Full Metal Panic!-Mission.04 (2002)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Anime	Main Menu Audio & Animation Alternative Version-clean opening (1:31) and closing (1:31) Gallery-Production sketches (1:34) Unseen Footage-Japanese piracy warning (0:33) Trailer-ADV Previews (7:31) Reversible Cover DVD Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	69:58 (Case: 75)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Kôichi Chigira
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Satsuki Yukino Tomokazu Seki Yukana Nogami Michiko Neya Shinichirô Miki Akio Ôtsuka Masahiko Tanaka Luci Christian Chris Patton Hilary Haag Allison Keith Vic Mignogna Mike Kleinhenz
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Toshihiko Sahashi

    This is Full Metal Panic! Mission.04. For those coming in late, this was preceded by Full Metal Panic! Mission.01, Full Metal Panic! Mission.02, and Full Metal Panic! Mission.03. But you may have already guessed that.

    The episodes on this disc are:

    This disc, as you can see, has only three episodes, which is a little disappointing after three discs each of which held four episodes, but it is made much worse by the fact that the last episode on this disc is the opening half of a double-episode story — very frustrating, and to make it worse, the next volume is not scheduled for the next two months, either...

    After the last disc, which was almost without fan-service, this disc makes up for it. These episodes are set during summer, so they get to dress the student girls in swimsuits...

    This disc starts with a voice-over from a threatening male voice (Mike McRae — the English language voice for Gauron) speaking over the copyright warning statement. He explains why it might be unwise to copy this disc. I'm getting quite fond of these crazy copyright warnings.

    The Mithril submarine (which we learn is called the Tuahar de Danaan) is in dry dock, so the crew are at liberty, too. Too much liberty, in a way: Melissa Mao (leader of an AS team) and Teletha Testarossa (captain of the submarine) get into a yelling match, resulting in a challenge to an AS battle between the two of them. Given that Melissa is a woman with years of experience fighting in an AS, and Teletha has never piloted an AS in her (short) life (and she's awfully clumsy), it seems a very uneven match. That's why Teletha asks Sousuke to help her train, although she takes advantage of the training session to get close to Sousuke. And the bet, that the loser has to run a lap of the base naked, adds spice.

    The second episode involves the students visiting the Narashino base of the Japanese Self-Defence Force, the one at which Shinji's father works. Shinji is ashamed of his father because he's not an AS pilot — he's a staffer. The occasion is the annual contest between the AS team of the Narashino base and the visitors from Nerima, whose leader is both ruthless and arrogant. Sousuke can't stand by and watch the dirty tricks the Nerima caption uses, so he intervenes. As we know, he's an amazing AS pilot, and no slouch at military tactics. Meanwhile, the Nerima captain, who we're expected to hate, is hitting on Kaname. This culminates in a battle between ASs with Kaname, Sousuke, and Shinji all participating. It may not be realistic, but it's quite funny, even if it does make the SDF look ineffectual.

    After these two episodes, both entertaining, but not contributing to the longer storyline, we swing into a serious episode. Sousuke is chosen for an assassination mission, and told that he can't refuse. He's dropped into Helmajistan (hmmm!) with a team of five AS hot-shots, who resent his inclusion and his youth. They ignore all his advice, despite the fact that he grew up in the area they are in (we catch a glimpse of Sousuke's past). Unsurprisingly, things do not go well.

    Kaname spends a lot of time during these episodes getting frustrated with Sousuke, mostly while he isn't around. She denies that she's attracted to him, of course.

    The two comic episodes are lots of fun, and the serious one is a good start, but it's really frustrating to be forced to wait months for the conclusion of the two-parter. It's a shame they didn't arrange the episode count differently, perhaps making this another four-episode disc, for example.

Video

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

    The image is clear and sharp; this disc is a bit better than any of the previous ones. There is no film grain, and no low-level noise.

    Colour is rendered very nicely, and there is plenty of range in the colours on display. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are no film artefacts.

    There is some minor aliasing, but I'm used to it on this show, and it's not troublesome. There is no moiré and no MPEG artefacts.

    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. The subtitles are a bit disappointing this time, showing a number of spelling errors; things like "nintey" instead of "ninety", and "at thing" instead of "a thing" — trivial errors, but irritating. There's another mistake that's not exactly subtitles, but this seems the appropriate place to discuss it: at the end of the second episode, after the next-episode-preview, there's a second set of closing credits, this time without sound or background images — just text on black. I'm sure they are not supposed to be there.

    The disc is single-sided and single layered (unsurprisingly), so there is no layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English (both 5.1 and 2.0) and Japanese (2.0 only). The 2.0 soundtracks are Dolby Digital, not surround encoded, at 192kbps. The 5.1 soundtrack is Dolby Digital at 448kbps. I watched all the episodes in English 5.1, then again in Japanese 2.0. I didn't listen to the English 2.0 soundtrack.

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

    I like the music in this show. Toshihiko Sahashi has done a nice job.

    The English 5.1 soundtrack provides some good examples of well-mixed surround sound, including some neat rear sound effects (especially at the start of the third episode, which exercises your rear centre channel if you have one). The subwoofer gets a real workout in some scenes involving ASs. The Japanese 2.0 soundtrack is less exciting, but displays 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, but the music clip behind them is fairly short and gets a tad monotonous fairly quickly.

Reversible Cover

    The cover slick can be removed from the case and reversed. The inside image has completely different cover art (this time featuring one of Kaname's schoolfriends — I think it is Kyoko), and the front cover and spine are in Japanese. It has episode summaries instead of an overall blurb. There's only one catch stopping you from turning all the slicks around and having a much more colourful display: this one is labelled "Mission.03" — oops. Apparently Madman have already been notified, and will deal with it.

Clean Opening (1:31)

    The opening theme, in letterboxed form, without credits. There's a certain sense of déjà vu here...

Clean Closing (1:31)

    The closing sequence without credits. More déjà vu...

Production Sketches (1:34)

    This is not a gallery — it is a free-running montage of images with music. Unless I lost count (always possible...) there are 20 different pages go past in this passage.

Japanese Piracy Warning (0:33)

    We only get one warning this time, this time featuring Kazama (the schoolboy who is a big fan of AS technology) — appropriate, considering the second episode on this disc.

ADV Previews (7:31)

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

• Angelic Layer
• Final Fantasy Unlimited
• King of Bandit Jing
• Magical Shopping Arcada Abenobashi
• Martian Successor Nadesico: Prince of Darkness

DVD Credits

    Unusually, this page does not list the Madman team who made this disc, but rather the American team, presumably the people at ADV.

    The Region 1 version of this disc was released October 2003. As far as I can tell, their disc is identical to ours. They get a mini-poster that we don't, with some liner notes, but that's a small detail.

    The R1 is reported to have a very good transfer, possibly even better than the R4, but I suspect the differences are small.

    I'm calling this one as a draw between the Region 1 and the Region 4. I'm happy to buy the R4.

    Volume Four of an excellent anime series, on a rather good DVD.

    The video quality is very good.

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

    The extras are limited, but I really like the copyright/anti-piracy warnings (both the English and the Japanese).

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall