This review is a continuation of my discourse regarding the animated adaptation of Shoji Gatoh’s best-known work. The first season, the original Full Metal Panic! from 2002, was created by Gonzo and suffered from various issues in terms of art, characterization and pacing, redeemed only by a good soundtrack and excellent MC. Kyoto Animation took over the project for their inaugural work, FMP Fumoffu, in 2003. This show departed drastically from the military themes of the original adaptation, preferring instead slapstick humor portrayed through the daily lives of the protagonists. Kyoani also took on the subsequent season, The Second Raid, in 2005. While this season suffered from some of the weaknesses of its predecessor, I found it far preferable to the original Gonzo offering, particularly within the final few episodes. Now, 13 years later, a fourth season is released, this time produced by Xebec. Full Metal Panic! The Invisible Victory would have been a season long-awaited by fans, but I’m honestly not sure if any fans of this series really exist in this day and age. Unfortunately, I don’t see this season as changing that any time soon. For the purpose of this review, I’ll be referring to this show as S4, with Panic!, Fumoffu and The Second Raid comprising S1, S2 and S3 respectively.
I’ll go through as always. For a season plagued with weak characters and mediocre plots, the soundtrack has always been one of the high points for me. I’m not exactly sure why, but I continue to return to S3’s OST, which I felt captured the military intrigue and daily life of Sousuke and his friends in a way that the storytelling never really did. Even the first season’s soundtrack still holds up decently well almost 20 years later, with a particularly memorable opening. Fumoffu, in particular, does so even better, with one of the best OP/ED combinations that Kyoani has ever produced. Unfortunately, S4 has what I believe to be by far the weakest soundtrack from the entire series. I think this is partially due to the mediocrity of the opening and ending, both of which really failed to capture me in the same way. The departure from Mikuni Shimokawa, whose voice I always associated inadvertently with Full Metal Panic, was probably the most surprising to me. Frustratingly, it’s the (overused by still welcome) return to the original OP, “Tomorrow,” at the end of S4 that I found most memorable, and that’s a shame.
There’s no use putting this topic off any longer, so let’s just jump straight into it here. The animation is definetely the most polarizing aspect of the whole series, and for good reason. If you’re like me, and the excellent art and animation of S3 is still fresh in your mind, the gratuitous use of CGI in S4 may seem excessive, even distracting. Now I know the topic of CGI in anime is a much wider matter of debate, so I prefer to use this test – does it help to tell the story? Drive the characterization? Engulf the viewer? Unfortunately, in the case of The Invisible Victory, I can say it does none of these. I found myself looking at the animation more than watching the show, at least for the first few CGI-heavy scenes. I will admit that while I got used to it fairly quickly, this was less due to seamless integration and more due to just how many of them there are. If you’re a true CGI-hater, I’d avoid this series, but it’s worth saying that my taste is based on a fairly limited sample size. The rest of the series is…just OK. I think my biggest problem with it lies in the fact that it was aired a full 15 years after the preceding season, but I would still choose S3 art and animation any day. Oh, well.
So, the soundtrack is lackluster and the art is alternatively lackluster and distracting in my mind, so what does this series have going for it? I’m not going to make this review another Sousuke-centric fest, but I’ll give him a fair share. The military kid is back and back to his old tricks, albeit this time at arguably higher stakes. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I love Sousuke, and I watch this series almost entirely for him. While his character development in S4 doesn’t live up to the latter portion of The Second Raid, he does get some good moments in this series. Unfortunately, most of these are centered toward the beginning – this is really one of the only times in the series he admits to being scared and needing help from others. While Xebec doesn’t really show these significant moments in a particularly meaningful way, I appreciate that they exist, and how they are at least some continuation of his revelation at the end of S3. The bulk of the show, however, remains limited in Sousuke explicit development, which isn’t a bad thing, but I will admit that the subtle aspects of his “suggested development” are less obvious in this season than any other (excepting, maybe, S1). I’m OK with it, though as Sousuke somehow manages to be more of a badass in this season than any other. Leave the country and travel the world looking for even inklings of his charge’s whereabouts? He’s got that. Get mortally wounded and still set up an ambush for his assailant? He does that too. Literally invoke the power of the United States to procure military assets? A bit hard to believe, but yeah. If nothing else, Xebec realizes who the real main attraction of FMP is, and they’ve given him majority screen time accordingly. Can’t complain about that.
Unfortunately, and in character for this franchise, the rest of the characters fall more flat. I’m pretty sure that you can’t write a worse antagonist than Gauron, the villain in S1 and (arguably?) S3, and thankfully he didn’t make another appearance in this season. The new antagonist, Leonard, is a slightly more nuanced baddie, definetely preferable to his “evil just because” predecessor. However, he’s fairly distant from the events of S4, preferring to leave the active villainous roles to Kurama, who somehow manages to be even more generic than the whole bunch. I suppose that Kalinin’s defection is supposed to be the series’ major pro/antag twist, but I found it so incredibly predictable I kept scratching my head as to why they portrayed it as some big surprise. Indeed, most of the villainous activity in S4 seems just to antagonize Sousuke and get more opportunities for epic battle scenes rather than actually pursue a motive. It’s for this reason that I really wish they had dug deeper in to Leonard’s character – we get a brief snippet of this in the graveyard scene in the very first episode and again in the final episode, but relatively little in-between.
Next, to move on to a character I’ve been plenty vocal about in the past. I think this season is definetely the best for Kaname Chidori, who is touted as a main character but is anything but. This is really the first season where she manages not to be the most annoying figure in the entire show, though arguably because she’s quite literally missing for the bulk of it. I will admit that she actually manages to show some maturity in the first few episodes – I’m grateful for this, as it shows that her character development in the latter part of S3 hasn’t gone to total waste. Her initiative to actually work together with Sousuke, rather than berate him endlessly, is a far step above what we saw in all of S1 and S2. However, I’m pretty unsatisfied with the way that her powers as a Whispered seem to be manifest here – in S1 and S3 they’re shown as a subconscious knowledge of Black Technology, here they show up in a sudden ability to create perfect RF-jamming algorithms. It’s almost as if Gatoh, finally realizing how weak of a female character he wrote, decided that making her a sudden god-tier programmer would solve everything. Again, while I like her better this season, I can’t help but think it’s kind of telling that the show is better with her mainly absent.
The rest of the characters are equally confusing for me. I don’t dislike Testarossa, and appreciated some of her good moments this season, but she seemed only tangentially connected to the main story in S4. Do I prefer following Sousuke rather than her and the rest of the Tuatha de Danaan? Definetely…but I think that the show could have really benefited by using her relationship with her brother to draw out the villain’s characterization more. It’s also pretty funny that she doesn’t seem to gain deity-scale coding skills here, as that would be the logical conclusion from being a Whispered too, right? As for the rest of her crew, I really don’t have much of a comment. As usual, Mao and Weber really only show up for opportune battle moments, somehow staying alive as their fellow mecha pilots constantly die around them. What can I say, this is a mecha show.
With that, I’ve said all that I want to about S4, with the final remark that I do appreciate how it does a better job than most of its predecessors at keeping fanservice and crudities to a minimum, and it really isn’t until the Americans show up that this becomes a real problem. In essence, The Invisible Victory is just another installment. The soundtrack is average, the animation is a bit polarizing, and the characters are generally so-so. But it is another season of Sagara Sousuke, and for that reason alone, I liked it. At this point, I’m seriously doubting if any other studio is ever going to touch this franchise, and surprising even myself, I do hope we get a final season.
