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The first anime is darker but a lot less well-designed, cohesive, makes poorer use of characters and early development, and in general is a poorer work. (Though the manga is better than Brotherhood.) It has a better budget for certain but that's about it. It suffers a lot from trying to basically write a story wholecloth from the first quarter of the manga using mostly characters who showed up there. It makes much poorer use of certain characters too. (Izumi Curtis is a standout here.) Also it lacks the lady Armstrong who is the best character in the manga.
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Mar 27, 2015 17:39
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 22:54 |
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Beef Waifu posted:Yoki owns. Also Envy's like my favorite character, but Brotherhood made me like him a lot more as a pathetic attention seeking little poo poo than FMA's daddy issues evil Ed. Yeah, this is exactly the way I feel. Pathetic Little poo poo Envy is way better than some sort of giant evil big bad. He was such an rear end in a top hat. I also like the manga (and to a lesser extent Brotherhood) for having an ending. A real, complete, thematically appropriate well-resolved ending that coherently ends the protagonist's arc. (I did sort of ruin FMA for a friend of mine by pointing out that it's pretty easy to read it as a story of Edward heroically becoming an atheist though.)
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Mar 27, 2015 20:05
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Yeah, he makes so much more sense as Wrath. Wrath isn't just extreme anger it's also retribution punishment. Wrath is both of those.
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Mar 27, 2015 21:43
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I think FMA's view of religion is really interesting. Tying alchemy (especially Ed and Al's alchemy) explicitly to religion isn't an unexpected way to go but the path they go with it is. I think it's interesting that at the end of the day Ed's victory is giving up his need for miracles to change the world and him willingly accepting a life where he can't depend on prayer for help, while Al goes the opposite direction and goes whole-hog into it and neither is portrayed as wrong or dumb. It's a nicer viewpoint than 'lol, religion' or 'lol, atheism' or whatever.
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Mar 27, 2015 22:24
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Bad Seafood posted: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). 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.
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Mar 27, 2015 22:36
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 22:54 |
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The irony of Father is that he is fundamentally very human despite not thinking he is. He's prideful, he's wrathful, he's greedy... you get where I'm going here. He thinks himself above humanity but in the end he's mired down in it.
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Mar 28, 2015 01:36
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