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ANNCast - Revenge of the 2000s Reloaded: Spectacular Spectacular

My thoughts on FMA and the Iraq War is this. Most of the similarities between them either predate the actual Iraq War because it was in the manga (the Ishvalans dark skin, the desert landscape) or are actually only found in the manga (in the first anime you never really see any suicide bombers while you see one in the manga, and the Amestrian army suffers large amounts of casualties by guerilla tactics in the manga whereas the Ishvalans are never really shown as fighting back in the first anime). The changes they made to the Ishvalan war largely have nothing to do with the Iraq War such as spoiler[special forces slaughtering everyone in a temple, and the use of Philosophers stone on a large level].

The series I equate more with the Iraq War is Gundam Seed Destiny were Logos spoiler[allows a terrorist attack on the Earth so they can use it to blame the Plants and invade them]. Also the main mechas are named after the War on Terror (which was originally called Infinite Justice but renamed Enduring Freedom).

Wolf's Rain was beautiful garbage. Gorgeous production values, but almost no likable characters. The wolf characters are a bunch of flat stereotypes with no discernable personalities of their own. The human characters were much more interesting, but got the short stick because they weren't the wolves and it's clear the writer wanted us to care more about those cardboard cut-outs. And actually, outside of a few choice tunes, it's one of Yoko Kanno's weaker soundtracks. And four clip episodes is ridiculous. If you have four clip episodes in your show, it's not a good show. Period. And it just f***ing drags and drones on and on, so needlessly.

Drinking game: take a shot every time Hope says "uh" or "um". Alcohol poisoning in no time!

penguintruth wrote:

And four clip episodes is ridiculous. If you have four clip episodes in your show, it's not a good show.

I'm going off of info from TVTropes here, so it's entirely possible that it's incorrect, but weren't those clipshows the result of issues caused by the SARS outbreak during that time? I find it hard to hold something like that against the show, especially since they eventually released a series of OVAs to make up for it.

And four clip episodes is ridiculous. If you have four clip episodes in your show, it's not a good show.

Aikawa told me himself in an interview that he purposefully wrote most of the Ishvalan stuff to comment on the Iraq war.

He had very strong feelings on the matter and wanted the show to reflect his take on it. This was in an interview I did with him for Anime Insider back when the show was new - Aniplex told us to take it all out, so those comments never saw print. I wish I still had the original text, but that's what he said, and the show itself is pretty obvious about it.

Fullmetal Alchemist? Adult anime? Erm, it's a show for kids... kind of a silly thing to call it for adults.

I must admit this is the first time I heard of a proper anime adaption being a bad thing; that's usually what the majority wants and hates when an anime spits all over the source material.

Especially in FMA's case where Brotherhood seems to be unanimously considered better since the manga was so huge and people wanted a proper adaption.

To me it sounds like they probably just has a lot of nostalgia for it since they saw it as a kid, especially since they mentioned it was their 'first'. Hard to beat something with that much sentimental value to someone.

I find it amusing that you think it's OK to behave like this and yet still hint at the fact that you think I should hire you, as though working with you would seem remotely pleasant or reasonable to me.

You don't need to be like this. It's a choice, you know.

And it doesn't matter, those four clip episodes for Wolf's Rain are still part of the show. It's not a 100+ episode show, it doesn't need clip episodes, certainly not four for any reason, period. FMA went 51 episodes without a single clip episode. Zeta Gundam. Hell, even DBZ didn't have clip episodes and that was 291 episodes! SARS outbreak? Then don't do any episode! Doing no episode is better than a clip episode.

You seem to be making a really big issue out of something that can easily be skipped without missing anything.

You seem to be making a really big issue out of something that can easily be skipped without missing anything.

I don't know why it took so long for the Amestrian forces to level Ishbal. It didn't even seem like that big a place.

I'm not sure about that. While what's appropriate for a kid is dependent both upon the adult making the decision and the maturity of the kid in question, I can't imagine showing the stuff in FMA to anybody younger than 10, especially with the rather brutal extermination and human mutilation.

Well that goes into what a "Proper" adaptation really is. While Brotherhood is certainly a faithful adaptation of the manga in terms of portraying the same events, I'm of the opinion that it's kind of soulless. More concerned with following the manga storyline to the letter than telling a cohesive story within the new medium. I suppose it ultimately comes down to what you want out of an anime adaptation; precisely following the source material, or adapting the source material and changing some things while preserving the spirit of what came before.

I was highly unenthused by the first series, dropping it shortly after the halfway point (later learning that that was when it diverged from the manga). On the other hand I found Brotherhood to be absolutely enthralling and was one of my most anticipated watches each weak for over a year.

To be honest, until I watched Brotherhood I never really got why people thought FMA was all that great, since the first season, as I mentioned, did not hold my attention at all.

You seem to be making a really big issue out of something that can easily be skipped without missing anything.

TitanXL wrote:

To me it sounds like they probably just has a lot of nostalgia for it since they saw it as a kid, especially since they mentioned it was their 'first'. Hard to beat something with that much sentimental value to someone.

While Hope did say she first saw the show when she was younger, I believe Zac was older when the show first came out. I personally saw FMA and Brotherhood back-to-back about a year ago, and I honestly preferred FMA.

the average Warrior Priest could take on 10 soldiers while Scar could take on twenty

animehermit wrote:

You seem to be making a really big issue out of something that can easily be skipped without missing anything.

While I don't condemn Wolfs Rain or anything, it's pretty silly to say you can just ignore the bad parts of a series in your evaluation of it. By this logic, every series is awesome because you can ignore all the flaws. "It's fine, you can skip the last 20 chapters of this manga. Just treat this chapter as the true ending. It's a great series!" That's more of a personal choice than an objective one you should expect everyone to adhere to. You have to look at a series in it's entirety to properly judge it; you don't get to pick and choose and play favorites.