Wednesday, February 20, 2002

Full Metal Panic! artwork

Full Metal Panic! is coming to America. Oh yeah.

All I know about Full Metal Panic! is what I’ve seen in clips that I downloaded from the Anime Intro Archive. As far as I can tell, Full Metal Panic! is a fairly derivative mech show that oozes style. It’s like a full crew of mech fans — guys who grew up on Gundam and Macross — were lounging around one day and said, “Hey, why don’t we make a kick-tail mech show?” Sure, it uses some cliches, but it looks like they’re used because they’re convenient, not because they’re Essential Elements Of Any Mech Show. This is a show about giant robots blowing stuff up, and while there’s certainly a plot — the show is quite moody, in fact — the crew realizes that the show exists to entertain above all else. So, they entertain, in the best mech show tradition.

By blowing stuff up. In very cool ways.

I don’t like violence, but I can’t help enjoying this. There’s an air of breezy self-confidence about the show.