Thursday, October 10, 2013

Full Metal Panic! Zero Update

Full Metal Panic! Zero Volume 1 and 2

Full Metal Panic! Zero is the latest Manga adaptation to the FMP light novel series. Serialized in Dragon Comics Age since December 2012, there are two volumes released so far with 4 chapters each. Much like most of the Full Metal Panic! Sigma books, each volume has about 160 pages.

Much like the first Full Metal Panic! Manga series illustrated by Retsu Tateo from 2000-2005, Zero is an adaptation of the first FMP light novels, that already got adapted to Anime, too. Thus, story wise there may not be much new to this series for you.

What's new is the character design as well as the general tone of the adaptation. Although mostly following the serious plot of the light novels, there are tons of cartoonish slapstick parts woven into the it.





That's not to say Full Metal Panic! didn't have any slapstick or comedy before, it had a lot. In the light novels as well as the Manga and Anime adaptations. But when The Second Raid was for the most part straight forward serious and Fumoffu mostly slapstick, with Zero artist Tetsurō Kasahara (Rideback) is seemingly trying to combine both. Slapstick on the battlefield...





It turns out, that Full Metal Panic! Zero feels more like a parody to FMP, rather than just another adaptation. Sousuke Sagara and Kaname Chidori seem not only different in character design but also in their characters themself.

With volume two Zero reaches about 2/3 into the first FMP light novel Fighting Boy Meets Girl. At this pace volume three, which is set to be released in early 2014, should finish the story from that book. If Tetsurō Kasahara will continue to adapt the remaining 11 light novels to Manga, remains to be seen, but we do hope so!

As for the chapter list to both volumes, here you go:




Full Metal Panic! Zero 1 (164 pages):

01 - Prologue
02 - Boy Meets Girl
03 - High School Life
04 - Surprise Attack

Full Metal Panic! Zero 2 (162 pages):

05 - School Excursion
06 - Take Off! Take Off! Take...
07 - Light And Sound
08 - Lambda Driver

Chances are, you will never see this series getting (fan-)translated to english. It's also quite likely that Zero won't be around for very long. You might also not like this series. However, it is refreshing for me to see a bold attempt like this to capture the well known story from another perspective. I can only wish Tetsurō Kasahara, whos Rideback i quite enjoyed, best of luck to continue with this endeavour the way he sees appropriate.

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