Full Metal Panic Invisible Victory Episode 5: Restart

We could kind of view the first four episodes as the cliff-hanger ending to a previous season given how this episode makes it feel like the anime is starting over. However the absence of Kanami is keenly felt in this fifth episode.

This episode very much reminds me of the very early Full Metal Panic episodes. We have Sousuke Sagara being underestimated by those around him because of his age (and lack of personality), his name being horrendously mispronounced, and some cool but fairly pointless mech fights. While this call back to old-school FMP is kind of fun, it really serves to highlight how much more interesting Sousuke has become and is when he’s with Kaname.

Clearly Sousuke has some plan in mind but he’s alone and starting from the ground up. By default he’s reverted to what he was. A soldier in every sense of the word. As he says to the new crew when challenged about his knowledge, he is a specialist. And hearing him say that again was fantastic but hearing him say it the way he did in season one was heart-breaking. It had become more of a joke line between Kaname and him and now it’s back to being the straight truth.

However, where this episode falters is the new group of characters we are introduced to. Each works well enough, but there is a lot of emotional attachment to the cast of Full Metal Panic and the anime suddenly removing all of them except for Sousuke isn’t something to be taken lightly. While these characters are fine, they are just that. Fine. They aren’t the amazing crew we’ve fallen in love with and that hurts this episode in a lot of ways. Hopefully these guys will either grow on us or Sousuke will reunite with someone else soon because otherwise what had come back as a fairly roaring continuation may quickly become just a quiet rumble.

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Thanks for reading.

Karandi James