Shelf Life

Full Metal Disorder

Full Metal Panic is over ten years old, but it's held on to enough popularity to merit several rereleases from both Funimation and its original license holder, ADV Films. That kind of longevity is tough to achieve, and it suggests that quite a few people still have fond memories of it. (I remember renting it one disc at a time back when Netflix was still flooding the postal system with DVDs in red envelopes.) Nostalgia can be a dangerously deceptive thing, though, and I wasn't entirely confident that I'd enjoy revisiting the series for this review. Thankfully, those fears were mostly unfounded.

The story follows the adventures of Kaname, a high school girl with special powers, and Souske, a teenage mercenary with no concept of how to act away from the battlefield. Souske is assigned to guard Kaname from terrorists who want to use her abilities for nefarious purposes, and ends up transferring into her class in order to keep an eye on her. This is a bit of a problem, because Souske has a bad habit of seeing threats that aren't there and taking swift and violent action to protect Kaname. The two of them butt heads constantly until a real threat appears, at which point Souske and his allies break out an arsenal of stealth submarines and giant robots and start earning their pay.

Full Metal Panic is a series with two distinct personalities. Depending on the episode, it's either a high school comedy or a reasonably serious mecha show. Taken on their own, both sides of the series are quite good. The comedy benefits from a strong core formula of applying Souske's military sensibilities to peaceful civilian situations. He overreacts to a perceived threat, chaos and destruction ensue, and Kaname hits him over the head and angrily explains why you're not supposed to interrogate your classmates at gunpoint. The pattern is obvious, but it's implemented well enough to feel fresh even when you know exactly what's about to happen. The more action-oriented episodes also benefit from solid writing and direction, delivering battles that are enjoyable and reasonably convincing as long as you don't think too hard about what's going on. Individual storylines will typically focus on only one of the two approaches, which keeps the comedy and drama from upstaging one another.

The problem lies in the transition from one plot arc to another. The switch from dark to funny can be incredibly jarring, especially if you're watching multiple episodes in a single sitting. Arguably the worst instance of this narrative whiplash comes late in the series, where Souske barely escapes a warzone with his life at the end of one episode and goes right back to doing silly things at school at the beginning of the next. Full Metal Panic occasionally makes an effort to dramatize the contrast between these two different environments, but it's not enough to keep the series from feeling like multiple separate parts instead of a coherent whole. The show also runs into trouble when it tries to outdo its previous dramatic efforts in the final episodes, where some of the emotional peaks end up feeling too melodramatic for their own good.

Thankfully, many of the issues with the story are masked by a strong central cast. Souske and Kaname have enough chemistry to effectively carry the comedic segments on their own, though it doesn't hurt to have a few amusing classmates on hand to back them up. The supporting cast of Souske's squadmates and superior officers is also very strong, and recurring villain Gauron makes an effective (if laughably hard to kill) bad guy. The only real issue with the characters lies with the “Whispered” abilities that make Kaname a target in the first place. Her powers are never given a satisfying explanation, and their only use in the majority of the series is as a handy mental manual for defeating particularly strong enemies. I'm fine with the idea of Kaname not fully understanding her abilities, but I get the impression that the show doesn't quite understand them either.

Full Metal Panic is over a decade old, which explains why some of its visual elements have aged better than others. The character designs hold up fairly well, and the animation quality is decent even by modern standards. I appreciate the relatively minimal reliance on CG animation, as it helps sell the idea that all the various mechs and tanks are actually part of the same world as the characters and backgrounds. The computer-animated submarines are an exception, and are pretty unconvincing when compared to similar efforts from more recent titles. The results of the show's move to Blu-Ray are mixed: lines are generally crisp and colors are pleasingly bright, but there are typically one or two moments per episode where the visuals look somewhat out of focus. This happens most often in medium or long shots with a lot of character and camera movement, which suggests to me that whatever process worked for the rest of the show didn't quite know what to make of especially busy frames. If you've been watching anime long enough to own Full Metal Panic on DVD, I'm not convinced it's worth buying it again just to watch it in HD.

While I didn't find myself loving this show quite as much as I did ten years ago, the positives still outweigh the negatives by a healthy margin. More importantly, it opens the door to a pair of sequels that arguably eclipse the original. Full Metal Panic Fumoffu brings the comedy to new and greater heights, and Full Metal Panic The Second Raid is more successful in its attempts to be dark and serious. Given the impossible task of mixing those two styles, the original turns in a commendable effort, but the comedy and drama really come into their own when given their own exclusive spaces to play around in.

If you're already a fan of this franchise and are looking to revisit it after several years, you'll find that Full Metal Panic holds up well against your rose-tinted memories of it. If you've never seen the show before and can't quite fathom why people have fond recollections of a show that didn't do anything particularly innovative, give it a shot. The comedy is a hit from the first episode onward, and the action is presented without the amateur philosophy that frequently plagues modern mecha titles. Above all else, it's a fun series that features plenty of things blowing up. What more could you ask for?
-Paul[TOP]