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Forward: For the duration of this article I will be referring to the original Fullmetal Alchemist anime as FMA and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood as FMAB. Further more I know that in the year 2019 there's been about a thousand different "which series is better" or "fma vs fmab" articles, videos and discussions. I DON'T GIVE A DAMN.
I haven't posted in like half a fucking year and I'm here once again to talk about something that most decidedly isn't a book or based on a book. Fullmetal Alchemist is a Japanese manga comic written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa. It was published in Shonen Jump Magazine alongside several other popular action manga, and quickly gained popularity and notoriety for its mature, philosophical themes that made it stand out from its peers.
In 2003 an anime adaptation of the manga was released. However, there’s something you should understand about anime and manga adaptations. See, Japan loves animation. Like, a lot. Japan loves animation so much that it literally treats their animators like indentured servants, who slave away at 120 hour work weeks in order to literally pump out animation. Because of this, the almost unthinkable constantly occurs in the industry of adapting manga: the show outpaces the comic.
This has happened in the west before. Notably, George R. R. Martin never finished his novel series A Song of Ice and Fire before the television adaptation Game of Thrones was completed. But this is because Martin is a fat, lazy geriatric at the end of his mortal coil who doesn’t give a shit anymore. Fullmetal Alchemist was being produced and printed weekly even while the anime was being drafted, written, casted, storyboarded, animated, cleaned up, edited, formatted, distributed, slotted into air schedules and then aired weekly over the course of a year. Even so, it was clear from the very beginning that the anime would outpace the source material.
In the world of anime this means one of two things: breaking away from the source material or polluting the anime with hundreds upon hundreds of episodes of ‘filler’. Imagine if, after season 4, Game of Thrones didn’t break away to its own ending but rather we got four seasons of random misadventures that didn’t advance or effect the overarching plot at all. There’d be an episode all about Sansa getting lost in the woods and fighting off a group of bandits, or Theon Greyjoy trying out phalluses constructed from different types of material until he finds one he likes. Many anime opt to do this; of 220 episodes of the anime Naruto, 91 of them were filler. The anime Bleach had 360 episodes with 170 of them being filler. Of 500 episodes of Naruto: Shippuden, 204 were filler. This leads to a situation where entire ‘arcs’ of the show are known as 'filler arcs', where hundreds of episodes at a time (combined years of air time) are random, noncanonical side-stories while the anime stalls for time so the manga can catch up to it. If this sounds like a fucking mess to you: that’s because it is!
Other anime opt for different approach. When it’s obvious the manga will never beat the anime (which is almost always the case), the anime will conclude with its own original story. 9 out of 10 times, though, what ends up happening is that a second anime series will happen once the manga is done. It’s a marketing firm’s wet god damned dream. The anime Hellsing ended up having an anime adaptation before its graphic novels were all published and they ended up going with an original story (eventually the anime was cancelled after its second season). Several years later, Hellsing: Ultimate was produced, an anime adaptation that happened after the manga was finished and that more closely followed the source material.
This is what happened with Fullmetal Alchemist. First was the 2003 series that was mostly following the manga for the majority of its first 25 episode season, and then broke away entirely in the second 26 episode season. In 2009, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was produced, and followed the source manga closely for its entire duration. This has lead most fans to simply parrot “Yup, FMAB is better, it followed the manga”, and I find this to be a stunted and unfair opinion that ignores the merits of FMA. While FMA has a good share of defenders, I wanted to throw my hat into the ring and do my own comparison. I just recently finished marathoning both series back to back with my girlfriend (I had only ever watched FMA and she had never watched either). With both series fresh in my brain, I wanted to compare and contrast them in different categories, seeing which one did what better. So LET’S GOoOOOo.
