Anime Review: Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Part One

[Doctor Panda]

I had an interesting experience. I watched half of the first series of FMA. Then I read the manga. Then I tried watching the first series again and found myself utterly unable to. The manga has a much richer, much more interesting and consistent storyline than the first anime. The characters are great. And the subterfuge is genuinely interesting and often intelligently written.
The anime is good! They did a good job on it! But the manga was one of my favourite to date, one that really avoided so many of the mistakes and cliches that occur in so much of what comes out of japan these days.

Fans of the manga are often turned off by the first anime. Brotherhood avoids that problem. Frankly, I wished I'd skipped them both.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

I had an interesting experience. I watched half of the first series of FMA. Then I read the manga. Then I tried watching the first series again and found myself utterly unable to. The manga has a much richer, much more interesting and consistent storyline than the first anime. The characters are great. And the subterfuge is genuinely interesting and often intelligently written.
The anime is good! They did a good job on it! But the manga was one of my favourite to date, one that really avoided so many of the mistakes and cliches that occur in so much of what comes out of japan these days.

Fans of the manga are often turned off by the first anime. Brotherhood avoids that problem. Frankly, I wished I'd skipped them both.

Anime is suffering from the water it down effect us TV/Film has drown in..tho its not that bad its getting there.....

 

[Mordwyl]

The original series had Ling Yao and his Xing bodyguards, the Briggs soldiers (namely Olivier and Buccaneer) and the REAL homunculi missing. It loses by default.

 

[Dhatz]

I don't see the changes amde when filming comics a bad thing, take for example how bad is the ghost in the shell comic, it doesn't even have colors on most pages and is just awful to read those transaltions impossible to be said in such situations. the movie and series improved it a lot, same goes to watchmen, the ending was just fucken in the comic and good they scrapped the comic boy and news guybecause it would just break pace and add unwanted lenght to the movie. I couldn't say the same ybout wanted, because the game was more interesting and varied tahn the movie, and it was because it was enriched by the comics.

 

[Zenron]

Both the manga and brotherhood have reached their conclusions now, contrary to what was stated in the review, and I've got to say the story line and pacing of the series as a whole, rather than just the first 13 episodes, is much better. Sure, it will feel a little rushed considering they put the 30 episodes of the original series into 13 of this one. It wouldn't make much sense if it didn't feel rushed in comparison.

However, if you look at brotherhood as a whole and not just the 13 episodes you've seen, then you would realise how much better it is than the original series. I'm glad they kept to the manga, because the manga is nothing short of a masterpiece, and it shouldn't be changed.

I've never actually seen brotherhood, which probably invalidates my opinion slightly, but I have read the manga so I know what's going on here. You mentioned the death of one of the characters being flat, but the manga goes back to this, as they finally work out what hughes found out, and why he was killed for it.

I think that if you're going to review this series, you're much better of reviewing it as a whole rather than the little bit you've seen, because you're really not telling us anything we don't know. Brotherhood started well over a year ago.

 

[Shjade]

Brotherhood has already come full circle. I watched the final episode a month ago on hulu. This is old news.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it old news if the article's about a recent DVD release, but yeah, if you want to watch this series it's been available on Hulu for quite some time now.

Helpful link! [http://www.hulu.com/fullmetal-alchemist-brotherhood]

Only thing worth noting: Hulu only has the subtitled version, so for those of you who just hate needing to read along with the show and prefer dubs I guess you'll have to wait a while longer. For everyone else, enjoy.

I'd have to say that, as far as a review of the early portion of this series goes, the critique presented here is...eh, "fair" isn't quite the right word, but it's not unfair. It's very strange to compare 13 episodes of one series with over twice that many of another series, but putting that weirdness aside it's still true that Brotherhood's opening episodes move much faster than FMA's. Whether or not this is a bad thing is a matter of taste: having watched the first series quite a bit I was happy to sorta gloss over the details of the opening - I KNOW this part already - to get to the meat of the new material.

For someone who hasn't watched the first series I imagine it will be rather more interesting and, more importantly, such a viewer won't know how much/what details are not present in Brotherhood because they aren't necessary to the plot, other character-defining moments exist later on, and the series doesn't feel like it's lacking anything unless you are looking for something that isn't there.

So as not to even accidentally get into anything spoilerific I'll just say this about the later episodes: the later opening theme animations look pretty dang spiffy.

 

[Mstrswrd]

You see, I really like both about equally because despite the fact that the original had great pacing, I'm a stickler for the anime and manga either doing either the same thing or doing something completely different, and not meeting in the middle. AKA: s-CRY-ed didn't bother me at all because it shared the name and some of the characters and that was it, while Hellsing annoyed the Hell out of me despite being decent.

I've been getting over that with things such as Soul Eater, which diverges around episode 25 or so, and FMA.

