talkjawking100 First off, I haven't written many reviews on IMDb this way, so if I do, that means the piece I'm writing on is really impactive. Full Metal Panic is to me, more or less, amazing.The show is a perfect blend of high school romance, slapstick comedy, hard-pressed drama and balls-out action. It follows 17-year-old military sergeant Souske Sagara (pronounced "soh-skey") as he is assigned to protect 17-year-old Japanese high school student/orphan with the body of a goddess, Kaname Chidori (pronounced "kuh-nah-may") from unknown dangers. The dangers become apparent throughout the series as a bad guy with a scar on the side of his face, Guaron (pronounced "Gar-on") hijacks a field trip plane their class is on to kidnap Kaname and use her for mysterious reasons. You soon find out Kaname is part of a secret and extremely rare breed of people known as "The Whispered". Exactly what The Whispered are or who, we find very little out throughout the series. But it leads to some extraordinary events in the show's 24-episode run.It's almost impossible to compress the series' events in a single review, so I'll just stop right there and let the viewer learn for his or herself. But know that if sounds like a typical weird explosion/sex Anime, you're pretty wrong. Yes, there does seem to be a focus on the guy genre (lots of robot action and hot half-naked babes, etc) but I know plenty of women who enjoy the show as well. And, it's not a "cutesy" Anime that the other half of the population seems to generalize it as. It has plenty of warm-and-fuzzy moments, but it's not what the show is based on.The show is such a wide mix of emotions, I don't know how it could be done. And all in all, the show hooks any viewer into wanting to know more. The story arcs are excellently put out, the character work, though a little scrappy, is raw and enjoyable, and the dialogue (both original Japanese and the English dub) are very well-written.I wasn't too big of an Anime person before I started watching this show. Before it I LOVED Miyazaki films (still do) and I thought Ghost in the Shell was a good movie. I caught a few episodes of this show's spin off series, "Full Metal Panic? fumoffu" (which is more romance and comedy, and almost completely different from this series) and thought it was enjoyable. When I bought this series on a whim, I was blown away.And you will too! Just make sure you watch them from the beginning. You don't want to miss an episode of this legendary Anime series.

VulturEMaN I've had Full Metal Panic! turn anime haters into anime lovers, but most said that they loved how FMP wraps everything up with an EXCELLENT....feel. Put the plot, characters, scenery in the back of your mind...and focus on the overall feeling of the series. Sure, the other stuff is great, and they're done very well...but a lot of other anime series have that. FMP! has the FEEL of something interesting...something worthwhile...something just plain enjoyable. I could sit down and re-watch it over and over again and pick up something new every time...it's like watching a good actor play his part.Maybe that's what I'm trying to get at...these characters don't feel like drawings with people reading their lines. They don't do something so predictable that you already know the next scene. This anime feels original because the characters feel original...as if they were real people. They're people that you could imagine meeting on the street, but know that you never will. They all have personalities, consciences, etc...facial features actually show what mood they might be in...it's something that could be easily converted into a real-life acted movie, just because it's so apparent that the storyboard operators went down to every excruciating detail of what everything needed to look like...I'll stop rambling now. Just go watch it. And make sure to keep, in the back of your mind, a mental note of what Sousuke's eyes look like between each episode...it may come in handy when you watch The Second Raid

Paco Eltaco Full Metal Panic caught my eye when it first started being released, and i was hooked after watching just one episode. The story managed to combine a school comedy/drama, with a mecha anime. The intro scene immediately had my attention, as a traumatized young woman is extracted from enemy territory. It was so astoundingly cool that i had to see more. This anime is extremely colorful and well animated. The characters are fun to watch and the voice actors are all top notch. I find that some great animes will have very bad dubs, where the acting sounds forced or as if the actor was bored. This series never has that problem, everyone sounds genuinely interested in the events that are occurring. The overall series shifts back and forth between themes, drawing Souske Sagara into Japanese school life as often as it draws Kaname Chidori(the person Sagara guards) into military situations. My biggest complaint is that about ten episodes in, the series seems to go soft, like the writer ran out of material and started over from scratch. From that point on i felt that the series never reached the same heights. A good anime.

au_law2001 Wow, a very funny anime series that has a lot of stuff, action, comedy, romance, drama, a little psychological theme ala Evangelion, but not too much of it, but a bit similar, and the main character who acts a little bit like Heero of Gundam, except crazier! In this one, a secret military organization serving no certain country, with technology and military equipment that years advanced and is ahead of Japan, US and Russia, deals with dangerous situations and rescues people from terrorist attacks, now has to protect someone, a Japanese student who is said to be a "whispered" the ones who have knowledge about secret technology, and is said to be targeted by terrorists, so they send someone, a 16 year old of Japanese descent to be the one to protect her, the 16 year old, who is Japanese, was raised in Afghani deserts and was trained as a child soldier, has had a lot of training, from unarmed combat, to piloting the M9 mechs, but has one problem: he doesn't have a clue of how to live in a normal environment with people his own age. So this maybe a tough mission for him. Overall a very funny show and perhaps one the best new giant robot animes out there, cool characters and beautiful animation, and intense action, and great comedy, especially the school scenes with Sagara, who still doesn't know a thing about high school or Japan. Sad. The only problem is that some of the characters, especially the bad guy, had very little character development, that the origin and explanation of their background was too vague. But overall a decent show recommended to all otaku, even to those who non or open to this type of animation.