In which we learn about the setting, the protagonists and the presentation of the story.

Hello and welcome to the Valkyria Chronicles. I have no idea what’s going on, but I’ll be your guide anyway.
The opening cinematic give us a brief hint what we might expect here: an anime-style (can one call this “cartoony”, or is cartoony strictly used for western animation?), slightly over the top war game, with faceless enemies carrying bazooka-lances. Awesome. Impractical maybe, but awesome.
The year is 1935, the local unobtanium is Ragnite, and the parties going to war over it are the Atlantic Federation, a loose alliance of several western democracies, and the East European Imperial Alliance, aka “the Empire”.
As we see clearly, the map is somewhat Europe-shape, but obviously not our real-world Europe. The war started by the Empire by crossing the border is called EWII, the Second European War.
So there is this not-quite-Europe, with a not-quite-Russia in the east and nothing that existed in the west in the second act of a not-quite-global conflict. I’m pretty sure everyone understood by now that is not a historical WW2-game, so I’ll drop the not-quite-stuff.
While mostly steamrolling over the western forces, a small part of the Empire’s army takes an uncomfortably close look at the Principality of Gallia, pushing over the border of the previously neutral country.
After the explanation of the global situation, we find ourselves in a book – a book by a certain Irene Koller, called “On the Gallian Front”. It is an account of the war in Gallia, of the battles fought and the people involved. The story of a small nation standing against a giant. The story of tragedy hidden in the mists of time. A story of courage and of trust, of persecution and hate, and of love blooming, even through the flames of war. I’m not making this up, this is the blurb given.The game is divided in chapters, represented by the pages of the book, which in turn are divided in episodes. We gain access to a new episode every time we’re done with the previous one, the same goes for chapters. And at least until now, somewhere in the first chapter, a good part of the chapters is non-interactive. Maybe this will shift towards a greater amount of action, maybe not. I like it.

The prologue starts with more exposition. Troops of the Empire are closing in on the Gallian town Bruhl, and people are leaving for the capital.Most of them, anyway. One of the main protagonists is on his way to Bruhl, which is the first indication that he is actually a main character. He gets sidetracked by some fish in the river along the path, drops his satchel and starts drawing in his notebook. A bit of a naturalist, our so-far-unnamed citizen.
Sitting beside a busy road, jotting down things in a notebook is usually not the best idea in a war zone where everyone is looking for spies. Our protagonist finds out about this when he is poked in the back with a rifle and kindly asked to identify himself. Welkin, as is his name, stands before Alicia Melchiott, head of Bruhl’s town guard. And as this is an anime-setting, the head of the town guard is wearing neither helmet nor trousers.
The joys of being a genre fiction character. Her coat ends on a level with the lower edge of the picture, but you already guessed that.
Here the game cuts back to the book and allows us to select the next episode. More cinematic exposition.

While Alicia is trying to find the secret code embedded into Welkin’s drawings, another person on the road asks him what he got himself into this time. The questioner is Isara Gunther, daughter of a certain General Gunter and Welkin’s sister. A rather dumbfounded Alicia hands Welkin’s notebook back to him and while apologizing for doing her job. To be fair, she also mentions herself that she was just doing her job. The conversation comes to an end when an imperial scouting party comes over a nearby hill, bullets start flying and one of the watchmen bites the dust.
We’re finally getting in a fight. Which is, as you might have guessed, another episode.