Anime Review: Full Metal Panic! Fumoffu(Season 2)

Since I recently reviewed the first season of Full Metal Panic!, I thought I'd might as well review the whole 3 seasons consecutively for a better perspective. With regards to the blog design, I'll be borrowing an Action Sampler from Wellington tomorrow. It'll take me some time to shoot the slides and get them cross-processed so the left column should be up some time next week. I'm excited to see how my first lomo-shot and cross-processed film will turn out so that ought to be an interesting exercise for me as well. What is cross-processing, it involves deliberately processing slide film with the wrong chemical(C-41) instead of the proper (E-6) chemical. This gives you out-of-this-world wonky colours and crazy contrast, which is an effect I'd like to achieve traditionally, rather than through software, for once.

Title: Full Metal Panic! Fumoffu

Studio: Gonzo Animation

Episodes: 12(there are actually 16 episodes, but some are two 10 min episodes fused together), 21 minute run time

Category: Action Comedy, with romantic elements

Synopsis: In guarding Chidori at Jindai High, Sagara is forced to go undercover as a high school student. Unable to adapt to regular civilian life and plagued by constant military over-cautiousness, he creates tons of mad-cap adventures for Chidori and the other students, developing the bitter-sweet romance between them that he remains constantly clueless about. Matters are complicated as Tessa, a 16 year old captain at Mithril, a mercenary organisation that Sagara is part of, and also Sagara's commanding officer, continues her unabashed romantic pursuit of Sagara. Hilarity ensues as Sagara struggles to fit in and to balance his duty with school.

First Impressions: The first minute in itself blows you away, literally. Solid first impression.

Art: The art is the same as the first season. No change.
4/5




Characters: The characters remain the same, but don't come out that well in this season unless you've watched the first season. As I'm rating single seasons and not the entire 3 seasons, I can only give fumoffu middle marks. You won't get the characters completely if you don't watch the first season, not very good. Minor characters are also sidelined completely.
3/5

Storyline: Extremely funny, but there doesn't seem to be any real progression or theme. Episodes just seem to be one mad-cap adventure after the other and inter-relation is poor. Fumoffu could well be a collection of OVAs, if you were to look at it that way. The bonta-kun storyline seems to be just playing for laughs as well, as enjoyable to watch as it is.
3/5

Ending: Gonzo probably couldn't find a good way to end this and the scriptwriters probably got bored of random funny events, which is probably why fumoffu only runs for 12 episodes. There isn't a real ending to fumoffu, which is quite expected considering the story wasn't quite going anywhere.
3/5

Overall Impressions: The storyline does not continue from where season 1 left off, but rather it focuses more on the school life at Jindai High School. The relationships between the key characters, especially between Sagara and Chidori, receive a much greater importance in this season as compared to the previous season. Other smaller characters like Kurz Weber and Melissa Mao are limited to small cameo appearances in this season. The storyline is rather irrelevant and not very deep, but of the three seasons, fumoffu is probably the most mad-cap and insane of the lot, and consequently also the funniest. It's totally over the top physical humour, which you may or may not enjoy, but is also somewhat heart warming in parts, though not as much as the first season due to the notable absence of seriousness and drama in this episode. The Whispered storyline is not mentioned here, and the Arm Slaves make cameo apperances at best, which makes fumoffu somewhat of a standalone season in itself. I suspect the creators of FMP at Gonzo just wanted to have a ball with the characters on this one; good for us anyway! You may, however, be slightly lost if you watch season 2 without knowing a bit about the backstory from Season 1 and some things might not make sense as the backstory isn't explained again. Insider jokes might also be lost on you if you do not watch the first season first. If you're not one of those keen plot types that take the story seriously, this is definitely a must watch.
3.5/5

Additional Notes: Contains some level of violence and gore, as is typical of gonzo animation. However, this is not excessive and is sparingly used in this series.