Product Description: It's tough to keep your grades up without having to take off at a moment's notice to save the world. But for Sousuke Sagara undercover high school student and member of the mercenary group Mithril life in Tokyo seemed the same as always. But underneath the promising exterior spin the wheels of a conspiracy that threaten to destroy the peace. A new threat has arisen: Amalgam.An unknown element with advanced mech technology this mysterious organization has been running things from behind the scenes. As dissension spreads throughout the ranks of Mithril Sousuke faces his own internal struggle. Spread thin between schoolwork and war the powers that be have decided to lighten his load... beginning with Kaname!Life and death hang in the balance as the clash between good and evil scale new heights. When the smoke clears Sousuke's path will be the one that he forges for himself.Includes all 13 episodes plus episode 000 and the OVA "Tessa's Eventful Day."Format: DVD Genre: ANIMATION/ADULT SWIM UPC: 704400085406 Manufacturer No: 0
Amazon.com: Second Raid (2005), the third and darkest season of Full Metal Panic!, picks up about two months after the first adventure (and ignores the farcical Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu). Sousuke tries to juggle active duty with the Mithril mercenary corps, high school assignments, and protecting Kaname. Gauron, the bloodthirsty terrorist he battled during the first season, reappears in China. Director Yasuhiro Takemoto stages hand-to-hand combat and a major mecha battle in a claustrophobic tunnel beneath the Yangtze River to great effect. As the crisis deepens, the Mithril commanders order Sousuke to return to piloting the super-mecha Arbalest, leaving the sinister-sounding Wraith to protect Kaname. For the first time in his life, Sousuke is torn between obeying orders and genuine emotions. Kaname uses every trick she can come up with--and a few she learned from Sousuke--to outwit Wraith and expose the assassin who's been stalking her. Alone in a largely deserted Hong Kong, Sousuke confronts the sadistic Gauron and his own weird upbringing. After Kaname knocks some sense into his head--figuratively and literally--Sousuke acts like a proper hero: he arrives in the nick of time, in a mecha that crushes everything in its path. When he's not engaged in deadly combat, Sousuke remains as clueless as ever, and Kaname has fits at his excesses. As the voice of Sousuke, Chris Patton shifts from despair to righteous fury to hilarious confusion; as Kaname, Luci Christian matches him mood swing for mood swing. The extras include footage of Takemoto and Shoji Gatoh, the author of the novels on which the series is based, scouting locations in Hong Kong and studying the equipment of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces; commentaries from the Japanese voice actors; and a 30-minute OVA in which Tess Testarossa tries to reconstruct what happened the night she got drunk. (Rated TV 14: violence, violence against women, grotesque imagery, tobacco and alcohol use, nudity with suggested lesbianism) --Charles Solomon
FANTASTIC! A GREAT SHOW. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. BUY THIS ONE WITHOUT HESITATION. WELL WORTH THE MONEY & TIME.
The Third Success After finishing watching The Second Raid (TSR) around 20 minutes ago, I was left with a feeling of fulfilment anime rarely ever gives me these days. As an action series it's hard to fault: The action was enjoyable to watch, helped by the high production values, and it had a strong cast of characters that painted over the story simplicity. It did everything it needed to do right and ticked all my boxes, meeting my overly critical standards.
This wasn't the case with the original FMP series, though. Back when I watched that I was left a bit underwhelmed by an experience I'd expected to be a lot more enjoyable than it turned out to be. The constant switching between school comedy episodes and anti-terrorism/mecha action stories let it down, interrupting the flow and making it difficult to get into the serious episodes. And, with the quality of the serious story arcs and comedy varying from decent to very good, the quality of the content wasn't enough save a series suffering from an identity crisis. I gave it 7/10.
Thankfully, someone with a brain obviously decided it would be a better idea to separate the serious and comedy elements into two series, removing the problems caused by the conflicting genres. The comedy side of things got its very own series first in the way Fumoffu and, as you'd expect, lots of school insanity involving Sagara and Kaname followed. It worked out far better without any robots goings on getting in the way, helped by the comedy scenes being far more funny than most of those shown in the original series. I gave it 8/10, but I would've probably scored it higher if not for my sense of humour failure.
