Full Metal Panic!-Mission.01 (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Main Menu Audio & Animation Credits-Clean Opening (1:31) Credits-Clean Closing (1:31) Gallery-Production sketches (1:33) Unseen Footage-Japanese Piracy Warnings (0:59) Trailer-ADV Previews (7 - 9:39) Reversible Cover
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	91:20 (Case: 100)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Koichi Chigira
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Tomokazu Seki Chris Patton Satsuki Yukino Luci Christian Shinichiro Miki Vic Mignogna Michiko Neya Allison Keith Ikue Kimura Monica Rial Hilary Haag Kira Vincent-Davis
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Toshihiko Sahashi

    This disc starts with a lightly aggressive voice-over from a female voice over the copyright warning statement. It's amusing, and gets explained by one of the extras (you'll see). This put me in a suitable frame of mind to enjoy this show. It's a bit quirky, rather funny in spots, and more than a bit aggressive in others.

    The start of another anime series. This is one that will really make an impression. It starts a bit slowly, with two mysterious girls (one with red-orange hair, one with blue), and a battle between a Hind helicopter gun-ship and a large mecha. Then cut to a futuristic submarine, all in the first five minutes...

    This is one of those shows where we're not really sure what's going on after watching the first volume. All we know is that a team of three very professional mercenary soldiers working for a mysterious organisation called Mithril have been assigned the task of bodyguarding a sixteen year old girl called Kaname Chidori (the girl with blue hair), but without letting her know that she's being guarded. This entails the youngest team member, Sousuke Sagara, going undercover as a new student in Kaname's school (he is a teenager, fortunately) — he's not very good at undercover work. Meanwhile, his colleague Kurz Weber will be around in an Arm Slave (that's what they call their mecha suits) — fortunately their mecha can be made invisible. And their team commander, Melissa Mao, will be maintaining electronic surveillance.

    Meanwhile, Kaname's best friend, Kyoko Tokiwa, teases Kaname about her new "stalker", and her apparent interest in him. Sousuke takes his task very seriously, leading to quite a few very funny confrontations, and various kinds of physical injury and embarrassment to Sousuke. But there's definitely an attraction between the two. Kyoko takes a lot of photos, often of Sousuke and Kaname.

    Back on the submarine, the captain, a somewhat clumsy, but well-meaning and competent woman called Teletha Testarossa (played by the sweet Hilary Haag in English), is organising another operation to make the protection of Kaname unnecessary. It looks like this operation has succeeded, but...

    The default cover for this disc is a fairly dull affair of greys, showing one of the Arm Slaves. Fortunately, the cover is reversible, and the reverse is much more interesting — it shows a nice shot of Kaname in her school uniform, and has episode summaries on the back. The episodes on this disc are:

    This disc features a fairly mild level of fan-service, mostly in the form of occasional flashes of Kaname's underwear, although she does appear briefly nude in the opening credits.

    There's a mystery relating to Kaname, and we only get hints at it in these episodes. It's something about girls referred to as the Whispered. It may well have something to do with the things we heard her saying in her sleep at the very start of the first episode — she lives alone (rather unusual for a 16 year old). I was interested to see the list of books she was reading (in the first episode) — it included So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, which happens to be my favourite Douglas Adams book.

    There's something of a mystery surrounding Sousuke, too — we get a brief glimpse of his past in the fourth episode, where we learn that he has been a skilled mercenary for a while.

    The shots of the Mithrill submarine look as though they were computer-generated (reminiscent of Blue Submarine 6) — they are almost photo-realistic at times, unlike all the other animation, which is more traditional cel-style.

    The first episode wasn't too endearing, but the show started to grow on me in the second episode. By the end of the disc I was really irritated that I'll have to wait until mid October for the next disc — this disc ends on a real cliff-hanger.

Video

    This DVD transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced. This is, I think, the original aspect ratio. Note that the opening credits are letterboxed, but the show itself is full-frame.

    The image is almost always clear and sharp; the few soft shots may well be deliberately that way to represent the effect of twilight, fog, or smoke. There is no film grain, and no low-level noise.

    Colour is well-rendered, and draws on an exceptionally wide palette of colours — there are some bright cheerful primary colours, like the red ribbons Kaname wears, and some more subtle shades. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are no film artefacts.

    There is quite a bit of low-level aliasing, but only on panning shots. It's not too distracting. There is no moiré and no MPEG artefacts. There is some interleaving, mostly likely as a result of conversion from NTSC to PAL, but it isn't really noticeable when playing, only when freeze-framing or single-stepping.

    The usual two subtitle tracks appear: both in English, with the first being a "signs and song lyrics only" track, while the second is full subtitles. These subtitles are yellow, attractive, and easy to read. I don't understand why the subtitles insist on spelling Kaname's best friend's name as "Kyouko" while it is "Kyoko" in the credits.

    The disc is single-sided and dual layered, probably formatted RSDL. The layer change is neatly hidden between the end of episode 2 and the start of episode 3 — it is effectively invisible.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English and Japanese. Both soundtracks are available in Dolby Digital 2.0, not surround encoded, at 192kbps; the English soundtrack is also available in Dolby Digital 5.1, at 448kbps. I watched all the episodes in English 5.1 first (well, I had to, didn't I?), then again in Japanese 2.0. The English 2.0 track is there, but I only sampled a few minutes of it.

    The English dialogue is easy to understand, well-acted, and synced well with the animation. The Japanese dialogue sounds clear enough.

    The score, from Toshihiko Sahashi, is excellent.

    The English 5.1 soundtrack provides some good examples of well-mixed surround sound, including some neat rear sound effects, although it is more a well-spread stereo sound with occasional surround than a continuous surround affair. The sub gets a lot of work from the sub (sorry, couldn't resist the pun); there's plenty in the low registers of this soundtrack. The 2.0 soundtracks are quite a bit less exciting in these ways, but display some decent stereo imaging.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menus are animated with music, with a neat introductory transition. They are easy to use. They are themed around machinery.

Reversible Cover

    The cover slick can be removed from the case and reversed. The inside image has completely different cover art, and the front cover and spine are in Japanese. It has episode summaries instead of an overall blurb. I like it.

Clean Opening (1:31)

    The opening theme, in letterboxed form, without credits.

Clean Closing (1:31)

    The closing sequence without credits. This is amusing, because it only has visuals on the left side of screen — the right is left black for the scrolling credits.

Production Sketches (1:33)

    This is not a gallery — it is a free-running montage of images with music.

Japanese Piracy Warning (0:59)

    Two warnings about the evils of piracy; the first features Kaname, while the second has Sousuke. Both are rather entertaining.

ADV Previews (9:39)

    As seems common for ADV Previews, this is a series of trailers shown one after another:

• RahXephon
• Steel Angel Kurumi
• Martian Successor Nadesico
• Noir
• Gasaraki
• Excel Saga
• Burn Up Excess

    The Region 1 version of this disc was released a little earlier this year. As far as I can tell, it is identical to our disc, except that they get a poster that we don't. Although the poster sounds interesting, it's a small thing. I'm calling this one a draw between the Region 1 and the Region 4, but I'm happy to buy the R4 in the high quality clear Amaray case.

    A cool new anime series that has already pulled me in, on a rather good DVD.

    The video quality is very good, although the aliasing on pans is not ideal.

    The audio quality is very good, particularly on the English 5.1 soundtrack.

    The extras are a bit meagre, but a lot better than nothing, and may get better on later discs.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall