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Short Summary:
Sousuke finds out from Kazama that some candid photos were taken of Chidori and posted on the internet. He goes on alert, confronting everyone who approaches her in the classic Sousuke way (which is followed by the classic Chidori beatdown). In the Republic of Balic, Gates, with the sisters Xia Yu Fang and Xia Yu Lan, arrives at a standoff with the ever-so-unlucky bad guy from last episode. Gates pulls a gun and pops him in the head before all hell breaks loose with the sisters start slaughtering everyone. Back at school, Sousuke finds the person who’s been posting the photos of Chidori and chases him to the roof. The culprit takes a photo of Chidori picking her nose hostage, threatening to post it, but Sousuke activates a radar that he had built earlier (and Chidori shut down), which shorts out the computer and all the electronics in the area. Sousuke threatens him with a knife, but ends up letting him get away thanks to Chidori’s kick. Before he does though, they learn that this guy was not the one who Chidori spotted spying on her when she woke up. Throughout this, they are being watched by a mysterious man from another rooftop..
The more I watch TSR, the more I want to read the FMP! novels (conveniantly translated by Boku-Tachi). Honestly, I’ve never read a novel in that sense, so I’m very interested, plus it’s FMP!, so all the better.
Anyway, this episode showed how big of a lunatic Gates is. This guy blows the brains out of the bad guy from last week, sings during the proceeding slaughter, then headshots his own guy later; never mind that he abuses Xia Yu Lan a bit afterwords. I just hope he’s not as unkillable as Gauron. The screenshots for next episode (from the WOWOW site) show him in a piloting suit, so we’ll probably get to see his piloting skills too.
This episode also showed that FMP! TSR is definately not for kids anymore. There was quite a bit of frontal nudity (breast shots) and gory violence (arms cut off, brains blown out), all of which caught me off-guard. Definately not what I was expecting out of Full Metal Panic!. Whether it’s good or bad remains to be seen; it’ll be determined by how much future nudity we have and whether all the action sequences are going to be pretty violent (at least the ones involving Gates). Still, this episode did manage to provide some classic Sousuke protecting Chidori humor which gave me quite a few laughs, going to show that some things never change.
As for the sisters, the long haired one (Xia Yu Fang) is the AS pilot while the short haired one (Xia Yu Lan) is the hand to hand combat one, and they seem quite close (yes in that sense too). They mention their sensei several times, but not really who he is. Leonard also calls them up and tells them to keep a low profile. I wonder what evil things he’s got planned…
Edit: Added a few more tidbits.
Damn, this new FMP is looking good, I must download!
What do you think of some of the weird angles they’re using for shots? Especially on the Tuatha de Danaan, whenever Tessa or Kalinin are talking … it seems the angle is always skewed way off, or even upside down. This is good when you consider you get to see more of the oh-so-sexy Tessa, but even with that don’t you think it’s kind of weird?
Other than that, I’m loving the show so far. It’s great to have it back to being action and comedy, not just the action. And holy crap is Gates nuts. O_O (it’s even weirder ‘cuz he has the same seiyuu as Jiraiya from Naruto)
I’m not sure what to make of the angles. I just assume it’s a style that they’re using to be more dramatic. Though initially I thought that maybe the Kalinin upsidedown shot was maybe an error, but who knows. *shrugs*
Gates is whacko. Worse than Gauron…
You’re right. Some things about Sohsuke and Kaname will never change. But as my friend EKMisao remarked, the show had gone serious in the first run and for my own opinion, the Xia sister have gone way too lesbian!
As for the Gates guy… he’s loco!
I’m liking the screenshots!
You’ve got to read the novels! They’re translated at boku-tachi.net
^^
What I really cannot fathom is why they gave the chinese twins a gender change. In the novels they’re both boys. They act pretty much the same there as they do here, just…you know, they’re male. I think that was kind of the point. It was supposed to be shocking and possibly make readers uncomfortable…but when they turn them into girls….it just makes it gratuitous. And to think I was annoyed by the Kaname panty shots in season one….