I guess this can have spoilers, so I’ll put my questions in the next post.
I’m halfway through the original Fullmetal Alchemist show on Netflix streaming. Hughes, the family man, was just murdered and the boys are on a train to find another way to get the Philosopher’s stone. Episode 26 of 51.
My question is about Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
So…it’s not a sequel series or continuation? It’s a retelling of the show following the Manga storyline more exactly?
What’s up with that? Is it worth watching, or will I more or less know everything having watched the current(2004) series I’m watching?
Which series did you like better? I have not read the Manga and never will, so story accuracy is not a big deal for me.
I’m liking the current series pretty well, much better than I expected to.
The first FullMetal Alchemist series ended way before the manga did, so it goes off the tracks part way through. Brotherhood started up just as the manga was ending, so it is a lot more faithful.
That said, Brotherhood(from what I saw) is a slightly different retelling of the beginning(likely assuming you’ve already seen it).
I watched about half of the first season of Brotherhood on Netflix, got distracted by other things, then came back and started watching again, except I was watching the original by mistake. To make things even more confusing, the first episode of the original series (the one with the corrupt priest who pretends to bring back dead people) is around six or seven of Brotherhood, which is where I’d left off.
Once I figured out what was going on, I ended up watching about four episodes of the original series, and I gotta say, I like Brotherhood a lot better. When they’re both doing the same episode (such as, say, the one about the alchemist trying to create a chimera that can speak) Brotherhood seems to pack more punch. Maybe it’s just because I saw that one first, I dunno.
FMA is a classic Gecko Ending - you are, I think, right about the point where it diverges completely. (Only read the first little bit of the manga, so I can’t say for sure, I just know it does from seeing manga spoilers in various places.)
For a specific example, several of the homunculi are completely different (won’t mention who).
Even aside from the hard swerve, the first anime’s got some smaller changes - the chimaera story ends slightly differently, for example - so even before you get to that point, you wouldn’t be watching quite the same story.
I enjoyed Brotherhood more, but that’s probably because the ending seemed more consistent with all the elements introduced early in the series.
You’re pretty much at the point when the storylines diverge completely. They are completely different shows after Hughes dies. That’s when the first show caught up with the manga and the TV writers basically created their own set of arcs to conclude the series.
I won’t spoil things, but the original TV series had a finale that I didn’t think made much sense.
Brotherhood evolves a little more naturally and a lot of the plot elements make quite a bit more sense in the context of the creator’s world.
Oh, and Brotherhood doesn’t have much filler to fill in gaps in story. Like that cat burglar episode in the original series. As amusing as they might have been, it means every episode of Brotherhood advances the plot, which makes for a tighter show.
I thought Brotherhood was better than the original anime. A little darker, but with just the right amount of humor to balance it out. I had to work a little harder to keep track of who was who and what schemes were afoot, which is not a bad thing. I can’t read the manga because I am too put off by all their heads looking like beach balls, so I can’t comment on how faithful the anime is to it. (Yes, their heads look like beach balls in the anime too, but it’s somehow not as bad.)