Memories of Amestris
Looking back at the adaptations of Hiromu Arakawa's manga Full Metal Alchemist
Hi readers!
This is going to be my first paid newsletter—I know the month has turned over, but I don’t actually have much writing to update you all with and I have a lot of exciting things coming up later in the month. I’ll do a free round up of my work later to correspond with that.
Today, I woke up and immediately started thinking about Full Metal Alchemist and it drove me so insane that I had to jot down a couple of thoughts about it rather than just tweet about it endlessly. This is in part inspired by an article from Polygon that asserts that the original anime adaptation is better than Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood and also the manga. Put simply: I do not agree.
If you’ve never seen or read Full Metal Alchemist, I would highly encourage you to do so. It’s the story of Edward and Alphonse Elric, two brothers who lost their mother, and who then try to use the power of alchemy to bring her back to life. In the world of the series, alchemy is just 100% real, but also using it to revive dead people is forbidden. When they try to bring their mother back the Elric brothers learn why: their alchemical equation rebounds on them. Older brother Edward loses his arm and leg, and his younger brother Alphonse has his soul bound to a suit of armor. From there, the two brothers go on a quest to get their original bodies back by searching for the mythological Philosopher’s Stone.
I think that the original 2003 anime does a couple of very specific things better than Brotherhood, especially in the beginning. Brotherhood has a slow burn, and also mostly skips over the early chapters of the manga. The 2003 anime spends a lot of time lovingly rendering these early scenes which establish large parts of Ed and Al’s characterization. The 2003 anime also spends a lot more time with characters like Maes Hughes and Shou and Nina Tucker, making their eventual fates all the more heartwrenching. Because the original anime was being produced before the original manga ended, the production team had no choice but to tell their own story after those arcs, and it is in those later story beats that I think the whole thing kind of falls apart.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say that you like the story that the 2003 anime tells, or that it meant a lot to you as a viewer. The comparisons between the two adaptations are pretty moot once you accept that they are simply two radically different tales. The 2003 anime is fine for what it is, and some parts of it are really good. There’s a reason why it was such a smash hit at a time when watching anime was much harder than it is now.
Unfortunately, Hiromu Arakawa’s manga is one of the best stories ever written, and the 2003 anime pales in comparison to the scale and scope of what Arakawa accomplishes in her manga.
In order to really get into why, I have to talk about what happens to Shou and Nina Tucker, as well as spoil many other aspects of both series.