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tori_reviews2023-12-14 11:09 pm
jedi_of_urth) wrote in tori_reviews2023-12-14 11:09 pm
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FMAB - episode 3: City of Heresy (and housekeeping)
So I know I basically dropped off this blog the last several weeks, but I've now made a decision to spend the next couple weeks clearing out my backlog of reviews. And I'm going to drop the M/W/F posting schedule, in fact I will be posting most days if I remember to. However, then I will probably take a couple weeks off after the new year to start building up a new set of reviews. If this seems overly complicated, blame the fact that I'm trying to make it easier on my word counter next year.
Which also makes this a real good time to let me know if you have preferences for what I should do more reviews of. But for now...
FMAB - episode 3: City of Heresy
So now we come to the third part of the Liore cross-series trilogy (and yes I realize that the subtitles say ‘Lior’ but that doesn’t look right to me; I wonder if the manga used Liore and so that’s what I’ve absorbed through fandom osmosis), and in my opinion the clearly superior version.
This episode is trying to pack just a bit too much into one episode, while also retreading some of the ground covered in the series opener. And adding in the premier does undercut a bit of the disappointment I think we ought to feel at the end of the story. In this context they’ve lost out on two potential philosopher’s stones in a couple of weeks or so, which makes this seem less hopeless overall than it might have.
But I will say that on close watch, I think this episode is even better than I was giving it credit for while watching the ’03 version. It’s a little fast, a little cartoony in places, but even that kind of works for it. It means more when the story slows down then, and it does know when to slow down.
I think the problems that stick out to me are more in the direction of the audio and visual elements. The music is overpowering at times and makes everything come across as that much faster paced, when the pacing already seems to be rushing through things than it maybe needs to. And the same is true for the visuals, there’s a lot of play angles and transitions that make the direction seem overcrowded, like they didn’t have enough time to do things more naturally. Though there is another element of the visual direction I think is in play. While I haven’t read the manga, I rather get the impression this show especially was trying to replicate well known visuals from the manga art; using the manga as effectively storyboards for the anime. This isn’t a terrible idea actually, but it leaves some messy traces. Like the fact that this isn’t the first time we see Ed’s automail, but since it was in the manga it’s given a full hero shot.
I was right to recall that it’s pretty convenient that Cornello doesn’t notice the microphone at his feet. But in addition to what I brought up last time about the timing in ’03 being convenient for Al to get the wires hooked up, this also has the advantage of Ed having the speaker switch; so as long as Al got the wiring done in time, Ed wouldn’t have them broadcasting random noise until Cornello showed up to say stupid things.
Another thing I think is done much better in the version is the world building. Liore actually feels like it can exist in the same world as the rest of this show. The people have at least heard of alchemy; they’ve even heard of the Elrics (for all that’s mostly there to set up the ‘which is fullmetal’ skit again). They just don’t see alchemy very often, so they don’t have much to compare with what Cornello does; either to see the similarities or to now assume the boys are doing miracles too or to ponder the differences. I suppose it’s a bit of a mixed bag that we know the boys were hoping to find a philosopher’s stone by coming here. The downside being that they don’t have to do any investigation and it raises the question of how they heard about it. But it also makes it so they don’t just happen to arrive in a town that happens to have something they would be interested in. We also have a bit more understanding of why the idea of bringing in the military isn’t something they want around here, which isn’t the most necessary ingredient to make this the better version, but it sure doesn’t hurt.
Thinking on it a bit more, I think this episode really benefits from not being the series opener. And not just because it doesn’t have to be mysterious about the backstory or isn’t solely responsible for establishing characterization and what little explanation of alchemy either of these shows does very clearly. I think there’s a benefit to not having Cornello be the first adversary we see Ed go up against. Cornello and Isaac at least seem to be cut from a similar cloth, and the boys did not defeat Isaac on their own; they *couldn’t* have defeated Isaac on their own; we see them beat Cornello more at a battle of wits and luck than portraying them (and especially Ed) as a great hero. Even the improbably lucky timing that Cornello got hit with a massive rebound is a mixed bag, it probably saved Ed in the moment, but it did toughen Cornello up for the next bit of their fight.
