As far as the art style goes, a big contributing factor to it is that unlike One Punch Man, Mob Psycho doesn't have a redrawn version to based the visuals on, so they stick to ONE's own art style
What exactly would possess you to spoil a character motivation that hasn't so much as been hinted at in a blind watch of something that Leila has indicated interest in watching further?
As I understand it, this is indeed the meaning of Mob's nickname, as a reference to this term. That he has such a nickname and it's something he does not complain about are obviously things to keep in mind.
So, all things considered, I'm giving this show a strongly favorable rating based on its pilot episode. I have one more episode of it commissioned, which I'll be reviewing in a few weeks when the payments have gone through, but there's a very good chance I'll continue watching it afterward. I'm not sure how well it lends itself to an extended review series, though.
If you turn down an extended review series on this basis, it might be worth making a post summarizing the series and how your views on it changed as it went on? If someone funds it, that is.
Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood is probably one of the most critically and publicly acclaimed anime series ever made. At the very least, I have not heard a single person who I know that watches anime shut the hell up about this series for several years now. So, either it actually is good, or I've fallen completely into the Upside Down a long time ago and am just now starting to realize it.
I've managed to stay fairly spoiler-free about this anime, the manga it was based on, and the previous, apparently less successful attempt at adaptation. All I know is that it involves state-sponsored alchemists in a magitech fantasy kingdom, there's a main character named Alphonse Elric, and that a little girl gets turned into a dog at some point.
The pilot episode is just called "Fullmetal Alchemist." Straight and to the point. Let's begin!
In a glimmering and geometrically elaborate magepunk city, a grumpy looking man with a hair noodle is chalking a magic diagram on the floor of an alley. We learn moments later that this man is a very dangerous wanted criminal known as the Freezing Alchemist. A young military officer named Colonel Roy Mustang is being assigned to hunt down and neutralize this rogue alchemist who has recently snuck into the city, and that a young boy named Edward Elric - an alchemist himself - will be at the Colonel's disposal. Cut to the young man in question posed on a rooftop next to his powered armor wearing brother, Alphonse, whining about how Colonel Mustang is a slave driver. At least, I assume that Alphonse is wearing a suit of armor. He could also be a robot, in which case Edward calling him "brother" and them sharing a last name could indicate that he was either created by Edward's biological parents and raised as another child, or that there's some kind of fantasy transhumanism thing going on.
Roll intro. That was probably one of the most succinct, efficient, and visually well executed intros I've ever seen. Not just for an anime, for anything.
The OP is quite good, though there's no one thing about it that calls a particular lot of attention to itself. A sensitive, melancholy-sounding prog rock song, over the Elric brothers and what I assume will be future companions of theirs traveling across the countryside, exploring the urban jungle, and staring morosely off into space. There are a coupleof very suggestive visuals, though. One of a younger Edward and another boy who I assume is Alphonse sans-power suit being locked in a room together. Another is of a rural farmhouse burning. If those two are supposed to have happened in immediate sequence, well, that might explain why Alphonse needs a golem suit to walk around anymore (Edward presumably must have escaped the blaze some other way).
Toward the end, the song speeds up, and we see people being mutated or disintegrated, the Elric brothers fighting monsters, and Colonel Mustang and his superiors being framed villainously against darkness and flames. I kinda suspected as much, based on the "slavedriver" comment and the general "punk" vibe of the art style. Also, Mustang referred to his commander as "fuhrer," which doesn't exactly have positive connotations in the modern era where this cartoon was made. Even in the context of a seemingly Germany-inspired setting with characters named Roy Mustang and Edward Elric.
