Forgive my lack up posts recently as work has gotten rather burdensome which has left me little time to blog. But it seems the past two episodes of Full Metal Panic have bee rather subdued when compared to the first four episodes. WIth Mythril on the run and Amalgam having taken Chidori Sousuke is left without any of the military resources he has had up till this point. So we find him in the middle east fighting in a robot tournament with a new heroine and a odd change of focus. I understand to a degree why this arc exists, after all it wouldn’t really make sense for Sousuke to burst into Amalgam headquarters straight away but this is admittedly a rather lackluster arc that could easily be mistaken for filler. In particular I am not fond of this new girl and if there is one thing I truly hate in a series it’s when they introduce a new girl to fall for the main protagonist when the main romance has been decided.
If this arc is good for anything though it’s showing how Sousuke has changed, for one he seems to have adopted a no killing policy for the moment but he’s still pretty brutal seeing as he stabbed a knife into a guys neck and used that as a threat. It’s nice to see his reactions upon being probed about the past. But Sousuke is the one carrying the show at the moment as the newly introduced characters just feel throwaway and second tier. Things will pick up and signs of doing so are here with Sousuke revealing his agenda to get into the illegal fights of the robot tournament. I also must admit there was some smart advertisement sponsorship going on as the robots now have brands pasted on them making a clever way to integrate product placement without it being intrusive. If it means more funds for this anime then I approve as it does feel like real effort and passion is being put into this anime. The mecha CGI animation remains fairly impressive and the fights are quite good.
As lacking as this arc is, at least we got a good fight out of it as Sousuke takes on a M9 in a illegal fight. It makes for an good twist of fate for Sousuke to fight the machine he used to make use of. Almost a reversal of his previous position where in the enemy would have the less advance tech while Sousuke was riding with the state of the art. The fight itself was good and even outside of it were getting rather dark as Sousukes teammates were almost shot and made into pig feed. Though Lemon jumps into with the utterly unsurprising reveal that he is not a photographer but instead some sort of French intelligence agent. We also learn that our new girl here is also whispered which has the weird aspect that all the girls who fell for Sousuke happened to be whispered and a rather foreboding image of Sousuke looking at her through his robots camera and seeing her as bloodied corpse. Possibly a reminder of his failed attempt to rescue a whispered in the first episode all those years ago or just him acknowledging that the girl will be hunted till the end of her days if her abilities ever got out. New episode looks to be a rather tough situation for SOusuke, one that could have him determine just how much this new girl means to him.
