What I watched in June: part 2 of 2

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood: I liked it.

But first, the bad.  The beginning really suffered from pacing issues.  They decided not to cover much of the ground they had covered in the earlier series while also trying to cover some of the important highlights.   (Example: important character death in other series - episode 25; same point in this series - episode 10.  Not as much time to see and grow to love the character.) The result is that they built little emotional momentum, so the payoffs in the first 25% of the show were, well, not powerful at all, especially for those who hadn't seen the first series.  I would thus recommend watching the other version first to get more mileage out of this one.  The problem is that if you see the other version first, you are probably going to compare the two, and there are some unfavorable comparisons.

• The music is 96% crap compared to the brilliance of the other series' music.  This may not be very fair.  The first series set the bar incredibly high.  This score is certainly adequate.  But I wanted brilliant again.  My expectations were wrong.
• Scar's new VA in English.  He's just too smooth and urbane and high-class sounding.  Again, the bar was set pretty high in the other series, so my expectations were probably impossible for any other actor to fulfill.
• The weaknesses of the manga are here, too.  The switches between humorous bits and serious bits can be kind of jarring in anime (I had this problem with D.Gray-Man, too).  Some fights are cooler in manga panels.

Some things that I was impressed by in the manga are here in living, moving color, and that can be a good thing.  Roy vs. Lust and Roy vs. Envy are particular powerful.  Hawkeye and Roy are a hoot together.  Al's mind-body problems are harrowing.  Ling is a complex character, and so is Greed (in all incarnations).  Gluttony is just scary sometimes.  The Briggs folks are great.  Oh, Jean . . .  Scar and Fuhrer Bradley's fight is pretty good, too.  And Wrath, well, some of that is creepy.  The body count is a lot higher in this series, too.  Bad Dwarf in the Flask, no, no!

The returning voice cast was great.  In Japanese, they ticked lots of folks off by switching around a bunch of the actors.  Funimation, the company who dubbed and released this in English, didn't make that mistake.  They really went above and beyond to get back everyone they could.  The end result was pretty amazing and made for some good commentaries.  My favorite was the one with Aaron in episode 40.  He played Al in the other series, but then puberty interfered.  I was really set up to sulk about that, especially after I saw the newer movie (Sacred Star of Milos) and really was not into Al's different, obviously voiced by a female voice.  After hearing Scar's new voice in the series, though, I found myself counting my blessings.  I also learned that Ed Blaylock (Fuhrer Bradley) is actually an area DJ, which makes sense.

The themes were still there.  Changed in trajectory a bit, but questions about whether to stay still or move ahead were answered in word and deed.  "Stand up and walk.  Move forward on your own two feet!"  The desire for power to protect and the desire for power itself, as well as the limits of power, were explored.  All sorts of relationships were portrayed.  Sin, brokenness, punishment, and redemption: it's all there.

I liked it and am glad it happened, unlikely as it was for a series that had already been made to be remade in the image of the manga.  I will watch it again.  Maybe after I read the manga.  Or maybe alongside it.  Maybe I'll patch together something that lets me watch earlier episodes of the other series mixed in with this one to get a less Cliff's Notes picture at the beginning.  That ought to be interesting . . .