Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

[Wargriffin]

and for the record

its Furher King Bradley

not Furher King Bradley


Yes his first name is King... and you will know it well

_____

In response to the review

1st episode is ironically completely Filler with a few nods to the original anime 'IE the first Anime used the Sun Pope as its actionized flash forward opening before doing basically a set of episode to explain how we got here'

Edward starts the series as a giant prick with a wee bit of a god complex... in FMA:B Ones flaws or sins are at the heart of person

Edward's sin is very clearly Pride which will contrast him with two of the key antagonists in Brotherhood

[Edvarius]

Martial arts accounting? Well, it wouldn't surprise me if it existed somewhere in the Ranma 1/2 setting. They've got a martial art for just about everything. Some of which are admittedly stupider or more annoying than others. I especially couldn't stand those Martial Arts Tea Ceremony guys.

[ORCACommander]

mmmmm I was waiting for this all day. Enjoy the special Hell Chuck since you greenlighted moooore }:D>

[Chaos Sepher]

Interesting he threw in an original FMA ep in there. Certainly helps expand on their origin story on some significant points so certainly approve. Do hope he at least covers the FMA ep with Yoki at least if he presses on in the series since Brotherhood glossed over that.

[Quixotica]

Just saw that this is on the agenda for next week. Neat. No idea if Chuck has a whole bunch commissioned or just the first four, but interested to see how this goes all the same. (Given that its a long series, it'd take him forever to get through regardless.)

One thing I'm really curious to see is how Chuck, as a fresh to anime guy, takes it all in, having NOT seen the first series. The original anime followed the manga pretty closely up to a point, and as a result, Brotherhood when it came out just a couple years later sort of skimmed over a lot of the earlier material and blitzed through it (including leaving some stuff out entirely that they then had to be squeezed in later.) I'm kind of curious if there will be some Gundam effect where its too much to really process properly, or if Brotherhood really did fine on its own.

I wonder which one Chuck watched first, since he seems to have watched at least some of both. I always felt that the first half of the original FMA was vastly superior to the first half of Brotherhood. It's just much much better paced, you can tell Brotherhood was really trying to rush through the material it was retreading.

The Tucker/Nina arc, the Mays Hughes arc, the intro episode with Cornello, the eventual Prison arc. They were all handled much better in the original and I think have a much stronger impact on someone watching the story for the first time. The latter half of Brother is better than the original and the ending is likely better. But for anyone that hadn't seen FMA yet I'd probably suggest watching the original first.

Also I always greatly preferred how the original handled Lusts character over Brotherhood, which seemed to make her far more of a straightforward villain with much less depth to her. I felt she was a rather tragic character in the original that you could almost sympathize with and Gluttony's attachment to her was equally interesting.

[Ordo]

Thank you for getting to this! I know I asked you to either look at FMP:B or Psycho Pass sometime ago and I am delighted to see this up on your page!! Thank you again!

[Akkristor]

and for the record

its Furher King Bradley

not Furher King Bradley


Yes his first name is King... and you will know it well

Furher President King Bradley

Furher is his military rank. (Like how the U.S. President is also Commander in Chief of the armed forces)
President is his office as head of state.
King is his name.

f'ing awesome name all around!

[SuccubusYuri]

In general, while I think Brotherhood is more...profound (or, more "art") I've always been of the opinion that it's the much harder series to watch. The last bit, namely after all the Homonculi are introduced, is great, but getting there is so hard if you're JUST going off the series. The 03 series is much more the adaptation, and Brotherhood feels like "the novel". It's paced almost like a full length novel, really, with the main characters changing locations and villains and faces each season, but ultimately the journey kind of wraps up but not entirely satisfactorily for everyone involved, many side characters just kind of get left behind. The original series has fewer complicated elements, but they are paced and payoff in a style more accustomed to the TV show format.

I think Hughes is the best example. Episode twenty....six? Is that it? Of the 03 series is still probably one of the most iconic in all of anime. But in Brotherhood, I found myself struggling to even care that Hughes is in the series. And it's certainly not that he has an insignificant amount of screentime. It's drawn down between the two shows, but he's still a pretty prominent supporting cast member.

The comparison I always made for people who said "Well I saw the first one, so why is it different now?" is, it's like watching "The Ten Commandments" and "Prince of Egypt". They tell the same story, but one is very specifically about the relationship between brothers and family, while the other is more focused on The Epic.

It's also a shame Chuck couldn't do spoiler research because "Period" would have been much easier to make an opening credit sequence out of xD Tho that'd be extra work in a series I'm sure he's gonna spend fifteen minutes just contemplating the meaning of "sins of the father" xD

[tenkiforecast]

Yeah, watching this reminds me why I skipped the first 10 episodes of FMA: Brotherhood. The viewer can tell very easily that Studio Bones wanted to get to the content that wasn't in the 2003 series, or it was a mandate to get past the divergence point of the 2003 series as fast as possible. While I understand the desire to not repeat material, it hurts the show overall.

The 2003 series has its flaws and if someone makes a case that Brotherhood is the superior anime series, I completely understand the reasoning. My problem is that the first couple episodes of FMA set the tone and motivations of the characters. Both the sequence in Lior and Night of the Chimera's Cry stand out to me. The 2003 series spends 2 episodes in Lior, gradually building up the characters along with introducing the rules of the world. Alchemy exists, it has these specific powers/limitations, and it is an exact science. More importantly, it gradually introduces the Elrics as intelligent and capable, if quirky. Ed is clearly a cynical hero while Alphonse is much more idealistic. The pacing of the show allows the characters time to breathe and interact. Brotherhood just...doesn't offer the same pacing. Brotherhood is, to me, a wild rollercoaster ride that never lets up. It has fantastic set pieces and it's well told, but it's a very direct adaptation. Pacing in manga and anime is different because one is a printed medium, the other is a show.

That, and after seeing the 2003 version of Night of the Chimera's Cry, I felt that the Brotherhood version was...so, so inferior in comparison.

[Akkristor]

It feels like, to me, it's expected of the viewer to not only have seen the 2003 version, but also know where the 2003 version diverged from the manga.