The First Fullmetal Alchemist Adaptation Had A Shitty Ending

…especially compared to FMA Brotherhood, which had the best and most satisfying final arc I’ve seen in anime (just a bit better than Eureka Seven’s). But that’s hardly surprising, because Brotherhood is a vastly superior show in every regard; and that’s not surprising either, because that’s the whole reason it exists. I joked once that Brotherhood gave me an excuse to not finish the original show, but I never actually took it off of my on-hold list and, having waited until Brotherhood was far from my mind (over a year), I finally put the nails in that coffin.

Shit.

Here’s information: I never finished FMA before watching Brotherhood, so I didn’t go into Brotherhood with the same feelings about the show that other fans did who already knew one version of the story. Instead, I went into finishing FMA that way. However, it’s not as though I’m experiencing FMA for the first time: I was a big fan of this show when it was airing on Adult Swim in 2005, and had seen the first half (26 episodes) back then. Unfortunately, my family moved before the second half began airing, and we couldn’t afford cable anymore, so I never saw any more of the show. Besides watching the first ten episodes in Japanese a couple of years ago, I didn’t ever watch more of it until Brotherhood. Now, I finally borrowed the DVDs from a friend and marathoned the show in the past two days. It’s worth mentioning that I was already spoiled to a lot of the plot points, but I didn’t know how all of it comes together or anything.

Even More Awesome EDs, ~2011 Edition

More EDs! These ones missed the first list for one or more of these reasons: I forgot about them; I didn’t want to include two from the same show; I counted it as not awesome enough because I was being a lazy dick; I haven’t actually seen the anime it comes from but know the ED by reputation.

TO MAKE THIS LIST, if I can actually think of how the song or video goes, it’s got a good bet.

(800) Days of Fuzakenna! And Eight Awesome Eighth Episodes of Anime

I tend to miss my blog’s benchmarks. I realized in June that my third anniversary had passed in April, and I’m not sure when I broke 300,000 hits, but I’m already halfway to 400,000. But most of all, I’ve missed my specially-numbered posts, or realized after the fact that I’ve made them. Well, today I was lucky and noticed that this will be my 800th published post! It’s a great mark to have, because 8 has always been a special number to me (I was born on August 8, weighing 8 pounds and 8 ounces) so to mark the occasion, I’ll be listing 8 of my favorite ‘episode 8s’.

8 tends to be an important episode number in anime. In a lot of 26-episode shows, the 8th episode marks the transition from plot set-up to actual movement of events, and will often feature a shocking twist or revelation that changes the way things will happen from there on out. This is a common enough practice that I could make a list of just transitional eighth episodes, but of course, being an important episode doesn’t necessarily qualify as being a memorable and awesome one, so this list will take eighth episodes from any series. The requirement for consideration on this list was that the eighth episode wasn’t just great, but was one of the most memorable or amazing episodes in the entire series. Oh, and you can count on there being spoilers for each episode.

Getting a Little More With Heartcatch Precure!

Maybe I just haven’t seen enough mahou shoujo anime and wouldn’t know, but the first two episodes of Heartcatch Precure impressed me with something that I don’t see much in these sorts of anime, and if it’s true that the mahou shoujo genre has a lot of it, then maybe the genre itself is impressive this way. I’m sure someone will let me know in the comments~. Now, these episodes impressed me in a lot of ways that are general to the show – some of my favorite character designs ever, energetic directing, splendid animation (especially during fights~), a balls-tighteningly awesome opening scene, grandiose metal-inspired music, and girls who are just too damn cute – but we’re leaving all that aside for now. I want to talk about the interesting way that this show treats it’s two main characters as individuals.

I may not have seen a great amount of mahou shoujo anime, but I’ve at least seen some, and I’ve also seen a lot of similar shounen anime that utilize the same kind of monster-of-the-week formula that mahou shoujo usually does. What I usually see in MOTW shows is that if there is a character who the protagonist has to fight (be it directly or through bad guys controlling them), then their purpose in the episode is usually to show the main character something about themselves, or conversely, for the main character to show them something about themselves.

Aside: This moment instantly reminded me of FLCL and Haruhara Haruka

200 (+) Anime Worth Taking With Us Into the Next Decade

100 Characters For 100 Otaku (Part Two: 95-91)

The second post in “100 Characters For 100 Otaku.“

Welcome to the second post in the “100 Characters for 100 Otaku” series in which I, upon request, take the list of my 100 favorite anime characters and state what I like about them, how they are mirrors of the nature of otaku, and draw a parallel between them and my own otakudom as well as the first episode of Crest of the Stars (yes, this was part of the request!) Today I’ve got numbers 95 down through 91, so let’s see what they’re all about!

Six Till Three-Hundred – Have You Been Counting Your Anime Milestones?

Ninja Scroll - Baby's First Anime

If the number is divisible by five, and especially it it’s divisible by one-hundred, then chances are it will bring up some kind of significance in your mind. Your top five, ten, or twenty shows. Your 500th or 100,000th hit. All will feel somehow special. As an anime fan, I’ve never done much thinking about the totals of anime I’ve seen, since they never add up to significant or convenient numbers. However, on MAL, I have been told that I am 6 shows away from completing a total of 300 shows (out of the 630 I’ve seen any of, LOL.) Since I saw it, I felt I should do something special.