Welcome to our newest feature here at Ani-Gamers. “The Brotherhood Diaries” is a new column written by Ink, and focusing on the new Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood series. We’ll leave him to explain the details.
Fullmetal Alchemist (FMA) is a story about (as if you didn’t know) two brothers living in an alternate human history – where alchemy progressed as the major science instead of electronics. These boys commit the ultimate taboo of trying to transmute a human life (their mother’s) and end up paying for the consequences of that act. The resulting 51-episode tale (plus movie) is one of brotherly love, morality, war, science, religion, and all the strains in-between.
First adapted from Hiromu Arakawa’s original manga into anime form by BONES, FMA supposedly stopped following the original story about halfway through its overall run because it outpaced the output of its creator. Luckily, instead of a hiatus, the anime’s producers collaborated with Arakawa to work out an alternative story path. Now, some four years after the conclusion of that story, the original is getting its chance to be told without alteration.
This re-imagining, being released on Funimation.com nearly simultaneously with the Japanese TV airings, does nothing if not open up the critical avenues of comparison and contrast given the popularity and outright love people shared (and cosplayed and otaku-ed) for the original anime series. Having been so enthralled to the original anime series myself, I will watch weekly the goings-on of the Elric brothers in this new FMA to point out differences – obvious and obscure, stylistic and chronologic, dramatic and humourous – between it and its predecessor so that, even if you’ve never seen the original or never wanted to see another re-envisioning of the original, anyone reading this might gain some good reason to ride the lengthy emotional roller coaster yet again…hands up in the air, tearing in sorrow or screaming for joy.
