OK, I admit – that was a lot of CGI. Not terrible CGI by any means, but not great either. Just CGI. While I confess that as someone who isn’t a devotee of Full Metal Panic it’s easy for me not to get upset, I get it. There’s a certain romance to a legendary series of long ago – like an old college lover who will always be 21 in our mind’s eye. CGI like this in a modern anime is pretty much par for the course – it’s the hand stamp for admission. But with a show carrying the emotional attachments of FMP, it’s got to be harder to take.
Still – I’d take that over getting the SHAFT any day of the week. And if I got my Jinchuu Arc with CGI sword duels, I’d still take that over never getting it.
Apart from that, I thought this was another solid episode for Full Metal Panic. To be honest I still don’t see why people are so nuts for this series – it’s good, yeah. But really, the writing isn’t that spectacular. It’s a fairly standard sci-fi premise, and most of the characters are archetypes. I’m not a fan of Testarossa, so any ep with this much of her has yawner moments for me. The reason Fumoffu was better (in my opinion) is that it was inherently more different, more surprising. Maybe it was only Kyoto Animation’s lavish visuals that made The Second Raid seem to stand out from the crowd.
The quality of ruthlessness is certainly not unique to FMP, but it is one of the series’ stronger points. The best moments in this episode were when it depicted the collateral damage the snit between Amalgam and Mithril, and the existential trauma that causes Chidori. Sousuke is a badass, but he’s also a killer. Self-defense and all, I know, but this kid has a lot of blood 0n his hands and a series of events like this makes it impossible for Kaname to pretend otherwise.
Still, I like Sousuke. For me he’s the character that makes Full Metal Panic tick, because he’s as aware of his situation too. That was an underlying note of Fumoffu that played off the comedy and gave it a note of tragedy. Nothing in “standard” FMP is quite that weird or interesting, which leaves a lot of weight for the pretty traditional action plot to carry. Most of the time it does that well enough, and it does so this week – the pacing is good, and the sense of consequence very real. With the action so integral to everything, though, all that CGI is a bit of an unsettling factor.
elianthos80
April 21, 2018 at 12:35 pmLet it brew! 8D * dons Leonard’s wig and toasts to NamiDai. The only saving grace is DAT VOICE *
Cheap car sequence CG notwithstanding what can I say? I have this deep abiding irrational fondness for FMP and I am still chomping at the bits for the next episode(s).
Re: Tessa/Teletha . Mind you I am not a big fan of the girl – or rather of the way female characters are characterized in the series overall. Melissa Mao imho tend to fare better as a Kaname-type of girl due to less screen time and no main girl character burden, a more (mutually) aware romantic tension with mah pretty ethical lecher boi sniper Kurz and a handful of spoilery reasons. Kaname compared to Tessa and Mao imho got the short stick of the plot with all the branching consequences too but again no details now for obvious reasons so we’ll see. I do hope either by the benefit of experience, time and his work on adapting Hyouka mr. Gatoh can smooth some of the rough edges ahead of us and besotw some nuance on his ‘archetypes’ of characters as you put it – back to Tessa I thought this was actually a pretty good episode for her.
When mademoiselle Testarossa is not bogged down with the romance plot as the oh-so-desperate-to-please a guy [1)who only exists in as a knightly delusion in her mind. The real Sosuke would drive her bonkers of a slow death of quiet repressed desperation – because it would be unpolite and ill-mannered to quarrel – and disappointed unhappiness 2) who is her subordinate 3) clearly ill at ease being pursued by someone who is his superior and not romantically interested in ] oh-so-clumsy-how-cute accidental-fanservice girly girl she is actually one levelheaded polite badass in her own right who deeply care about her guys. And this week we get a good exhibit of her best side.
*This* is a Tessa I can believe her men and women would fight along and for – and go gaga over XD – hence I was pretty satisfied with what we got on her account this week.
About Chidori, if anything her behaviour and reactions feels a bit more believable here as a civilian in the middle of a crisis than what we saw in TSR :P. I mean for having been witness of a number of gory bloody actions already before all of that took a LONG way to sink and maybe we have breached the realization threshold…
Re: Sosuke as what makes FMP work. No objections from me here.
I love my moe Rambo son and will support him on his journey all the way :,)sonicsenryaku
April 21, 2018 at 3:50 pm“I have this deep abiding irrational fondness for FMP and I am still chomping at the bits for the next episode(s).”
