Animania

For my next excursion in anime rental, I rented the first volume of Full Metal Panic! which seems to always top a lot of "favorite" anime lists and it has high ratings amongst Netflix users. The summary is somewhat innocuous, hinting at a possible dramatic series with some comedic elements. The cover is certainly dark and foreboding looking, promising of mecha battles to come. The first episode certainly fits that image, with a gown-clad terrified girl fleeing for her life through a forest with someone trying to capture her then her being saved by a mecha pilot who injects her with something. She doesn't seem all that happy to be rescued either. We have some dramatic political intrigue between a terrorist organization and some freelance vigilante group called Mithril...then, it goes downhill.

We meet a girl named Kaname Chidori, who is some special kind of person called a "Whispered"-a concept left unexplained in this first disc though it seems obvious she is similar to the girl we saw at the beginning. Irregardless, the terrorist group wants her so Mithril sends three of its troops to protect her, with young Sousuke Sagara going undercover in her school. From there, the series goes from a seeming dramatic series to a complete and total comedy of errors. Kaname is a gorgeous girl, with a bad personality (all guys seem to agree, she's perfect till she opens her mouth). Sousuke is supposedly this elite soldier, but he's so hard wired with ridiculous hair-trigger reflexes and literal minded that he jumps at the least little thing, overreacting to basic everyday things, usually resulting in Kaname thinking he's a pervert or a creep and abusing him for it. Seriously, as quick as he reacts, its a shock he hasn't killed half of his own troops. Towards the end of the first disc, things get more dramatic with Kaname captured by the terrorists after they hijack an entire plane to get her (overkill). By this time, of course, Sousuke's gone from seeing her as a job to someone he likes and wants to protect, making him become emotional the one time he shouldn't.

For me, this series was falsely advertised with its original packaging (the later collection package is a bit more matching to the feel of the first episodes), and it just didn't really meet my expectations. It wasn't bad, per se, but the idea of going through 24 episodes of stereotypical comedy situations and the already overplayed "OMG, you pervert" and of watching Sousuke attempt to pretend to be a normal high school student instead of a soldier just didn't have much appeal. Still, I was vaguely curious about the whole Whispered thing and what happened to that first girl, so I rented the second volume. However, while waiting for it arrive, I discovered this series has two sequels of 13 episodes each, both with the same silly focus of Sousuke trying to hide his identity while romancing Kaname. At that point, I wrote the thing off as just not worth the effort.

If you like lots of comedy and don't mind an overplayed, never ending idea of hidden identities and overly stretched out obvious romances, it might be a series for you. For me, disc two was returned unwatched.