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 Run, July 13-October 19, 2005

Director Yasuhiro Takemoto

Kyoto Animation's adaptation, directed by Yasuhiro Takemoto, aired on satellite network WOWOW from July 13 to October 19, 2005, both dates confirmed across multiple independent sources. Shinsen-Subs led weekly digital distribution during this window, already documented elsewhere on this site for other titles.
[Shinsen]

Live-evIL Ran a Parallel Release

Live-evIL, already documented elsewhere on this site, also provided a parallel release during the same broadcast window.
[L-E]

AonE & A-Kingdom Put Out the Complete 1–13 Batch

AnimeSuki · July 25, 2005

AnimeSuki preserves a Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid 1–13 batch credited jointly to AonE & A-Kingdom on July 25, 2005. Whatever the displayed batch date represents in the archive chronology, the important point is clean: the joint release covered the full thirteen-episode television run.
[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 carries a full episodes 1–13 batch torrent, a separate Prologue, and individual releases for every television episode with air dates, release dates, filenames and CRCs.

The early part of the page also preserves parallel AVI and H.264/VFR MKV versions for several episodes. That is a small but useful snapshot of the format transition happening inside fansubbing in 2005.
Why it matters
The AonE & A-Kingdom complete batch was not the only full English route through the series. Bakakozou independently completed all thirteen television episodes and documented the project on its own site.
[Bakakozou]

Adapted From the Ending Day by Day Novels

The Second Raid Adapts Ending Day by Day, Volumes 4 and 5

The Second Raid adapts the fourth and fifth light novel volumes, both parts of Ending Day by Day, written by Shoji Gatoh. Fan translation collectives circulated plain-text translations of the unadapted novel material before any official English light novel localization existed.

FUNimation Handled Distribution, ADV Subcontracted the Dub

Kadokawa Held the License, FUNimation Distributed, ADV Only Dubbed It

ADV DVDs, November 2006-May 2007

FUNimation Entertainment handled North American sales, marketing, and distribution of The Second Raid under master rightsholder Kadokawa Pictures USA. FUNimation and Kadokawa contracted ADV Films to produce the English dub in Houston, released across individual DVD volumes from November 14, 2006 to May 1, 2007. The dub cast, confirmed accurate, included Chris Patton as Sousuke Sagara, Luci Christian as Kaname Chidori, Vic Mignogna as Kurz Weber, and Allison Shipp (also credited as Allison Keith) as Melissa Mao. [UNCONFIRMED]: the specific claim that this vendor arrangement was undertaken to preserve cast continuity from ADV's earlier seasons is not sourced anywhere found here, and is not asserted as fact.

When Kadokawa Pictures USA Folded, FUNimation Already Had It

2009 ADV Restructuring
When Kadokawa Pictures USA folded its North American division and ADV Films ceased operations in 2009, splitting into several successor companies, FUNimation, already handling distribution from the start, consolidated full rights to the Full Metal Panic! franchise. [UNCONFIRMED]: a specific 2010 Blu-ray reissue is not confirmed here despite appearing in an earlier draft, and should not be asserted with a specific date or technical spec until sourced.