Hello :). Today I will start throwing my 3 part text on "Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood", we start from part 1.
"Steel Alchemist" has never really belonged to my favorite titles. In the sense of those that I would excite as often as HxH, DB, NGE, or "Kaiji". For a while, I was a little hungry, but the ending broke most of my love for this title. It doesn't change the fact that the rest is just great. Things that I didn't like can be counted on the fingers of 1 hand without 2 fingers. They have nothing to do with the powerful advantages of this shounen. I know that hardly anyone agrees with my comparison, but for me, FMA is not very different from, for example, HxH, which is also such an unusual battle, I will try to develop this thesis in the next text.
Arakawa is horribly consistent and accurate in its profession. Each of the characters she creates has its own unique fighting style, which has been meticulously adapted to the character and personality of the hero. Bah! We have many great ideas here (using the brain, cunning by characters, pros, and cons of individual combat methods) that we can associate with other battlefield players. As with most "tapeworms" (also with OP, but less) I felt that their authors did not stick to all the duels and pulled out of them as much as possible, so watching FMA, or to a lesser extent, HxH, this feeling is completely strange to me. As I mentioned before, like in Togashi's manga, a character declares that he wants to kill someone, he takes steps or just does it. In FMA it is similar, there is no overly polite, pulled and slightly hated by some Nakama-power fans. If someone is weak or loses too much blood, then there are no miracles in the village ... the character loses his power and does not pull more of his reserves from the ass. In fact, most of the advantages of "Hunter x Hunter", I can freely rewrite to Alchemist according to the principle of copy-paste, changing only some details, resulting from the differences between the titles. Yes, I know, at this point some people curse me in front of the monitors, hehe. But let's start from the beginning because I'm still too much into writing about the benefits of Hirom Arakawa and again the rest will probably come out somewhat chaotic.
My adventure with FMA: B began in college, probably thanks to Karol and Hyrule (a former admin of op.com.pl), who often made me think about this anime. Watching the adventures of the Elric brothers coincided with the biggest tragedy in my life, ironically enough, which made me feel better in Ed or Alphonse's skin. The first time I was amazing. It was the series I've been waiting for for many years. A battle game in which the characters are not stupid, the bad are not "just bad", there are a lot of fights and they are specifically led. Just as the first FMA series didn't pull me in at all after almost 2 episodes, so Brotherhood did it without too much effort. Now, when I watch anime for the second time and have grown up a bit, it's easier for me to see even more advantages of this story and extraordinary care for it.
The beginning of history is not particularly revealing, that's the full story. Two brothers after a life tragedy want to achieve their goal, so they wander the world to discover a way to heal. The beauty of "Steel Alchemist" probably lies in the fact that the story is behind a woman. I have written several times that male and female brains are different. To put it in a nutshell - guys have them more focused on logical, cool thinking, and women better perceive the environment, see things in front of men, it's easier for them to understand them, get to know the environment. Just like guys dominate women in most jobs, sports, occupations/occupations that require logical thinking (I'm not saying that there are no such women there !!! There are just fewer of them), in my opinion, women dominate over men when it comes to culture, art and psychology. Few authors are able to present emotions, facial expressions, emotions so well, which gives female cartoonists much easier. As far as Togashi or clothing, sometimes it comes out, Arakawa has drawn many more such scenes. When someone suffers, grieves, it can be seen in the unconditional reflexes, general attitude, body language, we are overwhelmed by sad emotions. If we see someone angry, we can feel this fire in our eyes, pure fury, we feel that the character feels the bloodlust and desire to destroy everything in his path (Wrath is simply brilliant in this role!). When Hiromu Arakawa presents the extermination of Ishval citizens, I had instinctive associations with the activities of the Reich of an Austrian watercolor artist. "Wonderfully" she presented the Ishvalans' holocaust, showing that war is a real paradise for murderers and hell for ordinary people. Ms. Hiromu is not afraid to accurately show brutal moments. Brothers seeing Truth, losing Al's limbs and body, a scene with known Chimera, as well as their later "life", combined with a sensational soundtrack, gives an amazing effect. When I watched the scene with Chimera for the third time (I watched half the anime of my time with my sister), the effect was still the same, I could barely refrain from crying.