After the intro, we cut to the Freezing Alchemist escaping from the alley and blasting a pair of cops who were unlucky enough to find him there with, as the name implies, an eruption of magical ice. Two more guards (wearing vaguely nazi-esque uniforms, now that I think about it) try to cut him off as he rounds the corner, pulling archaic pistols on him in the process, but he flash-freezes one and boils the other's blood before they can fire, while muttering about how rapid temperature change in either direction is a property of alchemical water. So, I guess "the freezing alchemist" is somewhat misleading. He's a hydromancer, and rapidly freezing water into ice is just one of several favorite tricks. Before completing his escape, however, an electrically charged javelin nearly strikes him, cluing him in to another alchemist entering the fray. She comments on the grotesqueness of the carnage he's made. He responds with that ever-popular bad guy sentiment:
Ah, the classics.~
Anyway, this exchange does a good job at establishing for the audience up front that however evil and nazi-esque the authorities might be, this guy is probably worse.
Also, it turns out that "she" isn't actually a she at all. Edward Elric just has a very feminine sounding voice.
Our waterbending mad scientist friend begins to counterattack, but it turns out that Alphonse is much stealthier in that mechsuit than one would expect, and has been sneaking up behind him all this time. A short, but tense, battle ensues, with the Elric brothers parrying Freezy's martial arts attacks and various elemental magical effects going off when his glyph-inscribed gauntlets parry their own limbs. Alchemy seems to use some elements of traditional magic, like the "alchemical circles" that we saw Freezy inscribe on the alley pavement and on his own gauntlets, but as the name implies it mostly involves chemical components and machinery. For such a short fight, this scene really does a lot to explain what "alchemy" looks like, how it works, and what it can do. I'd point to this scene as an instructive example of how to visually communicate a magic system clearly and succinctly to a fresh audience.
As the brothers defeat Freezy and seal him in a mass of alchemical wood (Chinese elements, apparently, not Greek), his final attack burns off Edward's right sleeve, revealing a cybernetic arm beneath. Upon seeing this prosthetic, Freezy recognizes his assailant as Edward Elric, the "Fullmetal Alchemist." That could be an actual title for alchemists of a certain power level or ability, or it could just be a personal nickname for Edward, we'll see (just going by their appearances though, Alphonse is the one who appears to be "full metal"). And then, after the title, there's a weird temporary art style shift as the brothers fight over which of them is the actually famous one (apparently, people assume that the hulking armored figure is the famous Fullmetal Alchemist and that the boy at his side is the little brother assistant, rather than the reverse), and then Edward flips out at Freezy for being derisive about it.
I guess this show has some levity to it, though I think the degree of the visual shift here is a bit too much. Kinda overshoots funny and verges on the bad kind of wtf.
Anyway, the police thank the brothers for their assistance, and start leading Freezy away in chains. However, he turns out to have had an extra alchemical glyph inscribed on the palm of his hand, and as they wade through a puddle he collapses onto the ground and strikes the water with his glyph, electrifying it and killing or disabling his captors. Before the brothers (who have walked away in the other direction for a short distance by now) can react, Freezy is out of sight.
Cut to the brothers being chewed out by Mustang for letting their target escape custody. It didn't look like it was their fault to me, unless they specifically had orders to escort Freezy to jail in person, but it makes sense that the kids would get blamed for an adult screwup (of course, its possible that they DID have such orders, in which case Mustang is right to be pissed at them. Although...even without their oversight, I think those cops fucked up on their own by not taking more care with their murderous wizard captive. You'd think knocking the perp out before bringing him in would be SOP for arresting alchemists...). Mustang accuses them of not paying enough attention to their mission briefing about Freezy, and so repeats the important bits of it for their and the audience's benefit.
Freezy, birth name Isaac McDougal, was once a military alchemist in service to the state. After fighting in a conflict called the Ishvalan War of Extermination (it isn't said which side was trying to exterminate the other, but given the locals' nazi-lite aesthetic I can only assume the worst), McDougal went rogue and joined some sort of dissident movement. So he isn't just a mad scientist then, he has a political ideology he's serving. Surprising, given his earlier dialogue; maybe he actually isn't such a bad guy after all. Since then, he has become one of the most wanted men in the country. Ideally, the state would like to capture him alive and get information about his organization, but killing him would still be a big step in the right direction as far as they're concerned, and increasingly it looks like lethal force might be the only option. Edward protests here; apparently, killing is one job he will not accept.
