Hagane no Renkinjutsushi – Fullmetal Alchemist Ep. 01
鋼の錬金術師 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST Episode 01
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood – 01

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

The “Ice Alchemist” (or “Freezing Alchemist” as FUNimation’s subtitles say) Isaac McDougal is loose and King Bradley assigns Col. Roy Mustang to take care of this rogue soldier, suggesting he enlist the aide of “Fullmetal Alchemist,” Edward Elric. After failing to bring Isaac in, Ed and his brother Al are given quarter at Lt. Col. Maes Hughes home. Isaac tries to enlist help from another former State Alchemist, Kimblee (Kimbley?).

Failing that, Isaac sets out to bring about his plan on his own. That entails encasing Central Headquarters in ice by setting up transmutation circles in key alleys around Central. His reasons are to get back at King Bradley for the tragedy during the fight at Ishbal. Roy fails to nab Isaac but Ed and Al manage to force him to retreat despite Ed taking injuries as walls of ice begin to turn the city into a giant transmutation circle.

As Isaac flees, he finds King Bradley waiting for him in an alley. Isaac attacks but the Führer simply draws his sword and kills Isaac. When everything is over, Bradley gives the credit for this crisis resolution to Roy and to Ed. Meanwhile in the hospital, the muscular Major Armstrong comes to “comfort” the injured Ed.

Thoughts/Review:

Because I’ve not read the manga, I’ve no idea on what the changes were to the Fullmetal Alchemist manga story in the anime adaptation. I’m told that the first half of the anime is pretty close to the manga source materials, then the anime goes off on its own (with the manga-ka’s blessing apparently) and comes up with its own end. Frankly, I enjoyed Fullmetal Alchemist and even owned it for a time (it had to go a few years ago when I needed to raise extra cash for medical bills) but for some reason, I never felt compelled to watch it again.

Despite this, when I heard of this new Fullmetal Alchemist anime coming out, I was keen to watch it.

I had no clue on what this new series would entail. I had thought that it might pick up half-way on the original anime and go from there. Boy was I mistaken. This is a complete reboot back to the beginning and frankly if they are going to follow the manga story all the way through, that’s how it should be. I only wish someone would do that for Negima!, but I digress.

Anyway, by rebooting the series, it will be important for me to divorce from my mind the things I remember from the original anime. Unfortunately, some things won’t be so easy to dismiss (a certain death springs to mind) but that’s OK. I look forward to seeing a fairly accurate adaptation of the manga story.

There are a lot of seiyuu changes for this reboot. While Al and Ed’s seiyuu are the same, many others are not including Roy Mustang. Ed and Al’s voices were the most memorable to me, so while others may pick up on hearing different voices for certain characters, I did not thanks to the sheer number of anime I’ve watched since I last saw Fullmetal Alchemist.

One final note on the production side — the Japanese are using an English VA to say “Fullmetal Alchemist” during the eye-catches. I wonder if that’s because FUNimation already has a streaming license and no doubt a full distribution license to boot though I don’t think that’s officially been announced (likely that is being saved for a convention). Also, on the Japanese side, the series is being called “Hagane no Renkinjutsushi FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST.” The term “Brotherhood” must be a creation for non-Japanese audience since the Japanese are simply using both the Japanese and English names.

I am glad that FUNimations is providing a legal means of streaming this anime series with subtitles. However, one of the problems is that for a series as popular as Fullmetal Alchemist, the strain on FUNimation’s (or whomever is ultimately hosting the episode) servers is high.

Basically one pretty much has to pause the video and let it stream on down because otherwise, you are going to have a very choppy playback. Right now, that’s going to likely take an hour or more to complete (make that a few hours). If FUNimation is serious about doing this kind of thing and can pull off enough ad revenue, then I’d say that investing in more servers to handle the increased load is in order.

Now onto the story. Because this is a reboot, there’s simply no need to have watched the previous Fullmetal Alchemist, nor is there a reason to have read the manga. It is very tough for me to say whether or not this series would have been confusing to a newbie. I do think that while the audience is thrown into the middle of things (with Al and Ed already working for the military), the story is crafted in such a way as to sweep those people along, providing introductions to some key characters. Hopefully, the writers will remain faithful to the manga but at the same time, not just assume people have either read the manga or watched the first anime.

I’m told that the character of Isaac and the story in this first episode are original, but that manga-ka ARAWAWA Hiromu-sensei had a role in its development (at least with character designs for Isaac). I’m guessing this original episode was done to differentiate this series from the first one, which is fine with me.

It was nice seeing Hughes, Roy, and the others having returned as well as the “chibi” jokes. I’d forgotten how much fun and humor were injected into the original story especially since I know it gets darker over time.

Beyond that, not a heck of a lot for me to say beyond that I am looking forward to seeing this series play out properly based on the manga.