about those continuity issues...

[kaigou]

Yes, this is when I started laughing because the only other option was to throw things at the screen.

Or to cry miserably.

I don't actually have a problem with Bones' (the production company's) decision to do a remake of what is, honestly, a damn good series in and of itself -- even though I can think of many many television shows that cry out for remakes, and Fullmetal Alchemist ain't even in the top three hundred. Granted, I would like to say this is because Bones et al realized that their story was adequate but it doesn't hold a candle to Arakawa's, but the cynical side of me says it's because they wrote themselves into a freaking hole with ep51, and the only way to get out was with a movie attempt which in fact ended up only burying them even deeper: one big dead end.

But the series was wildly popular! A huge success! The manga continues to be one of the top-ranked, winning several awards and selling like hotcakes! Which means it's not really a labor of love to tell Arakawa's full story: it's a labor of oh my freaking god there's money being made and we want some of that now kthxbai.

Part of the reason I think the first series caught me from the very start and held me for so long was because its scripts were a great deal like its main character: anguished, but doing its best to keep that on the down-low, enough to get by. A flashback scene starts the series but it's snapshots, come and gone so fast, and then we're into present-day, where Edward's all bristle and annoyance. But over those first three episodes, like the flashbacks, anguish creeps in, tinged with anger. Edward had an edge, and not just a chip on his shoulder or the oh-so-perfectly-metaphorical blade on his wrist. In some ways, the series may differ so dramatically from the manga but it retains the fundamental despair that characterizes the manga, for me: it's a kind of kicking life in the teeth, knowing you'll be beaten but determined to go down fighting.

This retelling strikes me as not just -- as Branch pointed out -- kinda fuzzy (not helped at all by Miki's rather affable version of Roy Mustang, could someone please tell me wtf is up with that VA change? and, fine, it's even LESS helped by an eye-catch voiceover I suspect is wot's-his-face as did the english-language Ed and I don't think you could get more cheese in six syllables if you owned a freaking cow) -- but this version's just not acting like it has to prove itself.

That is, the stakes are already known, right, so let's get into the story. I suppose that works when everyone freaking knows Batman lives in the Batcave and looks for big honking lights flashing in the sky, so no backstory really needed (or just kinda skim it) but... first, this story ain't that one, and second, this is the reason the Batman franchise has been on a losing streak, comparatively. Which might be a good comparison, after all: the retell the story with any kick to it, Batman needed a Joker to come along and really push the edges of things. This retelling of FMA doesn't push much of anything, except maybe all the standard shonen/boy's-action buttons.

Which is okay in the general scheme of things, if we were dying for more boy's action stories (which I'd say we're not, not really) and if the first version had been so much the suck that anything would do. But FMA saves itself from the standard shonen fare by its peculiar combination of subtle anguish and implied despair and a veneer of getting up and walking even when you don't got two good legs to do it, because you simply refuse to lie down and take it.

This second version (so far, at least) is like a fandom version of the first series: Roy isn't half as snarky, sounding more affable and even amiable, (such that Edward's annoyance at him seems rather unfounded, rather than justified after constant needling from Roy); Hughes is positively sedate, if not just plain phoning in his lines; the Fuhrer's all stern and a little scary, instead of goofy nonchalant mask over scary reality. But then, I guess it's a lot like fanfiction when the author's retelling the series: where are the surprises? Thing is, there are a lot of fanfiction authors out there who do retell series, and they do a damn good job of it, too. It's just that much harder to do a good job when the original was so damn good in its own right... but it can still be done.

This time around, there's a spark missing. I doubt it's the VAs, since they're the same cast (mostly) as before; I think it's the script. It doesn't give them the room to breathe life, so we're stuck (so far, again, that is) with what I call the Quatre-and-the-teacup syndrome.

