Before I go into what I think about Brotherhood I just want to say a couple things.
1) There will be some spoilers because I want to compare some plot points of Brotherhood and the original Fullmetal Alchemist. 2) I'm only talking about what happens up to episode 39 because that is all of the dubbed episodes I have seen so far. I only watch dubbed and not subbed because I'm not a crazy person. 3) Some people think that I outright hate anime, which isn't entirely true, I just hate most anime.
.... Anyways, now that I'm up to episode 39, I have been introduced to a lot of the storyline to be able to make a judgement of the overall show. I thoroughly enjoyed the original and I was glad to hear that there will be new run of the show that is supposed to follow the story of the manga more closely. I didn't really have much of an opinion around the beginning of FMA: Brotherhood because both series follow a similar story line up to the 5th Laboratory incident. Some stuff happens sooner in one series than the other, like when Hughes is killed. It's basically right after the 5th Lab that both series branch off into different directions with the story.
You know shit is about to go down when you can actually see his eye. The parts that I'm really liking about Brotherhood are most of the new characters that are introduced. Lin Yao, who at first was kinda annoying, develops into a more compelling character throughout the series. Of course he is kinda taking a backseat at the moment now that he isn't human anymore....for now I guess. Olivier Armstrong is also quite entertaining to watch despite having a standard "hardass" personality. The only new character I don't really care much for is probably Shao May.......might just be because of that stupid panda midget thing she has.... Oh and I just remembered that Alphonse is way better in Brotherhood because he basically can do what Ed can.
As for the plot, I'm really digging it. I'm kinda tied on which creation story of the humunculi I prefer. Both are pretty good. The idea of there being two Hohenheims has me very interested in what will happen later in the plot. As for the evil plans stuff, I prefer Brotherhood's over the original FMA. The scope of Brotherhood is a lot bigger because the plan is to use all of Amestris as an ingredient for a Philosopher's Stone instead of the original FMA, where Liore was just going to be used to create the stone.
Oh anime, you so crazy. Wait, dude! I need to talk to further the plot and tell you why I'm so strong! I do have some issues with Brotherhood, though. My one major problem with it, is the amount of typical anime "wackiness" that occurs throughout this show. The original did have its share of it too, but Brotherhood takes it a lot further. I think that nearly every episode so far has at least one moment where I just *facepalm. I hate that shit, it's why I dislike most anime. My other annoyance is just the common situation of, hey I'm fighting you, but wait I need to stop the fight and inform you why I'm kicking your ass. There is way too much explanations going on when they should just keep on fighting, but it's not really a major problem. A lot of anime suffers from this, Dragon Ball Z is probably the winner if my childhood memories are accurate.
Overall, I'm enjoying Brotherhood very much. FMA is one of my favorites, so being able to see a different story of it is fantastic. I am aware that FMA didn't follow the manga storyline which is why a number of people hate/don't care for it, but I myself don't care about that reasoning. For what it was, FMA's own story was still pretty solid. That isn't stopping me from liking Brotherhood either and at this point, I will have to wait till the ending of this show to finally know which series I prefer over the other.
Lastly, I want to add this because anything involving anime in Giantbomb requires it.
It's only funny as long as anime fans continue to bitch about it. 31 Comments
