eyes. There's also a mass of long, reddish feather-like growths hanging off its back, right before a large sausage-shaped "tail" with a little stinger thingy on the end, probably for balance.
While not quite as cute or quite as novel in design as the regular-size laser class, it's still very charming and very interesting in its own right. It still stands on two humanoid legs, supporting a blobbier, flabbier body with a single huge eye on top, surrounded by a handful of tinier eyes. There's also a mass of long, reddish feather-like growths hanging off its back, right before a large sausage-shaped "tail" with a little stinger thingy on the end, probably for balance.
GRAPPLER CLASS "MEDIUM"
Rrabidusius: Bracchium acutas
"Medium?" That's this thing's name? Maybe it sounds cooler if your first language isn't English. These are huge war-machine type Beta, 12 meters tall, 19 meters long and 28 meters wide, created to fight back against large enemy machines and actually comprising "up to 60% the total force" of any Beta group. I don't think that's literal numbers, these probably don't outnumber the small infantry type units. I'm guessing they mean 60% of the overall "power," or 60% of the physical mass maybe.
The "Medium's" design is shaped like a scorpion, but comprised of mostly pale humanlike flesh. Instead of articulated pincers, its front limbs are two giant crescent-shaped lumps of dark chitin it can use like bludgeons, shields, or a single set of huge clamps. It has four legs with piston-like hooves, and where a scorpion's "tail" would be is a head on a short neck, with a grimacing humanlike mouth. Where an eyes and nose would be are brain-like wrinkles, but I find the wrinkle pattern is also subtly reminiscent of two hands gripping the face from behind. Is that just me?
The "head" is said to be nothing but sensory equipment, and doesn't contain a brain or anything vital. There's a little fleshy nozzle hanging off the underside of the body, but the purpose of that isn't mentioned anywhere I've found. One thing I also find interesting is that there are no explicit eyes anywhere, but an awful lot of different lumps, wrinkles and grooves, pretty much all over the place, that can give an eye-like impression. I fixate first on the two drooping slits that kind of look like big, sad eyes on the front, but are just gaps in the flesh of the forearms.
The "Medium's" design is shaped like a scorpion, but comprised of mostly pale humanlike flesh. Instead of articulated pincers, its front limbs are two giant crescent-shaped lumps of dark chitin it can use like bludgeons, shields, or a single set of huge clamps. It has four legs with piston-like hooves, and where a scorpion's "tail" would be is a head on a short neck, with a grimacing humanlike mouth. Where an eyes and nose would be are brain-like wrinkles, but I find the wrinkle pattern is also subtly reminiscent of two hands gripping the face from behind. Is that just me?
The "head" is said to be nothing but sensory equipment, and doesn't contain a brain or anything vital. There's a little fleshy nozzle hanging off the underside of the body, but the purpose of that isn't mentioned anywhere I've found. One thing I also find interesting is that there are no explicit eyes anywhere, but an awful lot of different lumps, wrinkles and grooves, pretty much all over the place, that can give an eye-like impression. I fixate first on the two drooping slits that kind of look like big, sad eyes on the front, but are just gaps in the flesh of the forearms.
FORT CLASS "GRAVIS"
Pergrandium: tria corpus
One of the largest of all Beta at 66 meters tall, the fort class can destroy most things with its size and weight alone, but it also has a "stinger" that can spray concentrated acid, extend into a tentacle, or even launch like a missile! How talented!!
The design is very cool, looking like a heavily armored humanoid torso with a helmeted head and huge bulky shoulders, but the legs are ten long, straight stilt-like lances "impaled" through the shoulders, and it has no other appendages besides the wasp-like abdomen curled underneath. The chitinous, round head, shaped a little like a motorcycle helmet, has no features other than small, black sensory holes in various pairs, but a couple of shallow depressions wrap around the upper half in a pattern that reminds me of a hornet's eyes.
The design is very cool, looking like a heavily armored humanoid torso with a helmeted head and huge bulky shoulders, but the legs are ten long, straight stilt-like lances "impaled" through the shoulders, and it has no other appendages besides the wasp-like abdomen curled underneath. The chitinous, round head, shaped a little like a motorcycle helmet, has no features other than small, black sensory holes in various pairs, but a couple of shallow depressions wrap around the upper half in a pattern that reminds me of a hornet's eyes.