Mustang takes this retort in stride, saying that capture is fine too provided they can actually make it stick next time. He then, rather snidely, asks if the brothers have made any progress in "restoring their bodies back to normal."
Hmm. The brothers earlier referred to Mustang as a "slavedriver." In their interactions since then, it kind of seemed like that might just be childish resentment, as Mustang seemed to be fairly patient and reasonable when dealing with their failed capture attempt (again, assuming they actually did have more specific instructions that they failed to act upon; if not, he's just a dick). However, him passive aggressively trying to discombobulate Edward by mentioning his apparently unhappy cybernetic state, and Edward's following accusation, definitely paint Mustang in a less favorable light. Even aside from the maybe-nazi framing that he and the rest of his organization have going on.
Before Mustang can answer this accusation, the door bursts open and a very exuberant fellow named Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes comes in, bubblingly eager to meet the great Fullmetal Alchemist who he promptly mistakes Alphonse for.
Elric is unhappy about this mixup, as per usual. Mustang, meanwhile, is unhappy with Hughes' existence in general. It turns out that Hughes came to invite the brothers to stay with his family overnight. Apparently, they haven't found or been given any local accommodations yet, and they're a big enough deal in the alchemist bounty hunter scene that having them over would be an honor. They accept, we meet Maes' wife, Gracia, and six or seven year old daughter, Elicia, and the three of them are adorable for a while. Hughes comes across as a real family man and a great father, despite also being a high ranking maybe-nazi. At dinner, Alphonse and Edward have to quickly invent some unconvincing excuses for the former to not remove his helmet and partake of the meal. So yeah, Alphonse is either a paralyzed, burned up little Darth Vader-esque husk being barely kept alive by magitech and nothing else, or there's nothing under that suit at all and he's just a ghost piloting a robot. In the latter case, that golem body had damned well better have rocket launchers built into its nipples. I have standards when it comes to transhumanism.
Cut to a resistance safehouse, where Freezy McDougal and his companions have captured another rogue alchemist named Kimblee, who sometimes goes by the Crimson Alchemist. McDougal apparently fought alongside him in the war. Kimblee asks what they want from him, and McDougal tells him that after the atrocities that "Bradley" ordered them to commit against the Ishvalans, he's been wanting to bring the local military junta down, and that he knows that Kimblee feels the same way. So, he'd like him to join the resistance. Kimblee refuses, though; apparently, he didn't go rogue and kill a bunch of officers for ideological reasons, but rather because...the officers in question had annoyed him. The maniacal grin he recounts this story with indicates that he's either a psychopath, or pretending to be one to dissuade McDougal and doing a pretty convincing performance. Disappointed, McDougal leaves him in his cell and...
...ah, I seem to have mistaken the situation. The resistance didn't capture Kimblee. The authorities did, and McDougal broke into the jail to make a recruitment attempt. So, he ends up just leaving Kimblee in jail surrounded by dead guards. That also explains McDougal's outfit in this scene; he must have stolen a uniform and used it to infiltrate the building.
Back to the Hughes residence. Maes and Gracia muse about how state alchemists are referred to as "the dogs of the military," and that it bothers him that two young children would be given that status. Odd. Alchemists seem like they ought to be pretty damned valuable and respected. Wonder what's up with that? Meanwhile, in the guestroom, Alphonse tells Edward that the quiche at dinner looked as good as the kind their mom used to make, and that he's adding it to his list of things that he needs to taste once his body has been restored. Edward tells him that he can't wait for him to get to try it, but has a heartbroken look on his face that suggests that he's given up hope at this point but doesn't have the heart to tell his brother.
I'm also getting the impression that Alphonse is significantly younger. Like, if Edward is around 12 or so, Alphonse seems like...8? At most. Just going by his personality and voice.
Well that just hits you right in the damned feels, doesn't it?