THE INTROS AND OUTROS
In the world of anime, intro and outro sequences are big shit. Like seriously. In the west, our tv shows rarely if ever will change their opening sequences, let alone their actual intro themes. The intros to shows become just as iconic as the shows themselves. Could you imagine Game of Thrones or The Simpsons changing their intro? Could you imagine them doing it like ten god damned times?FMA had FOUR intro and outro sequences over 51 episodes. That’s a new intro and outro every 12-13 episodes. FMAB had FIVE intro and outro sequences over 64 episodes, which is a little better than FMA’s rate. Imagine if every season of GoT had not only a new intro song, but and entirely different intro sequence. Intros and Outros are a big deal in anime, and people waste dozens of hours compiling them into tiered rating lists to gauge which one is the best. In short: Who gives a shit about story, characters, music, animation and all of that garbage WHEN WE NEED TO COMPARE J-ROCK SONGS111111
I’m going to come out and say it: FMA wins. I actually found a couple of FMAB’s intro songs to kind of suck and none of them come even halfway close to intros like READY STEADY GO or REWRITE (the second and fourth intros for FMA respectively). However, the real winner of this category is FMA’s second outro song Tobira no Mukou he. I maintain that this is the perfect outro song (at least for an anime).
The way it blends the final moments of the anime with the song’s intro, to signal that “the episode is ending” is, well, downright god damned perfect and really sets the tone for the episode’s last seconds. I attribute this to the fact the song has two ‘cold starts’, the first cold start being the first few seconds, that synth-stringy thing that plays the song in. Then you have initial lyrics, which are blasted with an almost ethereal kind of autotuning. Then, the song begins to play. FMA got very creative with utilizing these ‘cold starts’ to punctuate scenes, weaving dialogue or action in between them to massively enhance the mood.
To a lesser degree I also think Tobira no Mukou he has the best outro animation, too. FMA generally went the more dramatic and somber route with its outros, which I think really clicks with the series’ themes better. The shot of snowflakes landing on Edward’s hands, melting on his flesh but not his automail, is really cool imagery even if the snowflakes look a little cheap.
FMA also gets a special mention for its pre-intro narrations. Each episode begins with the character Alphonse narrating about their quest to find the philosopher’s stone.
This intro narration has become very iconic to the series, though what I especially like about it is how, once Edward and Alphonse actually get the philosopher's stone late in the series, this narration changes. Now it’s Edward narrating, and the simple child-like music is juxtaposed with intense, almost tribal-like drum beat.
This second version actually didn’t exist in the original Japanese series, it was a stroke of creativity by the dubbing studio, Funimation. This second narration is awesome because it really sets the mood and makes everything feel like shit gets real as the anime reaches its conclusion.
With all that said: The winner is FMA.
THE PLOTS
It’s actually a pretty big misconception that FMA “stopped following the manga”. I mean, this isn’t wrong to say, it IS true, but the fact is that FMA was never intending to follow the manga from the start. FMA happened in two seasons, and the first season starts off by deviating from the manga in a few major ways. After all, we’re introduced to the character Juliet Douglas, who will eventually be revealed as the homunculus Sloth, in episode 10. Not to mention how much different things like the Fifth Laboratory end up being. I’m almost certain that FMA was using some kind of early outline provided by author Arakawa, containing plans/ideas she had yet to write into the manga as a guideline for the first anime.Comparing some of the similarities between the two is kind of interesting, and you can start seeing where these similarities begin. For instance, in both series the villain’s HQ is underneath the city of Central, there is also “another city” beneath Central (in a literal context in FMA and a more figurative/historical context in FMAB). A ‘giant transmutation circle’ gets made. Scar is given his scar by Kimbly, and Scar’s brother gives Scar his arm (both arms in FMAB). Hoenheim is directly connected to the main villain and has lived for hundreds of years, etc.
There are obviously major diversions of these plots as well, but you can spot many major and minor similarities that feel like they were pulled off of some early outline for the series.
FMA begins its series with a few filler episodes, including some episodes that will eventually be referenced in the second season. It’s also much slower overall. Much, much slower. It really takes its time building things up, such as the Alchemy Exam and the search for Dr. Marcoh. I really enjoy this and it’s the de facto strongest thing about FMA. To say that FMAB rushes through this stuff is an understatement; it practically blazes through it so fast that you blink and miss it. For instance, one of the most infamous events in the series is the story of Shou and Nina Tucker. In FMA this arc plays out over five episodes as Edward spends the better part of a year with the Tuckers, preparing for his upcoming exam, taking the exam and then the events that transpire after it. In FMAB literally everything is fucking mega-shoved into one episode. My girlfriend began watching FMAB first and I caught her watching the episode where Nina and her dog become an inseparable duo.
