Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid

Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid

フルメタル・パニック! The Second Raid
2005 Kyoto Animation TBS / MBS 13 episodes Completed
Action Mecha Military Drama Psychological
Details & Synopsis
The original Full Metal Panic balanced its military thriller against high school comedy with a precision that should not have worked and did. The Second Raid removes the balance. The comedy is almost entirely gone. What remains is the military thriller, and something underneath it that the first series was too busy juggling tones to fully surface.

Produced by Kyoto Animation and directed by Yasuhiro Takemoto, The Second Raid aired on TBS in 2005. Thirteen episodes. KyoAni were not yet the studio everyone knew them as, this predates Haruhi, predates Lucky Star, predates the reputation. What it represents is the studio at the peak of their action animation capability, before they pivoted to the aesthetic that would define their next decade. The Arm Slave combat sequences are as good as the genre produced in the mid-2000s.

The story picks up with the Amalgam organization moving from background threat to primary antagonist. Sousuke Sagara continues his impossible double life, MITHRIL special forces operative and Kaname Chidori's bodyguard-slash-classmate, until MITHRIL pulls him off the protection detail. What follows is the series' actual subject: what happens to a soldier trained since childhood for violence and nothing else when the one assignment that gave his life adjacent-to-human context is removed. Sousuke does not handle it gracefully. Sousuke does not handle it at all.

Gates is the antagonist the series deploys against this. Unhinged in a register the franchise had not previously attempted, not calculating, not ideological, simply a man who has found war and found that he likes it, enthusiastically, in a way that makes everyone around him deeply uncomfortable including his own allies. He is one of the more genuinely unsettling villain performances of the era.

Kaname alone and aware she is unprotected. Al, the Lambda Driver AI in the Arbalest, developing something that functions like concern. Tessa Testarossa carrying command weight that the first series kept at the level of character detail. The Second Raid is not a larger story than its predecessor. It is a narrower one, focused tighter on what the original was too busy to examine. Thirteen episodes and it earns every one of them.

A one-episode OVA, The Second Raid: "Another", was released with the DVD. Kaname in the bath, framed as comedy, functioning as something considerably more uncomfortable. Watch it after the series.
Alt Title フルメタル・パニック! The Second Raid
Studio Kyoto Animation
Network TBS / MBS
Aired 2005
Episodes 13
Genre Action, Mecha, Military, Drama, Psychological
Status Completed
← All lore

Fansub & Scanlation History

2005: WOWOW Satellite Broadcast, Confirmed July-October

Kyoto Animation's 13-Episode WOWOW Run

July 13 - October 19, 2005 · Yasuhiro Takemoto

Kyoto Animation's The Second Raid aired for thirteen television episodes from July 13 through October 19, 2005 under director Yasuhiro Takemoto.

AnimeHistory's retained fansub records also connect Shinsen-Subs to The Second Raid during the 2005 broadcast era. The surviving evidence does not yet establish a clean episode-by-episode Shinsen release map, so the archive should not pretend that it does.
Why it matters
A group association and a reconstructed weekly release history are not the same claim. The first is supported here. The second still needs stronger evidence.
[Shinsen]

Live-eviL Also Appears in the TSR Fansub Record

2005 Broadcast-Era Release Evidence

Live-eviL is also preserved in AnimeHistory's release records for The Second Raid during the 2005 broadcast period.

The exact episode coverage has not yet been reconstructed strongly enough to turn that association into a complete release map.
Why it matters
Fansub history gets worse when every surviving group name is automatically promoted into a full-series claim. For now, Live-eviL belongs in the record without pretending we know more than the evidence shows.
[L-E]

AnimeSuki Preserves a Complete AonE & A-Kingdom 1-13 Batch

Archive index displays July 25, 2005 · Do not treat that as episode chronology

AnimeSuki preserves a complete Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid 1-13 batch credited jointly to AonE and A-Kingdom.

The archive displays July 25, 2005 alongside the batch record. Because the television series itself did not finish until October, that displayed date must not be converted into a claim that all thirteen translated episodes existed on July 25.
Why it matters
The evidence proves the joint release covered the complete television series. It does not, by itself, reconstruct when each individual episode was translated or released.
[A-Kingdom-AonE]

Bakakozou Completed The Second Raid Too

Prologue + Episodes 1-13 · Own Project Page · AVI and H.264/VFR MKV

Bakakozou's own Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid project page, captured June 16, 2006, explicitly marks the project Complete. It lists a full Episodes 1-13 batch, a separate Prologue and individual television episode releases with filenames and CRCs.

The page also preserves both AVI and H.264/VFR MKV versions for part of the run.
Why it matters
That format split is a small snapshot of fansubbing in transition. AVI was still normal, but H.264 Matroska releases were already becoming part of the same project workflow. It also gives AnimeHistory direct group-owned evidence for another complete English TSR release.
[Bakakozou]

FUNimation Handled Distribution, ADV Subcontracted the Dub

Kadokawa Licensed It, FUNimation Distributed, ADV Produced the Localization

North American DVD release began November 14, 2006

Kadokawa Pictures USA awarded The Second Raid to FUNimation for its North American release. FUNimation handled the commercial release and distribution, while ADV Films produced the English-language localization, including the dub and subtitles.

That arrangement allowed the familiar ADV-era English cast to continue in the new series even though the release itself was no longer simply another ADV Films license.
Why it matters
The Second Raid sits in an odd licensing handoff. The packaging and distributor changed, but much of the English production lineage from the earlier Full Metal Panic! anime remained recognizable.

FUNimation Later Added the Earlier FMP Television Series

Anime USA 2009 · Remastered DVD/Blu-ray releases followed
By Anime USA 2009, FUNimation announced that it had acquired the North American rights to the earlier Full Metal Panic! television material as well. Remastered DVD and Blu-ray releases followed in 2010.
What changed
The Second Raid had entered the market through Kadokawa Pictures USA and FUNimation while the earlier anime had been associated with ADV. A few years later, those television releases were being collected under the same distributor.

Ending Day by Day Source Material

The Second Raid Adapts Ending Day by Day

Light Novel Volumes 4 and 5

The Second Raid adapts the two-part Ending Day by Day story from Full Metal Panic! light novel Volumes 4 and 5 by Shoji Gatoh.
Why it matters
That source explains why the thirteen episodes feel unusually concentrated compared with the original television series. The story is not hopping between several unrelated novel arcs. It is building toward one sustained break in Sousuke's attempt to live as both soldier and student.