FMA:Brotherhood 1,2, & 3
Apr. 25th, 2009 03:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
exhilarationI've had a long standing obsession with Fullmetal Alchemist. I watched the anime from the very beginning, almost simultaneously as it was being shown in Japan. I was in college at the time, and there were four of us living together when it first started. Jay, I think, got me into it - actually, I was hard-core obsessed with Harry Potter at the time, and when she showed me the anime, fan-subbed of course, that first sub we watched was using "sorcerer's stone" instead of "philosopher's stone" and so I was immediately like, wat? Harry Potter? (Of course now I know that in Europe the first book is called "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"...)
We'd download it every week, twice, in fact, because Jay would watch it in Japanese. I was always torn between watching it with her and understanding next to nothing, or just waiting another day or two for the fansub. It only took about eight episodes for me to be completely hooked, and my obsession after that lasted years. After the series ended I decided to check out the manga, and realized just how different the anime was from the book to begin with. Although the anime sucked me in, there were, absolutely, a lot of flaws that the manga definitely doesn't have. So when I heard that they were rebooting the anime and following the manga - well, I reallyreallyreally wanted to be into this, but it took a little while for me to actually watch it.
Well, I've seen the first three episodes. I only watched each one once (here if anyone's interested, right on the Funimation site) so this won't be a detailed analysis, by any means, but here goes:
Actually it may have been good to watch all three at once, and compare them to the first three of the first series. The first series started out in Liore, and the first two eps were the Liore story arc (if I'm remembering correctly... I don't have the files anymore) and the third one was the backstory ep. First ep of Brotherhood starts with an invented villian (not in the manga) and you know, I really, really enjoyed that first ep, invented villian or not. I thought it was a great start. Of course, I have no idea how the ep would seem to someone who hasn't already seen the first series and read the manga, but I thought it was pretty fascinating the small differences from the first series. The manga is so much more military-focused and this came out to me in the first ep. Ed's a soldier, a very unusual situation because he's so young and yet outranks so many others - he's an alchemic genius but we don't see him using his alchemy to save the day - we see him participating in what the military's doing, but not saving the day. His true genius isn't really revealed until the backstory ep, where we see all the information that's been crammed into his head.
The backgrounds looked much more sophisticated to me - there was more of a sense of place, if that makes any sense, in that first episode, and I think... am I right in saying that they're in East City? Not Central?
The second ep, the backstory ep (so equivalent I guess to the third ep of the first series?) had a lot more tension and horror in it this time around. First series was more tug-at-your-heart-drama than horror. This was an interesting change and I think I like it - one of my criticisms of the first series was that it began to take itself too seriously, while at the same time blowing off heavy plot points - of course a lot of this was explained by the series finishing in 51 episodes and using only the material from the beginning of the manga - what else could they do? Of course things that turned into major plot in the manga had to be left alone, because the anime writers didn't know what the manga creator was planning.
So anyway (I am a shit reviewer of anime, I'm starting to realize) in these first three episodes I'm seeing more grit and realism in the military and more tension all around (as opposed to drama - interesting, what do I perceive is the difference between drama and tension anyway?) and at the same time I love, love, love the visual evidence that this is a manga adaptation - I love how Ed and Al, when emotional, turn into caricatures of themselves! I know they did this in the first series too, in the beginning, anyway, but this looks just like the little side drawings in Arakawa's books! I love that! And I enjoyed how in the third ep it was split into panels - I like that when they do that in comic book movies, too, now that I think about it.
I remember watching the first series a second time and seeing how much the animation changed from the beginning to the end, and also thinking that Ed appeared to have three possible ages: child Ed, twelve year old Ed, and sixteen year old Ed. When I started reading the manga I loved watching Ed get older little by little. I hope we get this in the new series too!
And... that's about it. Again, here I thought I had a ton of stuff to say, when really I didn't have that much to say after all.
Except that, of course, I miss Daniel, and I do miss Jay, too. I don't miss her as much, but, really, she was my friend too. I guess I didn't feel as strongly about her as I felt about Daniel, but she was still my friend. I did live with her for several years. Her birthday's coming up - last year I sent her something nice but I never heard anything back from her. Sigh. Just one more person I'm out of touch with, I guess. In a detached sort of way, I can think back to those times and be like, yeah, I don't blame her. I wouldn't want anything to do with me either. But then I don't really think about myself like that anymore - it's just like reading my old, old entries - I HATED myself. I HATED myself, and my journal entries were very, very irritatingly self-loathing, it's like I wanted to reach back a few years and give myself a smack up the head or something.