The next day, the city guard are in an uproar over the prison break in, and Mustang announces that everyone should now just shoot to kill McDougal on sight, don't even bother attempting capture. I'm starting to getting V for Vendetta vibes. McDougal is basically Magitech V with the amount of damage he seems able to singlehandedly do to the regime. We then see the brothers' horrified reactions to the scene of another failed capture attempt, in which McDougal superheated an officer's blood and killed him and four others in the resulting steam explosion. This guy is brutal in combat, regardless of the rightness of his cause. A moment later, we see McDougal in a nearby alley, inscribing another of his glyphs onto the floor, when he is attacked by Armstrong; a very shonen-villain-esque state alchemist who melodramatically bursts through a nearby wall and charges McDougal amid a hail of earthbending attacks that leave statues of his face all over the stone walls in their wake.
I can just hear Jotaro Kujo good griefing.
The loud melodramatic fight gets the Elric brothers' attention, and they come running to the scene of the battle, but McDougal is prepared for them this time and uses a steam grenade to cover his escape the instant he finds himself outnumbered by enemy alchemists. Armstrong and the brothers recover quickly, and immediately begin to coordinate the search. They seem to be familiar with each other, and have a mutual respect. However bombastic Armstrong might be in battle, he's one of the few so far who hasn't given Edward any shit about visibly being a kid, at least onscreen. They drive McDougal up onto the roofdrops, where he is cornered by Mustang and a squad of soldiers just as dusk descends.
I guess not all state alchemists are considered "dogs of the military" after all; it turns out that Colonel Mustang is one himself, and he seems to be a pretty powerful and influential guy. Mustang and McDougal actually fought side by side in the war (I'm getting the impression that pretty much all the state alchemists who are older than the Elric brothers did), and according to Mustang they even had some camaraderie (though McDougal denies it). Mustang apparently has a fire affinity, and tries to fry McDougal with a flamethrower like attack, buuut that's not really the best element to go up against a water guy with. Mustang, there's a lady named Azula you might have something to bond over with. McDougal easily nullifies the attack and escapes; he may or may not have also killed Mustang and his men as he does so, the camera angles and cuts make it (probably deliberately) unclear.
I get the impression that McDougal was their best soldier, or one of the bests at the very least. This guy's almost unstoppable. I suppose he may have also been putting himself through constant hellish training in the years since the war, while his former colleagues were sitting back and enjoying the fruits of victory (assuming they won, which has been pretty well implied). That could have also made a big difference. He returns to the alley where he was working on his glyph, and starts resuming whatever he was doing with it, when Edward walks in on him. The Elrics suspected that he'd try to sneak back to this alley to finish whatever he had been doing in it when Armstrong interrupted him.
Unfortunately for them, McDougal has completed his task. Since infiltrating the city, he's been inscribing these alchemical circles at carefully selected locations around the city, forming the shape of a huge macro-glyph with the capital building at its center. He activates it, and the entire municipal water system freezes, huge walls of ice exploding out of the pipes and tearing through the pavement and buildings above. Edward and Alphonse try to seize him, but he leaps atop one of his own rising icewalls and rides it up out of their reach. Aghast, Edward whispers that he must have a legendary Philosopher's Stone in his possession; that's the only possible way that one man could cast a spell of this scale. They and Armstrong try to impede the ice walls (the latter ranting about the power of the alchemical arts handed down through the Armstrong family for generations, because of course he is), but they're just too massive and too fast-moving. It also quickly becomes apparent that the walls are expanding in very specific directions, bringing all their mass together toward the capital building with enough force to overwhelm whatever defenses it might have.
This isn't a terror attack. This is a decapitation strike. Presumably, the culmination of years' worth of preparation and investment by the resistance.
The brothers tell Armstrong that he and whoever else he can rally on short notice should try and find and destroy the rest of these glyphs to see if they can stop the ice movement, while they use their superior durability to try and climb up after McDougal and try to confront him directly. Armstrong stops his shonen-esque challenge speech almost midsentence to acknowledge the wisdom of this plan, and complies immediately. This guy really is way smarter, cannier, and more humble than he seems. Meanwhile, McDougal, riding his assault glacial toward the target, gleefully looks forward to ridding the world of King Bradley, the Fuhrer who resides within.
