FMAB - episode 1: Fullmetal Alchemist
Oct. 9th, 2023 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsFMAB - episode 1: Fullmetal Alchemist
A lot of commonly accepted fandom opinion is that this episode is pretty bad or at least that they don’t exactly like it. And I can see why, but I can’t exactly agree with the statement.
In my experience, this episode actually plays pretty well when a person is coming into this series without a prior experience with it. It’s sort of a sampler platter of what the series has to offer; it’s got drama and stakes and hints at the conspiracy; glimpses of the expanded cast and dangles the Elrics’ struggles out there without explaining a lot within this one episode; the action is fine and there’s enough of it to hook people for who that’s important while not feeling like it’s the action that’s getting in the way of exploring anything deeper about the story (it’s just got a lot going on so it’s not specifically going for action over character or plot).
And it’s that very sample platter writing that causes it to be hard to come back to. It’s got all the ingredients for the series but very few of them offer more than a taste of things to come. It’s also pretty much reusing (which may not be the right word) sequences and jokes that it will use in the more intended context within a few episodes.
Funny then, that I don’t think being good for new viewers was the reason this episode was done the way it is. Now, I’m speculating here, but the way it looks to me is maybe two fold with the new viewer appeal being the third benefit.
I think it’s partly done because there was such a short time between ’03 – which ended in ’04 even – and Brotherhood starting in ’09 (and no doubt being in production before that) and this was to reset old viewers to the beginning of a new series. Both for how similar and how different it might be. It reminds people of all the characters they loved in the prior series, and recaptures some memorable moments even if it means reusing them as we settle into the story. But it’s also a different animation style, it’s a little more overtly comedic (kind of), it’s a little more…I guess it’s a bit more of an ensemble piece (although again I’m not sure that’s the right word. Ed and Al are still more or less the only characters that are at all developed here, but they are shown to exist as part of a larger world and cast of characters, underdeveloped though the world and characters might be so far.)
I also think the writers basically wanted to start with the backstory, but as that story is best told in smaller pieces across the many years it covers, it’s not well suited to be a pilot episode. Had this been an American show, I can easily see them doing a two part premier where the present day story and the backstory are interwoven into a double (maybe triple) length episode, but I don’t gather that was an option here. And even as I say that, I’m not sure it’s what I would have wanted as I think the backstory benefits from being the focus of the episode in the next one.
In essence I’m saying this episode is kind of structural. *Something* needed to exist before they gave us the backstory, and this show wanted to put the backstory before Liore (for reasons I think I’ll discuss more when we get to both versions of that story). And as I said before, I think this show didn’t want to wait too long to expand the cast beyond the brothers. Which is why it wouldn’t have worked to pick one of the other early manga chapters as a starting point; as I understand a lot of what was cut, especially early, was more of Ed and Al’s adventures. To somehow turn the train job or Youswell into a story involving Bradly and Maes and Roy and Armstrong and Kimbley and Hawkeye would turn one of those existing stories into a whole new tale anyway, so they just went with a wholly new story.
I have another catch-22 situation with the way Hughes is used here. Although it didn’t necessarily have to be a catch-22 (which may mean that it isn’t) but to get around it would have required some different long term decisions. I want to say it doesn’t make sense that the boys are only meeting Hughes now, even though they’ve been doing this job for a few years already; but it’s less that it doesn’t make sense, I’m sure there are a lot of people they haven’t met (although most of them aren’t part of Mustang’s extended team), and more that it removes the possibility of assuming there was more interaction before the series started. It ends up making the boys association with Hughes and the Hughes family a fairly short time, which undercuts how much I’m emotionally invested in their reaction to Hughes’ death.
I am aware that I can be…a difficult and sometimes inconsistent character myself. I’m often pretty unwilling to assume things have been happening without me in the audience knowing about it during any given story; but I’m entirely willing to assume a backstory based on sometimes loose implications. I don’t see where the Elrics bonded with Hughes beyond maybe work friends; but I’ll probably call out the show for underselling Roy’s devastation at the loss of his best friend (not so much in the episode, but not doing enough to earn the extreme before we get to the Envy fight). These facets may not exactly go together but they are more than a little consistent; how many of my major ships are between people who have known and been quietly/secretly in love with each other for a decade before the story we watch even starts? (This show happens to contain an example of that Tori characteristic.)
I’ve been known to point out how watching shows for reviewing makes me notice things I wouldn’t otherwise, and I often mean that in a slightly negative way. But I noticed a few details this time around that I thought were really nice. The only one I remember is that the Armstrong face stones are still there in the alley when Isaac and the Elrics come back, but I really liked that attention to detail.
However, as usual when I take things in in this way, I start having issues with the timeline of events. Although in this case I’m not sure it’s too awful, as Isaac was walking all around the city drawing his circles so some of the time glitches could actually be more time passing than is made explicit.
In my first experiment with watching the sub with the dub, I’m not sure it’s optimal for me. Turns out, reading subtitles still overrides some other inputs I could be getting more out of. And while there are a lot of small differences in the dialog between the two translations, a lot of them are very minor. While the dialog in this episode can be a bit…unnatural sounding given that it’s often blunt and trying to do as much as possible in the short run time, I think most of the changes are toward the more natural sounding in English than the sub would be if spoken.