It's when someone either can't -- or maybe even won't -- be bothered to grasp the entire complexity of a character, so they settle for the most obvious thing, which is usually not even a characteristic so much as a physical trait or habit. Quatre, drinking tea, offering tea, pouring tea, instead of actually taking the time to grasp the character's nuances; Alphonse, apologizing for his older brother, apologizing for being mistaken for his older brother, apologizing to his older brother... SHUT UP AL AND GO ON STRIKE UNTIL THEY GIVE YOU BACK YOUR BACKBONE!

I'll give props to the second-go-round trying to cleave closer to the original storyline (of the manga), but I also take all those props and another ten to spare right back again at the way it's being retold. Because a story is not just a set of events, that could be marked on a timeline and if told chronologically would amount to the same story if told out of order. Like Memento, a movie with a rather basic plotline but one that created its tension by telling the story backwards, or movies like Pulp Fiction or Traffic, where each individual story is really rather simple but the confluence of six simple stories makes for one big mashup.

That is to say, in Arakawa's version, the backstory is told in bits and pieces -- and, to a great extent, is a rather dry retelling by Edward, all fury and making-a-point and less emotional attachment to the distant event; at least, less that can be seen, especially compared to Alphonse. That is, it's Ed's POV that gives us history but it's Alphonse's POV that gives us the anguish of how badly they'd screwed up. Arakawa doesn't give any real extent of backstory until chapter twenty, well into at least the second volume. (And in actual output time, being a serial comic originally printed monthly, that's almost two years since she began the story.) For that matter, the actual telling of the night it all went wrong doesn't take place for another three chapters. She works her way up to it.

By that point, Arakawa's starting to really gain the depth of a storyteller's art, I think. She's thrown warnings and hints here and there, let the story roll along, and by chapter nineteen the average reader probably has a decent handle on the world and its alchemy rules/constraints. So where at first she had to work hard to undo the immediate sympathy for Ed & Al, in trying to resurrect their mother -- that is, she had to show why they were now pinned to the wall as a result of their breaking such a horrendous taboo -- but when she begins the backstory, she has to regain that sympathy for kids with only the best intentions. In effect, she has to undo the world-education she's shoehorned into readers over the previous twenty chapters.

That, I think, is why her backstories take so long to come to light: when it reaches that point in the story, she comes at it, retreats, come at it from a different angle, hints, retreats... and then advances several chapters before the Big Event (whatever it may be). Those segue chapters, I'm convinced, are necessary to undo the reader perceptions created by the present-day position on things. So Ed and Al are shown struggling with alchemy, finding a teacher, surviving training, and returning home -- by which point the reader has three or four chapters' distance from the young/adult Ed and his brother, and Ed's driving anger (at himself, at the position he's in, at the things he's learning/seeing). Instead, the reader can sink into a younger, more hopeful, and certainly more arrogant Edward, with author-provided distance from the inevitable disaster.

Which means that when, in episode two of this version, we're already getting backstory... I really felt like I was dealing with bad fanfiction, of the really really bad kind. The "well, I should probably tell you all the backstory in the series just in case you didn't actually watch that much, but it's boring, so I'll just shove it all in a bunch of summaries right off the bat and get it out of the way."

That's what we're going through, with this version of the series: we're 'getting it out of the way'. So instead of trying to woo viewers with Edward, it's just presumed that we're watching because, hey, we watched the last one and we're reading the manga, so why waste the extra time to coax us into adoring the characters even more? We're like a done deal, a sure thing, and that's why I feel like -- as I cringe at some of the damn near "as you know, Bob" lines I heard in episode two -- I feel like I'm being taken for granted, damn it.

And even that I could struggle to forgive, or at least rationalize, if it weren't compounded by the sensation that Bones et al went out and found the very last five animators in the entire freaking world who hadn't seen nor heard of Fullmetal Alchemist. Because, honestly, how else can you explain such a stupid mistake as this?