...
So, the fuhrer who we saw Mustang taking orders from at the beginning actually was THE fuhrer; its not just a general-equivalent rank here, it means exactly the same thing that it did in Nazi Germany. Judging by the way McDougal recounted "Bradley" being the one who ordered the atrocities of the war in a very personal way, I get the impression that he wasn't yet king at that time, but rather a mere general or warmaster.
I'm guessing that after the war, the victorious general Bradley staged some kind of coup and put himself on the throne, turning the nation into a military junta in the process if it wasn't one already? I guess we'll find out soon enough, but that's the vibe I'm getting.
...
The brothers reach McDougal before he can smash the palace, and they begin their rematch. When Edward asks McDougal wtf he even thinks he's trying to do detonating a magical WOMD in the middle of a major city, he says that this nation must be stopped now for the good of the world, and that crushing a few thousand rando citizens and rendering a few thousand others homeless is worth it. The Elrics, who probably haven't seen any of Fuhrer Bradley's atrocities but have experienced kindness and generosity from a local family, understandably disagree with that calculus.
During the fight, McDougal blasts Alphonse's head off with a steam bomb, to reveal nothing at all beneath the helmet. Just a hollow suit of armor with its interior inscribed with alchemical glyphs. Alphonse doesn't seem to be so much as inconvenienced by the loss of his "head," continuing to move and speak unimpeded.
McDougal is phased by this, but only for a moment. After that, he gleefully announces that he's figured the Elric brothers out. They must have attempted Human Transmutation, the ultimate taboo of the alchemist order, and ended up a pair of disfigured cyborgs to different extents. Edward and Alphonse both react with clear emotional pain to this presumably correct pronouncement.
Cue a brief flashback of Edward in that farmhouse, kneeling in front of a huge, flaming glyph and screaming in anguish at having accidentally disintegrated his little brother. He himself is missing an arm and a leg, both stumps neatly severed and visibly smoking. Then, we see him inscribing more glyphs in his own blood on a metal frame, desperately trying to bind his little brother's freshly disembodied soul to a synthetic body, and apparently succeeding.
Back in the present, Edward doesn't react well to having this past trauma thrown in his face, and charges. Sufficiently enraged to knock a full grown martial artist war veteran over with just his (admittedly, partly cybernetic) child body. Alphonse follows up, and they manage to knock McDougal off of the ice wall, slowing its advance and giving Armstrong and the evidently still alive Mustang and his men time to reach some of the glyphs and destroy them. The ice stops moving, and the existing walls begin contracting themselves down into inanimate room temperature water. McDougal is forced to use his own blood to fight off the Elric brothers before fleeing madly into the rent walls of the capital complex on foot, injuring Edward but also wounding himself badly in the process.
Inside the complex, things shift into monochrome, and we see that King Bradley himself has run to the breach to confront the attacker. McDougal charges him, but the Fuhrer moves faster than the human eye can even track, sidestepping the alchemist's attack and cutting him down with his sword in the same motion.
I'm calling it. Bradley is the result of a successful human transmutation experiment. If the Edward's attempt had succeeded, he and Alphonse would have been turned into whatever Bradley is instead of a pair of deformed biomechanoids.
So, as it turns out, McDougal accomplished nothing good. He racked up the civilian death toll and property damage, but didn't kill the dictator or meaningfully impede his genocidal empire; he made the sacrifices, but no great things were accomplished. History will remember him as a madman and a monster, rather than the hero he would have been. And, its all thanks to our two lovable scamp protagonists, Alphonse and Edward Elric.
We also see him drop a tiny red crystal which breaks apart as he dies; presumably, this is the Philosopher's Stone that he used to amplify his powers by an order of magnitude or more.
Anyway, the Fuhrer congratulates the Elrics on their performance, and they're honored. Mustang gets a bunch of credit for stopping the plot that he doesn't deserve. Armstrong visits Edward in the hospital, gives him a nice bunch of flowers and get well card, and tries to cheer him up by showing off his muscles and offering to let him touch them (um...creeeeepy?).