I had an interesting moment with the ’03 version that I didn’t comment on last time, but I really thought Ed was going to land the fist of god on Cornello and actually squash him. I think this a product of how much more of a kids’ cartoon that version seems, like the kind of cartoon where they just wouldn’t acknowledge that the protagonist totally kills people in their fights. That obviously wasn’t what even that show went with, and I know that Ed isn’t a killer (he actually kind of is in ’03, but that’s a ways off), but it still came across that way. I still think it’s a little weird that Ed just lets Cornello run off at the end, almost like he knows that something else will come along and finish off the problem, but that actually makes a fair amount of sense the more I think about it. Cornello no longer had a stone and was heavily injured; and of course Ed was going to go back, make a report about what happened in Liore, and the adults would come back and make sure Cornello didn’t start things up again.
The only notable difference I kept noting in the sub vs. dub comparison is that the sub was focused on Ed calling Cornello’s alchemy second or third rate, where the dub has them trading novice insults. I kind of like the rankings as a language choice for Ed, but I think I like the novice choice better. It’s more aware of how Ed’s age makes him come across I guess.
Now, one pretty insignificant compliment I want to give ’03 in comparing them, is there was a shot toward the end of ’03 where Rose tossed her hair around and the animation of that really struck me with how much detailed hair we saw in the movement. There’s a similar shot in this one, but it’s not nearly as pretty to look at.
Okay, let’s make Ed’s parting words to Rose be the element I go out on too. The differences between the two versions of that scene are actually multi-fold. I’m only commenting on the difference in the dubs and the impression experiencing those scenes left on me, so whether either of these translates to what was done in the Japanese version I can’t say. But the difference in how the speech is delivered is only part of the difference, even though it is a pretty different performance. I think I would call ’03 Ed very dismissive, and in some ways not very self-aware; neither of which I think applies here. While he’s still harsh here, and the compassion is not exactly obvious, I would say that he’s at least sympathetic. He’s not talking down to Rose in that moment, not the way he was earlier; he’s telling her that he can’t tell her what will give her the motivation to keep going, but she has everything she needs to go out and find that for herself.
That this writing doesn’t strike me as so nihilistic is helped by a couple of things around it. In ’03 they use Al to say that Ed was too harsh, hence why he stops to give Rose a bit more context for what’s on Ed’s mind. This actually undercut what inspiration there was in Ed’s words, turning it from ‘get up and go out there and figure out what is worth living for in this world’ to something more like ‘Ed replaced his faith in bringing mom back with faith that we’ll find a philosopher’s stone to repair our bodies, you’ll figure out something like that.’ It also seems less fruitless here because the people of Liore have turned against Cornello in the end of the ep. They may fall prey to another person or another strategy later on, but every time a few more people will find their own feet and make their own way forward.
Which also makes this a real good time to let me know if you have preferences for what I should do more reviews of. But for now...
FMAB - episode 3: City of Heresy
So now we come to the third part of the Liore cross-series trilogy (and yes I realize that the subtitles say ‘Lior’ but that doesn’t look right to me; I wonder if the manga used Liore and so that’s what I’ve absorbed through fandom osmosis), and in my opinion the clearly superior version.
This episode is trying to pack just a bit too much into one episode, while also retreading some of the ground covered in the series opener. And adding in the premier does undercut a bit of the disappointment I think we ought to feel at the end of the story. In this context they’ve lost out on two potential philosopher’s stones in a couple of weeks or so, which makes this seem less hopeless overall than it might have.
But I will say that on close watch, I think this episode is even better than I was giving it credit for while watching the ’03 version. It’s a little fast, a little cartoony in places, but even that kind of works for it. It means more when the story slows down then, and it does know when to slow down.
I think the problems that stick out to me are more in the direction of the audio and visual elements. The music is overpowering at times and makes everything come across as that much faster paced, when the pacing already seems to be rushing through things than it maybe needs to. And the same is true for the visuals, there’s a lot of play angles and transitions that make the direction seem overcrowded, like they didn’t have enough time to do things more naturally. Though there is another element of the visual direction I think is in play. While I haven’t read the manga, I rather get the impression this show especially was trying to replicate well known visuals from the manga art; using the manga as effectively storyboards for the anime. This isn’t a terrible idea actually, but it leaves some messy traces. Like the fact that this isn’t the first time we see Ed’s automail, but since it was in the manga it’s given a full hero shot.
I was right to recall that it’s pretty convenient that Cornello doesn’t notice the microphone at his feet. But in addition to what I brought up last time about the timing in ’03 being convenient for Al to get the wires hooked up, this also has the advantage of Ed having the speaker switch; so as long as Al got the wiring done in time, Ed wouldn’t have them broadcasting random noise until Cornello showed up to say stupid things.
