At Fantasia Bunko Big Thanks Festival 2016, a special event was held for the Full Metal Panic! franchise. At the previous special event last year, a new anime for the franchise was announced. This year, it was revealed that the new anime project would be titled Full Metal Panic! IV. The new anime is set to premiere in Fall 2017. Along with the premiere date announcement, the main staff for the new anime was announced.
The anime will be produced by XEBEC and directed by Katsuichi Nakayama. Nakayama was the series director for planetarian and assistant director for Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo. The original light novel author, Shoji Gatoh, will handle the series composition and will write the scripts. Osamu Horiuchi will act as chief animation director and and character designer. Horiuchi previously worked on both Full Metal Panic! and Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid. Aya Yamamoto will serve as sub-character designer. Takeshi Yoshioka serves as small arms designer and animation director. Kanetake Ebikawa and Toshiaki Ihara serve as the mechanical designers. Takayuki Yanase is the set designer and Masanori Nishii is the mechanical director.
Takuya Matsumura will serve as the Prop Designer and Mechanical Animation Director. Yu Kato will also act as Mechanical Animation Director. Shōsuke Uechi will act as CG director and Chiaki Kitabayashi will handle the Color Key. Shin Inoie will work on the special effects.
At the event, it was also revealed that Vol. 6 of the Full Metal Panic! light novel, Odoru Very Merry Christmas, would receive an audio drama. You can check out key art for that below.
Full Metal Panic! is a light novel series written by Shoji Gatoh and illustrated by Shiki Dōji. It was published by Fujimi Shobo under their Fujimi Fantasia Bunko imprint from 1998-2011. The series was published in Dragon Magazine and ran for 23 volumes.
Full Metal Panic! IV is set to premiere in Fall 2017.