 

[commasplice]

Both series draw their premise from an original Fullmetal Alchemist manga series produced by artist Hiromu Arakawa that started in 2001 and is still ongoing today

I don't know when this review was written, but the FMA manga ended in Japan in June. And like Kajin said, the entirety of Brotherhood is up on Hulu.

I don't see the changes amde when filming comics a bad thing, take for example how bad is the ghost in the shell comic, it doesn't even have colors on most pages...

You don't read a lot of manga, do you? In any case, I think it would be remiss to say that the first FMA series was bad. It wasn't. In fact, it was better than most shonen anime out there. It was just different from the manga, which was also better than most shonen manga. I preferred the original original story to the preboot, though. It just made more sense to me, I guess. No Nazis or alternate dimensions, more Lin Yao and Oliver Armstrong.

 

[Dr.Nick]

I gotta say Mr. Anime Reviewer. You are taking crazy pills if you think Brotherhood wasn't as good as the original. It was better in every possible way! Better animation, a storyline that didn't get convoluted or absolutely nuts (because it stuck to the manga this time), and better action even! There's even more characters and character development. I really do not see how you like the original better.

 

[DTWolfwood]

FMA > FMA:B first 13 episodes
FMA:B > FMA after 13 episodes

color and art style was more crisp in the first series. The reboot seems a bit more washed down.

 

[Jamous]

Dammit I need the first series first! >_<' I really need to catch up with my anime. I have, however, just bunged an order of 4 Studio Ghibli films on Amazon.

 

[Ironwampa]

While it is true that the first 13 episodes seem rushed in comparison to the original FMA, they are only rushed in comparison to the original FMA. The original spent more time on the beginning because it spent more time developing characters and concepts that would be relevant later in the original FMA but not at all relevant in Brotherhood. The original FMA also had a lot filler which also dragged out the beginning. Brotherhood still paces out its beginning very well, getting across all important concepts properly developing all main characters as needed and creates attachment for the viewer towards the main characters.

The animation style from the first series does look better than Brotherhood in the beginning but later on the advantages of Brotherhood's stylized animation begin to show.

 

[jp201]

yeah FMA brotherhood by far surpases the original as it goes along by a wide margin and the original was excellent. I would consider it one of best animes or all time like in top 3 all time.

I will admit the first season of original FMA barely beats out FMA brotherhood but when season 2 comes along introduces many characters that are not in original and the story is much more epic and amazing then original fma. Also the action in brotherhood and the fights are much better done.

 

[aaron552]

Don't judge the series based on the first 13 episodes. It gets a lot better once it gets past the divergence point of the original anime. More internally consistent, no noticeable plot holes, and I actually preferred the animation style in the new series (the backgrounds are much more detailed, which wasn't mentioned)

It's a pity that they've rushed the development of the characters, the original was one of my favourite animes but I really didn't like the manga. "Like the manga" seems to be the anime slang for good but I think anime and manga benefit from different storytelling techniques.

While I didn't think the original anime was bad per se, I felt there were too many plot threads left hanging at the end and too much left unexplained, or that didn't seem internally consistent. The new anime is much better in this regard.

 

[Jynxx-TheSiren]

I hated the original series, it was boring to me, and felt pretty filler most of the time. After watching brotherhood I feel so much better about the series and it's characters. No death fell flat to me, they all got the same emotional response with out the filler episodes and time spent watching said episode. I love Brotherhood, and alot of people I know feel the same. Brotherhood felt so much more detailed to me, and while the Article believes the art is falling flat, I believe that the art is a bit better.

 

[Necromancer1991]

I will say that I preferred this to the original in some respects, the plot is more interesting (but the original got you more emotionally invested in certain characters), the homunculi are cooler (not just "zombies" like the original), I will say the characters have changed very little personality-wise. I PERSONALLY preferred the new animation and shading and the fact that overall the villains are more you know, mysterious than the last one (Dante as a villain was phoned in, as soon as she was revealed she was eaten by gluttony)

 

[dracoslayer16]

The first 13 episodes are the worst ones because they quickly retell the tale of the first season of the original anime so they didn't want to dwell much on it. I find it strange that you would write a review about an anime you've only seen the intro of and not the whole thing. If you based a review off the first 13 episodes of Bleach or Naruto you would think they were both crap compared to other 13-24 episode animes out there.

It is fine to write what you think so far but the fact that you even go as far as to make recommendations as to whether or not someone should watch this series when you yourselves have only seen such a small portion is just flat out wrong.

 

[aaron552]

If you based a review off the first 13 episodes of Bleach or Naruto you would think they were both crap compared to other 13-24 episode animes out there.

IMO, Bleach was pretty good up until around episode 70, where the first major filler arc (the Bount arc) took off. Since then I've been unable to enjoy it. Naruto has its moments, but there's just far too much filler. Again, IMO, both FMA anime are superior to Bleach and Naruto. The first 13 episodes of Brotherhood are better than Bleach and Naruto overall (filler included), too.