Full Metal Alchemist General

Like, the way any sense of Bradley being a Reasonable Authority Figure falls out the window the second he's revealed as Pride in '03, while in Brotherhood he keeps the act up longer. Even if he's still evil, I like him more when he at least acts like he's reasonable.

I just really like how multi-faceted all the characters in the Full Metal Alchemist series are.

Which one?

Well mostly Mangahood. I haven't seen enough of 2003 to say.

Though I loved more or less all of '03s characters for that reason. Really only Pride or Gluttony are flat.

So, that rock monster thing in the live action trailer. I'm guessing that's how they're interpreting Cornello's pet chimera.

I'm kind of interested in seeing the manga, because the source material is usually better than the adaptation, no matter how great that adaptation may be.

Can't be too hard to find.

The thing is Viz's translation is pretty meh in quality.

Brotherhood didn't exactly cover everything of the manga, as it rushed through the material in the first 14 episodes. The Ishval flashback was also reduced from an entire manga volume to a single episode, so I'd suggest to at least read that part.

Finally watched Shamballa, though it was very meh. Not necessarily bad, but it wasn't FMA level of quality.

In what way? I read all the Viz translation and find nothing particularly wrong with it.

I once found an English FMA volume that localised Xerxes as "Celkcess" (or something similar). I don't know if it was Viz or not, but that immediately turned me off buying that volume at the time.

Let me quote Viz's first line of the manga.

"Teachings that do not speak of pain have no meaning."

Just look at how cumbersome the aesop is.

There are also a few panels where speech bubbles are wrongly assigned.

Early days were rough. Viz as a whole has gotten much much better translators, or the people under them improved hard.

I think the volumes are woth buying to officially support the author alome imo

I always say the manga is better. The exceptions are rare in my opinion (Attack on Titan is one, maybe Initial D if only for Eurobeat). And I consider the FMA manga to be an outright masterpiece of the medium. I'm not sure how much they changed in Brotherhood, but if you ever want to go through the story again, see for yourself and go through the manga (which will be quicker if nothing else).

Also to supporting the author.

edited 15th Dec '16 3:56:23 AM by GoldenKaos

I mean, it could have been worded differently but that wasn't at all hard to understand. If it was for you, well, maybe that's on you.

edited 24th Jan '17 2:13:19 PM by LSBK

I love how when Arakawa spoke about when Square Enix decided to make an anime out of her manga, she was like "Why would they make an anime out of some obscure manga like mine? Are you guys deceiving me because I'm a country hick or something?"

On another note, Crunchyroll has Shamballa for some reason.

I arrive a little too late, but since I recently discovered these series, and this forum has good analysis posts, I'd like to ask a couple of questions for you guys:

-Meta question: The FMA franchise has a Broken Base fandom. Is this a 50/50 situation, a 70/30 one, depends where you go? It seems to me that some sites like MAL or the FMA subreddit are obviously pro-Brotherhood, while others stay ambiguous, and then there are many tumblrs, blogs or sites which are clearly pro-2003. Is there an age or gender division between the two fandoms?

-Conqueror of Shamballa: What's your opinion on this movie? I'm surprised to see so much criticism on it, even people who refuse to acknowledge it as the true ending of the original series. According to Wikipedia it had almost universally good critics, and has a 90% audience score at Rotten Tomatoes. Sure, it was a bit rushed because they had to cut much of the script, and the brother's reunion felt a bit cold. However, as much as I loved the bittersweet ending of the series, I found the film to be quite good.

-Has anyone seen the Kids OVA? It was sooooooooooo weird. Do you consider it canon?

Brotherhood has the deck stacked in its favor. It's new, it's 'canon,' thereeforenew viewers are more likely to watch it. its high reviews also make it attractive. Therefore it gets shown in major sites such as Crunchyroll, which leads to even more review scores, and word of mouth. Unstable Equilibrium of sort.

most Tumblrs posts I see are about Brotherhood (65-35 think) And I'm sure Brotherhood tumblr don't complaint about their series being swept under the rug.

