Review - again

[dragonimp]

To give it a fair shot, I felt I had to watch it a second time. It's kinda like when I saw the theatrical Pride and Prejudice movie; the first time though, all I could think was "this is not A&E's Pride and Prejudice...this is not A&E's Pride and Prejudice...this is not A&E's Pride and Prejudice...". I wasn't as conscious of doing that with Brotherhood, but still, I felt I should watch it a second time. Forgetting about the first anime, because I really wasn't expecting it to be the first anime and it shouldn't be judged against it, here's some more thoughts:

• I love the opening and ending. Both do a good job of capturing the series.

• The fight scenes are awesome. Al totally rocks, Ed is amazing. Ed losing his temper - really losing it, not his "you called me short!!" flailing - was a great scene.

• The animation, I think, is just going to take getting used to. I wish I could put my finger on what it is about Ed's character design that bugs me, but he just seems off. All the appeal he has in the manga is only sort of hinted at. Same with Roy. Most of the other characters are fine. Kimblee (what we see of him) looks great. Hohenheim looks good. But Ed and Roy bug me.

• I'm still put off by the rapid-fire reveals. It felt more like a story pitch than a premiere. "Look at all our cool characters! See all the nifty stuff they can do! Aren't you intrigued?"

• If I was coming into this not knowing anything about the story, I think I'd be confused as to who the main character is supposed to be. "It's called Fullmetal Alchemist, and that's what they're calling that little guy, but why did it start with that other guy? And who are these other people? Should I care?"

• In the manga, we meet Ed and Al. We don't see any of the military characters until the fouth chapter, and it doesn't spend any time on them until the fifth. It's very clear who our main protagonists are. We get to know them and get to know what they can do, before the story line gets cluttered by the secondary protagonists. In Brotherhood, it's like everyone is given equal weight.

• Roy's introduction is rather shaky, really. In the manga, as soon as we meet him, we know he's sarcastic, would rather be on a date than doing his job, and is perfectly happy to let someone else (Ed) do the hard work, and it's obvious his staff knows better than to take him too seriously. But when he does take action, he's calm, collected, and casually badass. And arrogant, let's not forget. We don't see that he has a major weak point (water) for some time. In Brotherhood, none of this is really established. His weakness is thrown out right at the beginning. He came off more like a sulky teenager trying to act adult. Especially with his "don't underestimate my flames!" screech. Roy shouldn't be losing his cool that easily. We really didn't get to see any of what makes him such a good character in the manga.

• We shouldn't be suspicious of Bradley this soon.

They probably wanted Brotherhood to be distinct from the first anime right off the bat and, unfortunately for them, the first anime follows the manga pretty closely for the first two episodes. But this really didn't strike me as a good solution. It was too muddled, and revealed too much too quickly. It would have been a good story to do maybe three or five episodes in, but not at the beginning.

Edit: On further reflection, it seems like this anime is assuming viewers have already read the manga, which is a strange thing to do. When a story switches medium like this, it should stand on its own.

Comments

[hikaru-9.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say FMA:B is assuming viewers have already read the manga, but have already seen the first anime.

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

That may be. It should still stand more on its own, though.

[auragirl.livejournal.com]

I think the problem with the character designs (which I also feel is the problem with the manga art, personally) is that the eyes are drawn too far apart - measure it, they all have like, 1 1/2 to 2 eye widths space between their eyes.

Also the manga style is incredibly flat and geometric, and the first series took SOME of that but then tried to draw the faces a bit more humanly, with some thought to anatomy/bone structure/etc.

This just copy pastes the manga character designs which are basically 'some men have rectangle heads and rectangle noses, Roy and Ed and Riza and the majority of the primary cast have circles for heads'

I don't really like the designs as still images, and I think they're a VERY poor choice for animation. Season 1 did a much better job adapting the designs IMO.

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

Thing is, I like the manga's character designs. She does tend toward wide (and round) faces, but they work for me. Ed is freakin' gorgeous (http://www.onemanga.com/Full_Metal_Alchemist/81/35/) and so very male, and Roy's pretty hot, too (http://www.onemanga.com/Full_Metal_Alchemist/87/13/). He did get moon-faced for a while (even Arakawa admits that), but it doesn't seem like they pulled that for the new anime, anyway. So in theory, I should like the character designs in Brotherhood. But I don't. Something about Ed and Roy bug me. I think part of the problem with Ed is his weirdly glowing hair (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v208/pandoraculpa/FMA/179.jpg), but even taking that into account, it's like nothing that I liked about the character designs in the manga made the transition.

I think I could look past the character designs if the storytelling was good, I've done it with animation before. But in this episode, it really wasn't.