Were these people living under a rock? Was the director out golfing that day? Who's doing the damn quality control around here, people? Or do you think your audience just loooves Ed so much that it doesn't matter if the production values have dropped, the attention to detail is sloppy in nearly every long shot, the script is mediocre, and serving tea is being substituted for, uh, actual characterization? Does Bones et al just think stories sell themselves? Obviously this is a group that's never stopped to see that not every remake of Romeo and Juliet has been a blockbuster, even if some along the line have. Just because the first version blew everyone out of the water doesn't mean a half-hearted, low-key, shonen-ramped, revisioning is going to do the job -- hell, I'd say it will do the job even less, given what it has to measure up against.

Let's compare, shall we? Here's the very first time in the manga that the automail is really shown -- and it's near the end of the second chapter. (Certainly not an 'immediate' thing in comic terms).



That's also one of the most famous images in the FMA world, nearly iconic in its own right. What's perhaps the second-most iconic image follows on the very next page, and for those of you following along at home, it should be pretty obvious what had me head-desking like mad in the current version's screenshots:



You'll have to scroll back up for the v2.0 images. No, I'm not even going to link to another screenshot. I can't take it. I can only hope someone got their ass seriously kicked, and the director promised to lay off the booze and the quality control folks put down the damn crack pipe. I hope. I really hope.

In the meantime, could someone please get rid of the voiceover on the eyecatch? Please. No, really: please. I'll agree to three more episodes before I start really frothing, if I can be free of Houston-tinged smarm at every episode's half-point.

Cripes. No, that's all I can manage now: just, bloody freaking cripes, people. Get a clue already.

Comments

[sans-pertinence.livejournal.com]

So someone on the flist loves the new FMA so much she posted in half-inch, bolded characters. And then there's this. XD

I did enjoy the first FMA--mostly. Sometimes Ed's preachy know-everything attitude (let's be honest, what he lacked in height he made up for in hubris) got on my nerves, but I loved him, really, and I loved most of the characters, and I still adore Lust. So I guess I wasn't more than lukewarm about a rewriting/reimagining, not enough to watch. If the writers fell into the telling instead of showing trap... meh.

But I know how you feel. If I can bring myself to go see it, I'll probably shred the bad fanfic that is the new Trek in the interests of venting spleen.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

At first I was amused by Ed's hubris, but as the story went on and the sins (so to speak) piled up, I guess I could see both the reasons for his arrogance even after such a massive mistake -- and the reasons why Roy (who with others was more even-voiced) was specifically and pointedly so sardonic, bored, just a little uninmpressed. (He always sounded like he was studying his fingernails, when he talked to Ed, except when he got really pissed, which made the shift that much more of a contrast.) Somebody among the cast had to be there to take Ed down a notch, and Winly and Roy get the honors.

It's not that the writers are telling instead of showing... so much that they're showing far, far, too soon. And too fast. And I think it's the really-fast-showing that amounts to a kind of telling, in itself.

[ktoth04.livejournal.com]

OMG at the screencap... I did not notice that at all
*fails so hard*

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I couldn't freaking NOT notice it, and I honestly wish I hadn't. I could continue to live in bliss (or close enough to it). Le sigh.

[ktoth04.livejournal.com]

yea... it annoys me, but I'll probably still keep watching it (cuz I'm too lazy to read the manga >.>)

[drich.livejournal.com]

I think part of the pacing issue may be however many eps they are planning for this series to run, which I haven't actually seen posted anywhere yet. First series took 25 eps to get the main event of Vol 4 (or was it 5?) and mostly diverged after that. If they are now trying to cram 20+ volumes into a similar length (51 eps), then yeah, something or several somethings are bound to suffer in the translation/transformation.

Re pictorial evidence: *headdesk* *sigh*

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I think it's a combination of the pacing -- it's not easy to ramp up into a series and it can be even more intimidating/difficult when a) you have pre-existing series to compare to and b) you're staring at over seventy chapters of mangaverse that you want to cover. From what I've heard, this series will "take as long as it takes" to cover the events of the manga, so if it ends up being a Naruto (sans fillers, I would hope) then, they're planning for that.

The problem, of course, is when you start with a filler, it's either going to be really really good or it's going to be epic fail.