Immediately my girlfriend caught that Tucker was going to be a bad guy due to corny foreshadowing, not to mention the that the story is very much “Tell, don’t show” as we don’t really see Ed and Al spend any time with Nina or do much with her. In FMA we see them spend months with the Tuckers, and Nina develops an actual relationship and place in the story, making her ultimate fate far stronger and more impactful. In FMAB it’s just “hey look at this cute little girl lmao OH FUCK SHE GOT TURNED INTO A MONSTER”.
The hunt for Dr. Marcoh encompasses like 20-something episodes of FMA and is the show’s first major arc. In FMAB we don’t even know who Marcoh is or why he matters until the characters randomly pass him at a train station. In FMA, the character Basque Grand serves as a minor antagonist for much of the first half of the anime and we see how he directly influenced the events concerning the Tuckers, so we really get to know him and develop disdain for what kind of guy he is, which makes his death to Scar hold a certain weight to it, as a character we’ve seen act as an impairment to the heroes is killed. In the anime he’s literally just some random guy Scar kills in a scene unrelated to the rest of the plot. The Alchemy Exam, The Fifth Laboratory, Hughes’ investigation and murder, Scar’s development from bad guy to good guy. These are all done so much better in FMA than in FMAB. I understand that in FMAB they were basically just “Recap” content that was meant to be glossed over quicker so FMAB could reach the story that FMA never adapted, but I don’t accept this as a perfect reason.
How many people have only ever watched FMAB because that’s what they were told to watch? It’s criminal to miss out on some of the stuff FMA did in its first season.
However, the second half of FMA gets… rocky. FMAB had this issue as well but FMA really suffered from confused writing. It’s not bad by any means of the word, but it’s significantly rougher than FMAB. Everything in the second half of season 2 has the feeling of “how the fuck do we end this lol”, and while it still has a lot of great moments, I think FMAB simply tells a more coherent story with better planning. FMAB isn’t perfect, though, and it gets a bit ridiculous by its ending as well, but it at least feels much more coherent.
Not only that, but some of the filler episodes in FMA are… pretty fucking dumb. They can easily be skipped entirely, really. A lot of early FMA episodes hinge on the character Roy Mustang 'orchestrating’ things to make sure Edward shows up somewhere to ‘test’ him on some task, but when you step back and examine this you quickly realize how fucking stupid it is. Mustang seriously thought it was a good idea to ‘test’ Edward by having him end up on a train full of terrorists who were holding a General and his family hostage and threatening all the passengers with violence? Mustang put a 10 year old kid with a physical handicap on a train full of armed terrorists and gambled the lives of dozens of people, including a top ranking military official, on the merit of Edward? And then the series wants us to believe Mustang is some master manipulator pulling all the puppet strings behind the scenes to make this happen, when in reality Mustang is just incredibly flagrant and stupid and should honestly be put in prison for what he did.
The biggest difference sans-content in the plots is general theme, though. FMA is a much more bittersweet and dramatic series while FMAB is more wish-fulfillment and happy. I think FMA is actually far superior in this one thing, as the bittersweetness fits the series much better. In FMAB, everything turns out more or less okay for the heroes. Alphonse gets his body back, Edward gets his arm back (he still has his automail leg, at least). Ed marries Winry, etc. In FMA, Edward gets his arm and leg back but is trapped in another world and Alphonse gets his body back but is ‘restored’ to a pre-transmutation state as a child without memories, with the series ending on an open-ended bittersweet “so close but so far” promise that Edward will find a way back to his world somehow. I absolutely love FMA’s ending for this reason, though I think to really appreciate it you need to do a couple of things. First: You have to ignore the movies. They suck balls. Second: To enhance the ending and fully ignore the films, you have to headcanon some things. Dante and Gluttony destroy each other, Envy is destroyed by going through the portal and Wrath fucks off to go live his life. The series ends with the last episode, the films do not happen. This is the best way to experience FMA’s ending, in my mind.
