Full Metal Panic!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, I'd recommend all of the novels over the manga since that's the best way to experience the rest of the story, to me, but even so, the manga is honestly a viable alternative. That said, I agree that Continuing On My Own, as well as Burning One Man Force for that matter, are particularly best read in novel form.

[Foggle]

So, uh, found this image in a recent post on MAL.



I have no idea what it says, but it's definitely related to FMP... something about its 15 year anniversary I think, which would be two months from now. I will not physically allow myself to believe it could be a new anime season, but if it was, that would honestly make my year.

Speaking of which, I still need to finish reading the novels, which I think I'll start on later this week if possible. And by that, I mean that I'll be re-watching the anime and re-reading the other books first. It's been too fuckin' long.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

People have been speculating that it'll be a new anime announcement, but I'm not holding my breath. If that does happen, though, then yeah....it'll pretty much be the best announcement that I've ever heard related to an anime series.

As for the novels, considering how much I didn't really like the plot twist in Nick of Time (too convoluted for a series that never really excelled at its sci-fi elements in the first place), I feel that the last 2 novels really did a great job of wrapping everything up and giving the series the epic sort of conclusion that it deserved. There is one major cop-out that I'm not a fan of, though, but I'm also easy to please so for me I could look past it given how the story did everything else right (IMO).

As for re-watching the series, I think I'll get around to that as well, and I also want to re-read all of the main novels. Continuing on my Own, Burning One Man Force, and Come Make My Day are arguably the best parts of the entire series (even better than TSR), so I'd pretty much die of happiness if those novels got properly adapted into the anime format.

[Foggle]

Okay, I did some digging, and apparently the 15th anniversary referred to in the picture is actually about the magazine this image came from rather than FMP itself. Said anniversary issue is coming out this month, so...

People have been speculating that it'll be a new anime announcement, but I'm not holding my breath. If that does happen, though, then yeah....it'll pretty much be the best announcement that I've ever heard related to an anime series.

Same here!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Out of all of the light novels that get adapted every anime season, I really have to question why FMP just got entirely forgotten about. As far as I've heard, the FMP serialization was VERY popular in the Monthly Dragon Magazine, and all 2 iterations of the anime series were considered to be generally successful and quite popular for their time. I suppose Kyoto Animation just decided at some point that they didn't want to do anything with the FMP property despite it being a money-maker for them if only because they had some strange obsession with moe and just wanted to ignore a mecha action series or anything that didn't have to do with "cute girls doing cute things." Its annoying, because surprisingly enough, KyoAni did do a really damn good job of adapting part of FMP with TSR, but after that they did nothing with the property, and its not like they tried to shop it out to any other studios that'd be interested in adapting it.

That's really it more than anything else. My skepticism of a new FMP anime has to do entirely with KyoAni. They just simply don't have the interest in pursuing this genre, anymore. I don't see why they'd change their mind now.

[Spark Of Spirit]

KyoAni found a goldmine in another genre. That's probably why.

Anyway, it'll be an OVA summing up the first season only it'll be worse. It's best to keep RK expectations on things like this.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Oh yeah, those RK OVAs were godawful. Just as bad as the Reflection OVA, or possibly even worse, because in this case not only do the writers not understand any of the characters, but they end up fucking up a perfectly great arc rather than just writing really terrible original material of their own while just skimming past the good (canon) stuff.

As for FMP, I've just kind of learned to give up hope on the rest of the series getting a proper anime adaptation. That said, I am at least glad that the manga adaptation turned out fairly well, and I still think that the novels are great, but I really do wish that Tokyo Pop could have finished releasing the entire series here, rather than forcing me to rely on fan translations. To be fair, all of the novels have been translated pretty well, by now, but I used to have to rely on REALLY terrible grammar with rough translations as they were just coming out. At any rate, I'm just glad that the translations exist. I don't know how accurate they are, but they were well-written enough to convince me that they were pretty much legit (the manga also confirmed this for me), and it gave the series a satisfying conclusion.

[Foggle]

Wait, are there new translations of BOMF, CMMD, and ANOT? Link please!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Wait, are there new translations of BOMF, CMMD, and ANOT? Link please!

