Full Metal Panic! A Dancing Very Merry Christmas is a Sci-fi, Action, Romance, Comedy, Drama light novel that focuses on a controversial mission that Mithril’s TDD-1 crew decided to undertake.

Plot / Story
Two months after the events of ‘The End of Day by Day’; the story continues with the 2nd year students of Jindai High, planning to go on an overnight Christmas Cruise. There’s always the worry that it may turn into another hijacking like before, but the beginning mostly focuses on Sousuke & Kaname’s rocky relationship and the affect Tessa has made. Sure this non-progressing romance is fairly tiresome however the story becomes more engaging, when TDD-1’s mission involves the overnight cruise. The way the mission was carried out felt like the TV series ‘24’. It had an interesting way of dealing with several events, occurring at the same time, with the author assorting events in a way that the reader wouldn’t get lost.

Characters
We have pretty much all the old FMP! characters, plus some new ones and the excellent dialogue used, during their conversations with each other, is one thing to look forward to in this novel. Even though the main characters like the Kaname & Sousuke duo are pretty much the same as always, a lot of the characters seem to have undergone slight change in their mannerism. The most noticeable change is Sousuke who is more casual, especially around Tessa.

Drawing Style
In this light novel, the artwork is pretty much the same as always. Usually once per chapter a detailed picture is used to portray some important situations and even though they look really good the character designs do seem a bit off, at times.

Overall / Enjoyment
Overall Dancing Very Merry Christmas is a great set-up story for the later novels, as it manages to showcase most of the important characters. The story itself was very unimaginative but the way it was executed was certainly FMP-like, with plenty of humorous exchanges between the characters. This novel is complete with an equal amount of action, comedy and tension, which is the perfect formula for any FMP! fan.

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