I didn’t like the goofy ‘romance’ between Ed and Winry that just sort of comes out of nowhere in the manga/FMAB and is played more for cheap gags and laughs than anything else. It’s just one big precession of “ME? LIKE HER? NO WAY!!” and Winry literally just announcing to the viewer that she’s falling in love with Ed. FMA handled Ed and Winry’s quasi-feelings for one another much better and, like I said, we never have their romance fulfilled, which adds to the somber and longing of its ending.
I think both series have their faults and strongpoints and while I much prefer the melancholy and drama of FMA compared to the more hyperactivity and action-orientation of FMAB, I recognize that they’re both doing two different things so I won’t really fault FMAB for lacking the tone of FMA. Ultimately I think when you really compare what works and what doesn’t to both series, their plots are equally as strong. I consider them pretty much even in this regard.
THE CAST
The cast is more or less the same in both series, though Brotherhood has a few more characters. The largest difference is the main villains, who are pretty similar but still quite different. In FMA we have Dante, the lover of Hohenheim hundreds of years ago, who is using alchemy to extend her life. FMAB has Father, a homunculus who befriends and uses Hohenheim to gain a body and grant them both near-immortality. Both villains are kind of lame. Lol.Both are pretty cliche god-complex characters and neither are very fleshed out. Father obviously presents a much bigger risk than Dante, making him a far more serious threat, but at the same time his power gets taken to the point where he’s almost too silly. Trippy, psychedelic imagery like Father becoming a giant and ‘opening up’ the planet to try to pull god from space is less “wow this guy is a serious threat” and more “wtf am i even watching”.
I think in general the homunculi were also far better in FMA. Especially Lust, who has her own bittersweet character arc in FMA where in FMAB she’s just a generic bad guy who dies a generic bad guy death after accomplishing nothing of real note. Most people are inclined to like Greed more in FMAB, and while I actually mostly agree, I think you can’t ignore how good he was in FMA, especially his death. Martel’s expanded story presence and her death play out far better in FMA than in FMAB. While the idea wasn’t exactly done the best in some ways, I liked that in FMA the homunculi were the results of failed human transmutation, and that they even had the weakness of being near a part of the body of the human they were based on. This gave each homunculi a more interesting backstory, and it’s kind of cool that Sloth was Trisha Elric, especially because Sloth in FMAB is a pretty lame character.
One thing I did much prefer about FMAB was the villain’s behavior. In FMA the homunculi just kind of kill people wantonly and most of their plans are “use these people and then kill them, or kill them if they don’t do what we want”. In FMAB, it felt more like the villains had to carefully plan their steps out and couldn’t get axe off anyone they wanted. A big part of how the homunculi control people in the military is by demoting people and moving them away from their allies to keep eyes on them, which makes them seem far more realistic. When your enemy can’t just magically overreach all the stipulations of murdering people, it makes them (funny enough) like a way more serious threat, because the realism grounds them.
Though I'm also going to be honest: Making the homunculi the seven deadly sins was a dumb idea lol. Most of them hardly embody their sin, or only do it ambiguously at best. This is even weirder in FMA; it sure is convenient that at any given time there's only seven homunculi walking around the world and that they all somehow represent a cardinal sin. At least in FMAB they were literally Father's embodied sins. I guess. Plus, I don't care how you cut it, Envy representing Envy in FMAB because "he's envious of friendship" is just stupid. Also, now you can't go onto a video on YouTube about any of the homunculi without some dipshit kid getting the top rated comment on some stupid "isn't it ironic that all the homunculi died ironically??" and then half the examples are really, really stretching it because they aren't ironic at all.
Some characters are different in very minor ways. I prefer FMAB’s Kimblee to FMA’s. Though I like that FMA’s Kimblee ‘teamed up’ with Greed for a little bit, FMAB’s Kimblee has a better arc and fate, and I liked how he channeled a more realistic sociopath (especially in his ability to be kind and normal when speaking to Winry about her parents, but then in the next moment cold and violent) as opposed to the more over-the-top goofy “mad bomber” Kimblee of FMA.
