I confess that a lot of my resistance to watching Full Metal Alchemist is childish stubbornness. About three years ago a young woman who used to be a reader of mine, and almost certainly is not any longer, pestered me constantly about how cool and marvelous it was, and I've always reacted extremely negatively to full-court-press hype. I think that kind of negative reaction was a survival skill for those of us who grew up during the era of only-five-TV-channels, given how absurdly emphatic a lot of hard-sell advertising was. So my natural reaction when anyone puts that kind of pressure on me is likely to get an acutely negative reaction.

The young woman in question eventually gave up.

But there were other reasons why I wasn't thrilled by it. First, it seems to be a bit grim, and generally I don't like down-beat stories. There's no woman as a continuing character, another down-check. (I confess it: I like girls.) And I hear tell that about two thirds of the way through the series they do a Gainax and change everything. What had previously been explained as being magic is suddenly explained as being high tech.

I've heard that the ending is weird. But the biggest reason why I was never tempted to watch is that the story concept just doesn't intrigue me. It still doesn't.

But I did notice something that confuses me, and does make me wonder if I've made a mistake. More of the confusion than the questioning,  but that's as may be.

The two main characters are brothers who try to use alchemy to bring their mother back to life. As a result of it, Edward loses his leg and arm (which are replaced by metal prosthetics) and Alphonse loses his entire body (which is replaced by a metal prosthetic body).

Why is it that both of them are voiced by women? Edward is voiced by Paku Romi, whose work as Nayuta in Shingu I really, really enjoyed. And Alphonse, the one living inside the giant robot body, is voiced by Kugimiya Rie -- who did Futaba in Shingu and was Shana in Shakugan no Shana and generally does "little girl" voices. (Not always, but usually.)

What the heck? Is the idea that they're both still very young? From the series concept they're both adults by the time the first episode begins. Why do they have those voices? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

But considering how much I enjoyed Paku Romi's performance as Nayuta, I'm interested in finding something else she starred in to watch. It won't be Naruto, because her character Temari is apparently not a very big role. So I was looking down her list of characters and spotted Full Metal Alchemist, hence my confusion and this post.

It might be "The Law of Ueki". It's a stupid concept for a series, but I think I'm going to try a DVD or two of it. Even if it is stupid, her performance may redeem it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Never Watch at 08:35 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
Post contains 512 words, total size 3 kb.

1 Oh no, your images are greatly enjoyed!

Posted by: Doug Oosting at September 08, 2007 09:14 PM (bQf6y)

2 If I recall, Ed is in his mid-teens and Al is in his early teens, so voicing them with women worked out all right (the two characters are prodigies, more or less). Plus, I think Al basically stopped growing when his soul was placed inside the metal body. Although I enjoyed FMA, I was never that crazy about it ... for me, part of the problem is that it's a long series, and it's hard to balance a long series properly. I.e., on the one hand, it can't be as neat and perfect as a teacup; it has to have a bit of sprawl. But on the other hand, it shouldn't lose its sense of cohesion or end up with episodes that can be dismissed as filler. I felt that FMA just didn't hold together strongly enough. Another problem was, as you mentioned, the ending, which I found disappointing. And the series did take some strange turns during the later segments. I don't remember them explaining away the magic of alchemy as a science, but I do recall a lot of pseudo-metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, and that stuff never translates well. Of course, none of this stopped me from enjoying the series when I was watching it.

Posted by: ambulatorybird at September 08, 2007 10:50 PM (vTHzZ)

3 Crap, how do I do paragraph breaks?

Posted by: ambulatorybird at September 08, 2007 10:51 PM (vTHzZ)

4 When I was in the Philippines, I saw a couple episodes of Law of Ueki dubbed in Tagalog.

Based on what I'd read in various places, it looked stupid; but the episodes I saw looked pretty decent. I still don't know how interested I am in seeing it, though.

Incidentally, the dubbing was excellent. Why is it that in a country where a doctor makes $400 a month, they get great dubbing, and here, they suck?

AB, use the HTML tag < br > (without the spaces) to get line breaks.

Posted by: atomic_fungus at September 09, 2007 01:41 AM (sbYRP)

5 It shouldn't be necessary for you to use any manual formatting at all. But it will be necessary if you've got Javascript disabled.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 09, 2007 07:23 AM (+rSRq)

6 (Oh no, my comment got onto the wrong thread!)

