Forum - View topicThe Anime Backlog - Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
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oogenesis
Posts: 23 |
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i was in much the same place as lynzee up until last year, except having gone in cold with only knowledge of the hype and curiosity about whether it was deserved... i've never read the manga. (i may have a similar shōnen allergy.) it took me five attempts to get past FMA:B's first four episodes: they're not even bad, but my tolerance for too-frequently used running gags is very low; edward's massive, explosive shoulder-chip over his height annoyed the hell out of me... like cheeto dust i wanted to blow off of him.
once arakawa-sensei pulls back on that particular insecurity, FMA:B's tight, tense plotting; its abundance of believable Smart Person™ representation (including edward and alphonse, both child prodigies whose emotional maturity hasn't yet caught up to their intellect) and memorable characters, despite the gigantic cast; and the extent to which the story forced me to sit with my own discomfort and wrestle with cognitive dissonance all colored this watcher pleasantly surprised. too many shōnen series feature idiot leads whose stupidity is supposed to make them more approachable somehow. here, an irascible vindictive little bookworm tsundere who grows into a man in real time, and surround him with shrewd, highly competent men and women? i'll take that any day. that romance lynzee found so underwhelming? it grows in the same almost imperceptible fashion: two childhood friends who don't even realize they love each other romantically until they do. i want to see more of that kind of romance. i found maes hughes and nina incredibly impactful despite their short screentime; they continue to ripple throughout the plot. maes made me shed tears for him and he doesn't even make it a quarter of the way through. for me, that's rare. i even like FMA:B's fucked-up bits for the conversations they provoke. it's not news that this story humanizes actual war criminals, nor that nearly every character occupies a morally grey area; it's the sadism and cruelty even those we're encouraged to root for are capable of. olivier armstrong is one of the coldest women i've ever seen in fiction, on too many dimensions (including to her own traumatized brother), and i like her as a character. spoiler['make sure that floor is level' will haunt me until i die. holy shit.] we get izumi's mentorship of the elric brothers... roy mustang's willingness to traumatize them to prove a point and keep them out of harm's way. it's the 'benevolent' military dictatorship running amestris and insulating its citizens from the atrocities it perpetrates on its neighbors. it's the pointed lack of focus on the ishvalan genocide, because the story isn't told from the victims' perspective and scar (and miles) are the only ishvalans we spend much time with. this aura of blissful ignorance closely mirrors the perspective of citizens in any society founded on imperialism and cultural suppression. studio bones presents all of this without much comment and invites you to draw your own conclusions. is it the best shōnen series ever? no, though it deserves a place on the shelf of classic stories in any medium. is it the best i've ever seen? no, and there are many aspects of the 2003 seiji mizushima/shō aikawa-helmed continuity i actually prefer, including its approach to the homunculi. (i watched FMA '03 after finishing this series and can't decide which i like more. though FMA:B consistently whips its predecessor's ass in the OP/ED department; if i ever have to hear porno graffitti's 'melissa' again, i will scream.) Last edited by oogenesis on Fri May 24, 2024 4:36 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 2959 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Really appreciate all the reader support for this new endeavor. The next one should be out June 3!
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4622 |
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I loved the rest of your post, but I will have words over this. I couldn't tell you what any of Brotherhood's OPs were from Adam, but I've had "Ready Steady Go" and "Rewrite" stuck in my head for almost 20 years. |
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Zubby
 Posts: 17 Location: Chicago |
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Interesting column. I have my own list of anime I’ve missed, and it’s nice seeing someone else admit it! I think FMA is a better series than FMAB, you should check that out too. Sorry to see it’s not available (at least in North America) but I actually bought the dvd’s back in the day. It’s the second anime I fell in love with, after FLCL.
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CrazyCanuck
 Posts: 103 Location: Canada |
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I can definitely relate to the premise of this column. My own backlog is large. It even sort of includes this title. Which is embarrassing, as someone who DOES have access to all of "Fullmetal Alchemist", the 2003, "Brotherhood", and the manga.
