About the Mangaka
Sadly not a lot of information available for Tateo Retsu, beyond her doing the art for the first Full Metal Panic manga. She does however have a personal website, which has a profile on there. If some knowledgeable person could translate and email it to me, I’d be grateful!!
Gatou Shoji really shouldn’t need any introduction. The series he created, Full Metal Panic, is probably one of the largest series I’ve ever seen. Spanning several series of light novels, three different manga incarnations, two of which are licensed, the current incarnation Sigma is still unlicensed. It also has had three incarnations as anime, with a fourth apparently in the works. He also has a personal blog, but again it’s in Japanese.
About the Manga
To be honest, when I picked up this series I hated it. I hated the anime which was just plain old naf, and it was with great reluctance that I decided to read the manga. In fact the only reason I did buy them was because they were going cheap. Which I have to admit would have been a great shame, since the manga is bloody funny.
Tateo’s art is great, far from perfect by any means, however it does fit the style of manga.
I did feel she had problems a few times, with the support characters especially. They didn’t feel as fleshed out and real as the other characters. I think that’s a shame as the characters, while being minor, do play an important role and the lack of care given to them clearly shows.
Also there were a few times when Gaoron is around. If you check the facial features from earlier volumes, with the later ones, there are some drastic changes. Though not enough to confuse over who he was.
Over all though, Tateo’s art style is fun, which is perfect since it matches Gatou’s writing.
My main grievance with the anime is that it misused the comedy elements, it felt to forced to be comedy. The manga however puts this right.
Gatou’s story telling is epic, and bloody funny on so many levels. I love the interactions between the characters, which feels more natural and fluid, something the anime lacked.
The story also has a feel to it that I didn’t find in the anime, that’s a comedy overlying a serious story. While it’s true that Gatou has a lot of comedy in this series, namely in the way Souske tries to protect Chidori, you don’t have to scratch the surface to deeply to find the serious aspects.
However, despite this it has a failing, to much of what was in the anime is cut out. You won’t mind if you haven’t seen the anime, but if you have you’re going to end up missing certain things, which were pretty good in the anime, but are lacking in the manga.
At first I didn’t find these to be all to bad, however as the story progressed and more and more became obvious by their lack of presence, it started to have an impact on the enjoyment of the manga.
As a result, I think those who read the manga first, then watch the anime, will end losing some of their enjoyment of the manga. And those who have seen the anime first, will find the same.
This series is published by ADV, and like a lot of their titles I’ve read, it’s oversized. For the most part I was impressed with the way they handled this series. loved the colour pages they left intact, bleaching colour from colour panels fails big time. TP learnt that with Aqua 
The paper used is standard manga paper, and we all know what I think in that :p front. Translation seems smooth and concise, with not problems or flow interruptions. The problem however is that for some reason some text is flipped. I can’t figure out why, but every now and then there are several panels that you need to read left to right for them to make sense. This is bad editing and quality control in my opinion.
The series also suffers from guttering at times, in this series I find that unacceptable given it’s oversized. There’s really no excuse of them not making use of all that space to remove the guttering.
Also, there’s effects and text bubbles that are left in. I have no problem with this if it’s an all or nothing thing. Either translate and replace all effects, or just translate and put in brackets beside them. Also, the text that was left in was just plain old annoying. All of them had english translations beside them, so I couldn’t see a reason for leaving them in. This sort of patchy editing is something I’ve found in a few of ADV’s titles, and one of my main beefs with them.
While I loved the series for it’s comedy, the flaws out weigh the enjoyment, and as such I can’t add it to the Essential Read list, though unlike the anime version, it doesn’t end up on my Junk Pile list. That said this series is heading Out of Print, so if you want to get it, it’s worth getting now while you can. Or check out eBay, which is where I got mine.
Where to Buy
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UK folks can head on over to either the Book Depository or eBay
As always, I am not on any affiliate scheme, and do not get anything back. I provide links to online shops where possible simple yo make finding the titles easier.
August 13, 2008 @ 19:24.
It’s more that the manga doesn’t follow the anime at all… and the anime doesn’t quite follow the novels either. Now, if you watch Fumoffu… you’ll see the manga animated there, and quite well at that. The only parts which match the original are probably the first two volumes, where Sagara meets Gauron again, and Kaname gets kidnapped. The rest is pretty much found only in Fumoffu, as you’ll note in one of the artist’s notes in the back when she celebrates the fact the manga’s been made into an anime called Fumoffu.