Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu
Full Metal Panic has three seasons. Season 1, Fumoffu, and Season 2. Seasons 1 and 2 are a mix of anime high school romcom and mecha action series. They're goofy and fun but also switch on a dime with action and a plot revolving around... something or other. I've only seen part of season 1 and nothing of season 2 and that was a while ago so I don't really remember. But that doesn't matter cause we're talking about the intermediate season
Fumoffu.
Fumoffu is
Full Metal Panic with the action (almost) completely taken out to leave us with a fully silly anime high school rom com. Except it's a unique high school rom com that can actually be watched independently of the series proper and let's see why, and let's also see why it's by far the funniest anime I've ever seen and easily a top 5 funniest show of any kind I've ever seen...
Episode 1 (separated into two separate parts of which we will explore only the first) begins with a high school teacher confronting a principal concerning destruction of school property buy one Sousuke Sagara. The principal makes it clear that this will be ignored due to a "sizable donation". You see, Sousuke is a child soldier, a member of a benevolent mercenary unit, and his current assignment is to protect one Kaname Chidori, a fully normal high school girl, for reasons that are made clear in the first season but never in
Fumoffu because they don't matter and have nothing to do with this season. So just go with it.
After this we see Kaname walking to school with a friend discussing a Sylvester Stallone movie she had watched the previous night cause that's just her thing, and they are interrupted at the school entrance by an explosion. You see, Sousuke had discovered that his shoe locker (Japanese school children turn in their shoes at the entrance) had been tampered with and decided that the only reasonable solution was to use C4 to detonate it. Sousuke has only known war and does not know how to be a student, so the fact that his locker had been "tampered" with by a female admirer leaving a love letter would never and could never cross his mind. Hence the high yield explosive. You never know when it could be the work of a terrorist.
So after Kaname discovers the source of the explosion she performs her main duty throughout the series: she physically assaults Sousuke in energetic exasperation.
After a discussion with the school council president who is also a nutbar who sides with Sousuke, Kaname and her male lead love interest discuss the nature of the letter that he exploded. Kaname perceives it to be a love letter cause of course it was and I just said it was, but Sousuke thinks it is a clever feint challenging him to a duel after school while also impersonating the handwriting of a high school girl because he is stupid.
Sousuke leaves to do... what the **** ever, and so Kaname, thoroughly jealous, and her previously mentioned friend decide to wait in the bushes at the spot where the "terrorist" had told Sousuke to wait after school and proceed to sit for several hours while the "terrorist" girl, a beauty pageant runner-up cause of course, waits in plain site. Eventually it gets dark and even Kaname begins to feel sorry for the hapless love letter sender but then the stock Japanese toughs intent on rape show up.
They try to assault the other girl, Kaname stops them, also almost gets raped, and then Sousuke, having waited motionless in a prone firing position for many hours in a gillie suit shoots the toughs with rubber bullets.
Like, the hapless girl is highly confused by this, is devastated on revelation that her letter was blown up, and then we never see her again. Then Kaname physically assaults Sousuke for being a clueless weirdo who can only deal with normal situations via ludicrous military solutions.
Then the next day she leaves him a lunch in his shoe locker in thanks for saving her and assaults him when he tries to detonate his locker yet again.
And this is the entire gist of
Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu. It's just Sousuke misinterpreting normal high school situations, trying to blow things up, and Kaname beating him up while being in love with him. And it never gets old. My god it never gets old. You have no idea just how much feet this concept has. The writing is razor sharp and the animation is beautifully modern yet still warm and inviting. And most importantly none of it makes the least bit of sense ever at all. I just watched this first episode and had to tear myself away from the series because **** off.
This will absolutely not be my last
Full Metal Panic entry. This wasn't even a particularly notable episode. It's just a good setup. There's so much brilliance that I absolutely must tell you more.