TV Tropes seems to favor mangahood too. especially if you look at the Trope Pantheon.

about Shamballa, I don't like it because of Idiot Plot and the fact that it follows 2003's ending, which I have little love for.

edited 7th Apr '17 6:45:18 AM by RAlexa21th

I've seen Brotherhood fans complaining about feeling harassed in some sites, so I don't know. In general, I have the impression that FMAB fans come off as more hateful, though, while 2003 fans are largely indifferent towards Brotherhood, or just dismiss it as "typical shonen for kids". So I don't know if it's a case of FMAB fans being more in number or just louder. In ANN, Brotherhood has better ratings, but the original FMA is voted most popular and most viewed, without FMAB appearing in the list. That's why I asked if this was an uniformly Broken Base or varied according to public. If I had to bet money on this, I'd say the younger and more homogenous male the audience, the more likely they'll prefer FMAB.

Personally, I'm a 2003 convert. I watched Brotherhood first, and only watched 2003 reluctantly (and after reading spoilers for the whole series, because I didn't plan on watching it). At first I didn't want to like 2003, because I'm lazy and just wanted to like more the first version I saw. But at the point at which both shows diverge I had to stop lying to myself, and recognize that I found 2003 much superior in every way (characterization, themes, ideology, music, art design, direction, writing...). In hindsight, I don't like the big scope that Brotherhood took; I've seen the same big conspiracy plot a million times, and better done. I don't like Black and White Morality either, and find it unrealistic and bland. Ultimately, 2003 was about the Elrics and alchemy, more reflective and less action, which was what I wanted to see, while Brotherhood kind of betrayed my expectations and disappointed me. The big Values Dissonance I got from FMAB didn't help either, specially towards the end (man, there's SO MUCH I didn't like about that sugar-coated ending that I was almost furious).

So yeah, I much. much prefer Co S ending. 2003's ending was good on its own, but frankly, I needed the Elrics to be reunited again, and the film provided just that, so I was happy.

But that other film, The Sacred Star of Milos, man that was horribly boring. I don't know how I had the strenght to finish it.

Feminist fans tend prefer Brotherhood. I suppose I had already stated my opinion of 2003.

Anyway, finished Vol 13.

Ed uses Riza's gun to fire 5 directions so he can hear echoes in Gluttony's stomach. Now that's Hawkeye's Gun.

Turns out the "ground" in Gluttony's stomach is clotted blood. Okay, but how can Envy walk around in their default form? I estimate they weighs around an elephant, and their contact surface has the same area as human feet.

The manga doesn't show Envy shooting the Ishbalan kid, I'm surprised.

A recurring theme about the extras is Arakawa complaining about the deadlines and being overworked.

edited 7th Apr '17 8:19:09 AM by RAlexa21th

To be honest, both shows treat the female characters fairly well, but I wouldn't call either a masterwork of feminism. Brotherhood has a tendency to force major female characters into love interests. Almost every woman who spends a reasonable amount of time with a man is eventually turned into it: Winry and Ed, Hawkeye and Mustang, Al and May, even Lan Fan is given much sentimentality towards Ling (with characters like Greed commenting on it). Lust is pure fanservice, with obligatory bouncing boobs shot. Grumman touches Rebecca's ass and it's treated as a joke (as a woman in the military, I can tell you JUST how funny I find that...), and this is the guy who ends up being Führer in a supposedly happy ending.

2003 has also fanservice in the Psiren's episode. Then they make Ed to touch her breast in order to realize that the thief is a woman, as if that wasn't obvious from the start. Really Ed, a thief running in tight clothes and high heels? Dante can be seen as the typical Vain Sorceress who has spent her life obsessing over Hohenheim. One of her major reasons for switching to younger bodies is seducing him (or in case this fails, raping his poor son). Rose is a bit of a damsel in distress...

Ed shits on your gender assumptions.

In regards to how the two series are received, what I've noticed is more cynical people tend to prefer 2003 and feel that Brotherhood is a bit too corny in some respects.