Posted by: Doug Oosting at September 09, 2007 08:45 AM (bQf6y)

7 Hmm, I've got Javascript enabled in my browser ... in case it matters, I'm using Safari 2.0.4. Let me try a couple of br's:

Hopefully this will be in a new paragraph.

Posted by: ambulatorybird at September 09, 2007 08:47 AM (vTHzZ)

8 The spiffy editor isn't compatible with Safari, and the code doesn't have a workaround. You have to enter HTML by hand to get paragraph breaks.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at September 09, 2007 08:57 AM (2XtN5)

9 What makes FMA work, ultimately, is the strong bond between Edward and Alphonse Elric. The portrayal of their relationship carries the show past some of the clunkier bits of plotting and provides the heart-&-soul of the series overall. If watching the brothers doesn't hold your attention, not much else of the rest will.

I love the series, but I also understand that it's not "for everybody." My days of heavy duty shilling for one show or another are long behind me...

Posted by: GreyDuck at September 09, 2007 09:26 AM (2Yvi7)

10 I don't recall any "Gainax" changes, though there were surprises along the way as former allies were revealed to be bad guys, and vice versa.  I enjoyed the story, and although I think that overall it had a postive outcome, be warned that it does have its darker moments.  Some of the bad guys are really bad, with body counts to prove it, and some good people do die. 

Posted by: Siergen at September 09, 2007 10:30 AM (bxCXv)

11 My real problem with FMP is that I keep catching episodes of it here and there on CN when I just have the TV on for background noise. It's not bad (and the dub is unusually good), but it's kind of disjointed in places and seeing the series out of order is a terrible, terrible idea. I still don't really know what sequence of events happens where.

But it's definitely good enough to try, though I don't know that I'd go spending money on it myself.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at September 09, 2007 12:09 PM (tPMch)

12 I must admit I'm fairly hesitant to chime in on posts like this. I don't know whether my brief recommendation will actually have the effect of making you even less likely to watch the series. I figure in this case nothing could persuade you to watch FMA. So this is for anyone else who might be on the fence.

I was in the same situation as Avatar_exADV. I'd catch a couple episodes on the TV in the background. However, once I actually sat and watched a few, I was hooked. I went back and watched the whole series. I do agree that about halfway through the writing does a bit of a hiccup and loses it's way for a bit. I've always assumed this was due to the anime outrunning the manga. At that point the show had to come up with it's own story. It takes a couple of episodes, but they do find their feet, and I found the later parts of the series as good as the beginning. The ending did leave a bit to be desired, but I found the movie to be a very soothing chaser. I really loved this series, and all it's characters. Even the side characters are enjoyable. However, it is a very grim series. These poor boys are put through hell multiple times. But I never stopped cheering for them. I really recommend this to anyone who might be on the fence. If you think you might like this, give it a shot.

Posted by: Mob at September 10, 2007 07:01 AM (f+cPk)

13 Some people claim that the dud of Edward is better than the original Japanese voice, injecting the world-weariness you'd expect from him but still sounding like a child.

Another interesting thing about the series: no power-ups, even after they get the object every one's looking for.

As for women as continuing characters, in addition to Lust and Risa Hawkeye, the main female is the boys' childhood friend Winry Rockbell. She maintains Ed's automail and beats out Parfet Balblair for the title of cutest gearhead.

Posted by: Jim Burdo at September 11, 2007 03:29 AM (T/9Kr)

14 I never finished watching FMA - it was picked up mid-series, and though the fansubbers did complete it, it didn't show up at AnimeSuki. What I saw of it was pretty good, though I was surprised when I found out around episode 20 that it was a 51-episode series.

I agree with ambulatorybird - Al (the younger brother) is 14 when the main story opens, but he lost his body when he was 10 and in many ways is still a child, and his voice reflects that. Can't speak as to the ending, since I haven't seen it yet. And yes, Winry is a repeating (though not starring) female character and a gifted engineer, so there's something for you there.

Side topic - I've found a good WYSIWYG editor, in some ways superior to Innova, the current Minx editor, that works in Safari and Opera.  Unfortunately much of its functionality is tied up in a PHP backend, and I'll have to somehow port, rewrite, or modularise it to make it available in Minx.  (Which is written in Python and runs on servers that don't necessarily even have PHP installed.)

The system should apply a "convert breaks" filter to comments that aren't made with the WYSIWYG editor (line breaks get converted to <br> automatically) but that's clearly not working, so I'll get that fixed for you.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at September 11, 2007 07:49 AM (PiXy!)

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