English Dub Review: Full Metal Panic Invisible Victory “Welcome to the Jungle”

You can taste the bright lights, but you won’t get there for free.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In the country of Namsac, Sosuke awakens from under his bed to a new day. A photographer, Lemon (John Burgmeier), runs into trouble with some thugs but is saved by a local girl, Nami (Trina Nishimura). In exchange, she asks him for five grand, money he does not have, and tries to convince him by showing her job: customized Arm Slave matches. She receives her payback soon enough, however, as her only pilot Rick is killed in retaliation by the thugs who were from an opposing team. Conveniently, Sosuke arrives just in time to take the job and quickly cleans house at that night’s match, inspiring Lemon to actually put money down and sponsor the team. The other team doesn’t take this lying down and threatens Nami, but Sosuke lays the hurt down and drives them off. The two then decide to crash at Lemon’s apartment, with Sosuke ending up under the bed again.

OUR TAKE

Did we just wander into an FMP spin-off? I heard we were headed into something different (and the two seconds of the OP that previewed these characters certainly gave me that impression) but aside from Sosuke showing up nine minutes in, I almost thought this was a new show. As a giant robot fan and a fan of this show, in particular, I AM eager to see more of the alternate history the backstory has established but never quite fully explored. Arm Slaves have apparently existed in the FMP universe since the 1980’s, so salvaging parts from war zones for what is essentially Giant Battlebots was a logical outcome. And of course, this means more metal on metal action, which I am always all for. The CGI may be hindering things a bit though since there’s not a ton of emphasis on the weight of the movement of the Arm Slaves. It’s one of the many reasons Pacific Rim: Uprising felt off to me compared to the first movie. These things are supposed to be lumbering heavy military equipment, particularly for a Real Robot story like FMP, and if they’re just jumping around like they aren’t made of tons of metal, it kinda hampers the grounded feel this sub-genre is supposed to have over Super Robot shows.

Unfortunately, the suddenness of this new environment, especially in the middle of the season, kind of betrays its potential importance. That and the rather shallowness of this new cast (at least from what I can tell right now) doesn’t strike me as anything that we’ll be following long term, and more likely just a pit stop for Sosuke to get his groove back and win some hearts before moving onto rescuing Kaname. The novel this story was based on came out in early 2006, but even then these plots in a romance story were pretty predictable. I don’t see much good ahead for Nami, other than growing fond of our sergeant before learning he’s already got someone and resigning herself to just letting him be happy, or even bringing her team and becoming a Mithril Arm Slave mechanic. She’s not a bad character by any means, and she at least seems to be connecting to Sosuke on the matter of them growing up around war zones, but seeing an all but doomed romance like theirs is gonna be more painful than any massacre. That said, we’re here for at least the next few episodes, so we might as well get comfortable. And at least we don’t have to worry about any more pointless recap episodes for the rest of this short season, right? RIGHT?

…not right?