Review of Full Metal Panic!

"Full Metal Panic" and its sequels are a couple of my friends' favourite anime. But to be perfectly honest, I really don't see what all the fuss is about. Although the presentation is pretty shiny (it's GONZO after all), and the execution competent, for me, this is mostly just a bog standard action anime with some comedy moments (only some of which are funny) and some nice gripping scenes sprinkled over it. But the key word there is "mostly"... and more on this later. You've probably seen the type before. You have a military organisation, and they go on the various missions, always running into thisseemingly unkillable boomerang of a bad guy who happens to be a bit insane and wants to destroy the world or something. At the end of the show, you get the obligatory final show down between the hero and that insane villain. Most of these missions are enjoyable at the time of watching, but ultimately forgettable (in fact I have actually forgotten them), but one does stick out. It's where they go on a desert mission that takes place in the the main character Sagara Sousuke's homeland. The internal conflicts within the mission team and Sousuke's meeting with an old acquaintance managed to spice up the flavour quite a bit and put that extra edge of tension as well as emotion onto the story and the action.

The story in "Full Metal Panic" is kinda incomplete, with a lot of it involving the "Whispered". The problem is that they don't really explain much about the Whispered, so by the end I was still kinda clueless about what they are. My first instinct is to blame it on GONZO, since throwing out ideas without thinking/developing/explaining them through properly is exactly the kind of thing they usually do. But now I think about it, this time the blame is probably with the manga source material rather than with the studio. I was kinda hoping "Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid" would be able to provide more answers, but now that I've seen it, I'm disappointed to say that it doesn't.

The cast of "Full Metal Panic" are also mostly templates taken out of their respective genres. You have the usual cold blooded, evil, ruthless and insane main villain taken from a typical action movie, and the loud mouthed, aggressive female lead taken from the school life settings. Admittedly the latter did fall into the likeable side of the fence rather than the annoying (I'm thinking of Asuka from Evangelion here). The sniper guy is a bit more interesting though, and no, not because he's a bit of a perv. What struck me was how useless the guy is at close combat. We're so used to seeing the generically all round elite soldier type who so commonly feature in today's media that it makes a refreshing change to see someone who's got clear strengths and weaknesses that reflect his role in the squad.

You've most likely seen the captain somewhere before. Tess - an innocent, ditzy teenage girl playing an important role on a warship, as a captain no less. Sounds familiar? [Hint hint: "Nadesico", "Vandread"]) In fact I hated her more than most, for some reason she just gets on my nerves sooo baaadly. Probably because she sticks out like a sore thumb when they're trying to sell the story off as more serious oriented as opposed to comedy oriented like in "Martian Successor Nadesico". Sure she's a genius that has "special abilities", but special abilities and brain power alone doesn't make a good captain - that's why you never see a complete geek playing the captain role . The primary traits required for the job are leadership and presence... and it would be too kind to say that she has zero presence... she has bloody negative presence. Small, clumsy, pretty teenage girl with squeaky voice who often looks to her second in command for reassurance whilst commanding a ship full of hardcore mercenaries? Sounds like recipe for rebellion to me. Are all these hardcore mercenaries really gonna stomach taking commands from someone like her and do no worse than wolf whistle behind her back? I have a hard time imagining it. She's pretty much a purely fanservice character. And if there's one thing I hate more than a fanservice oriented character, it's a fanservice character that plays an important role and ends up distorting a more serious storyline. But the worst thing is that is that the anime plays up this cuteness thing during the character interactions so you can't even claim that it's all superficial - notice all the guys in the mercenary group goes around saying how cute/hot Tessa is as though that's her defining characteristic. Maybe I'm the crazy one here, for thinking that the defining characteristic of a 16 year old captain should be something other than "cute"! *rolleyes* I wonder whether the full version of her name - Testarossa - is based off the word "testosterone", as it seems her whole fan-servicey design is geared towards stimulating the production of that particular hormone from the male viewers...

Luckily, there is one character that truly shines - and the bonus is that he happens to be the main character. Yes, it's that infamous Sagara Sousuke. In fact, he pretty much carries the anime on his back. He provides the extra spark that distinguishes this action/comedy series from its peers. Without him the anime would be a lot more dull and unremarkable. Unlike Tess, his comedy attributes doesn't "clash" with the settings very much because the jokes that involve him comes from the fact that he does his job not incompetently, but rather TOO competently. He doesn't know anything OTHER than doing his job. And this is clever because this one defining aspect of his character enables him to fill both the comedy role and the serious role perfectly. When it comes to comedy, he shines as it's mainly his inability to get out of his military mindset when in school (along with Chidori's reactions to his antics) that provides most of the chuckles for the show. When in serious mode, his hardcore military side allow him to play a believable and key role in the serious missions. In contrast, Tess is a complete failure - her comedy bumbling scenes just makes me grimace and her unignorable presence on the serious missions makes me grimace even harder.

For a while I was undecided whether to label this as good or very good... but Sousuke probably tipped the scales in the anime's favour. Still, this anime owes a lot to "Full Metal Alchemist". If it wasn't for people searching for "Full Metal Alchemist" and accidently stumbling across this show (like my friends and I did), I doubt it would have gotten so popular. On its own merit, it's an anime that has out performed its mostly unremarkable potential. Mostly.