Then, we cut to a crimson filtered tower in some other city, where an evil lady with glyphs on her skin muses on what a waste this was; McDougal would have made a good sacrifice if he hadn't gone and gotten himself anticlimactically killed, and overused his philosopher's stone to the point of it failing him. As she speaks, some humanoid monster thing named "Gluttony" chews on something unseen at her feet. She then says that things are going well in the land of Liore, and that "it will begin very soon."
It seemed like she was disappointed in McDougal's failure, but if Liore is the country we've been watching so far then...well, she still feels that she came out ahead, I guess? We'll find out what her deal is, I guess.
...
I'm also about 99% sure that this is one of the things RWBY was unsuccessfully trying to ape. The season 2 finale in particular. I think the two most important differences are:
1. RWBY had a huge problem as far as the evil fiery red lady's choice of minions went, and how they were portrayed. The White Fang played into every single racist trope about uppity coloreds being used as muscle by communist atheist banker Jews, whereas McDougal came across as a man with a legitimately righteous cause (ruthless methods, sure, but if you sent me back to 1938 Berlin with a briefcase nuke in my hand I'm not sure I'd do any differently) who was being tragically taken advantage of. And, the narrative expects you to root against the target of his attack, even as it makes you root for the pair of child soldiers who have gotten caught up in between them.
2. FMA:B has earned my confidence when it comes to character decisions making sense, plot points being followed through on, etc. Thus, when its evil lady says something that sounds contradictory about whether the outcome of this big terror attack was favorable or not, I'm inclined to be curious about what her angle actually is. Whereas with RWBY, I just assumed (and was completely justified in doing so in the following season) that the writers had no idea what she was actually trying to do and were just making her say the mouth words that an evil lady is supposed to say after a big attack is thwarted. That said, I tend to dislike this sort of mysteeeeeeerious foreshadowing on principle, so even if FMA:B's red evil lady does turn out to make total sense as I expect it too I'll be annoyed if the show takes a long time to lay it out for us.
...
So, that's the pilot episode of Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
I've got to say. After most of the shit I've been reviewing, it's pretty damned refreshing to be reminded that actually GOOD anime exists. Like, not just "witty and kinda fun" like Konosuba, or "has its high points along with the low" like JJBA: Battle Tendency. Actually, no-holds-bared good.
The high quality of the characterization (of the brothers in particular, but also of Isaac McDougle. A case could honestly be made for him being the tragic Greek antihero of this episode, with the brothers being supporting characters for him) and the extremely tight and efficient pacing and storytelling came together perfectly. The former, I can only assume, is inherited from the original manga. The credit for the latter must go to Funimation, at least in large part. Adapting a story to a different medium doesn't always create a lot of work for writers, but it invariably creates a ton for directors, and these ones knocked it out of the park.
The worldbuilding...well, I'll have to wait and see. This story was pretty much focused on this one local event and a handful of individual people at the center of it, with everything beyond that left hazy and out of focus for now. We have some idea of how alchemy works and what its limitations are (and how having a Philosopher's Stone removes most of those limits, which also explains how McDougal was nearly able to V for Vendetta this place to its knees. V had unique bioaugmentations, McDougal had a legendarily rare alchemy amplifier), but not in any great detail. We know that there's one kingdom (probably called Liore) at what looks like an early twentieth century + magitech level of development, and that it's recently gotten its Nazi on and started genociding someone, but we don't know anything else about its history, neighbors, or victims. And, well, that's okay. For all its political backdrop, FMA has pretty clearly telegraphed itself as a personal story about a few select people, so worldbuilding can take it slow and ease us in gradually while the protagonists keep the spotlight.
