Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu
Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu is a companion series to the anime series Full Metal Panic! (originally animated by studio GONZO) by Kyoto Animation.Markedly different in tone to the first series, Fumoffu emphasizes the high school romantic comedy aspects of Full Metal Panic! and focuses on the romantic tension between Sosuke Sagara and Kaname Chidori. It sometimes parodies itself on other anime stereotypes, and features none of the mecha combat and political intrigue which characterized much of the original Full Metal Paic!.
There is little ongoing plot, also contrasting with the first Full Metal Panic! series: most Fumoffu episodes can stand alone, needing very little recap if any. The only breaks from this pattern are a handful of two-part stories told over two episodes. Many of the stories in Fumoffu are adaptations of plots in the original Full Metal Paic! short stories that ran on the Dragon Magazine.
The television series was produced by Kyoto Animation, replacing GONZO from the previous series. The English version was produced by ADV Films. The original broadcast in Japan aired from August 25 through November 18 of 2003. It ran for 11 episodes, and 2 volumes of videos were released on DVD. To coincide with seasonal change of the last three broadcasts, the ending song images which were of summer at the beginning were changed to that of the fall.
While Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu may seem to be a sidestory, in fact many of the episodes were taken more or less directly from the actual run of the Full Metal Paic! light novels. It may have been that the producers sought to keep the core story straight during the Full Metal Paic! series, but then wanted to explore some of the less important stories at a later time.
The name "Fumoffu" is the sound made by Bonta-kun, a fictional mascot in the series who resembles a giant yellow teddy bear. During the series Sousuke designs and places into production heavily modified Bonta-kun suits for the purpose of aiding in tactical situations. Except for only being able to move at normal walking or running speeds for a human, the suit is essentially a miniature Arm Slave - however, the suit's "voice changer" renders all speech into either "Fu", "Mo", "Ffu", or "Ru", and the F.M.M.F.O. OS will immediately crash if the pilot tries to deactivate it (as referenced in Episode 10). This results in Kaname needing to act as a translator via headset radio if Sousuke needs to make himself understood.