The anime is based on a separate military organisation thingy called Mithril that destroys all forms terrorism and similar threats. Oh also everyone has huge robotic suits of armour called arm slaves (?) at least that is what it sounded like they kept calling them.
These ASs belonged to Mithril and every/any terrorist and government group. Even they do not know why they have such advanced technology.
This is all the background to the world of FMP; the storyline watches a 16 year old school girl (of course) who may/may not be one of the ‘whispered.’
Want to know what the whispered are? FMP won’t tell you until about 6/7 episodes in. And even then they don’t really tell you the whole story. Basically though there are people who in a separate consciousness know EVERYTHING about technology.
If you were a terrorist and you wanted to know EVERYTHING about technology so you could have the best what would you do? That’s right; you would kidnap the whispered and do experiments on them.
Therefore, without her knowledge, the main character is assigned a guard of three 16(ish) year old soldiers. Don’t be fooled by their age, they have been brought up in the soldier way, and so think of nothing else but soldier-y stuff. ¬_¬ Oh boy, I have such a fantastic grip of the English Language.
One of the three is a super-serious guy, and it is him that they choose to enrol in the whispered girl’s class.
This boy is serious about his protective assignment, but has little to no knowledge of Japanese High School kid behaviour; so much of the humour is based around him and his interactions.
Like what would happen to any dim-witted boy that is trying to be intimately close to a girl he ends up looking like a pervert most of the time. But as they say, sex sells, and it’s funny.
The first few episodes are kind of silly, but with nothing explosive, thus eradicating the need for the soldier entourage. As soon as they are called off everything changes. There are guns, murder, hijacks, fighting, a taser and kidnap.
“Imagine they are going to catch me, they are going to rip off all my clothes and play with my body. When they are done they will kill me. You hate it don’t you.”
A wonderful quote, it really accentuates the sexual humour in Full Metal Panic. There are so many unneeded panty shots of the girls. But there is no female fan service. So you would think this was a male driven demographic. However, the filler episodes and the lead up episodes have quite a girlish drama associated to them that there must be a female audience.
I must admit, the panty shots were just so ludicrous and obvious it could be for girl’s sake just to up the humour.
Sorry, I could't find a still or a youtube clip of all these ridiculous shots, but heres one with Chidori in a bikini.
The show boasts a large amount of talented and special 16 year olds as the cast. Each of them weird and likeable in different ways. Ameera and I are at war over one of the female characters, I think she is a wonderful ditzy edition whereas Ameera hates her till the end of time.
I award Full Metal Panic 8 our 10 cheezburgah rating. It is funny and enjoyable; you could easily watch it for a while. But the politics are so breezy, they mention them to make a military style dialogue and storyline but they don’t delve into them (Well not by episode 12) so it is an anime to just veg out to and eat (a lot) of cheesecake with.