DESTROYER CLASS "RUITARE"
Impestusis: Arma duras
Uhoh! We have another cutie-patoot alarm!!! This Beta's one and only purpose is to be a big battering ram, but it's VERY good at that, strong enough to plow through pretty much any and all obstacles in a straight line.
Most of the body consists of yellowish lumpy tissue in a shape sort of like a six-legged cow or pig, or I guess like a big giant tardigrade! The legs are just simple cylinders with no feet or claws or hooves, and and it actually has TWO heads, even if that's not so clear in this image. Each little low-slung head is shaped kind of like a turtle's, with no features other than tiny black eyes on their sides, timidly peeking out from under the actual battering-ram part, which is a humongous, beak-shaped bony shield. The design is much more threatening if you don't notice the real heads, like an alien triceratops or rhinoceros with an eyeless graboid-like maw. But that's just its silly hat!!
I also like the fuzzy, feather-like feelers that sprout all over its back, a neat little touch that implies a backup sensory system, since it's probably pretty easy to sneak up on this poor sweetheart.
Most of the body consists of yellowish lumpy tissue in a shape sort of like a six-legged cow or pig, or I guess like a big giant tardigrade! The legs are just simple cylinders with no feet or claws or hooves, and and it actually has TWO heads, even if that's not so clear in this image. Each little low-slung head is shaped kind of like a turtle's, with no features other than tiny black eyes on their sides, timidly peeking out from under the actual battering-ram part, which is a humongous, beak-shaped bony shield. The design is much more threatening if you don't notice the real heads, like an alien triceratops or rhinoceros with an eyeless graboid-like maw. But that's just its silly hat!!
I also like the fuzzy, feather-like feelers that sprout all over its back, a neat little touch that implies a backup sensory system, since it's probably pretty easy to sneak up on this poor sweetheart.
CARRIER CLASS "MEGAWORM"
No scientific name, because these are "more recent discoveries" in the setting, but a Carrier consists of a ridiculously massive worm that can tunnel underground at earthquake-inducing speed and transport an entire army in its hollow interior. With its mouth closed, the front of it is a flat excavation drill with both an outer rim and radiating rows of spiky crystalline growths, but the little red sphincter-mouth in the center can flare open into one big massive circular esophagus when it needs to spit up all its friends.
LASER FORT CLASS
SPOILER, apparently! Despite their behavior and adaptations thus far, all of the Beta apparently serve a primary purpose of terraforming. Even the laser types are mostly for excavation and mining, while the hunter-killer types are just engineered to gather resources. The "laser fort" is a big reveal towards the end, according to the wiki at least, meant to imply that human retaliation has taught the beta the concept of all-out war, and this is the first beta designed solely for the purpose of killing us more efficiently.
It is very, very weird and appropriately threatening, too. Its main body is an almost coral-like mass of bumpy grey tissue in three roughly cylindrical parallel lobes. The two outermost each have two rows of spike legs, like those of the original fort class, three huge feather-like sensors on the back and some sort of retractable dark "head" on their front, a dark purpleish pod covered in holes. The holes are full of little golden nodules I took to be eyes at first, but could just as easily be any other sensory system, or even weapons ready and loaded. A stinger abdomen, again like the fort class, hangs from the central lobe of the body, and all three lobes have a tapering fleshy tube extending forward from the top, each ending in three laser eyes!
It's a truly more bizarre configuration than any of the other beta, which still tend to look overall like one "animal" you can liken to something familiar, whereas this one really does look much more like an alien weapon.
It is very, very weird and appropriately threatening, too. Its main body is an almost coral-like mass of bumpy grey tissue in three roughly cylindrical parallel lobes. The two outermost each have two rows of spike legs, like those of the original fort class, three huge feather-like sensors on the back and some sort of retractable dark "head" on their front, a dark purpleish pod covered in holes. The holes are full of little golden nodules I took to be eyes at first, but could just as easily be any other sensory system, or even weapons ready and loaded. A stinger abdomen, again like the fort class, hangs from the central lobe of the body, and all three lobes have a tapering fleshy tube extending forward from the top, each ending in three laser eyes!
