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-ADV Films
Summary A hardcore military guy is thrust into the unpredictable world of high school. My Thoughts I was interested in watching Full Metal Panic mainly from the DVD covers. The DVD art consists of pictures of cool mechs that look like they're ready to launch into the fray of a big battle. I expected lots of mech action from the pictures and, with the “!” in the title, some comedy as well. The name of this episode is “The Guy I Kinda Like is a Sergeant.” Great, how am I supposed to expect awesome mech battles with a title like that? The episode starts off with a guy in a jeep driving like he’s trying to get away from something. There is a girl in the passenger seat biting her thumb and acting scared. The guy says he’s rescuing her, but are we supposed to believe what this guy says or not? A Hind-D chopper attacks the jeep and blows it up. The girl is thrown from the jeep. A mech de-cloaks, grabs the Hind out of the sky and smashes it to the ground. Hmm, not a bad opening, I must say. We see a submarine that is apparently the base for whatever world saving military organization this is. The three team members are Sousuke (the leader of the squad), some chick, and a dude I’ll call Funny Boy because of his constant joke-cracking. They are given a new mission to protect a sixteen-year-old high-school girl named Kaname. They need to protect a high school girl? This may start to get bad. Each team member assumes their surveillance positions. Funny Boy is in a mech and follows Kaname to school. He then utters the best perverted joke in the episode, “Yow! I am digging that uniform!” Funny indeed, but it’s at this time that the episode degenerates into a high school comedy. Sergeant Sousuke is “transferred” to the school as a student thanks to some fake papers and ID. He is introduced to the class and comes of as a big dork. He talks like he’s still in the military and names off a bunch of gun and mech-themed publications that he reads. Some nerdy guy in the class seems to fall in love with him. After more scenes of Sousuke acting strange, Kaname talks with her friends about how creepy he is. Sousuke then bursts into the girl’s locker room with a gun for no apparent reason. He then tries to join the girls’ softball team. At the end of the episode Kaname is falling for Sousuke. Oh boy, a hardened military dork and a popular underage school girl getting together? Why, that’s a match made for hilarity. Do I want to see more? Not really. The show could turn out to be a cool mech show with a bunch of stupid and silly comedy or could be a stupid silly comedy show with some mech action. From this episode I have a feeling it’s the latter considering that over half of it was the high school silliness. If I see another episode maybe it will have more mech battles and stuff, but if the rest of the series is like this I can pass. The most mech action I got in this episode was in the opening credits. Score: FMP! episode 1: 6.0 You can’t judge a series by one episode, but the purpose of the AniMini DVD is to make me want to watch the rest of the series. And right now I kinda don't. -Shawn
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Full Metal Panic!:
AniMini DVD 1