Well, they aren't exactly new anymore, but they DID get re-translated, IIRC. That said, I'll need to look up the link to them myself. I do remember having a PDF file of all of those novels with much better translations, but that was way before my computer crashed and I lost most of my files. I'm going to have to look up where to find the .zip file for all of the novels again.

[Foggle]

So the supposed BIG NEWS came out a few days ago... there are going to be a few fan expos about FMP in Japan later this year. That's it. Really.

I swear, KyoAni is sitting on a goldmine, and has been since 2006. If they actually finished the story by animating the rest of the novels, this would probably be my favorite anime of all time, no question about it.

Anyway, I've started re-watching the first season now, and it's still as fun as ever. E-K, are you still down to write some articles about this series with me?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So the supposed BIG NEWS came out a few days ago... there are going to be a few fan expos about FMP in Japan later this year. That's it. Really.

I swear, KyoAni is sitting on a goldmine, and has been since 2006. If they actually finished the story by animating the rest of the novels, this would probably be my favorite anime of all time, no question about it.

Seriously, KyoAni should just relinquish the rights to this series already. They clearly have NO intention of doing ANYTHING with it, so the least they could do is let some other studio that actually gives a shit a chance to animate the rest of the novels. I'm so tired of waiting for such an obvious adaptation to occur, already.

Anyway, I've started re-watching the first season now, and it's still as fun as ever. E-K, are you still down to write some articles about this series with me?

Yes! Oh, god, yes!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I know I did something like this before in this thread, but I want to rate FMP based on each individual story arc. For the first few story arcs, I am basically going by the anime adaptations rather than the novels to form my opinion, and after that I am referring to each individual novel as it's own story arc, except for the last 2 volumes which form a single story-arc together.

Full Metal Panic Season 1: Overall - 7/10

Part I: Fighting Boy Meets Girl - 7/10

It was a decent introduction to the series. It was really predictable and nothing too exciting, but it did it's job in setting up the odd status of this show as a really good combination of action, drama, and humor. It did it's job fine on that end.

Part II: One Night Stand - 7/10

I know that Foggle doesn't like this arc, but it has it's merits, to me. Most notably, this is the arc where we get a lot of good insight into Kalinin's character (and he's my favorite FMP character of all). We also get to see how much of a bad-ass Kurz can be when he's in his element, for the first time in the series. For what it is, I thought it was a pretty entertaining arc, if a bit unremarkable, just like the first arc.

Part III: Helmajistan - 8/10

This was an anime-only story-line, but I believe Shoji Gatoh himself was involved with writing up the story for this one, so it's still part of his canon, if I'm not mistaken. At any rate, the two things that really make this arc are Gauron and Sousuke. With Gauron, he's just being his usual bat-shit crazy self, which is always a delight. With Sousuke, we get a good deal of insight into his past, here, and this is the first time in the anime where we get to see Sousuke being truly in his element, and fighting on his home turf. On the whole, I really enjoyed this portion of the first season.

Part IV: Into the Blue - 8/10

Things really pick up, here, in the final arc of the season. I think it's great to have Kaname stuck in the submarine, and finally get a direct taste of how dangerous stuff can get in Sousuke's line of work. While she did get dragged into the previous two conflicts, this is the first time that she really got to gain an understanding and appreciation for Sousuke's background, and it's where she became a bit less of a hot-head around him (only a bit, though). For what it was, the arc was well executed, and left season 1 off on a relatively strong note.

Fumoffu - 7/10

I found it to be amusing and occasionally funny enough to make me chuckle a few times. There's not much else to say about this show besides that. I will say that my personal favorite episodes are the Hot Springs and Rugby ones.

Ending Day by Day/The Second Raid - 10/10

This is easily the best of the anime-adapted story-arcs by far. Everything went from being decent and just OK to being fucking brilliant. The execution was spot-on, and the stakes in this season were through the roof. This is the first time that Gatoh showed us that he could be legitimately excellent at writing serious drama, and both Sousuke and Kaname got a ton of excellent characterization, here. There is that scene with the hooker which I still downright hate to this day, but that's really the only thing that I can complain about in this arc, and it's not nearly enough to stop me from rating it as a full 10, anyways. While I enjoyed the 1st season, this one just blows anything that one did straight out of the water.

