Full Metal Panic is an standout amongst the anime of the early 2000s which from what Ive seen at least always seems to go somewhat under the radar in recent years. As a mecha/millitary/action show Full Metal Panic saw popularity around the release of its first two seasons and spin off in 2002 and 2005 respectively but seemed to fade way from the popular consciousness in the way of more popular series that take on many of FMPs ideas. With the being said FMP acted as something of a forerunner in its content that being a series creating a mix of serious conflict and engaging drama like what is found in many scifi/action series supported with lighthearted feelgood moments even occasionally comedic more typical of slice of life. At least on paper that is the goal of FMP as a whole. Since Full Metal Panic aired many series I enjoy like Code Geass or The Fruit of Grisaia successfully achieve this careful blends of genres. In an effort to expand my list and watching older series that have faded from popular view I watched Full Metal Panics first two seasons and spinoff expecting a comfortable and enjoyable blend of serious and lighthearted like these other series. Little did I know I was fated to sit through 2 seasons of what could have been one of the most shocking failures to present any sort of satisfying story or character writing in the genre I have ever seen. In this review I will breakdown what I liked and disliked about Full Metal Panic and will try to illuminate what exactly I think accumulated into the mess that this series turned out to be in a portion free of spoilers. Ill then follow it up with a portion with spoilers to more specifically illustrate my grievances. Also please note that while I will talk about season 1 briefly this review will be mostly focused on The Second Raid Full Metal Panics second season. 500https://i.ur.com/CSiDJSf.png Summary Full Metal Panic tells the story of Sagara Sousuke a 17 year old mech pilot who fights terrorism on behalf of a private military organization called Mithril. Having grown up on battlefields in active war zones Sousuke is suddenly forced to adapt to life as an ordinary Japanese high school student after being assigned to guard Kaname Chidori a seemingly ordinary girl whose subconscious secretly harbors a mysterious power that gives her an extremely in depth understanding of powerful military knowledge. While Sousuke tries to balance his two drastically different lives various terrorist organizations attempt to capture Chidori in an attempt to uncover carefully guarded military secrets namely being the Lambda driver mysterious technology allowing mech pilots to unlock the full power of their minds desire to fight. 500https://i.ur.com/umxGMYP.png What I Liked Truthfully Season 1 of FMP left me with very mixed feelings of the series and season 2 only furthered my feelings of negativity of many of the series aspects. With that being said I would be lying if I said there was not anything here I enjoyed. For a large portion of the series Sousuke proved to be a consistently enjoyable main character whos struggle to balance his two lives proved to a very strong way to create the serious/lighthearted vibe FMP set out to achieve. Additionally strong character writing can be seen in Tessa Sousukes commander from Mithril. While she doesnt appear as often as I would have liked her to especially in season 2 she consistently has scenes that show her internal conflict of being the revered and stoic commander of Mithrils submarine Danaan while also wanting to provide support to Sousuke as a friend. In these moments Tessas character really played to the strength of some of FMPs serious moments. From a technical production standpoint there were drastic improvements in the series between season 1 and 2. Originally made by Studio GONZO a studio with a hit or miss reputation season 2 was entrusted to Kyoto Animation which was at the time not yet well known. In watching The Second Raid and Fumoffu the FMP spinoff its pretty interesting to see that this is the very first series that Kyoani led on their own especially with FMPs genre being pretty far from what anime fans typically tend to expect from the studio. With that being said Kyoanis typical very well done high quality animation is on full display here drastically improving improving upon GONZOs season 1 production in both hand drawn animation and CGI while being accompanied with admittedly not super memorable but very pleasant music both for its OP and ED and for its OST. 500https://i.ur.com/0CBJjUJ.png A Messy Season 1 Season 1 of FMP very quickly shows very blatant flaws in quite a few areas. I think all things considered the very way the idea of the serious/lighthearted approach was handled was extremely flawed in its balance. There were many serious moments that would be very jarringly forced into a more lighthearted light through very animeesque means. Many of these serious moments rightfully so set the tone to be very somber and thought provoking. Sousuke being forced to make difficult decisions and dealing with the consequences only for Chidori to start smacking him back and forth with a Japanese paper fan like something out of a Looney Toons cartoon. It leaves very little room for the viewer to get anything out