Full Metal Panic!

Full Metal Panic is one of those novels that have an intriguing premise, but then failing to capitalize on it. The premise here is a boy who grew up in a war-torn environment as a mercenary, but is suddenly thrust into a Japanese high school with little social knowledge. It’s a solid premise, and I have mostly enjoyed the first volume. Herein lies the problem though – if you want to go the more serious route, this should get at most 4 volumes. Or come up with some ideas for the arcs. What we got instead was the usual LN hijinks of having to have over10 volumes just for the volumes sake. This causes both the plot progression and the character progression to go at snail pace as otherwise the story would get resolved too quickly and less volumes would be sold. It’s a quantity over quality industry after all. The other option would be to turn it into a full gag comedy, which would lessen the requirements for solidly thought out story. Well, at least this later came into reality in the form of a spin-off, though at this point I should probably clarify that the novel was my first exposure to this franchise. I haven’t seen the anime or read the manga, so this review is wholly unaffected by how those fare. Another waste of opportunity is the main pairing. A fish out of water who’s expert in his specialization, and a girl with unusual interests to an extent that her classmates consider her too weird to be dateable. A match made in heaven you could say. Unfortunately, the girl gets turned into an obnoxious tsundere at the nearest opportunity, one who does her best to sabotage any possible relationship progress and retain the status quo, resulting in a very underwhelming finale regarding the relationship. The story could have been so better if they started actually dating early on so the full potential of the dynamic of two kinds of weirdo could have been realized. Regarding rest of the cast and the story, unfortunately nothing managed to grab my attention. I would have even dropped the novel within the first 3 volumes if I wasn’t a completionist. Even them, I caught myself zoning out often, especially in the later half. So if you’re a fan and you have an objection in the form of “but there was this cool scene that you didn’t mention at all!” you might very well be correct, there is a real possibility I could have skimmed over it. Don’t blame the reader for being unable to devote attention to the work though. I’m a certified bookworm, it isn’t exactly difficult to make me interested in reading a book. So if I find myself in a situation where I have to constantly force myself to keep paying attention to a book, I’m 100% blaming the author’s lack of skills for that. It’s not just the story that lacks interesting points, Full Metal Panic also unfortunately falls into the common pitfall of light novels which is incredibly bland writing style. There is no author’s personality to be detected, there is no creativity with the medium, there is absolutely nothing of literal value in this book series. Overall, it feels like the author had all the right cards to write a good story, yet still managed to fumble all the opportunities. This could have been a romcom Metal Gear Solid, which sounds awesome. Instead, it’s an attempt at slice of life drama military mecha romance comedy sci-fi story which fails to execute any of those genres in a satisfying way, let alone combining them in an intriguing way.