I don't know why I only just now realized

[mochi]

that in the 2004 Fullmetal Alchemist anime, the body part Scar's brother lost when he tried to ressurect his wife, and created Lust

 

 

was his genitals

Edited November 25, 2020 by mochi

[In Flames]

Yea that's a hard reach.

Around.

[Daos]

That looks like his stomach.

[In Flames]

Also the 2004 version is trash. Why would you even bother watching something so obviously inferior?

Edited November 27, 2020 by MoistDaddy

[MasqueradeOverture]

The 2003 one is better for the material covered in the first half (since Brotherhood kinda rushed that). The rest of that series is ignorable.

I still stand by Machete Order being the best viewing experience (FMA:B ep. 1 / FMA '03 ep. 1-25 / FMA:B ep. 11-64). There are arguments for inconsistencies watching it this way, but those inconsistencies are vague and implied at worst.

[In Flames]

1 hour ago, MasqueradeOverture said:

The 2003 one is better for the material covered in the first half (since Brotherhood kinda rushed that). The rest of that series is ignorable.

I still stand by Machete Order being the best viewing experience (FMA:B ep. 1 / FMA '03 ep. 1-25 / FMA:B ep. 11-64). There are arguments for inconsistencies watching it this way, but those inconsistencies are vague and implied at worst.

I'm surprised I hear this from people. I don't understand how any of it feels rushed. 

[Top Gun]

Brotherhood absolutely flies through its adaptation of the shared material and makes for a far lesser experience if you didn't already watch the '03 adaptation.  What happened to Nina wouldn't hit nearly as hard if you hadn't already spent more than an episode getting to know her in the earlier version, and little touches like making the birth of Elicia the one that Ed and Al assist in, as opposed to some random stranger, does much more to endear the audience to Hughes and his family.  The events of Laboratory 5 hit far harder in the '03 version too, even if some of the mechanical details aren't strictly compatible with the manga story.

Honestly, having seen both adaptations in their entirety, I still prefer the '03 version overall, even in its original moments.  It seemed to take a more nuanced look at the themes involved, especially in terms of its ending, and it didn't have nearly as many painfully out-of-place SD comedy moments.  Just...let's pretend Shamballa doesn't exist.

[In Flames]

18 hours ago, Top Gun said:

Brotherhood absolutely flies through its adaptation of the shared material and makes for a far lesser experience if you didn't already watch the '03 adaptation.  What happened to Nina wouldn't hit nearly as hard if you hadn't already spent more than an episode getting to know her in the earlier version, and little touches like making the birth of Elicia the one that Ed and Al assist in, as opposed to some random stranger, does much more to endear the audience to Hughes and his family.  The events of Laboratory 5 hit far harder in the '03 version too, even if some of the mechanical details aren't strictly compatible with the manga story.

Honestly, having seen both adaptations in their entirety, I still prefer the '03 version overall, even in its original moments.  It seemed to take a more nuanced look at the themes involved, especially in terms of its ending, and it didn't have nearly as many painfully out-of-place SD comedy moments.  Just...let's pretend Shamballa doesn't exist.

Having read the manga, I thought the BH was pretty faithful. Agree to disagree and what not. BH honestly has one of my highest ratings next to NGE, Gintama and Bakemonogatari.

[EmpressAngel]

On 11/27/2020 at 3:32 PM, Top Gun said:

Just...let's pretend Shamballa doesn't exist.

Oh no, somebody in that writer's room has to fight me for the choices they made for that movie.

[avec]

Haha gottem

[Chapinator_X]

I’d stand by the Machete Order for a rewatch because the first half of the 2003 anime and the second half of Brotherhood were fantastic.

BH is better in the long run, especially if it’s your first FMA and you don’t want to face the terrible second half of 2003. But you do miss out on the emotional gravitas from the earlier twists and turns by completely ignoring the old anime. 

Edited November 29, 2020 by Jiro_Dreams

[MasqueradeOverture]

The Greed fight and the underground city stuff is awesome, but the corny Ishbal shit and Shamballa are enough to make the back half of '03 obsolete.

Hell, Shamballa for FMA is like TROS to the Star Wars sequel trilogy. The fuck were they thinking?

[EmpressAngel]

Hey, at least Star Wars didn't take Chewbacca and turn him into a Nazi.

