Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

Why is this terrible anime considered a masterpiece?

Because you have shit taste

To call FMA terrible you must have ridiculously high standards.

The presentation is much nicer than most battle shōnen for a start...

FMA 2003: 9/10
FMAB: 1/10

That pic is Conqueror of Shamballa

What is it with the fucking deluge of 2003fags coming out of the woodwork recently?

IRC at it again?

I wouldn't call terrible, but it's certainly overrated. To me it's basically a well made shonen, nothing more, nothing less.
I guess it's overrated for being a gateway anime, and for being very easy to like, especially if you are a teen.

>recently
2003 vs brotherhood discussions were always a thing.

Yeah but that's like the fifth thread within two or three days

It's okay for a shonen anime, completely overrated. Story is kind of meh, and doesn't keep me interested in what's going on. I dropped it after around 12 episodes.

holy fuck you are paranoid

Pacing was better in the original, it was a lot darker, and the Conqueror of Shamballa explained everything and had a perfect melancholy ending.

2003 and Brotherhood are both essential.

One has no characterization and the other one has a shitton of filler and a terrible ending.

I think 2003 is better, but Conqueror of Shamballa is garbage user. The anime would be a lot better with just a open end, than with the shit they pulled off on that movie.
I disagree. The fillers on 2003 are actually pretty good, and a lot to the characters and backstories unlike in most anime fillers. I also think the ending in 2003 is better.

To me it goes like this:
>Animation
Brotherhood
>Characters
2003
>Story
Brotherhood's story is tighter and more coherent, 2003 has better twists and is a lot more experimental.
>Pacing
2003
>Fights
Brotherhood
>OST
Tie.
>Homunculi
2003

Add a lot to the characters*

What it comes down to is, Arakawa was still learning how to write when she started FMA, and in the early chapters, it really shows. The pacing is very sloppy and the atmosphere is inconsistent and chaotic from one story arc to the next. The 2003 writers were at their strongest when they could take that raw material and carve it like marble into the story it deserved to be, with solid pacing and tension that builds over time. Throw in some world class music exactly suited to the mood they were careful to build, and the payoff is fucking legendary.

By the same token, though, the 2003 writers were at their weakest when they had to invent original material. They didn't have Arakawa's obsession with philosophy or lore, so none of their worldbuilding made any sense, and all the plot twists based on it just seemed to come out of nowhere. It was like getting rickrolled halfway through a performance of Beethoven's 9th and watching the entire orchestra pull out skateboards, individually attempt to kickflip offstage, and collapse in a wretched tangle of human bodies.

Wrath > Pride

Nah that movie was great. Explains where the power comes from, ties in the real world. Ending was beautiful, i hate happy endings like FMABoring

I kind of both agree and disagree with 03's ending being better

While I was fine with a more bittersweet ending the "suddenly NAZIS" thing put me off pretty hard, like said they really dropped the ball hard in regards to setting once they started having to go their own way without the source material to guide them

Brotherhood's ending is a lot more "fairy tail" though, I think Arakawa saw how controversial the original anime's ending was and just went with something that would please fans, for better or worse

The manga's ending was more or less the Elrics finding a happy ending after tons of strife. From an equivalent exchange perspective, it makes some sense. Edward thought of the way to bring someone back & in order to use it, he had to give up said same ability.

>muh dark
>muh no happiness allowed

Are all 2003fags stuck in their teenage phase and listening to Evanescence?

Thats why bittersweet is nice. It's not muh dark. Its tasteful

I think it has less to do with being happy vs sad and more to do with being standard vs unusual. What makes 2003 a more interesting show to me is that it is a lot more experimental, as opposed to Brotherhood, which is solid but nonetheless plays very safe.
In the end it's a question of whether you value coherency and consistency more than experimentation.

>not even replying to anyone even though you're obviously mad at what someone in this thread said
Is everyone who prefers Brotherhood a manchild?

they're going underrrrrrr

Yeah, I think that people do give Brotherhood's ending more shit than it deserves, like I've seen people say "he doesn't lose anything" which is obviously BS since losing to use alchemy altogether effectively puts him below even normal people powerwise

>Thats why bittersweet is nice
Wasn't 03's ending pretty much bittersweet though? I don't recall it doing anything super grimderp.

>In the end it's a question of whether you value coherency and consistency more than experimentation.
does that mean 2003 fans all love Eureka 7 AO?

Roy killing Winry's parents because... I dunno, nerves? Isn't that grimderp?

>BS since losing to use alchemy altogether
It's not like he even needed it by then.

>Isn't that grimderp?
I meant the actual ending itself.
From what I remember everyone who was left alive happily moved on with their lives.

If you think of him as a anime character that's bound to a plot, yes, but if you actually try to put yourself into his situation, It's like losing an incredibly, useful power, and also losing everything that you worked for all your life, since he dedicated his life to learning alchemy.
He may not ''need'' alchemy for plot reasons after the end, but he has an entire life ahead of him, and I can think of countless situations where alchemy would be VERY desirable.
Hell, I would give everything I have to use ED's powers for even a day.

The whole ending for 2003 seems more like out relies on Dues ex Machina to make the series dark, hell characters had act out of character to a ridiculous degree just to make it happen.

