Fantasy weapons are rarely useful. They’re overdesigned pieces of trash that use excuse of magic or other bullshit to make them plausible. While Japan has produced some fine examples and utter bullshit, like the Final Fantasy 8 Gunblade or Clouds Buster Sword, the West is no stranger to absolutely batshit stupid designs. Skyrim’s Red Eagles Fury and Daedric Sword are good examples of awful design as is the Frostmourne from World of Warcraft.
The TSF close combat weapons don’t get a free pass from me just because it’s Muv-Luv. The problem with giant robot weapons is that they’re pretty much always made of bullshittium or the like. In case of TSF’s close combat weapons, they’re most likely made of some sort of derivative of supercarbon to give them high resistance to damage and light weight rather than made straight up same type the TSF’s are made of. Outside the fact that close combat is not the best idea when it comes to fighting the BETA, these close combat weaponry range from night retarded to plausible.
To add to the discussion whether or not these should be called Melee Halberds or something else, I’m sticking with my grounds and refusing to call these halberds despite me finally finding some materials having the term in plain English. Furthermore, Muv-Luv Alternative Total Eclipse World Guidance, or just TEWG, splits Melee Halberds into types; halberds and claymores. This can be countered with two arguments; 1) there are no halberds in Muv-Luv and 2) there are no claymores in Muv-Luv. This is largely a case where the writers have just thrown in cool sounding terms they no jack shit about. You might as well start calling a gun a longsword while you’re at it and missiles as Volkswagens. I may need to read up on fighters and jet planes with each TSF comparison, but I know my way around blade weapons pretty well.
The Type-74 PB Blade is the sword we see the most in the franchise as it is used by the Japanese. It’s not really modelled after any real life sword, and while most people will see it modelled after a katana, the closes analogue would be the Chinese changdao as all of them are named after this particular type of sword. Tachi or nodachi would be the closest Japanese equivalent. Maybe the back carrying is taken from nodachi due to their huge size, but the grip with Type-74 is too short to be one.
Aaltomies 
