It Still Stings: The Original Fullmetal Alchemist Anime Deserves More Respect

Editor’s Note: TV moves on, but we haven’t. In our feature series It Still Stings, we relive emotional TV moments that we just can’t get over. You know the ones, where months, years, or even decades later, it still provokes a reaction? We’re here for you. We rant because we love. Or, once loved. And obviously, when discussing finales in particular, there will be spoilers:
In my spare time, one of the things I love doing most is curating lists of anime for friends to watch when they request advice in that genre. While working on the latest one, I thought the series Fullmetal Alchemist would be the ideal choice for this particular person. In hunting down what streaming platform it was available on, I realized something: it was gone. Nearly two decades after its original release, it has been made entirely unavailable to watch legally (hooray for piracy!), replaced by the second attempt at adapting Hiromu Arakawa’s shonen manga of the same name.
“Surely you jest, Juan,” you might say, wondering if I mistakenly confused Seiji Mizushima’s original adaptation of the text and Yasuhiro Irie’s second, more commonly known as Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. After all, the years have been unkind to the 2003 series ever since the 2009 adaptation became a critical darling simply for being a “faithful adaptation” of its source text. But, no, I am here to maintain that Brotherhood is the lesser series of the two, and we, as a culture, should be embracing it as the philosophically dense, gorgeously directed work of art it is.
Over the years, Fullmetal Alchemist has gotten a bad rap due to its divergence from its source text. It’s not unlike Game of Thrones in many ways, as Gita Jackson noted in their piece comparing the two shows. Though where they cited Brotherhood as a corrective to the problems of the original series, I find it to be quite the opposite. Both series follow Edward and Alphonse Elric, a pair of brothers who, in a world where alchemy reigns supreme, seek to restore their bodies to the way they were. As children, they attempted a forbidden human transmutation in order to bring their mother back from death, and in their failure, lost pieces of themselves (Edward losing an arm and leg and Alphonse his whole body, his soul now attached to a suit of armor). Their journey places them in harm’s way more often than not, dealing with everything from goofy con-artists to the military and the abundance of war crimes it commits.
If the latter of these sounds heavy, it’s because both series and their source text have more weight than most popular shonen anime usually do. They both dive deep into what actually makes up a human, not just the physical elements (water, carbon, etc) but the soul itself, and how it and the body are connected by the mind; what it means to be human in a world that’s increasingly inhumane. They both start, more or less, with exactly the same core plot and themes of loss and connection. The most glaring thing that Fullmetal Alchemist does, due to its source text still being unfinished during the time of its creation, is veer wildly off-course from said material. But different isn’t bad, and Fullmetal Alchemist’s changes are sometimes more appropriate for the narrative than those of Arakawa’s original work.
Whereas Brotherhood and Arakawa’s FMA manga often sidestep some of the more intense discussions that they introduce, and even rush through the chapters that have already been adapted by Fullmetal Alchemist anime in order to get to what it deems as corrective and “true” material, the 2003 series takes its sweet time with world-building. Early episodes that could easily be considered “filler” (like “The Phantom Thief”), flesh out the universe that these characters exist in and provide more emotional turmoil for Edward and Alphonse to navigate. It isn’t just about coloring in the world, but about shaping their ever-changing worldview. And, instead of shortchanging its cast (though not without sacrificing some characters from the manga entirely), certain supporting characters are given time to breathe and exist as fully-formed figures rather than just characters to be thrown into action scenes. Take Maes Hughes, for instance, whose death is something of a turning point for FMA (his expanded presence in the series and brand of “good cop in a deeply corrupt system” gives his eventual end an even greater impact), but who is killed off relatively early in both manga and Brotherhood.
Without a blueprint for completion, and with Arakawa only signing off on certain changes and allowing the anime’s creative team to play around with the text themselves, the series focused on expanding themes introduced early on. It does so by wholesale changing numerous plot strands (that had already been written), slowly but surely creating unique backstories for its allies and villains alike that are arguably more interesting than what the series itself ended up doing with them.