Another thing I think is done much better in the version is the world building. Liore actually feels like it can exist in the same world as the rest of this show. The people have at least heard of alchemy; they’ve even heard of the Elrics (for all that’s mostly there to set up the ‘which is fullmetal’ skit again). They just don’t see alchemy very often, so they don’t have much to compare with what Cornello does; either to see the similarities or to now assume the boys are doing miracles too or to ponder the differences. I suppose it’s a bit of a mixed bag that we know the boys were hoping to find a philosopher’s stone by coming here. The downside being that they don’t have to do any investigation and it raises the question of how they heard about it. But it also makes it so they don’t just happen to arrive in a town that happens to have something they would be interested in. We also have a bit more understanding of why the idea of bringing in the military isn’t something they want around here, which isn’t the most necessary ingredient to make this the better version, but it sure doesn’t hurt.
Thinking on it a bit more, I think this episode really benefits from not being the series opener. And not just because it doesn’t have to be mysterious about the backstory or isn’t solely responsible for establishing characterization and what little explanation of alchemy either of these shows does very clearly. I think there’s a benefit to not having Cornello be the first adversary we see Ed go up against. Cornello and Isaac at least seem to be cut from a similar cloth, and the boys did not defeat Isaac on their own; they *couldn’t* have defeated Isaac on their own; we see them beat Cornello more at a battle of wits and luck than portraying them (and especially Ed) as a great hero. Even the improbably lucky timing that Cornello got hit with a massive rebound is a mixed bag, it probably saved Ed in the moment, but it did toughen Cornello up for the next bit of their fight.
I had an interesting moment with the ’03 version that I didn’t comment on last time, but I really thought Ed was going to land the fist of god on Cornello and actually squash him. I think this a product of how much more of a kids’ cartoon that version seems, like the kind of cartoon where they just wouldn’t acknowledge that the protagonist totally kills people in their fights. That obviously wasn’t what even that show went with, and I know that Ed isn’t a killer (he actually kind of is in ’03, but that’s a ways off), but it still came across that way. I still think it’s a little weird that Ed just lets Cornello run off at the end, almost like he knows that something else will come along and finish off the problem, but that actually makes a fair amount of sense the more I think about it. Cornello no longer had a stone and was heavily injured; and of course Ed was going to go back, make a report about what happened in Liore, and the adults would come back and make sure Cornello didn’t start things up again.
The only notable difference I kept noting in the sub vs. dub comparison is that the sub was focused on Ed calling Cornello’s alchemy second or third rate, where the dub has them trading novice insults. I kind of like the rankings as a language choice for Ed, but I think I like the novice choice better. It’s more aware of how Ed’s age makes him come across I guess.
Now, one pretty insignificant compliment I want to give ’03 in comparing them, is there was a shot toward the end of ’03 where Rose tossed her hair around and the animation of that really struck me with how much detailed hair we saw in the movement. There’s a similar shot in this one, but it’s not nearly as pretty to look at.
Okay, let’s make Ed’s parting words to Rose be the element I go out on too. The differences between the two versions of that scene are actually multi-fold. I’m only commenting on the difference in the dubs and the impression experiencing those scenes left on me, so whether either of these translates to what was done in the Japanese version I can’t say. But the difference in how the speech is delivered is only part of the difference, even though it is a pretty different performance. I think I would call ’03 Ed very dismissive, and in some ways not very self-aware; neither of which I think applies here. While he’s still harsh here, and the compassion is not exactly obvious, I would say that he’s at least sympathetic. He’s not talking down to Rose in that moment, not the way he was earlier; he’s telling her that he can’t tell her what will give her the motivation to keep going, but she has everything she needs to go out and find that for herself.
That this writing doesn’t strike me as so nihilistic is helped by a couple of things around it. In ’03 they use Al to say that Ed was too harsh, hence why he stops to give Rose a bit more context for what’s on Ed’s mind. This actually undercut what inspiration there was in Ed’s words, turning it from ‘get up and go out there and figure out what is worth living for in this world’ to something more like ‘Ed replaced his faith in bringing mom back with faith that we’ll find a philosopher’s stone to repair our bodies, you’ll figure out something like that.’ It also seems less fruitless here because the people of Liore have turned against Cornello in the end of the ep. They may fall prey to another person or another strategy later on, but every time a few more people will find their own feet and make their own way forward.