[Daos]

On 11/27/2020 at 2:32 PM, Top Gun said:

Brotherhood absolutely flies through its adaptation of the shared material and makes for a far lesser experience if you didn't already watch the '03 adaptation.  What happened to Nina wouldn't hit nearly as hard if you hadn't already spent more than an episode getting to know her in the earlier version, and little touches like making the birth of Elicia the one that Ed and Al assist in, as opposed to some random stranger, does much more to endear the audience to Hughes and his family.  The events of Laboratory 5 hit far harder in the '03 version too, even if some of the mechanical details aren't strictly compatible with the manga story.

Honestly, having seen both adaptations in their entirety, I still prefer the '03 version overall, even in its original moments.  It seemed to take a more nuanced look at the themes involved, especially in terms of its ending, and it didn't have nearly as many painfully out-of-place SD comedy moments.  Just...let's pretend Shamballa doesn't exist.

I always preferred the 03, I thought Brotherhood suffered from too many characters syndrome. The final fight in Brotherhood was better though.

[mochi]

I prefer the 2003 Anime for at least addressing the weird Nazi Symbolism that Amestris exudes in and of itself

 

also Dark Skinned Rose is best Rose....I wouldn't say either anime is bad tho

[MasqueradeOverture]

Oh yeah, I forgot her melanin count dropped between series.

[Chapinator_X]

I thought 03 shat the bed when they made Izumi the mother of Wrath and raped Rose.

Aside from Rewrite being an awesome song, the second half suffered from the writers not knowing where exactly to go after they ran out of material to work with. 

It’s definitely easier to look fondly at 2003 though because Brotherhood came out and there isn’t a situation where the only version of the Fullmetal Alchemist anime is the incomplete one that ended at Shamballa.

[CaptainStarwind]

I definitely like both series but I like 03 more, honestly probably because I watched it first.  I feel like 03 gets more melancholic towards the end of the series, and I enjoy that feeling more than huge grand finale babies ever after at the end of BH.  I also agree with all the points that 03 is much better paced for the manga material it covers than BH, and if I watch the series again I'd probably do it in that order.  That animation is (clearly) much better in BH, and the final fight is awesome, so I see positives about both series. 

I don't particularly hate Shamballa but I would not have ended the series that way.  The alternate universe stuff at least comes up in 03, so it's not out of left field, and I think it still keeps the tone of the end of 03, but I'd much prefer that two people didn't get stuck in an alternate universe at the end of the movie.

[Top Gun]

The thing with the finale of the manga/Brotherhood is that they set up these huge apocalyptic stakes, and then everything gets resolved in a manner that feels way too...easy. Like there's that moment when Father starts Third Impact and everyone keels over, but it's reversed so quickly that you don't even have time to feel the enormity of it.  And then Ed's final sacrifice to bring back Al isn't that at all.  He gets an idea, it works, and the only thing he has to "sacrifice" is something he's already spent the entire series without anyway.  Compare that to the heart-wrenching dueling sacrifices Ed and Al made for each other at the end of the '03 version, and there's no contest.

Edited December 6, 2020 by Top Gun

[CaptainStarwind]

15 hours ago, Top Gun said:

The thing with the finale of the manga/Brotherhood is that they set up these huge apocalyptic stakes, and then everything gets resolved in a manner that feels way too...easy. Like there's that moment when Father starts Third Impact and everyone keels over, but it's reversed so quickly that you don't even have time to feel the enormity of it.  And then Ed's final sacrifice to bring back Al is that at all.  He gets an idea, it works, and the only thing he has to "sacrifice" is something he's already spent the entire series without anyway.  Compare that to the heart-wrenching dueling sacrifices Ed and Al made for each other at the end of the '03 version, and there's no contest.

I agree, and I think you put that better than I could have.  Everything wraps up a little too neatly for me in FMAB.  Admittedly, it's a fun watch and a great climax for the series, but I can't help but prefer the bittersweet ending of 03.

[mochi]

On 12/5/2020 at 6:21 AM, MasqueradeOverture said:

Oh yeah, I forgot her melanin count dropped between series.

Rediculously so

Edited December 8, 2020 by mochi

[Daos]

I wasn't a fan of the whole "Truth/God" thing at the end of Brotherhood either.