I watched the 2003 series disc by disc as it was released, starting in February 2005. My wife and I loved it. I have all thirteen in the three metal tins. We watched the odd finale movie, which we were less taken with, but I don't regret seeing it. We enjoyed it enough that when the manga started coming out in May, a few weeks before the third disc, we started buying that too. While the final disc came out in September 2006, the same month as volume nine, the manga was only about a third of the way in. We kept right on buying them. At some point, I fell behind on reading them. My wife kept going all the way to the end. I kept meaning to catch up, but it never actually happened. I've still got them all, there's still time. This is the mantra of my backlog. I own it, I can watch/read it whenever. While the manga didn't end (in English) until the end of 2011, "Brotherhood" started up in May, 2010. We watched the first set, which was basically a speed run of the first chunk of the 2003 series. They made the reasonable assumption that everyone watching this had seen the previous series and just needed a refresher. This was true at the time. They were not considering new viewers a decade and a half later. I am unsurprised by Lynzee's feelings about characters that should have had development during that part, but didn't. We watched the second set three months later, then made a conscious choice to wait until it was done to binge it. So I have all five of the original sets, and the associated movie and OAVs. Most of them still have the shrink-wrap on them. That eventual binge just never happened. They sit on the shelf (in the pile if I'm honest) and make me feel bad every time I notice them. This is how we oldtaku wind up with such embarrassing series in our backlog. I spent a LOT of time in the forums here and the old animeondvd.com forums. If people started talking about something a lot, and it was generally being praised, I bought it. And then I could get to it "when I have the time". But there's always something new and shiny. Or real life gets in the way. Now, marathoning "Brotherhood" means committing to circa twenty-six hours of dedicated viewing. I could do that in a week, easy. Even less if it's just me and not with my wife. But I don't. And thus the backlog endures. It's taken some time for me to adjust to watching weekly releases. I've only had Crunchyroll for just over a year. I binged a lot of garbage. I binged some real gems. But I avoided weekly release new titles. Now I'm following eleven. (And I'm pretty sure it's about to be twelve, since the current background noise binge we are watching is apparently airing season three now...) It's easy to commit to twenty minutes once a week, in a way that it is hard to commit to a whole week of one thing. So I applaud Lynzee for doing the hard thing. Tackle that backlog. I look forward to seeing what other titles we share in our shameful pile of "things to watch eventually". I hope it encourages others to tackle their backlogs. I hope it isn't too late for me. |
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kurichan69
 Posts: 114 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Hard agree and I will add in the Porno Graffiti song because that's a f^cking legend that deserves to be in your head and playlist. |
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oogenesis
Posts: 23 |
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i can't blame you there. outside its gorgeous score, those two tracks and yellow generation's 'tobira no mukou e' are the only songs that did stick with me from FMA'03. the rest, i actually found painful and will skip every single time.
oh, y'all can have 'melissa'. i don't want it. for me, it was both a grating tonal mismatch and the sort of earworm that requires a plumber and an exorcism. my just typing this means it'll torment me for another week... *cries* by contrast, there were just two songs from FMA:B i didn't care for ('hologram' by nico touches the walls, 'let it out" by miho fukuhara) and only one i considered skip-worthy. YUI's 'again', SID's 'uso' and sukima switch's 'golden time lover' own my whole soul; i can sing them all by heart. |
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Triltaison
 Posts: 746 |
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I'll back you guys up here, too. I knew all the '03 OP songs by osmosis from conventions and such without having actually seen the show back then. I actually ended up buying the soundtracks when they were new without having seen the show. I just liked the songs I heard that much and would frequently do that with shows I hadn't even seen if I liked the music. (Witch Hunter Robin was another one I finally got around to watching many years after frequently listening to its OST sight unseen.) I remember a few visuals from the Brotherhood openings, but not a bit of the OP tunes' melody. Was there more than one even? Because they were super not memorable to me at all, and I watched the whole franchise within the last 5 years or so. I just remember being disappointed by the OP and skipped them 90% of the time. But I'm pretty sure "Ready Steady Go" will still be playing in my head until my dying breath. I'll have dementia and it will be the only thing I remember anymore. |
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