Grimderp is actually a good description for it.

I never understood why, in 2003, they finally GET the Philosopher's Stone, then just sort of... faff around for ten episodes until they lost it again and sent Ed to a parallel world.

I watched 2003 first when I was 11, and it literally blew my mind at that time. I'd think about it for months to come and for a long time considered It my favorite anime. For that reason, I watched brotherhood with a lot of hype 6 years later, and was very disappointed.

Thing is, it's very hard for me to figure out for certain If I excuse a lot of 2003 shit due to nostalgia(although by now It has been 8 years since I watched brotherhood, so it's on nostalgia mode as well), and because I watched It as a kid with low standards, or because the good stuff on It actually outweighs the bad stuff. I wonder If I'm harsher with Brotherhood shortcomings because I watched as mid-late teen, and softer with 2003 because I watched as a kid. Plus, there's also the fact I watched Brotherhood with a lot of expectations compared to the original.

Oh well, I'm generally good at separating nostalgia from my ''objective'' judgements, but I guess I'll need to rewatch both in order to be completely sure.

>since he dedicated his life to learning alchemy.
for the soul purposw of getting back everything he lost.

Not really, he was already interested in alchemy much before his mom even died.

>soul purposw
sole purpose

Because you have shit taste

>ip count hasnt gone up
You're probably and trying to make your opinion look more popular than it is. Pathetic

It's a pretty awful adaptation

Compared to garbage like One Piece, FMA:B is a solid 10/10.

Compared to Avatar: The Last Airbender or Samurai Jack, FMA:B is a 7/10.

>Samurai Jack
SJ's ending made both FMA endings look like masterpieces by comparison

The first seasons of Last Airbender are shit.

>Samurai Jack
That show that has to use robots as enemies so that kids can watch it?

Also, the fact that you used a extremely popular show, and two western cartoons as ground for comparison tells me you are a huge newfag.

It's not like FMA 2003's ending was any good either.

It had some interesting concepts I suppose but it was all crammed in two episodes.

>It's not like FMA 2003's ending was any good either.
That was pretty much implied in his post.

You just like to start shit.

user, we're talking about brotherhood, not fma. It doesn't take high standards to identify trash as trash.

I don't even remember the plot of Conqueror of Shamballa. Was about Hitler?

Unironically kill yourself

Brotherhood it's literally made for teens.

My problem with CoS was that it goes pure shonen with a rather over the top final battle which ended a story that had basically become seinen with low key battles.

When it was just Ed in WW2 era germany, I admit I actually enjoyed it.

But yeah, CoS was an epilogue that didnt need to happen

2003 is so much better, but I enjoy both. Getting really tired of everyone autistically fighting about which version is better rather than being extremely fucking happy that you, as a fan, received two extraordinary anime series that dad basically opposites of each other perfectly.

>instead lets just shit on the other because it's impossible to like both

The themes are better in brotherhood

It's kinda funny how the two versions reach opposite conclusions about equivilant exchange

Personally I think both stories were excellent in their own aspects, the original for story depth and plot, the 2003 the character development and darker situations.

Neither is strictly better than the other.

2003 has better pacing and a superior OST.

Brotherhood has a stronger overall story.

>2003 has better pacing
It was slow as fuck.

>>OST
>Tie.

Winry's parents were healing the enemy. I can't see how that is derp.

It was a secret organization of nazis but Hitler wasn't part of them.

>brotherhood
>the image is from 2003 version movies
What

this post pretty much perfectly explains how i thought about fma 2003. i still liked it, and liked some of the things it did (like homonculous), but overall i'd still say brotherhood was more enjoyable. (mostly because im a lorefag and i liked how large scale and deep and shit brotherhood was. like with father, his past, him eating fucking god, etc)

How does the manga/brotherhood rejects equivalent exchange?

>It was slow as fuck.
and? rushing is worse than going at a slow pace and Brotherhood was guilty of that.

Agreed. Brotherhood was a bad shonen.

Damn straight.

brotherhood is better

I can't understand why Sup Forums dickrides the isekai rape nazi fantasy that is FMA2003
The writers were clearly out of ideas and just covered the series in edge in the anime original part
Most if these kind of series are derided but FMA2003 gets a free pass for nostalgia
Either that or Sup Forums is just tsundere for these stories and since FMA2003 is old enough Sup Forums is already in the dere phase

>FMA2003
Even ignoring the filler shit, FMA still adapted the most memorable parts of the series like Hugh and Nina's deaths phenomenally so the praise isn't unwarranted.

Not him, but IMO, when 03 was adapting the manga, it was legit great. The thing I'm weirded out now is that people are singing praises about all the super disjointed and off-theme stuff that Bones made up.

I just combine 2003 first season before it got fucked up with the rest of brotherhood to get the optimal experience.

2003 is a really good anime even now, but Brotherhood is superior in almost everything.

It's probably one of the few "commercial" anime that is truly great, enjoyable by literally anyone.

FMAB is literally the normie appeal anime.

It's literally just the manga, how is it bad? The series was amazing

>the manga can't be bad
nice reddit spacing too