We'd download it every week, twice, in fact, because Jay would watch it in Japanese. I was always torn between watching it with her and understanding next to nothing, or just waiting another day or two for the fansub. It only took about eight episodes for me to be completely hooked, and my obsession after that lasted years. After the series ended I decided to check out the manga, and realized just how different the anime was from the book to begin with. Although the anime sucked me in, there were, absolutely, a lot of flaws that the manga definitely doesn't have. So when I heard that they were rebooting the anime and following the manga - well, I reallyreallyreally wanted to be into this, but it took a little while for me to actually watch it.
Well, I've seen the first three episodes. I only watched each one once (here if anyone's interested, right on the Funimation site) so this won't be a detailed analysis, by any means, but here goes:
Actually it may have been good to watch all three at once, and compare them to the first three of the first series. The first series started out in Liore, and the first two eps were the Liore story arc (if I'm remembering correctly... I don't have the files anymore) and the third one was the backstory ep. First ep of Brotherhood starts with an invented villian (not in the manga) and you know, I really, really enjoyed that first ep, invented villian or not. I thought it was a great start. Of course, I have no idea how the ep would seem to someone who hasn't already seen the first series and read the manga, but I thought it was pretty fascinating the small differences from the first series. The manga is so much more military-focused and this came out to me in the first ep. Ed's a soldier, a very unusual situation because he's so young and yet outranks so many others - he's an alchemic genius but we don't see him using his alchemy to save the day - we see him participating in what the military's doing, but not saving the day. His true genius isn't really revealed until the backstory ep, where we see all the information that's been crammed into his head.
The backgrounds looked much more sophisticated to me - there was more of a sense of place, if that makes any sense, in that first episode, and I think... am I right in saying that they're in East City? Not Central?
The second ep, the backstory ep (so equivalent I guess to the third ep of the first series?) had a lot more tension and horror in it this time around. First series was more tug-at-your-heart-drama than horror. This was an interesting change and I think I like it - one of my criticisms of the first series was that it began to take itself too seriously, while at the same time blowing off heavy plot points - of course a lot of this was explained by the series finishing in 51 episodes and using only the material from the beginning of the manga - what else could they do? Of course things that turned into major plot in the manga had to be left alone, because the anime writers didn't know what the manga creator was planning.
So anyway (I am a shit reviewer of anime, I'm starting to realize) in these first three episodes I'm seeing more grit and realism in the military and more tension all around (as opposed to drama - interesting, what do I perceive is the difference between drama and tension anyway?) and at the same time I love, love, love the visual evidence that this is a manga adaptation - I love how Ed and Al, when emotional, turn into caricatures of themselves! I know they did this in the first series too, in the beginning, anyway, but this looks just like the little side drawings in Arakawa's books! I love that! And I enjoyed how in the third ep it was split into panels - I like that when they do that in comic book movies, too, now that I think about it.
I remember watching the first series a second time and seeing how much the animation changed from the beginning to the end, and also thinking that Ed appeared to have three possible ages: child Ed, twelve year old Ed, and sixteen year old Ed. When I started reading the manga I loved watching Ed get older little by little. I hope we get this in the new series too!
And... that's about it. Again, here I thought I had a ton of stuff to say, when really I didn't have that much to say after all.
Except that, of course, I miss Daniel, and I do miss Jay, too. I don't miss her as much, but, really, she was my friend too. I guess I didn't feel as strongly about her as I felt about Daniel, but she was still my friend. I did live with her for several years. Her birthday's coming up - last year I sent her something nice but I never heard anything back from her. Sigh. Just one more person I'm out of touch with, I guess. In a detached sort of way, I can think back to those times and be like, yeah, I don't blame her. I wouldn't want anything to do with me either. But then I don't really think about myself like that anymore - it's just like reading my old, old entries - I HATED myself. I HATED myself, and my journal entries were very, very irritatingly self-loathing, it's like I wanted to reach back a few years and give myself a smack up the head or something.