It's a truly more bizarre configuration than any of the other beta, which still tend to look overall like one "animal" you can liken to something familiar, whereas this one really does look much more like an alien weapon.
TREBUCHET BETA
Debuting only in a spinoff game, I can't find any other angles or much clearer screenshots of this one, but it mostly consists of six huge, squishy bottle-shaped growths, a little like mammary glands, a little like sea-squirts, that propel acidic slime! They're attached in rows to a thin, spiky central body with eight little tardigrade-like legs on it, there's a knobby head (or something) sprouting off the back end, and there's also a paddle-shaped tentacle that reaches out from underneath the whole thing, bearing a bunch of eyes on it, which it cut off a bit in this image. It's another favorite of mine, because you know I love "toxic" type monsters, and I even love its blue and purple color scheme.
HAMMERHEAD BETA
Hammer...head? Are those heads? Not "hammerhand" maybe? This game-only Beta has a blobby, saggy body with what looks like a little keyhole-shaped faceplate on the front, or something, and six metallic wedge-shaped legs. Its obvious primary weapon are the two scaly limbs on top, each splitting into three long, pinkish tubular fingers, which each bear a huge block-shaped metallic "hammer." Apparently it also moves around entirely by jumping, which is a pretty alarming thing for a giant beast with hammer-limbs to do.
LASER BULKHEAD BETA
A game beta with a much clearer wiki image! This radially symmetrical beta has four legs supporting a body shaped like a warty mushroom, with a head like another, bigger mushroom on top, completely ringed with laser eyes. I'm not sure how big it is, but probably pretty huge, and probably one of the ones emerging after they figured out they're at war.
THE SUPERORDINATE
The big boss itself, the highest authority ever discovered among the alien forces, the "brain" in command of the entire beta army attacking our planet! It resides inside one of the Beta's energy reactors, an immobile mass with dozens of tentacles and a charming eyestalk similar to that of a laser class, albeit with six eyes in two vertical rows. Definitely a classic "alien mastermind" kind of design! But, there's a twist here, which is that this still isn't THE alien mastermind, and there's evidently no sign we'll ever meet whoever they are, or whoever they were.
The supreme leader of all beta activity on earth, it turns out, is just another beta itself, following some ancient directive from creators who aren't known to have actually issued any further orders ever since. Maybe they just leave Beta to terraform distant worlds while they deliberately wait in hiding, maybe they lost track of their own autonomous creations, or maybe they're long gone. Whatever happened, the Superordinate doesn't care; it's got a job to do, and none of the destruction or slaughter along the way is even anything personal. It took some time for it to even realize humans were trying to stop or destroy it, and began counter-measures as emotionlessly as we might modify our zoning plans because some rocks were in the way.
There's more to this series, of course, and still more entries or spinoffs probably on their way in the future, but even if we only consider the muv-luv titles that moved away from animated teenaged nudity, I'm still just not the biggest fan of bleak sci-fi war dramas where humans are the only good guys. I have to say however that the Beta are so interestingly designed and compelling, they're easily now among my top favorite Space Invader armies in fiction as a whole. Every class is full of character, with a design I've never fully seen before anywhere else. If you're like me and have no other interest in the series, I hope you liked looking over these thingies together!
The supreme leader of all beta activity on earth, it turns out, is just another beta itself, following some ancient directive from creators who aren't known to have actually issued any further orders ever since. Maybe they just leave Beta to terraform distant worlds while they deliberately wait in hiding, maybe they lost track of their own autonomous creations, or maybe they're long gone. Whatever happened, the Superordinate doesn't care; it's got a job to do, and none of the destruction or slaughter along the way is even anything personal. It took some time for it to even realize humans were trying to stop or destroy it, and began counter-measures as emotionlessly as we might modify our zoning plans because some rocks were in the way.
There's more to this series, of course, and still more entries or spinoffs probably on their way in the future, but even if we only consider the muv-luv titles that moved away from animated teenaged nudity, I'm still just not the biggest fan of bleak sci-fi war dramas where humans are the only good guys. I have to say however that the Beta are so interestingly designed and compelling, they're easily now among my top favorite Space Invader armies in fiction as a whole. Every class is full of character, with a design I've never fully seen before anywhere else. If you're like me and have no other interest in the series, I hope you liked looking over these thingies together!
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