So do I, although i wouldn’t say being fond of FMP has to be steeped in irrationality; the series definitely has its merits. For one, it’s the OG highschool action anime; or at least the one that started the flame that lead to other series in the early to mid 2000’s popularizing such a sub-genre. At the time, the anime was pretty good looking; in addition, the potential danger of terrorists out to monopolize secret technology and the effect it had on Kaname’s jaunty school life always made for an engaging conflict of interest. Sure, cast is composed of archetypal characters, but they are fully fleshed out, optimized archetypes that have enough going for them that they don’t end up being pigeon-holed under broad labels. Sousuke and Kaname in particular become more intriguing takes on their archetypes, especially Sousuke, who at first comes off as the usual take on the stoic protagonist before we are shown how his awareness of his troubling actions and overly obedient mindset causes him internal conflict. It’s why i find TSR to be good as i claim it to be; because it really brings those conflicts to the forefront and explores them in a convincingly dramatic fashion for this kind of story. The writing rakes into consideration all the things Sousuke has been through from the original and Fumoffu and challenges him to contemplate his status quo and make changes for his own betterment. He becomes layered through his interactions with Kaname and the journey of almost losing her, something that TSR handles very well within its 12 episodes. Unlike other generic highschool action series, FMP felt like it had real stakes, ones that always put the characters to the test and developed them as a consequence.
I will say however that the first season of FMP has aged poorly (mostly from a narrative sense). It was easy to gloss over some of its flaws, especially since I was just a 12/13 year-old expanding my anime horizons (as I’m sure many were, hence the love many people still carry for the series), but looking back as i have multiple times at different points of my anime-watching life, it was not always a shinning example of good writing. Some of the visuals have also aged poorly, mostly notable the cg. I’ve found that over the years, my fondness for the series has survived through fumoffu and TSR, as they are the two series of the three that i consider genuinely good, with fumoffu being exceptional. If the first FMP did anything right, it was endearing me to Kaname and Sousuke (even though Kaname is mostly a bitch during this first season) and selling me on the story potential its premise had.
sonicsenryaku
April 21, 2018 at 4:55 pmAnd yea Enzo, I think you hit the nail on the head regarding one of the factors that made fumoffu as good as it was; it’s the tinge of implied tragedy within Sousuke’s actions. Kyoko notes during the first FMP that Sousuke doesn’t go out of his way to make everyone’s lives difficult, to which Kaname remarks that it’s because of that which makes dealing with him that much harder; because she knows it’s not his fault and yet she can’t help but lose her patience with him. As much as she’d like to hand-wave away all his actions, the reality of the situation is that at the end of the day, he causes LEGITIMATE problems. It’d be so much easier on her if Sousuke was being malicious, because it’d be easier to give up on him. Fumoffu mines all this for comedy, but it never forgets to remind the audience that there are some serious implications behind these character dynamics. There are some that would argue that fumoffu has slight tinges of dark comedy in its DNA, an argument to which the underlining note of tragedy in Sousuke’s actions makes a case for. Sousuke almost always feels a bit of guilt for the trouble he causes, especially since he does it so reflexively and in return, Kaname can’t help but feel guilty at times for losing her temper the way she does. You can’t help but feel bad for him (as elianthos aptly put it, Sousuke is a moe rambo). But as much as they both stress each other out, they need one another; they work well together. Fumoffu knows this and makes this clear in some cleverly subtle ways (like the second half of ep 2 where Sousuke and Kaname try to evade the crazy policewoman).
A story doesn’t always need to have perceived literary value like being some intellectual dialogue about humanity, philosophy, technology, romanticism, etc. to be exceptional. Sometimes, your story just needs to be able to maximize all its narrative mechanics to appropriately present everything it is trying to do and fumoffu does it so well. It’s comedic timing is on point; the directing is on point; the pacing is on point; the dialogue is definitely on point. The show is so capable of indulging in its erratic, and sometimes irreverent humor while still fleshing out its characters and crafting some genuinely heartwarming moments. The show feels really uniform, which makes sense considering Yasuhiro Takemoto (our man on hyouka) basically had full control– storyboard, scripts, directing; the whole nine. The end-result is a huge net positive which is why it’s one of my favorite anime of all time. The second raid never reaches this level of brilliance but its still pretty damn good even with some of its storytelling blemishes. We’ll see where invisible victory stacks up when everything is said and done. While i thought this episode was another solid effort from FMP, the cgi is not doing the show any favors.
Passa
April 23, 2018 at 2:02 amI love FMP to here and back! Don’t mind the CGI it’s whatever to me.
If you ask me the reason why I love this series so much it’s has to be the chemistry with the characters and action mixed with lil bit of old fashioned romance.
Also I watched this series like 5 years ago in my mid twenties so I don’t know about this hasn’t aged well business for me at least.