Forum - View topicJason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Fullmetal Alchemist
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8459 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Ah, I love Fullmetal Alchemist. Arakawa's rich, detailed world, complex storytelling, full characters, sharp and iconic art, well-examined themes, great battles, and memorable plot twists make it my second favorite manga. I used to carry volume 15 (the Ishbal war) with me wherever I went, as if it was my Bible (I wish Brotherhood would have done more of it... I compiled all the flashback clips and made my own little movie).
So glad there was an image of Ed's fight with Greed in the article. Greed was my favorite character! Please no FMA1 TV vs FMA2 TV. They're both excellent. |
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musouka
Posts: 707 |
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I tried to get into FMA so many times, under the impression that if it was so acclaimed then surely I was missing something special. Well, that may be the case, but I've long accepted the fact that another person's "rich world and incredible cast" are my "morally simplistic world and boringly uncomplicated cast".
BASARA really is an incredible series, though! |
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Thatguy3331
 Posts: 1790 |
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Ah FMA one of the shining examples that shonen can be really good (and by that I mean it's a great way to make "ew-shounener's" shut the hell up when they say its all the same)
I'll admit, I haven't acctually read the manga, rather than stumbling upon brotherhood one night when I was expecting boondocks and I became instantly hooked. It's my favorite kind of series that REALLY knows when to be serious and remember to still let its audience have fun. While I feel more along the lines of "I'll get to it when I get to it" towards the 2003 anime *due to those annoying which series is better debates and me having been spoiled on how it ends* I really want to try and read the original manga from volume 1 and up just to to really dig down and scrape out those tiny nuggets of extra details. |
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Ultimatum
 Posts: 160 |
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I absolutely love this manga. While I can't agree with everything it brings up, I still think it's a excellent work and the best of the shonen genre.
Its second adaptation is also the only anime I've ever watched with my parents. I was watching Brotherhood with my mother in an attempt to prove that anime could have as complicated and intriguing a storyline as any movie, play, etc. Around episode 27, I noticed my father on the couch behind us (who knows how long he'd been there!) and we made it through the entire 64 episodes without either of them losing interest. Rambling aside, I have good memories of this series and it's still one of my favorites. |
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
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Thank you for pointing that out! I totally missed that.
Good point... someone else had suggested to me that the story element might be a way of dealing with Japanese war crimes. In a pseudo-European skin, of course... but ethnic identity is so blurry in the world of manga and anime. |
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crosswithyou
 Posts: 2892 Location: California |
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FMA is a total roller coaster and I love it! I've seen some people dismiss Gin no Saji because it's so different from FMA, but there's a reason why that series has won so many awards too so I think everyone should give it a try. Looking forward to the anime!
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brankoburcksen
Posts: 126 |
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I hope I'm not going off topic here, but reading your article, I could not stop thinking about Attack on Titan. I think it is still way too early to tell, but it looks like it has a lot of same elements that made FMA so successful. The biggest difference, at least in terms of exposure, is that American fans can watch the series at the same time as Japanese audiences.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Except Brotherhood was categorically not. Arguably it is partly the fault of the Anime staff - terrible pacing issues, that awful first episode, the crappy art, wildly whiplashing humour and drama, et cetera - but it's also partly due to Arakawa not paying enough attention at keeping her writing airtight. There, I said it. The Manga has loads of ambition and I respect it for that, for being more than another dumb Shounen story. But its writing quality is quite weak at times, especially at the end. The whole final arc with the battle/war at Central, including Father's stupidity and Hohenheim's BS plan that he sprang from his arse, made me incredibly angry at how bad it all was. Arakawa's story was a great one, very iconic, but it was also riddled with plot holes. |
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halochief_90
 Posts: 466 Location: Canada |
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Also, FMA Brotherhood was streamed at about the same time as the Japanese airing on Funimation's website. |
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050795
 Posts: 230 |
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I love FMA! It was the first manga I read so it will always have a special place in my heart. I'm also a little surprised that people say they don't like the humor because it's great. Oh well I guess Hiromu Arakawa and I just have the same weird sense of humor.
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TopGunman
 Posts: 498 |
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FMA was great in all shapes and sizes, the first series was great, the 2nd was great, the manga was great, the games (curse of the crimson elixir in particular) were great, the side stories were great.
But sadly, a lot of manga purists, ie Brotherhood fans, are gonna be complete bitches to anything that's not completely faithful to the manga as if no matter what, manga is always better by default. |
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gedata
 Posts: 615 |
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It's gonna happen (but I agree with you, they were both awesome in their own ways)
basically sums up my problems with the series.
Mine are Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and then I suppose and (after FMA though) Hunter x Hunter |
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Aizen-chan
Posts: 79 |
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The end of the manga just felt so *lazy*. It's the old cliche where spoiler[all the good guys get together and fight all the bad guys.] The rest of the manga was pretty light on the shonen tropes, only to have the end be a series of typical Shonen Jump style battles that last for too long. And at the very end, it pulls a Harry Potter and gives an un-needed epilogue. That's one of the reasons why I prefer the original FMA anime - the ending is still not great, but in the context of the show, it's not nearly as disappointing as the manga. |
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marcos torres toledo
Posts: 269 |
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Thank you Jason for confirming that the Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood anime is closer to the original manga. Though I love the first anime series parallel universe take ending with the Fullmetal Alchemist the Conquest of Shamballa movie. I have not read the original manga series I might look it up. My take on the first series was trying to figure out the historic diversion point of that world from ours. It took Joseph P. Farrell book The Philosophers Stone to find out their father was Paracellus the sixteenth century German Alchemist. Both anime series showed that important issues could be tacked in a adult way and to appeal to all age groups while not talking to them.
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marcos torres toledo
Posts: 269 |
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Correction the last words should read talking down.
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