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NEWS: Fullmetal Alchemist Wins Amazon Critics Choice

Wow thats pretty impressive. Especially since compaired to the series, the FMA movie wasnt really that great.

Good for FMA, I thought the movie did a good job with closing the chapter on a great anime series. Although some characters needed some more development, but overall I am happy to hear that it made the top 100.

It's the same thing with the Cowboy Bebop movie from a few years back. Was it neccesary to the storyline? No. Was it awesome? Yes. (Actually, the CB movie was probably a little more accessible to new fans than the FMA one.)

penguintruth wrote:

It's the same thing with the Cowboy Bebop movie from a few years back. Was it neccesary to the storyline? No. Was it awesome? Yes. (Actually, the CB movie was probably a little more accessible to new fans than the FMA one.)

I think it was definitely more accessible than the FMA film, but I didn't find the Cowboy Bebop movie all that great either. It wasn't bad, but it felt too much like a weaker, longer episode of the TV series. It lacked a lot of the great, dry humour of the TV series, in my opinion. It was very nicely animated and had some great action sequences, though.

That was what was so brilliant about the Cowboy Bebop movie - it was like a long episode of the television series, but on a more epic, detailed scale. That's why it was so great - they weren't trying to make it into something that was too heavy-handed or overscaled.

I felt like it was a very strong "big episode", and that's what I liked abou tit. And it did have a lot of the great humor of the series, just not as much because the plot was of a more serious nature.

penguintruth wrote:

That was what was so brilliant about the Cowboy Bebop movie - it was like a long episode of the television series, but on a more epic, detailed scale. That's why it was so great - they weren't trying to make it into something that was too heavy-handed or overscaled. I felt like it was a very strong "big episode", and that's what I liked abou tit. And it did have a lot of the great humor of the series, just not as much because the plot was of a more serious nature.

See, I wanted it to be a long episode of the TV series, and in a sense it did that, but I felt that it was a long episode with the charm kinda pushed into the corner to incorporate too much "epic", large-scale stuff, which I never felt Bebop should've been. It wasn't by any means a bad movie, and I enjoyed it plenty, but I would of rather had a less serious story and a smaller scale. I suppose they didn't want to do that for a big theatrical film, but aside from a few key episodes, Cowboy Bebop, to me, was always about the little things.

I suppose I could say the one advantage FMA had over CB was that it was a continuation of the story. With CB, we have a big epic plot, but it's stuck in between TV episodes, so fans of the series lose a bit of the tension. We know how CB ends, we know that nothing in the movie will have any big effect on the plot, and all that. Of course this is a double-edged sword seeing as the FMA movie requires you to have seen the TV series in its entirety to understand the movie. Personally, maybe the Bebop film could've included some more detailed explanations of spoiler[Spike's time with the Red Dragons], and we could have learned more about his past, coupled with the film's plot, but on a lesser scale, perhaps? Either way, I'm not trying to say it was bad at all, it just felt to me that it could've been more than it was.

As far as FMA winning awards, I'd really care more to hear how the manga is doing regarding awards and sales.

If I read the manga instead of watched the anime, would I understand it?

I_AM_L wrote:

If I read the manga instead of watched the anime, would I understand it?

Not as much as those who've seen the anime because FMA took a turn away from the manga halfway through the series. You'll just be up to par by knowing some of the characters involved, really.