Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu! is a 2003 anime series, a spin off of the original Full Metal Panic released the previous year. It follows the comedic misadventures of Sagara Sousuke, a soldier thrust into civilian life as a high schooler.
This will be a short review for a short show. At only 12 episodes, Full Metal Panic Fumoffu sadly ends too soon, although most of these episodes are broken into two mini-episode segments, a format shared by the early episodes of Urusei Yatsura and one I quite missed when it moved away from them. Despite being half the length of the original Full Metal Panic, Fumoffu leaves much more of an impression.
Although I don't know what led to the creation of Fumoffu, I can only speculate that the producers were given one criterion, lots of fanservice. Fumoffu unapolagetically delivers, and honestly it works. Too many shows try to cram fanservice in where it is inappropriate, in various senses of the word, but there is no overarching plot to Fumoffu, there are no intense situations where fanservice feels out of character. Although lacking a plot, the individual episodic stories are actually interesting, I was engaged and waiting to see what happened next despite knowing that things will go back to normal. Things did go back to normal, but to my surprise, there was continuity! Events and characters from previous episodes were recalled, something that I wish more episodic comedy would do. The only other episodic comedy anime that I can recall having continuity is School Rumble (I'll spare you my rant about that for now...)
There's not much to say about the music of the show, I don't even think there is much of it. I really liked the ending theme though. The animation is an improvement over the first FMP.
To compare Fumoffu with its predecessor might be unfair due to the genre difference, but I think the characterisation in Fumoffu is far better. I did not care about the relationship between Sagara and the antagonist in the original Full Metal Panic, I get the impression nobody else did either, so to see Sagara spending time with characters I and others actually like is most welcome. I hope that this focus on characters that are actually interesting carries over to The Second Raid.
I suppose nothing much of substance has been written here, but there's not much one can say about an episodic comedy without digging into it episode by episode. If you didn't hate the original FMP but didn't think it was all that great either, I suggest checking out FMP Fumoffu as it won't take up much of your time.
My rating: 7/10
11/08/2024