[annotated_em]

...Oh my freaking god. *howls*

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction, too. Heh.

[haya5h1.livejournal.com]

wait, it's a remake? I thought it was a sequel. Ah whelp. *tosses on the no-watchy pile*

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

And it's supposed to follow the manga much closer, but I think they're flailing as they try to get their feet. If it gets any better, I'll let you know and you can pick it back up if you've got time -- but I'd recommend sticking with the manga. Now there is some incredible storytelling. And the cost! OMG, the stakes are phenomenal, and for once, "saving the world" is a literal thing. Part of me reads in awe and the other part is dying of envy for not being able to come up with stuff like that myself. WAH.

[hinotori.livejournal.com]

YES YES YES on the eyecatch voiceover. I was sitting on the floor in front of the TV last Sunday with kanon_chan and her bf, and all three of us went "...tf. TF? TF!" at that, and it lasted the entire commercial break.

Other than that... I don't think the dialogue is too bad, some of it has had me laughing out loud, but then I don't know how good and / or bad the subtitles you've been watching are, so. Uh.
I love Lust's new voice, am sort of meh with Roy's -- the instant reaction was DISLIKE DISLIKE D:, but I think I could get used to it.

Over all, the plot changes get me a lot-- Lior is not in a desert, Rose isn't dark-skinned, but SCAR still seems to be ... I'm interested to see what they'll do with it. Screw-ups like the automail-thing suck, but I haven't lost hope yet. Some things-- the "eyes" in episode one, the talking gate-kid-thing (Al's voice and at least three more. Hm.), a new perspective on Ed as first seen by Roy and Liza ...

...but I keep comparing and coming up short with things. Like Trisha Elric's DOD being given as in 1904, when the watch in the original FMA clearly said '03 (apparently this is different in the manga again, will check at BookOff ASAP); or the incredible amount of cabbage lines.
I'm sort of glad about the reduced gore (re-watched ep1/1 earlier for contrast), but I'm not sure it works in context. I don't know. I'm going to keep watching, but... I really hope they'll get better as soon as the cabbage line stuff's over and done with.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I remain baffled by the lack of desert, which was a major metaphorical element of Liore (not to mention a serious nod to the "go in and help and then it all blows up" situation of, well, Afghanistan, to be honest -- not surprising given Arakawa interviewed veterans from Afghanistan as part of her research). The lack of skin tone also bugs the hell out of me, in that flash of what I saw coming up, because I loathe when characters get white-washed, especially when they pointedly were not so pale in the original story.

(In fact, I'd say Arakawa does a better job than most when it comes to presenting a diverse world within the scope of a manga, albeit with the usual about-a-handful of black characters, but a strong showing for ones who appear even less, like Arabic, Russo-Mongolian, and Chinese.)

I think the watch said '04, because that was when they burned down their house... wasn't it? (OH man how long has it been?)

As for the reduced gore... I dunno. I think part of the reason the first episode had such incredible power was because it went from this horrible scene, such anguish and terror and utter loss and then suddenly two characters in cheerful music in the desert. It gave you whiplash, and it meant when Ed references the taboo of making humans, and speaks with that kind of arrogant, edged-anger, patient-but-not-interested patronizing of Rose... you know what's hiding underneath. (That's what I meant by keeping the anguish on the down-low; if you didn't see the flashback you might not realize how much it had torn Ed up, and you might think now it's just a badge that makes him different and he's cool with using that to his advantage.)

I didn't mean the dialogue was bad, so much as it's just filled with an awful lot of cabbage-lines. Those, unfortunately, don't usually get lost in translation.

[branchandroot]

Yeah, the eyecatch makes me flinch every time.

And I just don't watch the outro at all.

This may be one where I consign the first ten eps to the "filler, never watch" folder and just pick up when the new plot starts to come in. Because the pacing on these first ones is dreadful.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

This may be one where I consign the first ten eps to the "filler, never watch" folder and just pick up when the new plot starts to come in.