But there are a few changes that are worth commenting on. Right from the start, MacDougal is almost never referred to by his surname in the sub but just Isaac (the dub uses either depending on the scene). He’s also the Ice Alchemist instead of the Freezing Alchemist, and I’m not sure why that change was made; maybe Freezing just scans better.
The biggest changes are basically the last two scenes though. In the dub, Maes is being the wiser advisor to Roy’s humility; while in the sub, Maes is just reminding Roy of something Roy would himself say. I have to say that the sub does seem more accurate to their respective goals; Roy really shouldn’t need reminding to take the credit and praise he can get, even if in private he’s not letting it go to his head because he knows the real facts. On the other hand, it could be argued that the dub version shows Roy as more cautious and unwilling to accept underserved credit because it can become something used against him if Bradley decides to tell the truth instead and people think Roy was trying to take credit for something he didn’t do.
I think I definitely prefer the sub version of the hospital scene. Armstrong in the dub has always been a little too extra; while in the sub he seems…maybe not a lot more rational (it’s still very much Alex Armstrong logic at play), but a bit less aggressive in his display.
Back to this as a constructed pilot episode, I’m sympathetic to the argument that by showing Central and transmutation circles so early it might be hinting a little too hard at the big reveal that won’t happen until a fair bit down the road. Plus, among the several oddly framed shots they made sure to get in an image of Amestris being such a round country (I think I even noted it on first watch, because of how it was framed, but I doubt I made the connection this early). I don’t think this is a huge problem, but I am sympathetic to those who think it’s too much.
I’m even more divided on how Bradley is used here; especially including his fight with MacDougal. In some ways, if that scene was cut out, or hadn’t put him in obvious villain lighting they might have gotten through this episode with him only being suspicious and not more or less confirmed evil. On the other hand…he’s the *Fuhrer* and that sets off certain alarm bells about reasons not to trust this guy. I’ve always wondered if that plays the same in other parts of the world, or if they use a different word that triggers the same reaction in different cultures, or if it’s less obvious to other cultures or maybe younger people who haven’t had as much exposure to why that title brings such side-eye. Then again, taking the at the time still recent release of ’03, maybe there was never much intent to drag out the question of which side Bradley was on (even though a lot about him is changed).
I feel like I should have some standard closing thoughts for this series (like my ship and villain section), but I don’t have anything in mind to use from the beginning. Should I just use shipping and hating? Maybe scenes I put the ship goggles on tightest for; to which I say Riza is very much in exasperated wife mode dealing with Roy trying to fight ice with fire.
A lot of commonly accepted fandom opinion is that this episode is pretty bad or at least that they don’t exactly like it. And I can see why, but I can’t exactly agree with the statement.
In my experience, this episode actually plays pretty well when a person is coming into this series without a prior experience with it. It’s sort of a sampler platter of what the series has to offer; it’s got drama and stakes and hints at the conspiracy; glimpses of the expanded cast and dangles the Elrics’ struggles out there without explaining a lot within this one episode; the action is fine and there’s enough of it to hook people for who that’s important while not feeling like it’s the action that’s getting in the way of exploring anything deeper about the story (it’s just got a lot going on so it’s not specifically going for action over character or plot).
And it’s that very sample platter writing that causes it to be hard to come back to. It’s got all the ingredients for the series but very few of them offer more than a taste of things to come. It’s also pretty much reusing (which may not be the right word) sequences and jokes that it will use in the more intended context within a few episodes.
Funny then, that I don’t think being good for new viewers was the reason this episode was done the way it is. Now, I’m speculating here, but the way it looks to me is maybe two fold with the new viewer appeal being the third benefit.
I think it’s partly done because there was such a short time between ’03 – which ended in ’04 even – and Brotherhood starting in ’09 (and no doubt being in production before that) and this was to reset old viewers to the beginning of a new series. Both for how similar and how different it might be. It reminds people of all the characters they loved in the prior series, and recaptures some memorable moments even if it means reusing them as we settle into the story. But it’s also a different animation style, it’s a little more overtly comedic (kind of), it’s a little more…I guess it’s a bit more of an ensemble piece (although again I’m not sure that’s the right word. Ed and Al are still more or less the only characters that are at all developed here, but they are shown to exist as part of a larger world and cast of characters, underdeveloped though the world and characters might be so far.)
I also think the writers basically wanted to start with the backstory, but as that story is best told in smaller pieces across the many years it covers, it’s not well suited to be a pilot episode. Had this been an American show, I can easily see them doing a two part premier where the present day story and the backstory are interwoven into a double (maybe triple) length episode, but I don’t gather that was an option here. And even as I say that, I’m not sure it’s what I would have wanted as I think the backstory benefits from being the focus of the episode in the next one.
