Full Metal Panic! Mission.02 (2002)
Animation Production: Gonzo/Digimation
Released by: ADV Films
Official Website: Full Metal Panic
Episodes: 4
By Keith "JC" Hayward

Introduction

My first encounter of Full Metal Panic was in an oversized manga that I received in an issue of Newtype USA. I can't say that I was overly impressed at my first glance; however, friends I know and trust have flipped out over the anime version of the manga. After constantly being recommended the title, along with claims that it tops even the top gun of modern anime, Cowboy Bebop, I couldn't dismiss Full Metal Panic any longer. After watching the first two DVDs from ADV Films, I think I got a good idea about why Full Metal Panic has received such a huge fanbase in recent years.

Story ( Box Description)

“They say vacations never go according to plan, and school trips are no exception. Instead of enjoying sunny skies in Okinawa, Sousuke and Kaname’s classmates are under cloud cover in Siberia, playing the part of hostages. A vicious and unbalanced terrorist has kidnapped Kaname to donate her brain to science – with or without her consent! Will Sousuke and Mithril be able to scramble and ad-hoc rescue? Will they be able to get everyone out alive?

Get ready as Full Metal Panic! launches in to its second stunning volume! It’s a race against the clock that will raise your pulse and have you hanging on to the edge of your seat!”

Review

At first glance, Full Metal Panic didn't impress me much. It seemed like a stereotypical, almost generic anime series. You know, the one that follows the tired template of a secretive, yet somewhat clueless boy meeting a loud and angry girl. The series wasn't bad by any means. It was just not a draw for me. However, the second disc is where the series really heats up.

Full Metal Panic is about a girl named Kaname Chidori and her undercover bodyguard Sgt. Sosuke Sagara who's, well, a little gun happy. The aspect of a military boy undercover as a high school student had a nice 21 Jump Street angle to it, which I found intriguing, but I didn't get hooked until I checked out the second disc. When a terrorist group hijacks Souske and Kaname's plane in the middle of a class field trip, landing them in a foreign military compound and taking Kaname captive, the element that shows why this show is so addictive is introduced, and suddenly I knew that I was hooked in for the long run.

Each episode ends on a cliffhanger, leaving me to dive for my DVD remote to click to the next episode. Souske suddenly ceases to be a comedic foil as he enters back into his element of serious Tom Clancy-esque military espionage. He slips in shadows, radios in to base, and makes crack shots with the pistol he took off an unsuspecting guard. Still, he's just one boy against an entire hostile military base . . . and that rocks!

The action doesn't stop there. It's just getting started! Through some quick thinking on the part of Kaname, Team Mithril was able to bring in the heavy artillery in the form of a Arm Slave Prototype. Never breaking stride, the action takes it up several notches as a mysterious enemy, believed to be long dead, appears in his own Arm Slave and it turns out that he's pulling the strings beyond the whole hijacking operation! The rivals go head-to- head with giant robot action, piloted like F-15s, and played out in a style that's quite reminiscent of Evangelion battles. The movements of the Prototype mechs are that of swift tech ninjas, with the hint of a beast waiting to be unleashed underneath. Morsels of secrets yet to be revealed are trickling down, and that's where the true fun of the series begins.

FMP has combination of wit and humor, that's pretty my de rigor for anime these days, and it goes great with the espionage, gunplay, and mecha action that comes later in the series. In the end, it makes for quite a refreshing mix. It has a lot of familiar elements like the Evangelion-influenced mech designs and mech fight choreography, the typical boy meets girl who's sweet at heart but constantly in uber- bitch mode, but in the end, Full Metal Panic becomes its own thing for an unsuspecting audience. It's a completely new world with characters definitely worth getting to know, my personal favorite character being the womanizing, cocky, perpetually smirking Sgt. Kurz Weber. He doesn't particularly get a lot of the glory, but he definitely steals every scene he's in.

The packaging is excellent, sporting a clear see-through plastic case and a reversible cover. One side resembling the metallic menu with a one of the badass Arm Slaves on the cover and the other a little more “Japanese” in appearance using the kanji Full Metal Panic logo and sporting our undercover hero, Souske, on the front.

Heh, but wait, there’s more(always wanted to say that)! The DVD comes with a fold out poster insert with Mizuki Inaba on it. You’ll meet this kooky cute gal in Episode 4. Flipside of this posters has production sketches and quick bios for a couple characters, mechs and even for the character’s “props” like purses, cameras and some kinda teddy-bear named, Bonta-kun, who I must’ve missed in the episodes I watched.

Only drawback I can think of is that I’m a fan of subtitled anime. And in the sound aspect concerning the Japanese track, we don’t get the full five speaker surround sound experience, but you do with the dub-track that’s fully decked out with the Dolby Digital 5.1 experience. This is really no big deal actually, since when I clicked between the two on my DVD player I actually didn’t hear that much of a difference. Of the two speakers used in the Japanese track, the sound was still easily more than acceptable and even slightly exceptional. As long as my subwoofer's booming when needed, it’s all good with me.

Previews I saw were for You're Under Arrest: The Motion Picture (been wanting to see this series, since one of my favorite comic book artists, Joe Madureira says it was quite influential in his work), King of Bandit Jing looks awesome (definitely something I’m curious about. Looks like a great anime for video game RPG fans and has a very unique and vibrant looking world design), Aura Battler Dunbine (not just a fun name to say, but looks beautifully classic. Like one of those anime I wish I’d had in my childhood to look back on and have fond action packed, daydream influencing memories of…), Blue Seed Beyond (eh… series never did get a hold of me... but a must for Blue Seed fans at least), Sakura Wars TV (Being a SEGA fan, this is something I’ve wanted to check out to see what all the talk is about. Looks like a fun game and the anime seems to be no exception. Who knows, perhaps it’ll land on TechTV someday), and Steam Detectives (this also looks like a gem. Modern animation with classic designs. Like some kind of steam punk anime meets Giant Robo meets League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; the comic, not the movie…).

All in all, an excellent package definitely worth the dilly-o that it costs to snag it.

Final Thoughts

If you like covert ops military ops action, boy-meets-girl anime, the mechs of Evangelion, or excellent anime that you can really sink your teeth into, you owe it to yourself to check out Full Metal Panic.

Keith "JC" Hayward