Yeah... I'm leaning more and more towards that option. Or maybe of rounding up a few strong souls and trading off, so that at least someone trustworthy is watching and can report that it's made a turn for the better (or hasn't, and to keep waiting)... plus, that way, I'd only have to watch one in however many episodes equal to there are volunteers.

Because I don't know if I can keep doing this every week until it does get better: by then I may not even care, and that would really piss me off.

[recession.livejournal.com]

I was going to post with my Hughes icon but I realized my paid time was out. Oops.

I'm enjoying it, even if I feel like I'm watching the first season. Like I told my friend a few minutes ago, "I'll be glad once the first five or ten episodes are over, so they'll stop going through the motions and get to the good stuff." The entire Reole storyline I find myself bored with, be it original series, manga or this series... it's just something I didn't care for.

I still find myself amused at the eyecatch, rather than irritated by it. It's just so wtf and out of place.

I wonder if the FMA animation crew is like the Gundam 00 Season 2 animation crew -- multiple animation directors working on episodes, which cause the animation to go from "Holy Christ that was excellent," to "When did this series suddenly get QUALITY animation?" If you notice, the scenes before and after that scene there have it right, but for some reason an animator who was sleeping at his desk drew it wrong. It's an error in continuity, but I think I can overlook it if they don't start botching up all sorts of things. I've got to look over it, or else I'll never enjoy the series -- I run through the same thing in movies, which was something I got from working as a film student for a year. I can see when they film out of order and things get changed; shirts ripped in one shot, not in the next, then ripped again, characters wearing sunglasses that were broken a minute before then broken again a few scenes later, etc. If I don't look past it, I spend the entire movie gnawing on my arm and growling like some sort of rabid dog.

My bigger concern with this new season was more on Hughes' personification. Sure, we know what's going to happen to him in (I'm sure) the next six episodes or so, but they rolled pretty much his entire manga plot into episode 1. He met the Elrics, took them home to meet his family, then spent the entire night worrying about them which made it so he couldn't sleep. Save for the birthday party with Winry and learning the secret he does, we've pretty much covered his entire character in ONE episode. It saddens me to see them do that, as he is one of my favorite characters (and if I remember correctly, there was an interview with Arakawa where she said she never expected Hughes to become so popular) especially knowing he's not going to be around much longer...

Really I think I'm ranting now and I don't know where I was going with this to begin with. :')

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I have gotten very good, already, at knowing when the eyecatch is coming and HITTING MUTE FOR TEN SECONDS. I suppose someone out there thought it'd be a good kind of wacky corporate crossover to have one of the American VA doing the eyecatch crossover but HELLO NOT IN MY SUB.

Sheesh. I'm halfway tempted to write the fansub groups and ask if they could take out the eyecatch voiceover. Please to be removing the cheesy english from my japanese, kthxbai.

As a writer, I thought the entire Riole/Liore storyline was a powerful introduction to the story, encapsulating a lot of it without giving away a great deal. Right now, though, I feel like I have whiplash because in four episodes the redux has covered what, six episodes of the first series... something like that? Starting to wonder if they're determined to get all 90-something chapters into 51 episodes, or die trying.

I've been meaning to ask: was the 2nd second of 00 worth it? I stopped watching around ep10 -- partly b/c of harddrive failure, partly from just being so distracted -- and never could talk myself into getting back into it, for reasons still not known. The same strange feeling of boredom I had as with Code Geass, in which I liked it but for some reason just couldn't be arsed to watch more... but kept thinking that with 00, mebbe I should. Kept meaning to ask: was there reason, should I go track it down and finish up?

[recession.livejournal.com]

I wonder how the Japanese fanbase is handling the english eyecatch...

As for Gundam 00, it wasn't really worth it until the last seven episode or so. Maybe even the last 5. Even then, the ending was decent but it wasn't great, and it could have been so much better than it was. It also suffers from Bandai's new business model of sticking half of the story in the manga/novels/model books, so plot points we have start and never finish get completely glossed over for no reason other than sales.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I wonder how the Japanese fanbase is handling the english eyecatch...

