Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory 08
フルメタル・パニック！Invisible Victory episode 08

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Kurama gives Sousuke 10 seconds to come out or he’ll kill Nami. Then Kurama aborts the countdown and kills her anyway. Sousuke doesn’t come out of hiding, so Kurama taunts him to no avail. Kurama and the chief start to leave when Lemon’s DGSE agents start taking out the chief’s men. Sousuke comes out to help, grabbing an automatic rifle, but he’s unable to stop Kurama and the police chief from getting away. Nami’s crew are angry with Sousuke over Nami’s death, but two agree to repair the Savage AS to allow Sousuke to pursue Kurama.

Sousuke turns down Lemon’s request to join his DGSE team and heads into Namsac. In the city, the chief and Kurama enlist AS pilots from the arena, including Dao, to kill Sousuke, giving them weapons. Kurama doubts they’ll stop Sousuke and leaves to set up his own welcome for Sousuke. Sousuke encounters a police checkpoint and destroys it before encountering his first mech. He easily overcomes the pilot, grabs the weapons, and learns where Kurama and the chief are.

With that, Sousuke engages the other AS pilots, easily defeating them. The police chief is killed in the carnage. Dao is his last opponent and manages to cripple Sousuke’s Savage, but Sousuke manages to kill Dao before being killed. Abandoning his mech, Sousuke heads to the arena, where Kurama leads Sousuke into a bomb trap. Kurama shoots Sousuke, but before he can finish him off, the DGSE agents attack. Kurama easily kills several of them, forcing them to retreat.

He then returns to finish off Sousuke, but Kurama discovers too late that Sousuke made his own trap. Sousuke mortally wounds Kurama and demands to know where Kaname is being held. Kurama initially refuses, then provides Sousuke with three cities. Kurama dies and Sousuke passes out just as Lemon and another DGSE agent arrive. Elsewhere, Wraith and another former Mithril agent examine a package and an incomplete AS unit the man calls ARX-8.

Thoughts/Review:

Wow. I have to say, Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory 08 left my head spinning, especially since I didn’t think Nami was going to get killed!

The Unexpected Death

I honestly did not think Nami would die here. I thought she might get wounded, both physically and in the heartbreak sense, but that’s about it. In my mind, Sousuke comes clean about his love for Kaname, which hurts Nami to hear. But being the gracious girl she is, she accepts Sousuke’s words and that’s that. I could see Nami showing up again at the end to meet Kaname and complete the healing processes.

What made Nami’s death even more shocking is that Kurama didn’t even wait for the countdown to end. He just decided, “to heck with this,” stopped counting and shot her. Even then, I thought Nami might survive, but the additional bullets she took removed that chance.

What I’m not clear about is if Nami was the one who saw herself dying before she got shot, or if that was Sousuke. Or maybe it was both of them.

Either way, Nami’s death was a shocker and I admit that Gatoh-sensei got me good.

The Cliched, but Still Cool, Fight

By Kurama murdering Nami before Sousuke’s eyes, we get our cliched MC rage moment, whereupon he’s going to go get revenge on the villain. In this case, it allowed Sousuke to have a fun mecha battle through the city until he was able to face the low-rent villain Dao and kill him in typical, last-second, lucky fashion. But as I said, it was all fun to watch.

Then we get to see Sousuke walk into a trap so obvious, even in his rage, he say, “Man, this must be a trap.” Then he sets the trap off anyway. Lucky for Sousuke, Lemon and his team where there to help, but the result was a fairly cool gun battle. This allowed Kurama to be shown to be highly skilled at handling trained professionals, whom we’d just seen had handled the police chief’s men with ease. By bumping Kurama’s skill stock, it helps make Sousuke’s win, even if cliched, somewhat more satisfying.

Probably the most interesting part of Sousuke’s fight with Kurama was Kurama demanding to know what was driving him. After all, Kurama had critically shot Sousuke, but somehow, Sousuke took advantage of the distraction caused by Lemon’s forces attacking to set his own trap for Kurama. Again, Sousuke’s response is cliched in that it was his love for Kaname that kept him going. Nevertheless, it was good enough for Kurama, and thus Sousuke gets some possible cities to explore.

DGSE

I have to admit, before the Lupin 3 Part 5 series started, I was completely unaware of France’s Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE). And now they make their entry into the Full Metal Panic franchise via Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory 08. I found that to be amusing.

So, what does Lemon and DGSE want? With Mithril apparently dead, DGSE may have been forced to deal with Amalgam’s activities since no one else will do it. Also, since Mithril had advanced technology that they didn’t share, Lemon could be looking for an opportunity to score some caches of Mithril tech that Sousuke could know about.  We’ll see where this goes.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Time to wrap up my thoughts on Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory 08.

• I was kinda hoping the M-9 pilot Sousuke met earlier would have shown up to help. Alas, that was not to be.
• I wonder how much longer Lemon and the DGSE will remain in the picture. Sousuke could use help, but he seems determined to do this on his own.
• I’m looking forward to seeing what is going on with Kaname as well as Tessa and crew.
• Glad to see Wraith again. I think the other guy was in The Second Raid, but I’m not 100% sure on that.

In the end, Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory 08 contained a big surprise in that the villain didn’t even wait for his own countdown to finish before he executed Nami. We had some cool, but cliched mecha battles as well as gun battles that ensued. I’m looking forward to the next episode.