Revisiting Full Metal Panic

Written for Kaza, with love from Loba.

For the sake of brevity, I will just introduce a brief look into Full Metal Panic! The second raid, the 2nd or 3rd season depending on how you look at it, in this case, let’s take it as Season 2.

Full Metal Panic!, What is it about?

Booze

Sex

Yuri

Kaza? Kaza?! You still there?

FINALLY you ran out of tissue. Ok, I’m just kidding Kaza, you can pick your jaw off the floor now. Our main character ain’t a booze swinging casanova and these ain’t the main themes though they are included heh.

Full Metal Panic!, What is it (truly) about?

Long story short, in the first season, mithril presents itself as a mercency organisation, guns for hire to nations with a twist: They are ‘saviours of justice’ with incredibly advance technology. Boozeboy, 16-17 year old, very much a military brat, is part of the organisation and participated in missions that seemingly always bring him back to school.

Introducing Sagara Sousuke, main protagonist and his beau mission: stalking Kaname Chidori.

I won’t spoil anyone reading this so just go watch Season 1, GO GO GO! It would be necessary as Season 2 occasionally references Season 1. Besides, even though the pacing seems disorienting, with the occasional swing from dead seriousness to comedic school life, the serious parts are pretty well done and well, there’s whooping great mecha action!

If you don’t like mecha, you could watch Season 1.5 : Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu which is extremely hilarious without the serious mecha actions included. Trust me, even if you are a female(introduced it to a few gals and they loved it, now they love me too XD) and don’t really like mecha, Fumoffu is a series that delivers the comedic punch episode after episode, lots of parodies included for those who are sharp enough too!

This might not be from fumoffu but no prizes for guessing which anime it’s parodying.

So what’s so captivating about Full Metal panic besides

Dual scimitar wielding hot babe

And badass mecha standing around looking cool

A few things really make the second raid entertaining to watch, decent character development, I say decent because for Second Raid, 13 episodes doesn’t allow much time to develop all the side characters. Another thing is the pretty realistic portrayal of military organisations, plans and equipments take time to unfold and progress which other mecha shows mostly conveniently bypass. Equipments jam, things overheat, people make the wrong call/decisions resulting in much death and destruction. And the best for the last: a psychotic villain in Season 2 that makes for eye raising scenes (remember the tissue scene?) They are not your run of the mill EVIL VILLAIN WHO WANTS TO RULEZ/DESTROY the world (for whatever reason). If you do watch Prison Break, remember T-bag? Yea, villains who are psychopaths. But psychopaths with a plan.

White coat psychotic villain.

See the blimp on the river? That was the guy beside psychotic villain.

Same guy who survived the river swim. His boss in the red mecha.

Oops, that was intentional. Doubt he’s surviving THAT.

Pardon the expletive but this show is just f***ing 1337.

One thumb up for Season 1, two thumbs up for Season 1.5, two hands both feet up for Season 2! Watch all 3 seasons and you won’t regret it. I know there’s much more one can say about the show so feel free to comment on why you loved the Full metal Panic series or why you don’t like it as much as I do. Maybe I’m just biased since it was the first non-mainstream show I watched after Gundam Seed, Bleach and naruto around 3 years ago. No matter, this show drove me to purchase one of my first few figures:

These cost a bomb, around SGD$80 for five freaking 10cm tall figures. But totally worth it since they have good articulation for their size.

Never got to finding the second set….anyone have?

Winterfest specials, fat hope of ever acquiring any of them.

But all is not lost! Companies actually recognise the (lackofrelatedmerchandise) huge fanbase and released/are releasing Full Metal Panic figures. There was the 13000+ yen(Wtf yea) arbalest released by Alter around half a year ago.

It’s like the GFF of FMP. Great articulation, cockpit opens up, lots of accessories but only 14.5 cm tall.

And here’s what I’m gonna preorder next month!!! Revoltech ARX-7 Arbalest and it’s descendant ARX-8 Laevatein, found in novels but not the anime, think both each around 12.5 cm, will set me back by around SGD$90. Robot damashii had released Arbalest but I feel it’s a scam by bandai and totally so not worth it imo.

Robot Damashii Bonta-Kun – This on the other hand is worth buying, key character in Season 1.5! Sets me back SGD$48. Just in case you are wondering, I don’t usually buy a lot of figures, the last one was 1 year ago, the figma Hatsune Miku. On a spending craze for FMP figures since I just finished rewatching all 3 seasons of FMP for the 3rd time.

Yesterday was my last day of the semester before examinations begin so I afforded some time to write this post. This WILL be the last post till december so wish me all the best for my examinations. Hope this is informative to you, Kaza. Loba out.