Dancing Very Merry Christmas - 8/10

I promise that it's a lot better than the title makes it sound. This was the last "fun" part of the main story-line. The serious stuff that happened here was mostly just foreshadowing to later events that would unfold in future stories, but on the whole this one was just really entertaining. That said, it'd only get darker from after this point in the series.

Continuing On My Own - 10/10

This is the arc downright surpasses TSR, IMO, which is no easy feat. I love how the first part of this story deals with Sousuke really pondering his feelings about Kaname, and this is where he starts thinking about quitting his life as a mercenary entirely in order to live out a normal life, which he realizes that he has strongly come to desire after the months that he has spent at high school, and after all of the friends he has made. Unfortunately a happy story would be boring as fuck, so of course it just so happens that THIS is the point when Amalgam wants to execute their plan, and shit ends up going down in a way that smacks Sousuke right in the balls, downright destroying any chance that he could continue having any sort of semblance of a normal life. A massive attack is carried out on Tokyo, and Sousuke's entire school is held hostage. Of course, by this point Amalgam had already carried out their full-scale attack on MITHRIL, and with the help of certain "traitor," they had already completely wiped them out, with only a few core members surviving and escaping the island. So, yeah, Sousuke was SOL since he had no back-up whatsoever that he could contact, leaving him on his own to deal with the situation at hand. When he downright fails to stop Leonard and gets his ass seriously kicked in the process of trying, Kaname finally gives in and let's Amalgam take her in exchange for the safety of Sousuke and her classmates. That scene at the end where Sousuke reveals his true identity and background to his friends and they resent him for it, only for him to walk away from the school in pursuit of Kaname, without looking back, is one of the most powerful scenes in the entire series.

Burning One Man Force - 10/10

Hands down my favorite story arc in the entire series. This one is ALL about Sousuke, and he get's his flat-out best characterization and development, here. It's great, because none of the other characters really appear in this story, and are merely only referenced, without actually being seen. All of the characters in this story are brand new, making this quite a good stand-alone piece in such a continuity-heavy series. Just getting to see how bad-ass Sousuke can be as a solo agent working for his own cause really made me appreciate his character on a new level. I would LOVE to see this arc get adapted into animated form, someday.

Come Make My Day - 9/10

While the last story was all about Sousuke, this one is mostly about the rest of the the surviving members of MITHRIL. It does a really good job of advancing the plot, and it really pumps you up for their inevitable retaliation on Amalgam. There are a lot of great character moments, here, and of course when Sousuke meets back up with the main team at the end, that's a pure celebratory moment in the series. They still don't manage to retrieve Kaname, but this arc ends off with a lot of hope, whereas previous arcs had very dark and grim looking endings, so it was nice to see an upside after such a long while of dark stuff.

Approaching Nick of Time - 7/10

This one was mainly just set-up for the final 2 novels. It had some really great scenes, but it also had that shitty sci-fi plot twist that I'm not big on (though it wasn't bad enough to kill the series for me). This arc could really drag at times, but it had just enough going for it that it managed to hold my interest, even through some of the really stupid moments. For what it is, I think it was OK, but it's definitely the most flawed arc in the entire series, IMO.

Stand by Me - 9/10

And thus the entire series ends on a high note. I LOVE this final arc, and it really makes up for a lot of the crap in ANOT. The ONLY thing that stops me from giving it a full 10 is a major cop-out moment toward the end which really got on my nerves, especially since it kind of killed a truly great scene from ANOT (one of the few from that story arc), but on the whole it was still great the entire way through, and brought the series to a thoroughly climactic and satisfying conclusion.

[Spark Of Spirit]

They never added the Second Raid to Netflix here and have in fact removed the first season.

Ugh.

[Rynnec]

Are you able to view the official uploads on youtube?

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yeah, but I have problems watching things on my computer these days. My attention drifts too easily, even when I'm enjoying it.

I'll probably get around to it eventually, though.