TSR, which came out after Fumoffu, did the reverse and focused on the anti-terrorism side. I wasn't really sure what to expect after ending up disappointed with the more serious sections of the original series, not even the high ratings making me confident. I only got around to watching it after I saw and won an auction for the art box + entire series on eBay.co.uk, the motivation not having been there when I had finished Fumoffu many earlier. But, when I did finally get around to watching it, I found myself struggling to find faults, and even the faults I found were only relatively minor things such as the use of abbreviations without any explanations being given.
As you'd expect with TSR being an action series, the story wasn't memorable: The threat of civil war appears, Mythril send out Arm Slaves to intervene, the threat of war is averted and the cycle starts anew. Mixed in is an organization called Amalgam that creates wars to test out weapons and profit from doing so. None of it is hard to understand or what I'd consider to be memorable.
So, what made TSR better than most other action series? The characters. Since most watchers would've viewed the previous series before getting into this, most of the character introductions and basic development wasn't necessary, leaving more than enough time for the new characters to get introduced and allowing for the already established characters to get additional development. Talking of new additions, the new characters were pretty good, the insane new villain Gates and a pair of sexy Chinese twins being the best of the lot.
Unsurprisingly, The Sagara/Kaname relationship received the most time and, as a result, was the strongest non-action point of the series. I came to like/love/want to sex Kaname far more by the end, the determination and emotions shown by her raising my opinion of her even higher than it was prior to watching. Sagara, on the other hand, was more hit and miss: I hated him for a lengthy period of TSR for being a coward, but I did end up warming up to him towards the end; when the interaction between the two resumed. The one consistent thought that ran through my mind when watching Sagara was that without Kaname around him he's neither likeable nor very interesting...
Overall, I can't help but rate TSR highly. It successfully pleased someone hard to please, meaning it's a show that I'm sure the majority of anime fans out there that haven't got around to watching it yet would love to bits. Looking for a short and high quality action/mecha series? If so, this is for you.
A Great Sequel To The First Full Metal Panic Series This series seems to get better and better as it goes The full Metal Panic was one of the first box sets I got so of course I had to get this one as well. These 13 episodes begin a few months after the first season and has Sousuke Sagara(Voiced By Chris Patton/Tomokazu Seki)still fighting with the Mecha Arm Slave Arbalest in civil war strifes and other hot spots around the world as well as attending High school in Japan to protect Kaname Chidori(Voiced By Luci Christian/Satsuki Yukino)who is one of the 'Whispered'. Now a new threat comes along to stir up a new conflict with North and South China as well as a unknown agenda one which is to capture the Arbalest. What I also truly liked was you see Sousuke's growing feelings for Kaname as he has to struggle with both his own feelings as well as his duties to Mithril. One of the few scenes that stick out for me was when Sousuke who needs a haircut can't seem to trust the stylist enough to allow him to cut Sousuke's hair and nearly attacks him in the salon while his trust in Kaname is so deep he actually falls asleep while she cuts his hair showing how great his trust in her is. The one downside I had to this series set was it was only 13 episodes to short for my liking so I truly hope another season is coming out soon because I know I will definitely be getting that one. The extras are mostly trailers and textless intro/ending songs though they also have the producers video of how they went to Hong Kong as well as a few other video commentaries. The video is widescreen and very sharp and clear the audio is also excellent both the Japanese/English Voice Actors did a superb job with this series. So if you're just starting your mecha anime collection this is one of the top 5 you must get...
Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid A great anime, and a great box set... includes a bonus OVA, commentaries for pretty much every episode, and a handful of behind-the-scenes specials that provide an in depth look at how the show was made. Well worth the purchase price.
Comedy, Action, Suspense, and Romance all in one! I have loved all three seasons of FMP, and even if this one seemed a little out of place in comparison to the first season, it still drove me to watch every episode in one day. You meet all of the characters that we were introduced to once again, and we become exposed to some new characters who I must say show what they can do quite well. ;) The second season is practically ignored, yet Fumoffu can be interperated anywhere chronologically, as just great entertainment. Anyways I was pleased with TSR, the action animation was beautifull, and it was a nice finishing touch to my FMP collection.
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