[PokeNirvash]

My experience watching FMA 03 was... not ideal. I started tuning into [as]'s Saturday schedule long-term in 2006, just when premieres finished up and they started playing reruns of the show. I watched all 23 episodes they aired, but in a move that was very like 11 year-old me, I rewatched some episodes multiple times while others I only watched once or twice. (For example, I can't count how many times I played and replayed "The Alchemy Exam" for myself, but "Night of the Chimera's Cry", I only bothered with twice, I think.) And that's without bringing up episode 2 being the April Fools' version where soundboard fart noises muted out the dialogue half the time, which, while hilarious, was awfully inconvenient. Once they pulled FMA reruns from the Saturday schedule, exactly around the time Bleach and Trinity Blood premiered, I pursued the final 28 episodes of FMA through the reruns it had on [as]'s weekday lineup. Episodes 27 and 28 were slight exceptions, my first exposure to them being a special features disk included with an FMA video game I never played, but through efforts in waking up early and working knowledge of how to use a VCR, I was able to watch and record (because that was my thing) all 51 episodes of FMA as broadcast on [as]. Unfortunately, I was never the most consistent early-riser in middle school, so I wound up skipping some episodes and going back to watch them out of order, which really jumbled my at-the-moment understanding of the show. Then there was Shamballa, the home video release for which somehow found its way onto my sister's list of anime DVDs she wanted, so my first time watching that was not the most ideal, and it wasn't until the Toonami broadcast of the movie in 2013 (and Angel's beautifully written evisceration of it) that I really came to appreciate what I was watching, as faulty as it was.

Compare that with Brotherhood, which I was able to view from start to finish during its 2010-2011 broadcast on [as]. (I was gonna start it subbed as a seasonal watch, but FUNimation's free-to-view player had extremely slow buffering issues, so I opted to wait until the inevitable happened.) With only a few hiccups in the recording-and-watching process - episode 14 failed to record so I watched it through viewing individual episode clips on the [as] website in what I assume was the correct order, and post-credits scenes cut from later episodes I filled myself in on by looking up and watching the original Japanese versions on YouTube - Brotherhood turned out a much smoother ride than 03. While I'd be willing to give 03 another shot in a more start-to-finish format, and can appreciate it for its own merits and even its flaws, I'll always prefer Brotherhood because between the two, it's the one I had the comparatively ideal watching experience with.

And then there's Sacred Star of Milos, whose different animation style wasn't that bad, but suffered worse problems with the story, and I'll always associate with the chain of events that led to the Toonami block's early 2015 downsizing.

Edited December 7, 2020 by PokeNirvash

[EmpressAngel]

2003 series did turn that one guy into an automail Terminator. Whether that counts as a pro or a con is a personal choice.

[PokeNirvash]

Funny thing, Terminarcher was the first thing I thought of when Gunners said "mechanical details", even though it had nothing to do what he was talking about.

[mochi]

On 12/7/2020 at 2:56 PM, EmpressAngel said:

2003 series did turn that one guy into an automail Terminator. Whether that counts as a pro or a con is a personal choice.

I know people make fun of that but honestly I don't see why, a talking suit of armor with a cute little kid voice and a 4 foot tall man with bionic arms and legs is no less stupid

Edited December 8, 2020 by mochi

[PokeNirvash]

Probably because Ed's automail prosthetics are limited to just two limbs and in Al's case his soul is bound to said suit of armor, not to mention both were part of the canon story from the beginning, whereas Terminarcher had one half of his body - lengthwise, mind you - replaced with prosthetics, and is also exclusive to the 03 anime, just like Archer himself was.

[mochi]

11 hours ago, PokeNirvash said:

Probably because Ed's automail prosthetics are limited to just two limbs and in Al's case his soul is bound to said suit of armor, not to mention both were part of the canon story from the beginning, whereas Terminarcher had one half of his body - lengthwise, mind you - replaced with prosthetics, and is also exclusive to the 03 anime, just like Archer himself was.

that's true but FMA isn't a "realistic" series....even if Shamballa has a weird amount of IRL nazi history woven into it's story

[CaptainStarwind]

On 12/7/2020 at 2:56 PM, EmpressAngel said:

2003 series did turn that one guy into an automail Terminator. Whether that counts as a pro or a con is a personal choice.

I think the funny thing is I never questioned the fact that Terminarcher existed until this moment.  Until now I was just kinda rolled with it and never really questioned it.  Though now that I think about it, he's definitely a bit out of place... but I don't care because the concept is so over the top it becomes awesome again.