Making gold from less good gold
Alu and I have been watching Fullmetal Alchemist, the 2003 one that isn't Brotherhood. I've never actually finished this one, but I prefer Brotherhood in general and this runthrough doesn't look like it's going to change that. Overall, the storyline, pacing, characters, animation, even the voice acting just doesn't impress me as much, but that's all been covered to death by other people for the last ten years. What I can't find any discussion about is how the two series treat alchemy itself differently, which I think is strange, considering how important the practice is to that world.
We're not finished with our run of the show and I might have to correct myself on this later, but I feel like while FMA '03 talks an awful lot about alchemy being a science based on equivalent exchange, it doesn't seem to go much deeper into it than that and its use often even seems to contradict that idea. A lot of the time, it seems as long as a circle is present somewhere nearby, anyone claiming to be an alchemist can work pretty much any kind of magic they can think of.
The most glaring example I can think of off hand is early on when Majhal, an alchemist in a small village (who turns out to be killing little girls so he can put their souls into puppets to try and revive his "dead" girlfriend, but we're not worried about that here) uses the same circle on his wristband to do several completely things throughout the episode. First, he uses it to fix a broken lamp post in town. Then later, he uses it to throw fire (something that's extremely complicated and exceptionally rare in Brotherhood) at one of his escaped puppets in a cemetery. Then after Ed finds him trying to extract a local girl's soul, he uses it to turn a small chisel into a longsword, which also seems like a pretty unequal transmutation to me.
I haven't watched Brotherhood in a few years, so maybe my recollection is faulty, but I remember alchemy being much more consistent in Brotherhood. It felt like they took a lot more care in portraying what it could do and how it worked. I got the impression more easily that transmutation circles had to be very precise in order to work properly and a given array was limited only to a specific function. I don't remember my suspension of disbelief being stretched quite so much, even later on when stuff starts getting weirder, which is part of the reason it's easily my favorite magic system in any media (Bending takes a fairly close second, but it's edged out by its random distribution; you have to be born a bender, but anyone can learn alchemy), and why it bothers me so much to see it treated so apparently carelessly in '03.
I'll probably touch on this again later when we watch Brotherhood someday. I'm hoping my memories are confirmed, but we'll see. Maybe I'm looking back through rose-colored glasses and a rewatch will have me saying "Hey wait a minute!" just as much as FMA '03 is now.
All that said, I'm still quite enjoying myself watching '03. It's still a good show. They just did it better later is all.
Take it easy!
We're not finished with our run of the show and I might have to correct myself on this later, but I feel like while FMA '03 talks an awful lot about alchemy being a science based on equivalent exchange, it doesn't seem to go much deeper into it than that and its use often even seems to contradict that idea. A lot of the time, it seems as long as a circle is present somewhere nearby, anyone claiming to be an alchemist can work pretty much any kind of magic they can think of.
The most glaring example I can think of off hand is early on when Majhal, an alchemist in a small village (who turns out to be killing little girls so he can put their souls into puppets to try and revive his "dead" girlfriend, but we're not worried about that here) uses the same circle on his wristband to do several completely things throughout the episode. First, he uses it to fix a broken lamp post in town. Then later, he uses it to throw fire (something that's extremely complicated and exceptionally rare in Brotherhood) at one of his escaped puppets in a cemetery. Then after Ed finds him trying to extract a local girl's soul, he uses it to turn a small chisel into a longsword, which also seems like a pretty unequal transmutation to me.
I haven't watched Brotherhood in a few years, so maybe my recollection is faulty, but I remember alchemy being much more consistent in Brotherhood. It felt like they took a lot more care in portraying what it could do and how it worked. I got the impression more easily that transmutation circles had to be very precise in order to work properly and a given array was limited only to a specific function. I don't remember my suspension of disbelief being stretched quite so much, even later on when stuff starts getting weirder, which is part of the reason it's easily my favorite magic system in any media (Bending takes a fairly close second, but it's edged out by its random distribution; you have to be born a bender, but anyone can learn alchemy), and why it bothers me so much to see it treated so apparently carelessly in '03.
I'll probably touch on this again later when we watch Brotherhood someday. I'm hoping my memories are confirmed, but we'll see. Maybe I'm looking back through rose-colored glasses and a rewatch will have me saying "Hey wait a minute!" just as much as FMA '03 is now.
All that said, I'm still quite enjoying myself watching '03. It's still a good show. They just did it better later is all.
Take it easy!
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