of it as usually upon switching up like this the show abandons the particular serious idea all together and just like that it moves on. Additionally I personally didnt really find any of the comedic elements very funny. Lot of the humor is crude and I didnt find it very thoughtful but humor is subjective I guess so to each their own. In regards to the actual story of FMP there is a plot but its so poorly explained its very hard to follow beyond just a surface level. The entire first half of the season feels like it tries to juggle 2 or 3 different plot lines and it leads to none of them feeling very well defined. The second half does become a bit more focused in on one plot line but it also starts to go off on strange little tangents that feel very out of place in context of the main story. The bigger issue for me though was the severe lack in any sort of meaningful character writing. The most blatant example is Chidori herself. Chidori has to be one of the most paperthin static main characters Ive seen in an anime in a very long time. Throughout season 1 she doesnt really show any growth or any sort of change at all. Chidori exists in this show to be the token tsundere love interest and really not much else. This issue compounds itself in multiple moments though when it becomes clear that there really isnt much thought at all put into how her power works or what exactly she is capable of. In moments where she uses her powers it kinda just feels like she pulls out the perfect little thing that Sagara and company need to overcome whatever obstacle is in their path. They never really give any sort of explanation to how any of it works so you as the viewer is forced to just rationalize it as an I guess thats how it works??? whenever it is brought up. Chidori doesnt understand herself how her powers work or even why she has them and the show makes little attempt to rationalize it. Its just shocking to me how this character is presented as being the person of paramount importance central to the conflict and her character is so poorly defined I can barely tell you anything about her after watching nearly 50 episodes in total of this series. Speaking of not being able to explain things the villains of FMP are some of the most generic antagonists I have ever seen in an anime. The main villain Gauron I had to look up his name because I literally already forgot is the classic Hey Im evil antagonist that dont have any sort of motivation beyond being evil and wanting to kill people. All of the other antagonistic characters are just nameless faceless goons who dont have any importance at all and just exist for Sousuke to kill. In terms of production I already pointed out a few things indirectly. Studio GONZO was in charge of season 1 and the animation is pretty poor. The animation quality not very sharp at all and the 3D CGI asset were extremely jarring looking like assets pulled straight out of a Playstation 1 game. I know computer tech wasnt nearly as good as it is now in 2002 but even amongst other series Ive seen that aired around the same time FMP looks particularly bad. Another little odd thing was that the coloring and lighting was very noticeably weird. I found it most obvious with Chidoris hair presented as a blueishturquoise color which would turn what I can only describe as a sickly green color any scene where she was outside. Little details like that kept popping out to me which was very odd to me as this is something hasnt ever really stood out to me before in any other series Ive seen. Finally in regards to FMP being mecha I personally found it to be more military than mecha but I digress the mech design was extremely boring and generic. There wasnt really much imagination put into the design work making FMPs mechs look like generic Walmart brand versions to the premium memorable designs we see in other popular mecha anime like Code Geass. Ive gone on and on about things I didnt like about FMP season 1 be it the poorly defined mechanics of the world the very lazy character writing or lack of it. All in all put simply it all ties back in someway to this seasons failure to handle the mixture of genre it wanted to incorporate. This series tries to wear many different hats across its run time but in trying to do so it stretches itself out so thin that it just doesnt really do any portion of it justice. It feels very half baked and devoid of substance that it consistently had me asking for more of literally anything only to always not getting anything in whatever would happen in the next episode. A Disastrous Season 2 Immediately upon starting season 2 the shift in the way the series is being handled becomes immediately obvious. Right away the show take a much more pointed and gritty approach with far more emphasis on the serious aspects of season 1. The action is noticeably better and the general direction does the series so much more justice. As season 2 progresses while lighthearted school portions with Chidori still show up for time to time there is far more emphasis on the more impactful content that pulled the weight in season 2. Truthfully I thought season 2 actually had a pretty strong start compared to season 1. At least thats what I thought until I was forced to face the fact that many of the critical issues from season 1 were practically shelved and were once again about to rear its ugly head yet again with a vengeance. Yet again the new antagonist of this arc has no substance at all. Yet again none of the actual way any thing works in this world is explained. Yet again it goes off on little tangents that give off the illusion that its doing something but its only taking away from the main conflict in reality. Yet again Chidori is just there existing off in her own little tsundere world not doing anything of any substance. It was truly infuriating to see after a first few episodes that felt so promising. 