One thing that I admire in particular is the combination of levity with tragic irony. The cutesy art shifts are a liiiiittle too much for me, but I'm still able to appreciate what they do, and how their cartooniness keeps this otherwise depressing world from feeling too "real." The irony of the likeable underdog child heroes getting their Well Done Son speech at the end from literally fantasy Hitler (with them none the wiser for this being the case) is...well, bitter. Really, really bitter. Again, were it not followed up immediately by Armstrong's WTF ridiculous hospital visit, it might have been too depressing. The comedy is used very effectively to season and and encapsulate the tragedy without softening or undermining it. It remains to be seen if the Elric brothers will eventually be awoken to the truth about their patron state and turn against Bradley and his officer-aristocrats, or if their story will be more tragic than that.
Of course, it could also turn out that the nazi aesthetics are a total red herring and McDougal was just a lunatic. "War of Extermination" does sound bad, but he's the only one to tell us about any actual atrocities, and we don't know how reliable he actually is even without the final revelation that he was being used as a pawn by some kind of diabolical witch lady who considered the fruitless loss of life he caused to be a good thing. For all we know, the war could have been about Leore defending itself against extermination rather than committing it. It's unlikely at this point, but still possible.
Next week, I'll be watching the second episode of FMA:B. So far, this is shaping up to potentially be one of my favorite animes, but I'm going to have to see more than just the pilot to make assessments of quality with any real confidence.
So, this really isn't a spoiler, but King Bradley is called that because someone honestly thought that giving a kid the first name "King" was a good idea.
edit:
Also the Brotherhood Pilot was an original piece made for the anime, rather than an adaption from the manga.
So, this really isn't a spoiler, but King Bradley is called that because someone honestly thought that giving a kid the first name "King" was a good idea.
I can't recall exactly when or if it happened, but IIRC there is one instance where he is referred to as "Fuhrer President King Bradley" for even more template stacking.
So, this really isn't a spoiler, but King Bradley is called that because someone honestly thought that giving a kid the first name "King" was a good idea.
Next week, I'll be watching the second episode of FMA:B. So far, this is shaping up to potentially be one of my favorite animes, but I'm going to have to see more than just the pilot to make assessments of quality with any real confidence.
I feel like noting that this episode is anime original without a manga counterpart. The manga (and the first anime) begins where the second episode of FMA:B starts.
I'm not entirely sure why they decided to add an original opening to what is otherwise a faithful adaptation of the manga, but I suspect it's for many of the same reasons that you found it to be so engaging - it acts as a strong opening to hook people into the show by while hinting at enough of a greater plot that they'd want to keep watching.
I can't recall exactly when or if it happened, but IIRC there is one instance where he is referred to as "Fuhrer President King Bradley" for even more template stacking.
The original Japanese is "Daisouto". I think much of this depends on different subtitles/dubs choosing to translate the title 'Daisouto' differently.
But the 'official' translation is just 'Fuhrer' I think, based on what we can see on the anime itself in a screenshot of the 2nd ep! (Note: this isn't spoilers for Leila, she has already seen the 2nd ep)
That screenshot, actually also implies the opposite, that "Daisouto" is just the Japanese translation of the 'original' title Fuhrer. (same as 'Samwise Gamgee' being the translation of 'Banazir Galbasi', I guess)
Which would be doubly confusion if they did that thing where Kings are only referred to by their given name. Thus he would almost always be King King, first of his name.
The cutesy art shifts are a liiiiittle too much for me, but I'm still able to appreciate what they do, and how their cartooniness keeps this otherwise depressing world from feeling too "real."
Back to the Hughes residence. Maes and Gracia muse about how state alchemists are referred to as "the dogs of the military," and that it bothers him that two young children would be given that status.
I think this is a case of a Japanese idiom that doesn't translate well. In Japanese, calling someone a "dog" of someone else implies blind obedience rather than being at the bottom of the pecking order.
In the latter case, that golem body had damned well better have rocket launchers built into its nipples. I have standards when it comes to transhumanism.
It seemed like she was disappointed in McDougal's failure, but if Liore is the country we've been watching so far then...well, she still feels that she came out ahead, I guess?
Pfft, still not as good as "His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas, Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular".
So Leila, any chance you'll turn this into a full on Brotherhood let's watch? It only gets better from here. I'd offer to pay for it but I'm a college student without a fixed source of income.
