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Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (TV) (w/ index).

I wouldn't worry about that too much. After all, the first series started out in the same way, and I think most people who "have already seen that" will come back when they hear about how it deviates from the first show's storyline, probably around episode 20 or something.

I thought the flow was a bit awkward...

While episode 1 was a nice start, episode 2 was definitely a big improvement. The transmutation scene to spoiler[revive their mother] felt a lot more intense and involving in this episode than the series one counterpart.

Well. This was an episode that, despite already being in the anime, they would have HAD to repeat, but I will echo kpk: everything about it was done better the first time around.

First of all, the entire flashback, in terms of plot events, was sandwiched into one episode. The manga didn't even do that. From Ed and Al as little boys first learning alchemy to Ed's state certification in ONE episode. There was so much plot here that it ended up being all we got.

The first series succeeded because they used ten minutes or so making us fall in love with Trisha as much as the boys. They gave her a lot of heart in the short time we spent with her. Here? We get, what, two or three minutes of her before she dies? Who cares that she died? The same could be said of Alphonse, who has no significance in the episode, no interesting lines or development of character. Episode three of the previous show added a lot to Al's character as the moral counterbalance to Ed's zealotry...a role that seems more tragic because he still takes responsibility for not speaking out when he should have. None of that here. Al is entirely window-dressing.

Emotional development on the whole was really sophomoric. They completely wasted the scene at Trisha's grave. In the original series, we saw her die, we realized why she had raised the boys the way she did, and the very eerie sunset moment where Al asks Ed how they're going to live without her...oooooh, jeepers. The night they actually committed the transmutation was just like any other night. The house was dark and they were in the basement, but there wasn't any over-the-top Death Note foreboding needed to make it scary. It was already eerie.

This time around? The scene by the grave is used to spout exposition, there's so little emotion on the boys' faces or in the scenes to follow, we have to wonder why they'd put themselves through hell to bring this woman back, I mean, we don't really care about her or anything. Regardless, there they are later trying the human transmutation, something that has NOT been built up to be the damning mistake that it is very well, so what do they do? The cliche everything turns red and crows flock the house as Al gleefully reads off the ingredients of a human body. Really? Come on, really? Maybe it makes it more foreboding, but it's an extremely lame way to do so...and nowhere near as effective as the first time around.

The details from the manga that are different really surprised me, though. When people think of differences between the manga and the first anime, they tend to think of events that happened later in the story, but it really struck me here how great the event differences were between the manga and the anime, even in the origin story, down to the actual design of the "thing they brought back, and with good reason, as a slight difference in her/its design is a plot point for the manga down the road. Then there's the definition of the Truth, which is completely different. spoiler[Wrath is conspicuously absent, and the Truth addresses Ed directly to force his choice, which is interesting.] I will throw a bone to, well, not really the new anime, but the manga in regards to that scene. The first anime made Ed's choice to lose his limbs for the truth a little more passive, probably to make him more sympathetic, but the manga/2nd series makes it very obvious how darkly ambitious Ed can be as we see him beg "the Truth" for the answers in a half-maddened state. Then there's Mustang and Riza, that was interesting. I guess I'm just surprised at how much difference there was in the origin story now that I can visually lay the two versions side by side.

As for my adamant insults to how this new anime is developing, don't get me wrong, it's not a bad series so far at all, not by a long shot. The story is and will always be fascinating, and I'm very eager to get to Lin and Lan Fan later. (Lot of Ls...) But it's a direct copying of the manga, with little room to breathe dramatically. It feels kind of devoid of emotion, any emotion, that is, that wasn't stripped from the manga, and its sense of timing and pacing is just as weak up front here. I'm going to enjoy the action and humor in this series, but as I've already mentioned, it feels like a much emptier, less mature iteration. (Isn't that what happened with the Watchmen movie...?) If there had been no anime version before this, I probably would think higher of this version. But I'm not totally jaded. If this 2nd series had come out first, I would not have been sucked into it at all. I might have watched it out of curiosity, but I wouldn't have downed like potato chips when I saw the first series. It's not conducive to newcomers and it's dramatically stale. But the writers here know they already have a massive fanbase, and they are milking that. It's working. I'm watching every week, anyway.

And there's no way at ALL that the future episode four will compare to the old episode seven. I will eat my shoe if it is, based on how they handled the new episode two here.

The one sure thing this series may have done better than the old one? I love the OP, and I love that it's seems to be sung by a young boy. (Could so be a woman, though, I didn't check.) Sounds like Al singing...leaves a strong impression.

My opinion still stands on having the previews read by random narrator man, though. That's never a good idea...

Westlo wrote:

While episode 1 was a nice start, episode 2 was definitely a big improvement. The transmutation scene to spoiler[revive their mother] felt a lot more intense and involving in this episode than the series one counterpart.

I'll agree there in terms of shouting, intensity and gore, you're absolutely right. The first series left the whole initial human transmutation incredibly vague until much later on in the show, so that wasn't a factor. But I think they sacrificed a lot of emotional involvement and character development for the deep detail they went into with the transmutation. Yes, it was cool, but I preferred the initial approach of leaving more mystery about the process until later. This one episode has completely shoveled all the details about the past into twenty minutes, but didn't leave us much sit-down time with the characters and who they really are.

I mean, the spoiler[death of Winry's parents] is only mentioned in passing, and if you've read the manga, you know that's going to be even more important there than it was in the first anime when the death was spoiler[attributed to Mustang.]