Speaking of which, the author was clearly inspired by geopolitics, history and Eurasia. Maybe this is not something like "Legend of Galactic Heroes", but you can also see that these were not senseless references, as in many Japanese compositions. We have here Germany from WW2 (Amestris), Russia (Drachma) or Xing (China). Each of these countries contains characteristic elements, Amestris is a typical military state, where the state administration is the majority of the army, and the ruler is King Furer. Not all citizens support their actions, showing them more or less contempt, and unflattering statements. We know relatively little about Drachma, but it immediately brings to mind Russia from the early 1940s (a powerful, frosty empire). In turn, diplomatic relations between them (Amestris and Drachma) are associated with relations on the Berlin-Moscow line (non-aggression pact, both countries disliked each other). Xing and his representatives pretend to be weak pacifists for as long as necessary. At a critical moment, when nothing else remains, they rush to the opponent's throat and show their capabilities. Like Ling Yao in the country of the Elric brothers. His skirmish with Envy, and earlier Wrath, was just great! I forgot for so many years that Ling Yao embraced as well as dueling and using elements of the environment in his favor.)
Generally, we have all the best things here, known to us from other battlefields shounen, but given in very good or excellent form, and without errors. Everything is logical here, there are no sudden jumps in power levels or transformation from the proverbial "ass." For now, and I'm finishing the action in the north, I have not encountered any mistake or inconsistency on the part of Arakawa in terms of the results of the matches or the scenario. This is by no means the standard among similar series from Shounen Jump). Character development is also perfect and surprisingly logical. You can see that each character has their own unique fighting style and tries to make the most of their physical predispositions. I especially love close combat / short distance, where the physical aspects of the warriors are most important (reflexes, cleverness, skillful use of aggression <I know that it's a truism, but I mean that if a person is bent, his senses work better > pure power), which are not so common in many shonens. Fortunately, Arakawa included in its manga the unexpected representation of damage dealers and gave them enough air time. However, ranged alchemists are great.
Roy Mustang is, in my opinion, one of the most masculine anime characters in general. When it is needed, it can be deadly serious, it never leaves its allies on the battlefield. And he has that characteristic "flash" in his eye. Kimblee, in turn, is one of my favorite types of characters. A total psycho who craves for risk and "breathes fully" mainly during risky fights, when he does not have to limit himself and can fight at all. Generally speaking, when it comes to performing and rethinking fights, Arakawa does not stand out even a millimeter from the best artists. Bah! It is often better than them. He often does not treat some threads on the head (like some mangacs), and presents it as widely as possible. I love it in a special way when it shows us some action on the other hand, presenting the whole situation in a different context. E.g. an action with Scar in Briggs or the last meeting of Trishia and children with Hohenheim. This is a rare treat in tapeworms, and it significantly enriches history.
The idea for Homunculuses is simply great, and most importantly, the author simply perfectly rendered the universal (in the sense understood by most people, regardless of where they live) archetypes of the "seven deadly sins". Sloth is sluggish, he doesn't want anything (the type is so lazy that he falls asleep during the fight!), And at the same time complains about everything, even his existence. Glutonny is such a stereotypical fat man who eats a lot and doesn't think much (although he is deadly dangerous, stupidity, and high strength is a dangerous mix). His "guardian", Lust, emanates sex and is sensual femme fatal. He knows well what guys want and often enhances his physical qualities, as well as tempts with his body language, alluring eyes, and tempting voice. Unfortunately, Envy has not yet revealed her cards, but you can feel her jealousy and the fact that she easily gets angry. Greed is simply the embodiment of greed, however, understood. The guy wants everything for himself: women, people, money, power, slaves, land, objects ... everything, because he has such a whim. Pride, as his name suggests, is proud, as well as what often goes hand in hand, over-confident and arrogant. When he feels that he has an advantage over a person, he can say a few words too much. This cannot be said of Wrath, who is calm, but in a second is able to transform into a tornado, a real, uncontrolled element of pure destruction that will demolish everyone on his path. When he sees an obstacle on his way, she should humbly move away, or Wrath will simply break it like a ram. The massacre of Greed in his performance is simply poetry.
As for the rest of the characters, apart from all the above, there is probably no one that I would not like. Seriously, even the secondary or even tertiary were perfectly fine. I even liked the Chinese woman from Xing and her little panda Jia (and as some of you could read, I wasn't a big fan at first ... I even scrolled through the fragments with them at the beginning of the anime. All the characters of "Steel Alchemist", similarly like his story, they are well created. Their characters, as well as life attitudes, are sensibly motivated and stick to the proverbial poop. They perfectly fit into known archetypes of characters from other fairy tales of this type. Unlike them, however, they are carefully thought out, not there is room here for behaviors that do not match the character, invent something quickly, sometimes forcefully. We don't feel for a moment that something has been added here in post-production, so to speak.
Initially, this text was supposed to look a little different, but well ... it didn't work out. Think of it as a kind of longer introduction, the development of which will appear in the second part of the text. By the way, I want to thank Karol, thanks to whom the text is more refined, and I avoided some stupid theses when I slightly interpreted some scenes in FMA.