 The Full Metal
ROSSMANWar. Good God, y'all, what is it good for? Well,
after watching the original Full Metal Panic!
I'd say the answer is "Absolutely nothing." But, after
having witnessed the genius comedy that is Full Metal
Panic! Fumoffu?, I'd have to say that war is probably
good for making great character driven, funny, animated TV shows.
I'll now explain.
A while ago the online fan community was jizzing
their collective pants over Studio Gonzo's newest comedy/action/drama/military
show, FMP. I was intrigued. At the time though,
Gonzo didn't have a winning track record good enough for me
to trust them blindly. I knew that they were capable of incredible
production values, but the storylines that they chose to animate
mostly left me wanting more (this of course was well before
Kiddy Grade and
Last Exile). But,
since I liked pretty-looking stuff, I decided to give the Panic
a try. The first two or three episodes had me. The characters
were fresh, fun and very likeable. I especially liked Kaname
Chidori, Sousuke Sagara, and Melissa Mao. And none of the supporting
cast from either the mercenary team, Mithril, or the high school
annoyed me to any major degree (which is amazing in this day
and age of overly-hyper or underly-boring sidekick characters
which plague our society like that horrible locust/ebola crossbreed
that Dr. Dave is working on shortly will). Good start. But then
FMP got kind of bogged down in its own attempt
to get serious. See, the opening episodes were basically comedy
driven. They were all about (mercenary-raised) Sagara's attempt
to blend into a normal Japanese high school in order to protect
the "Whispered" candidate, Chidori, from some evil
Soviet terrorists or some such. My point is that the comedy
quotient was good. However, once the main kidnapping occurred
the show went all serious and never really looked back. A bad
bad move by the writers and director.
There were about 4-5 storylines that ran through
the show (as opposed to one 24 episode-long plot), and it felt
discombobulated as a whole. Kind of piecemeal. Some of the stories
were okay (the giant robot one and the final Gauron/Toy Box
one), but the others were just "blah". The desert
episodes, where a bit of Sagara's background is revealed to
us, were just so overly dramatic that I originally stopped watching
the show because of them. I only really came back to finish
it up after seeing Fumoffu... But I'll get
to that in a bit. The only saving grace of FMP
was the few and far between comedy stand alone eps. The one
where Sagara has to take that dumped girl out to pretend to
be her boyfriend for her old grade school friends had me giggling,
and the Mao vs. Captain Testarossa one had me laughing out loud
on occasion. I just wished that the whole series could have
been like that.
Apparently a lot of people thought like me. They
said, "You know, we have some incredible characters here
who work best in silly situations... Hmmmmmm, what to do?....
*ACK!* Dammit, Akira! You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!
You little Japanese intern piece of sh-... Waaaait a minute!
I have the PERFECT idea!" And thus, Full Metal
Panic! Fumoffu? was born.
What is FMP Fumoffu, you ask?
It is FMP on laughing gas. Fumoffu
took ALL of the seriousness and blandness of its predecessor
and dropped them like a sack of bowling balls on starving kittens.
Then, it completely maxed out the hilarity quotient and made
room for some almost slapstick situations. In other words it
became what the original SHOULD have been. And Buddha bless
it for doing so.
Fumoffu (don't ask what that
means, just laugh [or groan] when you figure it out while watching
the series) is perhaps the most consistently funny show I've
ever seen. Every episode had me laughing out loud joke after
joke (and a few had me snorting and guffawing too). There was
only one kinda lame episode (i.e. the "ponytail" one),
but even that one had me kicking my sofa in fits of titters
with the whole psycho cop thread. Best psycho cop EVER,
by the way.
After watching all of Fumoffu
in about 2 days (it's only half the length of FMP)
I was really amazed that they didn't just repeat the same lame
punchlines time and again. No joke was ever really echoed (which
is very rare for a "fish out of military water" show).
Also, the characters stay completely true to themselves all
the way through (Sagara never lightens up to become a generic
high school hero-type, and Chidori never becomes an army otaku
or anything of the like), and later on some very fun special
guests arrive for a few episodes to let us know what's going
on in the whole Mithril, merc-y world. Not that Fumoffu
dwells on the militaristic side of things in the least, but
it actually takes all the Mithril characters and all the high
school characters and puts them into an obligatory onsen (hot
springs) episode. The onsen episode is arguably the funniest
24 minutes of anything I've ever peed my pants over... Well,
it's probably tied with the final episode in all out
zani-kookiness. How great is Fumoffu? One thing
sums it up perfectly: "Full Monty Bacteria."
New train of thought. The opening themes to both
FMP and Fumoffu are really
fun J-Pop ditties, the Fumoffu op is so melancholic
(in a good, longing, hopeful, non-sad way... does that make
any sense?) and fulfilling, it's become one of my all time non-English,
non-understandable favorite songs (along with anything from
Nirvana's first album). The "A-Team"
theme music from FMP was also good for a grin
whenever that popped up, though too bad the rest of the series
couldn't have had that A-Team feel to it (campy,
fun mercenary show where the plan always comes together).
So, what did I think of Full
Metal Panic! and FMP! Fumoffu? For
once, the sequel was actually infinitely better than the original.
The characters were all great all the time, but the seriousness
of the first series was just too much. I give FMP
a thumb down, and FMP Fumoffu a hearty thumb
up. Just watch the first few episodes of FMP,
then skip directly to Fumoffu. And man, the
animation quality in Fumoffu actually surpassed
FMP! That means it was very very spiffy... And with
that I think I said the word "Fumoffu" more than was
originally thought possible in one page. Wow!
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The Military Base Stalking
TAMMI WITH AN "I"Now, I'm not all about that whole Jap cartoon
scene that the Rossman gets a massive boner over all the time,
but this here Full Metal Jacket Foosball thing
was downright heeeeee-larious! I only really caught a few of
those episodes, but man did I ever laugh my pee out! Hooo-wee!
But after the laughter and urine left me I got to thinkin',
this Foosball show wasn't really very realistic-like.
Seriously, I had TONS of guys in my high school class who dressed
in camouflage all the time, and none of them was as cool as
that Sapporo dude. Though none of my classmates was ever packin'
a live grenade before, or able to kill a man with his or her
bare hands. Though all of my classmates DID have shotguns and
plenty of alcohol... So I guess they were all kinda MORE dangerous
than some trained army guy with a dirty bomb in his backpack
and a canister of chem warfare shit in his pocket. Shee-it!
If anybody I knew had that kinda crap in their possession I
doubt I'd still have the sexual drive of a mule on speed right
now... Speakin' of which I think the ROTC classes just got out
down the street. So if y'all will excuse me now.
Full Metal Fookimooky gets a high
five from me. This kinda shit always makes me laugh,
so like, why the hell not.
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