A big difference between the two series is the killer of Winry’s parents. In FMAB and the manga, it’s Scar. In FMA it’s Mustang, under Basque Grand’s orders. I GREATLY prefer the latter. Scar killing Winry’s parents ends up amounting to almost nothing in FMAB, it’s just sort of ‘there’. In FMA the killing of Winry’s parents by Mustang works so much better on several levels. First, it was the catalyst for letting Marcoh go into hiding, as Mustang now had a reason to cover Marcoh’s identity and keep him safe and stop the Elric brothers from finding him. This added a lot of important drama to the plot of FMA. Second, it’s a much stronger reveal to have Mustang kill Winry’s parents, as it adds, again, a lot of drama. Scar killing her parents is kind of like… so what? The mass-murderer also happened to kill some girl’s parents, wow, stop the presses. Mustang doing it not only warps our perception of him, but also illustrates the nature of the military and committing atrocity under order. You’re going to tell me anything in FMAB is better than Mustang holding a gun to his own head, empty wine bottles on the floor next to the dried pools of blood, as he panics in a moment of confliction; whether or not to pull the trigger? Haha: noooooo.
FMAB also suffers from some pretentious moments. When Mustang is fighting Envy, for instance, all of a sudden the story wants to go all “oh no revenge is bad dont be consumed by it :(“ out of nowhere and, frankly, for no good reason. Even my girlfriend was outright angry at the whole ‘REVENGE BAD’ business when it happened. Roy has more than every reason to want revenge on Envy. Envy is literally the most evil fucking character in the series and directly responsible for almost all of the major problems, and now all of a sudden we go on a fifteen minute romp of ‘revenge is wrong’? It’s completely undeserved and outright pretentious.
We need to talk about FMAB Marcoh. In general, Brotherhood was a big fan of totally random asspulls. Mustang’s power is just “does whatever I want however I want it ha ha lol”, Heinkel just had a fucking philosopher’s stone in his pocket? And Marcoh walks around with the ability to literally one-shot any homunculus, but it’s only ever used or brought up a single time? And we never even know about it until LITERALLY the second he uses it on Envy? That’s a bit annoying, but whatever. And what the actual fuck was up with Ed ‘turning into a philosopher’s stone’ to battle Pride, lol? Second to that, when they trapped Pride in that big sphere of earth, why didn’t they just dig a long tunnel from the outside into it and then go in and literally just murder Pride? We saw in Pride’s “fight” with Heinkel that Pride has all the powers of a NORMAL SIX YEAR OLD BOY in total darkness. Heinkel literally just assrapes him but somehow didn’t ‘kill him enough’, even though it should have happened in only minutes? Whatever.
I think, without debate, the weakest characters in FMAB are the four chimera. Zampano, Jerso, Heinkel and Darius. They just show up in FMAB and… don’t really do anything. Zampano and Jerso want to get their “old bodies back”, but it’s completely not explained just why. They already have their old bodies back, don’t they? They just have the power to transform into beasts? Is maintaining their human form difficult? Do they lose some important concessions of humanity or biology? Why do they want their bodies back? Heinkel and Darius are even worse. Heinkel’s given reason for following Ed is “we don’t have anything better to do”. They kind of just literally hang out for the whole story and don’t serve much purpose. Oh, and Heinkel JUST PICKED UP THE FUCKING PHILOSOPHER’S STONE AND HAD IT UP HIS ASS THE WHOLE TIME YEAH SURE OKAY.
I like Hohenheim better in FMA. His relationship with Ed was a lot stronger and even if they didn’t have as much time together, I thought their relationship in the ‘real world’ was pretty realistic to their situation; like they were just kind of friends with their own lives and while Ed more or less forgave Hohenheim in the end, they still had their own separate lives and plans. Plus hey, fuck it, I’m a sucker for any ‘ironic history’ stuff. Hohenheim complaining about German inflation and wondering when it will end, or Ed writing off Einstein as a quack, I don’t care if it’s cheesy, I eat that shit for lunch.