In essence I’m saying this episode is kind of structural. *Something* needed to exist before they gave us the backstory, and this show wanted to put the backstory before Liore (for reasons I think I’ll discuss more when we get to both versions of that story). And as I said before, I think this show didn’t want to wait too long to expand the cast beyond the brothers. Which is why it wouldn’t have worked to pick one of the other early manga chapters as a starting point; as I understand a lot of what was cut, especially early, was more of Ed and Al’s adventures. To somehow turn the train job or Youswell into a story involving Bradly and Maes and Roy and Armstrong and Kimbley and Hawkeye would turn one of those existing stories into a whole new tale anyway, so they just went with a wholly new story.
I have another catch-22 situation with the way Hughes is used here. Although it didn’t necessarily have to be a catch-22 (which may mean that it isn’t) but to get around it would have required some different long term decisions. I want to say it doesn’t make sense that the boys are only meeting Hughes now, even though they’ve been doing this job for a few years already; but it’s less that it doesn’t make sense, I’m sure there are a lot of people they haven’t met (although most of them aren’t part of Mustang’s extended team), and more that it removes the possibility of assuming there was more interaction before the series started. It ends up making the boys association with Hughes and the Hughes family a fairly short time, which undercuts how much I’m emotionally invested in their reaction to Hughes’ death.
I am aware that I can be…a difficult and sometimes inconsistent character myself. I’m often pretty unwilling to assume things have been happening without me in the audience knowing about it during any given story; but I’m entirely willing to assume a backstory based on sometimes loose implications. I don’t see where the Elrics bonded with Hughes beyond maybe work friends; but I’ll probably call out the show for underselling Roy’s devastation at the loss of his best friend (not so much in the episode, but not doing enough to earn the extreme before we get to the Envy fight). These facets may not exactly go together but they are more than a little consistent; how many of my major ships are between people who have known and been quietly/secretly in love with each other for a decade before the story we watch even starts? (This show happens to contain an example of that Tori characteristic.)
I’ve been known to point out how watching shows for reviewing makes me notice things I wouldn’t otherwise, and I often mean that in a slightly negative way. But I noticed a few details this time around that I thought were really nice. The only one I remember is that the Armstrong face stones are still there in the alley when Isaac and the Elrics come back, but I really liked that attention to detail.
However, as usual when I take things in in this way, I start having issues with the timeline of events. Although in this case I’m not sure it’s too awful, as Isaac was walking all around the city drawing his circles so some of the time glitches could actually be more time passing than is made explicit.
In my first experiment with watching the sub with the dub, I’m not sure it’s optimal for me. Turns out, reading subtitles still overrides some other inputs I could be getting more out of. And while there are a lot of small differences in the dialog between the two translations, a lot of them are very minor. While the dialog in this episode can be a bit…unnatural sounding given that it’s often blunt and trying to do as much as possible in the short run time, I think most of the changes are toward the more natural sounding in English than the sub would be if spoken.
But there are a few changes that are worth commenting on. Right from the start, MacDougal is almost never referred to by his surname in the sub but just Isaac (the dub uses either depending on the scene). He’s also the Ice Alchemist instead of the Freezing Alchemist, and I’m not sure why that change was made; maybe Freezing just scans better.
The biggest changes are basically the last two scenes though. In the dub, Maes is being the wiser advisor to Roy’s humility; while in the sub, Maes is just reminding Roy of something Roy would himself say. I have to say that the sub does seem more accurate to their respective goals; Roy really shouldn’t need reminding to take the credit and praise he can get, even if in private he’s not letting it go to his head because he knows the real facts. On the other hand, it could be argued that the dub version shows Roy as more cautious and unwilling to accept underserved credit because it can become something used against him if Bradley decides to tell the truth instead and people think Roy was trying to take credit for something he didn’t do.
I think I definitely prefer the sub version of the hospital scene. Armstrong in the dub has always been a little too extra; while in the sub he seems…maybe not a lot more rational (it’s still very much Alex Armstrong logic at play), but a bit less aggressive in his display.
Back to this as a constructed pilot episode, I’m sympathetic to the argument that by showing Central and transmutation circles so early it might be hinting a little too hard at the big reveal that won’t happen until a fair bit down the road. Plus, among the several oddly framed shots they made sure to get in an image of Amestris being such a round country (I think I even noted it on first watch, because of how it was framed, but I doubt I made the connection this early). I don’t think this is a huge problem, but I am sympathetic to those who think it’s too much.
I’m even more divided on how Bradley is used here; especially including his fight with MacDougal. In some ways, if that scene was cut out, or hadn’t put him in obvious villain lighting they might have gotten through this episode with him only being suspicious and not more or less confirmed evil. On the other hand…he’s the *Fuhrer* and that sets off certain alarm bells about reasons not to trust this guy. I’ve always wondered if that plays the same in other parts of the world, or if they use a different word that triggers the same reaction in different cultures, or if it’s less obvious to other cultures or maybe younger people who haven’t had as much exposure to why that title brings such side-eye. Then again, taking the at the time still recent release of ’03, maybe there was never much intent to drag out the question of which side Bradley was on (even though a lot about him is changed).
I feel like I should have some standard closing thoughts for this series (like my ship and villain section), but I don’t have anything in mind to use from the beginning. Should I just use shipping and hating? Maybe scenes I put the ship goggles on tightest for; to which I say Riza is very much in exasperated wife mode dealing with Roy trying to fight ice with fire.
