Review of Full Metal Panic!

Lots of Spoilers.... Dear Sousuke-kun, When you want to protect a girl – er, lady – it’s not in good taste to feel her up. That’s all. Respectfully, etc. Full Metal Panic the anime is good screwball comedy. Never mind that the light novel writer went off into dark, apocalyptic drivel essentially lobotomizing the lovely Tessa and demonizing Kalinin. No, no. This is Full Metal Panic the anime, and Sousuke at 17 and in high school for the first time in his abnormal life is the perfect straight man.There are three major story lines, each drawing in a wider array of characters and scenarios. In the first, Sousuke and Kaname do the two-step, finding a natural rhythm to the tune of an Arm Slave loaded with a lambda driver; the lyrics? “If you lose, they’ll rip off my clothes, play around with my body and kill me! You’d hate that, right?” Right, Kaname; Sousuke wins. In the second, Sousuke’s superior officer, Tessa, crashes on the duo with a homicidal teenage terrorist in tow to form a loopy square dance. And in the third, it’s an underwater dance party, with Tessa and Kaname resonating with each other to defeat the villain.

What makes this funny are the characters. No matter how much the writers try to bury him under the “orphan child of war” angst, Sousuke is a comedic dream, an animated Buster Keaton – his beautiful face is so deadpan that you start to attribute meaning in the slightest change of his eyes. Kaname is versatile, tough, and gifted with comic timing; with her insane homerun swing and physical agility, she’s the only one who can match Sousuke stride for stride. And Tessa: can a tactical genius be this klutzy and ingenuous? “At the age of 6, I derived Einstein’s 10 component symmetric tensor field equations….My brother derived it at 4, and I’ve always felt inferior to him (smile).” On the Geiger counter of sweetness, hers is an order of magnitude higher than the rest.

The episode to showcase the romp that is FMP is #13, “A cat and a kitten’s rock and roll.” Oh the glee of Mao.

Three obligatory remarks:

First, the animation. The action sequences are probably CGI, while the remainder is drawn with strong, clean outlines and sharp color. The lead characters are prettified, making them look like children playing in a grittier world.

Second, the music. Pleasant and light, for the most part it is unobtrusive, except for the instrumental used for highlights from previous episodes which sounds like “the flight of the bumblebees” with its crescendoing fugue of strings.

Third, the voice characterizations. The English dubs were better than the Japanese originals.

Grade: solid B