FMA and FMA: Brotherhood: Celebrating ADTRW's Most Metal Anime

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > VEGETA > FMA and FMA: Brotherhood: Celebrating ADTRW's Most Metal Anime

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

I like how Bradley got shafted in the original Bones adaptation so in Brotherhood they basically set aside a good portion of the budget for whenever he was doing anything badass which it turned out was all the time.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 21:21

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 13:54

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

I think Wrath fits him, it's just too many people make the connection between wrath and impulsive, emotional anger when he's more a deep-seated, simmering stove of rage.

I remember when Sloth (in the manga) revealed his power a bunch of people thought it didn't fit, but what is sloth if not a waste of natural talent?

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 21:32

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

FMA deals in a lot of unexpectedly thoughtful themes for what is essentially a kid's adventure story. Recently I've been reading a lot of literature on the Japanese side of WWII, soldiers' letters and diaries and things, after which revisiting FMA yielded a lot of parallels I'd missed the first time (beyond the obvious surface connections, I mean).

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 22:33

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Endorph posted:

Arakawa mentioned that she actually went around and talked to a lot of former soldiers, which probably has a lot to do with it.

Most likely. War in FMA is a far more personal and intimate experience than it usually is in a lot of manga and anime that touch on the subject. War guilt, also.

ImpAtom posted:

I think part of what I like about FMA (the manga at least) is that it isn't so... black and white.

Characters have a lot of elements to them which are presented as neutral or at least not evil. Major-General Armstrong and Mustang both can be absurdly vicious, conniving and politics-minded but that is presented as just part of who they are and it doesn't prevent them from being heroic characters. Killing someone is portrayed as hard and painful but not necessarily evil, but also as something you can grow uncomfortably used to.

There are obviously evil characters and obviously good characters but it's willing to address the idea that good and evil can exist over a large spectrum that can sometimes be contradictory.

What's more, there's a recurring theme of people building off their past mistakes (which are sometimes quite heinous) in the pursuit of a better world. Dr. Marcoh participated in human experimentation during the war, yet you'd be hard pressed to find a character who values individual human lives more than he does. His terrible experiments produced the philosopher's stone, that miracle macguffin of all macguffins, which he uses to treat people for free as a small town doctor. He doesn't pretend such simple gestures could possibly wash away the blood from his hands, but he doesn't allow his guilt to prevent him from doing good now, in the present - including treating otherwise fatal injuries with the power of the stone.

This ties in with another point I made in the anime chat thread awhile back, that FMA seems like one of the few shounen series to actually allow its heroes to be "Wrong" about key things, only to later address those issues through character development. Most times the good guys hold the monopoly on what is right.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 23:06

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Captain Invictus posted:

Does the philosopher's stone count as a macguffin? We're told in fairly grotesque detail exactly how they're produced and used, aren't macguffins generally distant, unexplained sources of power/goals?

TheKingofSprings posted:

It counts in the first anime but not the second I would say

Yeah, true, my bad.

I meant something more like Marcoh winds up with the proverbial source of ultimate power and puts it to humble, altruistic uses.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 23:33

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Depends on what you didn't like about the anime adaptations.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 23:44

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Silver2195 posted:

I actually prefer Dante to Father, mainly because I don't like the idea that ultimate responsibility for the Amestris government's crimes lies with someone with fundamentally non-human motivations.

I wouldn't say Father's motivations are "Fundamentally non-human," just a bit more abstract. At base level, he's someone who's lived his whole life in containment (the greater part of it ironically by choice) who wants to break out of his bubble. That his own "Human" experience is limited is a product of his birth and circumstances.

When Ed's talking about Icarus in the first chapter, he's really describing Father.

Butt Ghost posted:

It's been a while, but from what I remember, I didn't really care for the humor, and 2003 series felt a bit boring. In retrospective, I didn't watch a whole lot of Brotherhood, so maybe I should reserve judgment on that. It's not even really a strong dislike, it's more of a disinterest. But if the manga's actually supposed to be really good, I'm willing to give it a shot.

Early Brotherhood is probably the weakest bit since the show kind of assumes you're already familiar with a lot of things covered in the original series and tries to burn through a lot of material too quickly.

I'd say to give it the two-volume test. The second volume is where the series really gets going in my opinion, but the first introduces a lot of core characters and concepts and serves as a nice contrast to later developments in the story.

Bad Seafood fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Mar 28, 2015

# ¿ Mar 28, 2015 01:29

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

She was prepared to expend roughly the same amount of effort as Father for a considerably more modest prize.

Not sure I'd call that a point in her favor.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 09:11

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

The manga does a better job putting Ed's sin in perspective too with the whole grave digging scene.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 09:56

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Not that I recall, but I'd think such a scene would be incompatible with the altered origins of the homunculi.

Been years since I watched the original series though, so maybe.

EDIT: I'm talking about the bit in the manga where Hohenheim asks if Ed "Really" brought his mother back and Ed digs up the grave with Pinako to check.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 10:15

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 13:54

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

TheKingofSprings posted:

Considering they only weaken when exposed to their original bones I'm almost certain Ed dug up his own mother's grave so he could kill her.

Ah, I remember now.

Still not quite one-for-one though since the emotional context is different. In the first adaption he's digging up his mother's grave in an effort to finally put her to rest, so to speak, whereas in the manga (and Brotherhood) it's about confronting whether or not he resurrected his mother only for her to die again, and if not then what debt he owes to his stillborn creation.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 10:33

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