Full Metal Panic! (season 1) 720p - (2002 Lang: English, Japanese)

Great sci-fi military action!

Completely awesome i recommend this and all other full metal panic media one of the funniest shows ever and you have to see it to understand. This is the classic story of boy meets girl, except the boy is a child solider lacking the most basic of social skills, and the girl is for some reason targeted by many government institutions, and said boy is assigned to guard the girl. Oh and the catch is that Souske (the boy) is not allowed to let anyone discover that he is actually a bodyguard not even Chidori (the girl).

Some people complain of how Gonzo changed the storyline (they really didn't), but with the exception of episodes 15-17 all of them are actually part of the original novels, which are also very funny.

I also suggest the side story series, "Full Metal Panic Fumoffu?!" and the main story continuation "Full Metal Panic the second raid". I would also recommend the novels which are still being written and translated. You really have to see them all.

I've had Full Metal Panic! turn anime haters into anime lovers, but most said that they loved how FMP wraps everything up with an EXCELLENT....feel. Put the plot, characters, scenery in the back of your mind...and focus on the overall feeling of the series. Sure, the other stuff is great, and they're done very well...but a lot of other anime series have that. FMP! has the FEEL of something interesting...something worthwhile...something just plain enjoyable. I could sit down and re-watch it over and over again and pick up something new every time...it's like watching a good actor play his part.

Maybe that's what I'm trying to get at...these characters don't feel like drawings with people reading their lines. They don't do something so predictable that you already know the next scene. This anime feels original because the characters feel original...as if they were real people. They're people that you could imagine meeting on the street, but know that you never will. They all have personalities, consciences, etc...facial features actually show what mood they might be in...it's something that could be easily converted into a real-life acted movie, just because it's so apparent that the storyboard operators went down to every excruciating detail of what everything needed to look like...

I'll stop rambling now. Just go watch it. And make sure to keep, in the back of your mind, a mental note of what Sousuke's eyes look like between each episode...it may come in handy when you watch The Second Raid