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tori_reviewsSpaciness continues, maybe one day my brain will focus on a project again.
FMA’03 - episode 5: The Man with the Mechanical Arm
I guess a summary of my rating for this episode would be that it should be better than it is. It’s not bad, definitely a step up from the last one (the last ’03 one), but I can’t exactly call it good either. I know there is a train job chapter in the manga, and I gather this isn’t really an adaptation of it, more inspired by the idea of Ed and Al being caught up in an adventure on a train.
I think half my problems with this episode come from seeing what it could have been in Brotherhood. It’s sort of glancing at the worldbuilding of Brotherhood (and I assume the manga) but it doesn’t know how to embrace that world so it seems really shallow and empty. In construction this episode has a good balance between action and character moments, and incorporating some character work into the action, but it doesn’t exactly succeed in the story it tells in those parts.
There’s also something that’s more of a directing problem, I think. The music was too insistent at times; high energy when it should be tense, and so the mood ends up fairly contradictory. I also feel the need to bring up the change in timelines again, because in this version I’m not sure where Ed and Al’s fighting skills come from. In Brotherhood, they seemingly train with Izumi for years (maybe not consistently, it’s not entirely clear) and she trained them in things like combat as well. Here Ed acts way too confidently for a 12 year old who’s never been in a gun fight before. Another trace of this plot meant to happen in the ‘present’ of the manga story, when Ed has had many experiences to let him be so confident.
Part of me appreciates, or at least wants to appreciate, that in this version we get an adventure where Hughes is so involved. It does help to establish why the boys care so much about Hughes, where in Brotherhood they meet so late in things that they don’t seem to have enough time to really bond with him. But aside from him getting some hero moments that would endear him to the boys, I don’t think we get to know very much about him. In this version there is still time to get to know him, but it keeps me from really giving this episode the very credit I want to give it on this front.
So…this has to be a glitch, but the identity tag says Hawkeye is a Major. We’ll call it a mistake, since Hughes is also a Major, and I remember that Hawkeye is correctly a lieutenant at later points in the series. Also I now feel obliged to check in both shows how often Roy is wearing his gloves when he’s sitting around the office; then again I’m not sure what the effect we saw here was, since he didn’t set his office on fire.
As the first episode to really involve Roy, I remember that this episode gave me quite a few thoughts the first time through, and it did again. Because this Roy…is really different, but still recognizable and therefore comparable. I think I can see Bro-Roy pulling a stunt like this to get the boys on a train for his own reasons, and without necessarily telling them why he was insisting on the change. Although I’m less sure I think he would have done that before Ed was a State Alchemist; not impossible, and if he wouldn’t I’m not sure it would be out of concern for their safety, but I have a harder time seeing it.
I can’t quite get a good enough read on the interactions between Roy and Maes to say whether it fits with my view of them and their relationship. It doesn’t grate against my understanding, so it’s probably okay.
But then there’s the end scene. I have a pretty bad disconnect between Ed and the show saying that what Roy does is awesome, when it seems dead scary to me. To me it should clearly at least elicit the reaction that Roy burning the immortal army does in Brotherhood; and I think that one is pretty awesome, even if I can at least sympathize with people thinking it’s potentially horrifying. It doesn’t help that my brain was only too quick to associate the way ‘03-Roy burns Bald with the way Roy burned Riza’s back (and some of the really horrific things my brain has come up with that he might have been made to do in Ishval) so for me this moment should at minimum be weightier than it is, if not sour Ed’s feelings for Mustang even further.
I really hope that whoever the villain in the manga was, they were more interesting than Bald. Bald is clearly an idiot; the military may have been right to get rid of him after he decided to cut off his own arm and replace it with automail. He’s a terrible way to open the idea of the military as corrupt and destructive, and while I can’t remember if that theme is as present in ’03 as it is Brotherhood, I know it is at least in there. But for all the legitimate things that someone can take issue with in the Amestrian military, the idea that they have concerns about someone like Bald, does not seem like something to be concerned about.
Now, if Bald had been Ishvalan (Ishbalan)… Or if he had lost his arm in the Ishbal war, and maybe lost a whole bunch of fellow soldiers; if Bald had then been drummed out of the military and was coming back with his combat arm to get revenge on the commanders who had gotten them into that war (not entirely unlike Isaac in Brotherhood). That’s a story that would introduce worldbuilding, and could actually have been interesting if the first we heard to the Ishbalan war was that of someone who didn’t object to the war but the treatment of Amestrian soldiers. It casts doubt on the military, but we would later learn that the military’s crimes were a lot worse than neglecting veterans.
And, in a way that they couldn’t have known in ’03, that would have been quite a contrast with how we first hear about the war in Brotherhood. No one in this situation would yet be saying that maybe the Ishbalans had been justified in their resistance (I’ll have to wait and see if ’03-Roy says anything similar to that when Scar enters the picture).
…yet again, my priorities reveal themselves. I have nothing to say about Ed and Al except for the way they interact with other characters.
