Review of Full Metal Panic!

Story: This anime is about a highly trained military commando/mecha pilot with no social skills named Sagara. He gets assigned to pose as a high school student to protect a large-breasted female student from being abducted by terrorists. As silly as the plot is, it creates room for interesting challenges. How will he blend in? How will he avoid suspicion? How will he protect this girl without blowing his cover? Etc. Well this anime chooses to brazenly ignore all of those concerns and have the Sagara act about as conspicuous as possible. It really requires that the audience suspend all disbelief. Example: What’s a normalreaction when you see a student holding a submachine gun on school grounds? Run? Warn the students? Call police? Nope. It’s to scold him playfully and then forget about it. Well that’s the way it works in this anime at least. It’s hard to build suspense when the audience isn’t sure what’s supposed to be taken seriously and what isn’t.

However, if you decide to beat yourself over the head with a snow shovel until logic stops being important, FMP does become kind of endearing (it took 106 consecutive hits for me). The story has a lot of relationship/romance undertones which gives it quirky but cute feeling. Sagara is like a retarded Terminator sent to protect the prepiest and most volatile girl in school. It’s a recipe for a lot of odd and funny (often ecchi-related) misunderstandings. Over time, the audience gets to watch these characters interact and evolve…albeit very slowly. Unfortunately, they do tend to throw in useless arcs which distract from the overall plot and stall character development. I’ve read good things about the sequel so I watched S1 with that in mind.
The action isn’t bad. There are some intense scenes that I think are pretty well done. At the same time, I finished the anime without a good sense of how the mecha worked, why certain (let’s call them mecha techniques) were used in some battles but not in others, how some characters managed to cheat death, and why the mecha insisted on fighting with little chode-like chainsaw daggers. To each his own but these were problems for me.

Art: I’ve seen a lot better but it’s still pretty decent. I don’t have anything against it.

Sound: Soundtrack wasn’t bad…they’re not going on my ipod but they weren’t bad.

Characters: As much as I hated the simplicity and stupidity of the cast, it was that exact flaw that allowed this anime work. Instead of building a narrative based on complicated characters who have multiple layers, each character in FMP basically represents the extreme of a single, very simple concept. We as the audience get to see what happens when these extremes come together. It’s not pretty but it does get the job done.

Sagara: He is essentially an Unsullied from Game of Thrones. No real personality, curiosity, sex drive, independent thought…nothing except an unwavering devotion to duty. Of course, one of the main conflicts in the series (evident from the TITLE of the first episode) is whether he is capable of forming human feelings and relationships. Narrative-wise, it’s not the worst place to start; it lets him be a blank slate. Who knows what sort new things he’ll learn and experience. Wouldn’t that be fun and sweet? Like watching cyborg Arnold bond w/ John Connor. The problem is that the pacing was off. I’ll say that in S1 his character evolution is generally plodding, erratic and subpar.
Chidori: She was actually the most likeable character in my opinion despite being 100% anime cliché. Basically the chirpy, sassy hot girl who does the whole tsundere thing. I can think of half a dozen characters from other anime who have the same personality. As a main, she stands out only because she contrasts so heavily with Tessa…*sigh*.

Tessa: She’s a 16 year old attack submarine captain in charge of most of the military operations. Maybe it’s a sign of watching too much anime but I’ve gotten completely used to seeing teens in super powerful military positions. The impossibility of it doesn’t even bother me anymore. What did irritate me was her personality and the way she interacted with the other characters. It’s just really inconsistent. FMP wants to have a teen genius plan a military assault? No problem, L and Lelouch were awesome. But a crying, meek, swooning, scatterbrained little girl? That’s just pushing it for me. It also gave FMP a weird ecchi vibe…like they needed to insert a shapely female somewhere to hit a quota but didn’t know where to put her so BAM she’s the captain.
Overall: Overall it was watchable. I am looking forward to S2 in hopes that it can pull things together more.

Blood/Gore: Sagara actually shoots people lol. It’s a weird mix of goofy high school antics a violence.
Love/Romance: It’s a little disappointing. I think it’s the love triangle dynamic. I’m still trying to figure out what the appeal of LTs are. School Days was the only one that made sense to me. In order to make them interesting or plausible the guy/girl being fought over has to be either really dumb/oblivious or extremely indecisive and douchey. I guess I’ll find out in S2.
Sex/Nudity: non-nude shower scenes, panty thieves, unintentional awkward sexual situations…