dragonimp

11x14 oil paint.

Finally got torrents to work (yay for Miro!) and watched ep. 10 in the dub - gawd Travis and Sonny were breaking my heart all over again. They certainly seem to be playing it from a certain *cough* subtext.

I noticed quite a few places where the translation took liberties when compared to the subtitles, but most didn't change the meaning or feel of a scene. One that jumped out at me was during the at the beginning. I'm probably not remembering the exact lines, but Roy talks about protecting the people under him, and they in turn protect the people under them, etc. In the dub, he says something like "protect the people I care about." It doesn't fit as nicely with Hughes comment about needing to be at the top. It's minor, and the rest of the scene comes off beautifully, but it was jarring little hiccup and there was no reason for it.

The discrepancy that really bugged me, though, was that they cut Hughes' line of "the military is in danger." Doesn't that line get referred back to later, or is that just in the manga? How are they going to refer to it if it's not there?

There's also a subtle change between the manga and Brotherhood that I didn't notice the first time around. Both the subtitles and the dub imply the same thing, but the dub seemed to state it a bit more clearly. After Roy questions Armstrong, he makes a comment in the manga that I took to mean that Armstrong was giving them all the information he could without violating his orders. In Brotherhood, what Roy says is more along the lines of Armstrong telling them more than he realized - implying that he slipped up, not that he was deliberately getting around his orders. It's a slightly different nuance of character, and I don't think I like the Brotherhood take.

I can't be the only one who thought the scene at the end of ep. 23 of Gluttony's large mouth/pseudo-Gate thing opening was obscene.

And May's voice ranks somewhere near the top of most annoying anime voices :P

I'm starting to think FMA: Brotherhood should be renamed FMA: Abridged. Stop rushing through the goddam story! And stop leaving out important pieces!! What makes it so aggravating is that when they do step back from the fast-forward button and take the time to actually tell the story they do a really, really good job. Such as episodes 5, 8, 9, and 10. But then they rushthoughtheotherssofastyoucan'tbreathe, and it's a huge disappointment.

I dreamed the simulcast went down again because Funimation got fed up with the fansubbers, so I had to check this morning. It reminded me of my irritation with the last three episodes. Rush Valley was a disappointment. Yock Island wasn't bad, but now it looks like Izumi really did endanger their lives. Greed and the Devil's Nest - all I can say is the impression of "OMGwemustgetthroughthishurryhurry!" and why should we care about Yoki if we've never seen him before? They also left out an important piece, but I'll leave off on that until I see how they compensate for it in the next episode.

Goddam you, Brotherhood, why do you keep insisting on throwing out crap...

From ADDitude Magazine

Sarah, an adult with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD), like many clients I work with, feels that socializing is anything but fun.

“It’s work,” she says. “And hard work at that!” Sarah dreads many of the parties, family dinners, and business functions during the summer and the holidays.

“I never know what to say, especially with people I don’t know that well,” she adds. “Any way you look at it, I’m in trouble when I go to a party.”

Sarah jumps from topic to topic in a conversation, and doesn’t listen effectively to the person she’s talking with. I worked with her to develop strategies that would make her feel comfortable the next time she heads out.

Y'know, it's gratifying to know it's not just me.

On a completely different topic, I haven't seen eps. 10 or 11 of Brotherhood yet :P. I was waiting for Funimation to watch 10, and that was right when they went down (for the second time). I can't get torrents to play so Eclipse's fansubs are useless to me.

But! There was tyco drumming last night at the library. They were such a treat to listen to. I got to watch them out the back door while minding the desk. We did have one neighbor complaining about the noise and threatening to call the police if they didn't "keep it down." Um, sorry? The drums kinda only have one volume, and it's well before curfew. The police really aren't going to do anything -_-;;. But everyone else thought it was great.

We finally get another quality episode \o/! I'm suspecting it's the action sequences. If it doesn't have action, they seem to want to rush through it as quickly as possible. So far, we have:

1. Meh. Good action but mediocre story. Poor as an opening episode.


2. Better but still rushed. And annoyingly out of sequence.


3. Crap.


4. Starting to get good.


5. OMG THAT WAS AWSOME!


6. Decent, but rushed, and missing some important parts. Bonus point for adorable!Ed scenes, though.


7. Decent but rushed, again.


8. OMG COOL!!

... Not a good track record. The fight scenes are great, but overall the storytelling has been mediocre.

Could Ed get any more adorable? Between that, Ed stumbling around on the spare leg, and all the shots of chibified-Ed with his hair down, this episode was really going for broke ♥

The story was a bit compacted, but it held together. Kinda disappointed they didn't keep the scene of the office staff ganging up on Ed, but eh, that's minor.

(I'm still considering moving all the fandom posts to DW alone, but for now I'll continue to cross-post)

Okay, I'm still waiting to be impressed. Because that - whatEVER the hell that was - did not impress me.

Since they made such a big deal about using the manga story line, I had hoped they'd stick a little closer to the manga. Not that - that mess they're trying to pass off as storytelling.

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.