FMA’03 - episode 5: The Man with the Mechanical Arm
I guess a summary of my rating for this episode would be that it should be better than it is. It’s not bad, definitely a step up from the last one (the last ’03 one), but I can’t exactly call it good either. I know there is a train job chapter in the manga, and I gather this isn’t really an adaptation of it, more inspired by the idea of Ed and Al being caught up in an adventure on a train.
I think half my problems with this episode come from seeing what it could have been in Brotherhood. It’s sort of glancing at the worldbuilding of Brotherhood (and I assume the manga) but it doesn’t know how to embrace that world so it seems really shallow and empty. In construction this episode has a good balance between action and character moments, and incorporating some character work into the action, but it doesn’t exactly succeed in the story it tells in those parts.
There’s also something that’s more of a directing problem, I think. The music was too insistent at times; high energy when it should be tense, and so the mood ends up fairly contradictory. I also feel the need to bring up the change in timelines again, because in this version I’m not sure where Ed and Al’s fighting skills come from. In Brotherhood, they seemingly train with Izumi for years (maybe not consistently, it’s not entirely clear) and she trained them in things like combat as well. Here Ed acts way too confidently for a 12 year old who’s never been in a gun fight before. Another trace of this plot meant to happen in the ‘present’ of the manga story, when Ed has had many experiences to let him be so confident.
Part of me appreciates, or at least wants to appreciate, that in this version we get an adventure where Hughes is so involved. It does help to establish why the boys care so much about Hughes, where in Brotherhood they meet so late in things that they don’t seem to have enough time to really bond with him. But aside from him getting some hero moments that would endear him to the boys, I don’t think we get to know very much about him. In this version there is still time to get to know him, but it keeps me from really giving this episode the very credit I want to give it on this front.
So…this has to be a glitch, but the identity tag says Hawkeye is a Major. We’ll call it a mistake, since Hughes is also a Major, and I remember that Hawkeye is correctly a lieutenant at later points in the series. Also I now feel obliged to check in both shows how often Roy is wearing his gloves when he’s sitting around the office; then again I’m not sure what the effect we saw here was, since he didn’t set his office on fire.
As the first episode to really involve Roy, I remember that this episode gave me quite a few thoughts the first time through, and it did again. Because this Roy…is really different, but still recognizable and therefore comparable. I think I can see Bro-Roy pulling a stunt like this to get the boys on a train for his own reasons, and without necessarily telling them why he was insisting on the change. Although I’m less sure I think he would have done that before Ed was a State Alchemist; not impossible, and if he wouldn’t I’m not sure it would be out of concern for their safety, but I have a harder time seeing it.
I can’t quite get a good enough read on the interactions between Roy and Maes to say whether it fits with my view of them and their relationship. It doesn’t grate against my understanding, so it’s probably okay.
But then there’s the end scene. I have a pretty bad disconnect between Ed and the show saying that what Roy does is awesome, when it seems dead scary to me. To me it should clearly at least elicit the reaction that Roy burning the immortal army does in Brotherhood; and I think that one is pretty awesome, even if I can at least sympathize with people thinking it’s potentially horrifying. It doesn’t help that my brain was only too quick to associate the way ‘03-Roy burns Bald with the way Roy burned Riza’s back (and some of the really horrific things my brain has come up with that he might have been made to do in Ishval) so for me this moment should at minimum be weightier than it is, if not sour Ed’s feelings for Mustang even further.
I really hope that whoever the villain in the manga was, they were more interesting than Bald. Bald is clearly an idiot; the military may have been right to get rid of him after he decided to cut off his own arm and replace it with automail. He’s a terrible way to open the idea of the military as corrupt and destructive, and while I can’t remember if that theme is as present in ’03 as it is Brotherhood, I know it is at least in there. But for all the legitimate things that someone can take issue with in the Amestrian military, the idea that they have concerns about someone like Bald, does not seem like something to be concerned about.
Now, if Bald had been Ishvalan (Ishbalan)… Or if he had lost his arm in the Ishbal war, and maybe lost a whole bunch of fellow soldiers; if Bald had then been drummed out of the military and was coming back with his combat arm to get revenge on the commanders who had gotten them into that war (not entirely unlike Isaac in Brotherhood). That’s a story that would introduce worldbuilding, and could actually have been interesting if the first we heard to the Ishbalan war was that of someone who didn’t object to the war but the treatment of Amestrian soldiers. It casts doubt on the military, but we would later learn that the military’s crimes were a lot worse than neglecting veterans.
And, in a way that they couldn’t have known in ’03, that would have been quite a contrast with how we first hear about the war in Brotherhood. No one in this situation would yet be saying that maybe the Ishbalans had been justified in their resistance (I’ll have to wait and see if ’03-Roy says anything similar to that when Scar enters the picture).
…yet again, my priorities reveal themselves. I have nothing to say about Ed and Al except for the way they interact with other characters.