[auragirl.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, I see your point - THOSE illustrations have very well drawn faces, which I like a lot better...is it just me or does Arakawa do better art inside the comic than she does for illustrations and covers?

Because I'm not seeing the 'eyes too far apart' problem in either of those examples, but in any image that's been worked on more (..well, in theory she'd work longer on the color ones), it seems like the art gets stiffer/the facial anatomy suffers somehow.

I agree with what Binaryalchamist said below, about the lack of definition in the lower eye area - it tends to make Ed look bug eyed because it seems like his eyes are always extremely wide open.

Another thing they do sometimes -- which was a major problem in Code Geass, too, is drawing mouths that are WAY too long, making them look uh...weird. Really weird.
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/wp-content/gallery/misc-images-xvii/alf_ed_elric_secons_series_pv.jpg

http://acesan.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/spamfic_codegeass.jpg

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

Arakawa definitely went though a moon-faced period, and Roy still occasionally suffers from it, sadly ^^;. These are both from fairly recent issues. I like the character designs, like I said, but they don't hold up in every panel. The mouths that reach too far to the jaw is something else that she - unfortunately - tends to do, but it's the kind of thing that you can get away with more in a black-and-white manga. In animation, yeah, it just looks weird.

[binaryalchemist.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think that's a very good analysis of *why* it's somewhat jarring to the eye--it's FLAT. Also, Ed and the other characters have no "color sep" between the whites of their eyes and their cheeks--"color sep" is an animation term used by inkers meaning a color shading or even a simple black line that gives dimention and suggests a lower eyelid --these characters don't have them--that scene where Maes and Gracia are talking on the couch--just look at Mae's face--the angles are all wrong. And this is part of why Roy just doesn't look right--even in the Manga his face has more dimention, even though Arakawa often draws him with a nearly round, almost babyish face, in profile she does give him a more defined jaw line.

Studio Bones is capable of such good work--"Wolf's Rain" being a shining example. I had hopes that Brotherhood might be of that calibre...but this attempt to (unsuccessfully) adapt Arakawa's artwork just isin't working yet. I don't mind Ed too much--and I think Hohenheim looks great--but Roy looks like shit. Pure and simple.

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

Now that you mention it, I think the color sep is half of what bugs me about Roy's design. I had to look back at some screenshots from FMA to compare. It's not like they outlined the eyes completely, but it was enough to make it clear where the eyes were supposed to begin and end. Even comparing how he looks in the opening (http://pics.livejournal.com/dragonimp/pic/0000dz8e) (where he has lower lids) with how he looks during the show (http://pics.livejournal.com/dragonimp/pic/0000c11b) (where they're absent), there's a big difference. It's one of those things that works fine in black and white, but doesn't work so well with color.

I think they were too focused on giving Brotherhood a distinct style and kinda forgot what makes for good animation -_-

[binaryalchemist.livejournal.com]

Also, notice the use of shading and fine lines--you can see it is more three-dimentional. When I studied animation in film school I didn't do much cel work--my stuff was more like Terry Gilliam/Monty Python style because I'm not an artist--I spent a LOT of nights doing ink-and-paint for my friends (we had ink-and-paint parties until the dawn some weekends, fueled with beer and cheap pizza and other, ahem, intoxicants...)and when you've colored a few hundred cels you start to notice stuff like color sep (short for color separation--that's why all those Hannah-Barbera characters like Fred Flinstone and George Jetson look like they need a shave--bad color sepping on bad character designs). If you look at Roy in the original series--a very good scene is when he's on the porch at the Rockbell's talking to Hohenheim--look carefully at their eyes as the faces change angles--it's beautifully done. Wide-Eyed Ed looks adorable...but...it's going to limit his expressions severely. They need to go back and look at Wolf's Rain, which I really think is Bones' masterpiece....

[binaryalchemist.livejournal.com]

I think you've done the best analysis of FMA:B so far--and I took a second viewing of it last night and I really see what you are talking about--Notice Ed isn't the one to win the big battle in the first episode--it's Bradley. Ed is not the big driving force he was in the first Ep of FMA. Roy comes across as weak, they are trying to make us too suspicious too fast--in the original I loved how Bradley came across as a jovial, almost loveable leader with a kindly manner--which made the revelation of his true nature all the more shocking. Kimblee was brought in---why? He does nothing in the episode. The whole 'arrays around Central" would have been a good idea but not thrown out in a one-shot. After all ,they built up Scar so well...they should have done better. Period.

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

And they did such a good job with the first FMA, too. It's like they were trying too hard for the fanservice. Half the characters they introduced really didn't need to be there for the story.