I think FMA had a better cast :}
THE MUSIC
This is a hard one to compare because both series took their musical direction in different ways and generally everyone tends to agree both soundtracks are equally good and usually just wish that FMAB had used the music from FMA in addition to its own original songs. I feel the same way.For instance, compare the ‘philosopher’s stone’ music from Brotherhood:
It sounds like a god damned Professor Layton track. Now listen to the music that FMA used for the stone:
FMAB hits it out of the park with plenty of its own music, though. Most notably any songs used for battle and unlike FMA’s soundtrack, FMAB was fully scored and orchestrated, giving it a much more ‘fuller’ sound. I think FMA had better ‘mood’ music while FMAB had better ‘feeling’ music. Truly it’s a shame that they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, combine both soundtracks. I consider them equal in different ways.
THE ANIMATION
This is another strictly split verdict. FMA and FMAB were both animated by studio Bones in Japan, but they bear distinct visual styles that are quite different from one another. A big thing is outlining. In FMA, characters are outlined mostly in darker colors. In FMAB, they’re outlined in colors more matching the color they’re outlining. Both are fantastically animated, though FMAB in general has better (smoother) animation and especially backgrounds/scenery shots. Cities look much, much better in FMAB than they do in FMA, where in the latter they seem very bare and simplistically shaped, FMAB makes the cities look expansive and well-drawn out. I especially like FMAB’s shots of Central City at night and the way it puts all the major light sources mostly around the main streets and middle of the city, with the rest being dark because we can assume they don’t have constant access to electricity, which really expresses the feeling of “early 1900’s city”.However, FMA had far better character models than FMAB. In fact, FMAB feels the same way about respecting character models that modern political discourse respects basic maturity. Armstrong especially is a character who fluctuates greatly in size and height and in general he looks so weird and shrimpy compared to how he looked in FMA. Lust had this really cool wavey-hair and almost Jessica Rabbit-esque bodyshape in FMA, but in FMAB she looks really plain in comparison. The opposite was true of a character like Scar, who was kind of lithe and shrimpy in FMA but appears much more stout and muscular in FMAB.
I actually stumbled across a meme image that kind of perfectly sums up both series animation style compared to the original manga. Thanks to Tumblagramwhatever for this image.
(Click the image to resize it). You can see here how the original manga (far left) is more closely copied by FMA (middle), but in return the colors are a little more static and the shape of his head more simple. In FMAB (far right) we get more colors, a lot more detail on the hair and hat and sky, but in exchange we lose a slight bit of stylization as they opt to 'black out' his eyes, rather than minimally 'hide' them with angle. Pictures 1 and 2 are at more of an angle, where Picture 3 is a direct shot at the side of his head. This is pretty consistent throughout everything else in both series.
While FMAB had better animation over all, I think FMA had far better character design and kept characters on model better. I consider them more or less equal and I think you’re hardpressed to make an argument for one being better than the other.
THE HUMOR
Fullmetal Alchemist is notoriously unfunny. 90% of its humor is obnoxious anime humor that you either love or hate. I hate it. I wouldn’t be as bothered by it, except it almost constantly fucking happens. FMA is pretty bad, but FMAB is even worse. I feel most humor scenes probably worked a lot better when in the manga, but put to sound and motion they’re incredibly stupid and happen way too often. I used to criticize FMA for lacking any quiet or witty humor but after watching both series again, I’m reminded of at least a handful of simple, non-intrusive/obnoxious moments of humor. I wish there was far more of those in both, because le funniez screamiez are, in a word, UNFUNNY AS SHIT.Both series lose in this category.
THE CONCLUSION
Arguments over which series is better or whether you should or shouldn’t watch FMA are fucking stupid. Anyone walking around planet earth actively telling people “DONT WATCH FMA ITS NOT DER MANGA” is a tool. Anyone walking around telling people “BROTHERHOOD IS BAD CUZ ITS TO MUCH ACSHUN” is a tool.Fucking Christ, just watch them both.
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