The Fullmetal Alchemist franchise is widely recognized as one of the best manga and anime in all of history. The story of the Elric brothers on their journey to find a way to recover their bodies, only to discover a great conspiracy that puts the continent at risk has resonated in the memory of viewers for years.
However, everyone who was ever interested in seeing the animated adaptation found a dilemma, since there are two: Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood that, although they sound similar, actually have drastic differences between each other, which is recommended. consider.
Fidelity vs. Freedom
The central difference that identifies each adaptation is how faithful they are to the original material. When the Fullmetal Alchemist series premiered in October 2003, only five volumes of the manga had been published at the time, with the sixth being published later that month. By the time it ended in October 2004, the manga had published a total of eight volumes. That means the Bones Studios, the studio behind the series, only had a portion of the 27 volumes published in total available to them.
In contrast, when the final episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood aired, it did so in parallel with the manga's final chapter. That is why this anime is more faithful to the original work. To put things in context, both series adapted the events of the manga until Maes Hughes' death, only to go in different directions after that. It would be redundant then to say that Fullmetal Alchemist after episode 26 and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood after episode 10 are completely different stories.
The original series, however, made decisions that further expanded events and character development. He devoted more development to characters like Barry the Choppet and Shou Tucker, so they were better known. Brotherhood, meanwhile, introduced the antagonists at the time they had to be relevant. Of all the characters that had different roles, Rose's changes were the most drastic. She went from being a minor character introduced at the beginning of the villain Cornello's arc, to being brutally used as a container for Dante once he obtains the Philosopher's Stone.
However, even in the first few episodes a lot of content is added that is not present in the manga, such as Russell and Fletcher Tringham, original characters taken from the Fullmetal Alchemist: The Land of Sand light novel. However, some characters in the manga, such as Olivier Armstrong, did not appear in the first series. And a general complaint from fans is that the women of the original series didn't have the same level of importance in the plot of the story, unlike what happened in Brotherhood, with Winry or Riza.
The Homunculi
The Homunculi in both Fullmetal Alchemist series serve as the primary antagonists, although their creators and even their identities are different from series to series. Each homunculus is named after one of the seven deadly sins. In both Lust series, Gluttony and Envy remain essentially the same, although Lust in the original series serves as the main antagonist with a rather extended role, while in Brotherhood he is the first Homunculus to die.
However, Pride, Wrath, Sloth and Greed are completely different. In Brotherhood, Wrath is Fuhrer Bradley while Pride is his son. While in the original series, Bradley is Pride. Wrath is a failed transmutation of Ed and Alphonse's mentor Izumi in the original series, while Greed is created by Izumi's mentor. Arguably the most surprising of all is Sloth, who in the original series is the mother of Ed and Alphonse.
This leads, of course, to the origin of the Homunculi themselves shown in both series. In Brotherhood and in the original manga, Homunculi was created by Father, the true antagonist of the story. However, in the original series, a Homunculus is created by a failed human transmutation that was found and renamed by Dante. If the plot is known, it is easy to deduce that Ed and Alphonse created Sloth near the beginning of the original series, while in Brotherhood, his "revived mother" ended up becoming a disaster. Furthermore, because each Homunculus is a recreation of a human, when one of them comes into contact with a remnant of their previous lives in the original series, they become more vulnerable.
While there are many other minor differences, the last most drastic is that the final enemies are completely different. Both Dante and Father have ties to Hohenheim, with Dante being an immortal ex-partner of the Elric brothers' father, and Father being linked to his origins as an alchemist and immortality. While Father created the Homunculi, Dante only bumps into them. Their plans are also different, and as each series focuses more on these plans, their plots also vary more and more.
The end
Undoubtedly, the biggest difference between Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is their endings. Brotherhood faithfully adapts the end of the manga, linking every point of the plot and character development in an epic and memorable way. The ending feels organic, properly developed and linking each element that the series had left loose, completing the story in a magnificent way.
The original series, however, ends with his movie, Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa, which is bizarre, to say the least. The end events send Ed into an alternate dimension similar to ours, where Ed ends up trying to survive in Nazi Germany, while the other characters in the series try to bring him back. The finale involves many characters scattered in different dimensions, with Greed taking on a new transformation and even a Hitler cameo.
The end of the original series left many viewers unsatisfied, but it doesn't mean the anime is bad. Simply put, the original series offers a different story than Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and manga, and the effort made by productions to continue making an adaptation when they run out of material is always respectable.
Source: CBR
© Hiromu Arakawa / Fullmetal Alchemist Project
