Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

[RobbyB1982]

There is always option of watching first episodes of 2003 and then continue from that with Brotherhood so that you get best from both.

People SAY that, and on paper that seems like a decent solution, but despite the overlap, the tones are really different, some details are shuffled around, and there's no truly clean splitting point. Like, the death of Hughes is when 2003 starts really going in its own direction, but its really changed everything with Scar prior to that, added and lost things with Barry the Chopper, the timeline for Yoki is different, the brothers are there for Hughe's wife giving birth to Elicia while in Brotherhood they're present for a different woman giving birth years later, while Brotherhood at that point has introduced a couple of long running characters, and so on.

Maybe, maaaaybe if you just go through the very early flashback stuff and stop after say, Nina's death, it could work but that's only like episode 8, what would even be the point? Plus what happens to Tucker afterwards varies a lot between the two series, in one version he's killed by Scar and in the other they're just lied to and told he's dead so he can pop up against 40 episodes later.

There's just too many little things to do a clean cut on.

[AuRon]

There is always option of watching first episodes of 2003 and then continue from that with Brotherhood so that you get best from both.

I'm not sure if you're being serious, or trying to troll me. I've said numerous times that I consider 2003 to be the superior show. Not just the early episodes, but the entire series. Why would I start off watching the first series, and then switch to an (in my opinion) inferior show that I don't care much for instead? Sure, Brotherhood has some good elements, but I still greatly prefer the first show, including the later episodes.

I've also said that I consider 2003 and Brotherhood to be two SEPARATE shows, and should be treated as such. They have different tones, different styles, different characterizations, etc. Compare Roy's calm, cool, and collected (and sometimes dour) persona in 2003 to his more emotional and agitated personalty in Brotherhood. I also didn't care for how goofy and cartoonish Brotherhood got at times. At any rate, I feel the two shows don't really fit together, and it feels kind of like you're taking a dump on 2003 by saying you should just watch it's early episodes to make Brotherhood seem better. Not you specifically, but just people who say that in general.

[AuRon]

For the record, I'm fine with people preferring Brotherhood. I just felt the need to speak up for the original show, since so few people seem to. The original FMA was one of the first anime shows I ever watched. I began watching more regularly after that. I always considered it a great show. But over the past decade its been common to see Brotherhood fans bad mouthing the first series, and saying to skip most or all of it, and that it's characters and twists are bad, etc. I try to ignore it, but its so pervasive it can get a little frustrating at times. Imagine being a fan of Star Trek TOS, and hearing TNG fans bashing it all the time. That's probably not the best example, but you know what i mean.

So yeah, I just wanted to speak up for the show, since its so rare to see anyone do that. But I think I've said enough now.

[ChrisTheLovableJerk]

Fair enough. Agree to disagree then, I guess. I assume you're aware of the movie after the series too.

Also, I personally felt Brotherhood turning Izumi's blood vomit into a gag was incredibly bad taste, considering how tragic and heart-breaking the cause of it is

This I agree with. I think the first series might have used it as a gag once, but that was before the details of it were explained. After that it was always played seriously and dramatically. Which is why it was so jarring to see Brotherhood just treat it as a joke.

I kinda wish there was a hybrid of the two that somehow made both work, like 2003's versions of Rage and Sloth become additional sins that are in some (quite old) versions of the seven deadly sins Despair and Apathy.

Again, I agree. While I'm not really a fan of Brotherhood, I will acknowledge that there were some good things about it, and even a few things it did better than the first series. A version that combines the best elements from both shows into one definitive version could be great. Maybe they could even find some way to have both Dante and Father in the story somehow. Although, I would still prefer that it hew closer to the first series stylistically and tonally. I liked the darker and more mature style of 2003.

My idea for how to make Dante work was that she was another slave with Van Hohenheim and was there for the creation of Father, but unlike Van Hohenheim she didn't show regret, or flat-out horror for gaining their long-lives, she embraced it, maybe she was a sex slave to their master so she was justified in seeing the cruel slave masters of the city be killed.

I had this idea that she gets devoured by a mutated Shou Tucker, now transformed into some unholy abomination that suffers horrible pain every second it lives (Because Shou never suffered enough), and then Ed and those two Chimera Mercenaries kill him by luring him off a cliffside, ala the ending of Tremors.

And 2003 Rage (Despair) goes to live with Izumi and Sig because they deserve happiness.

[aceina]

i personally think the original anime is far better than brother hood

in the original the humunuli had a much more personal connection to things

and i liked that ed had his faith in equivalent exchange destroyed because its a BS world view

brother hood feels much more like a standard shonen series complete with a big bad who screams about how amazing they are they god mode through tons of attacks

[Edvarius]

Uh... equivalent exchange as it applies to alchemy is just the law of conservation of mass. And they rejected it as a philosophical system in the ending of Brotherhood too.