500https://i.ur.com/okuL4Sm.png Along with the many issues that came along from season 1 the way season 2 is handled opens a whole new can of worms that has almost entirely killed my interest in this series. This season makes the correct decision to put the lighthearted content that weighed down the first season on the back burner and instead try to build more meaningful individual aspects of the main cast and personally I thought the way they set up the first half of the season for this was pretty great. The internal conflict facing Sousuke hits a climax right at the halfway point and it is right at this moment where the fragile foundation built up of issues from season 1 only amplified by the content of season 2s first half gives way leading to the second seasons complete collapse. The show allows Sousuke and Chidori separate time to make big shifts in their characters but it completely fails to make anything meaningful out of it. Chidori who at this point still has next to no characterization at all is forced to carry her own episode. The episode feels like a bizarre fever dream of her interacting with a bunch completely underdeveloped antagonist characters with very poorly depicted action and conflict scenes. Sousuke forced to face the uncertainty that had been building up inside him over the series up to this point is suddenly forced to actually follow through with the actual serious portions without the comedic backbone Chidori offers that allows the show to just gloss over it without any real conflict. Without this Sousuke proceeds to make a complete 180 in becoming a complete hindrance to progress making the next 4 episodes almost painful to get through as the empty husk that was once our main character sluggishly drags his feet across the finish line leading into the final episode. The climax and finale of this season is just a complete mess from any direction you look at it. Faceless antagonists die and the plot moves along ambiguously in the background as Sousuke wanders around brooding over his decisions. Once the final episode finally comes along suddenly like magic Sousuke has his answer and and is all too willing to turn on his protagonist powers to save the day and make the complete mess of a conflict come to an extremely anticlimactic halt. I found the ending of season 2 to be extremely off putting and almost slightly conceited in the way the show felt like it could wrap up the meaningful conflict it built up and let stagnate in an overly idealistic everything is fine now ending. This truly without exaggeration may be one of my absolute least favorite endings I have seen to a season of anime in a very long time. 500https://i.ur.com/tDaBm34.png The Season 2 Crashout Spoilers The Aftermath In Conclusion TLDR Full Metal Panic is a classic mecha action show of the early 2000s which attempted to pioneer the blend of serious and lighthearted genres made even more popular in series to come later. Over its first two seasons Full Metal Panic has a massive glow up in terms of production moving away from studio GONZOs functional but unimpressive animation to showcase one of Kyoto Animations first ever company lead project in season 2 containing many hallmarks of what fans come to expect in a KyoAni production. With the occasional good character moment from main characters Sousuke and Tessa Full Metal Panic stumbles through its all around poorly written first season and makes a vein attempt to make a more thoughtful and well written season 2. What starts off as a seemingly more sound and enjoyable season with far better thematic and character rich story writing ends in complete disaster as the series falls back on just about every sin made in season 1 in a hackneyed attempt to resolve character and plot conflicts into a satisfying ending. Full Metal Panic almost completely fails to embrace its Jack of All Trade genre mix and proves just why this series has faded into a certain degree of obscurity. If you havent seen Full Metal Panic there just isnt really anything here that makes it work watching over other series that take on this same concept and manage to deliver a far superior result. For people who watched this series back in the era in which it aired I encourage you to keep on looking at Full Metal Panic with rose tinted glasses and not revisit it as I fear you will be sorely disappointed. With that being said in an odd way one of the only ways I can justify this series is to appreciate the roll it took in paving the way for other series like it that far exceed it. At least we get something out of this series in the long run as we surely wernt getting anything out of the series itself.