Well, from what I hear from a friend in Japan, there's a lot of hysterical laughter going on. Sometimes you don't need to be fluent in a language to be able to identify smarm.

oh, also: your icon reminded me. at some point I must tell you how we broke the hearts of every gundam fanboy at Akon, two years ago. CRUSHED THEM LIKE GRAPES.

[recession.livejournal.com]

... Did you mention how Garma takes showers with TV screens inside while Char watches?

( Let's try that with a non-RP journal )

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

No, but applesauce was involved.

[recession.livejournal.com]

I am both amused and afraid at the same time.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I've heard rumors there are even pictures. Which, frankly, scares the hell out of me.

[flamesword.livejournal.com]

I'm really not liking the sound of that remake. :/

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

It's... uhm. Well, it's, uhm. Hunh. Uhm.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pretty much what you said. While my own most recent entry contains positive comments (because, it's FMA. it's my favorite), now that I've watched all the episodes, it's just reconfirming my certainty of Arakawa's genius. I can get the argument that the ship of the big reveal of Ed's automail and Al's empty armor has already sailed, but I really didn't like the anime giving away the entire store in that stupid first episode.

I also really, really don't like the compression going on. Arakawa's pacing and the time she spent building up characters (even minor characters like Lieutenant what's-his-face, the corrupt one) is a big part of the story's greatness. It is like fanfiction in that they're relying on the audience's pre-existing affect to carry the day and do their jobs for them, rather than selling us on the concepts like the first anime did so well. And you know, I'm totally taking a completely unintentional swipe at fanfiction there; I meant "bad fanfiction."

I'll probably hang on, just because I want to see the Xing characters and Olivier animated, but yeah, the manga is still 1000x better.

P.S. Death to the eyecatch! And what is with Hawkeye's voice actress not sounding kickass?

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Yeah. What you said. (heh)

The compression bugs me most of all, really, though this most recent episode I was once again struck by the fact that they could give Paku Romi the most amazingly truncated squish-all-this-in script and yet that woman is still amazing at the emotion. Just breathtaking. It really is a star vehicle for her, and to a slightly lesser degree, for the actress (whose name sadly always escapes me, ugh) who plays Alphonse. Thing is, it was also -- to some degree -- a star vehicle for the VA who did Roy and Hawkeye, both of whom were relative unknowns and have been replaced by relative (or definite) knowns. I'm not sure whether that was a "we need to distinguish ourselves somehow" or "they're not available" or maybe the really brutal (and cynical) "this time around we can afford to get good actors!" -- which ignores that regardless of experience, those two VA really made those characters.

That said, Hawkeye's voice is different, but it's still somewhat pitched to the same cadence, I've noticed. I'm wondering if the VA is specifically trying to keep at least the original Hawkeye's mode, as part of her characterization. As much as I like Miki's other work, I can't say the same for him doing Roy, but I have hopes (however in vain) that he'll grow into it. Sigh.

YES DEATH TO THE EYECATCH. I swear. Can we do a petition to the fansub groups to just MUTE that part so we don't have to?

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Miki's Roy sounds like a lounge lizard imho. Which isn't a mode that's entirely foreign to Roy, but it's by no means his default state. And there's a definite overlap between Urahara and Roy as this voice actor plays him now, which I don't think is really a supportable reading of either character based on the manga. But I do think he's been given a script that does not fulfill the manga's potential.

I don't know. I think Orikasa (I might have that spelled wrong) completely hit Rukia out of the park from the first episode of Bleach, and she puts Rukia's English voice actor to shame. But (particularly in episode 4) while she does seem to be trying to stick to the original Hawkeye mode, she keeps wobbling out of it--particularly in the first episode. And the exchange between her and Roy about Ed and Al in the second episode totally reminded me of off-camera dialogue between Akio and Anthy, or Touga and Anthy, from Utena--and that is not a good thing for a scene from FMA in my book.