Well, eleven out of twelve ain't bad. And, paradoxically, the worst episode may have been the best episode... which makes no sense at all, but bear with me.

FMP:F is a comedy series about a teenaged boy who has grown up fighting wars as a mercenary, and knows nothing else. Oh, sure, ask him to blow something up, or shoot someone, he's your guy, no question! Ask him to flirt with a girl, though...
...see, he doesn't know what flirting is. He's never done it, never HAD to do it. He asks one of his classmates, who tells him it's a "girl hunt," and... well, this is the result:

Yup... fish outta water, that's Sagara. So what's he doing in school?

He's keeping Chidori from being kidnapped. In the main series, she has special talents that are VERY useful to the Powers That Be, so she needs to be protected. That's Sagara's job, since he's the only member of his organization that's of an appropriate age to be in High School.

Together, they fight crime.

Actually, they're perfect foils for each other. He's out of his element, she's perfectly in hers... and determined to housebreak him. And how best does one housebreak an animal?

That's right, hit him with a rolled up newspaper... or a paper fan, in this case. There's a lot of that in this show, but it's almost always funny.

Point in fact, the entire series is hilarious. There is no overarching plot, it's all filler... which is great. There's one two-episode story, and that is entirely fanservice. And good fanservice, to boot:

(her name is Tessa. She's Sagara's commander. There's no reason for this shot to be in the episode. I love anime.)

Really, this is just about the perfect comedy. There's explosions, hilarity, romantic tension, faux violence (slapstick and facefaults abound), and all of it at no real cost to the watcher. At most, I'll watch two or three episodes of a series at once; there's always other things pulling at me that prevent me from doing more.

With FMP:F, I watched the first eight in one sitting, then finished off the remainder the next day. It put a smile on my face, which is high praise indeed.

Until I hit episode 12: "5th Period Hot Spot." A classroom of students (including our heroes) are infected with a bioagent (accidents do happen, y'know...), and everybody believes they're about to die. It's completely out of tone with the rest of the series, with a surprising amount of seriousness from what's supposed to be a comedy. It might be the best single episode of the series... except it's not very funny (which is bad, in a comedy), and therefore makes it the WORST episode, too.

Of course, all's okay in the end: it's a bioagent, yes, but not the human-killing kind... more like the 'clothes-eating kind.' Cue wacky hijinks!

I think the best way to describe Full Metal Panic?: Fumoffu is "empty calories." It's the anime version of Doritos: tasty, but with no great nutritional value.

If you're looking for something fun (and funny) to watch, I can't recommend the show highly enough. If you're looking for something serious, stay very far far away.

The Duck Sez: Two wingtips up!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 06:44 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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