Last week at a restaurant after attending my weekly anime club, I got into a discussion with a friend about what anime she was intending to watch this season. The conversation got to the point where I asserted that Eden of the East, the original production created and written by Kenji Kamiyama of Ghost in the Shell:Stand Alone Complex fame, was this season's show to look out for. She asked me, then, what about Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood? At the time it seemed as if she had got me. Since I wasn't a big fan of the original show, the sequel had been kind of flying low on my radar the whole time. However, after a week of reflection, I'm beginning to think that I was right in the first place.
To put it bluntly, reactions to the new Fullmetal Alchemist show have been mixed, at least in the places I've been reading. Part of it seems to be that many fans are attached to the original series, and in the (apparently) more manga-faithful remake, things from the original anime are missing or different, and this is seen in a negative light. Being faithful to the source material is often held up as an ideal for anime adaptations (or just book-to-film adaptations in general), though in some cases diverging from the source material might ultimately be better for the show or movie, which I think might be the case here (though not having seen or read it limits me on what I can really say regarding this).
There also seem to be many people who don't feel that a remake of the show was necessary at this point since the original show is only about five and a half years old. It does seem odd to me that Studio Bones decided to remake the show this soon in its life cycle, though if financial concerns are brought into the mix, it does seem like anything with the words Fullmetal Alchemist slapped on it would at the very least be a secure investment. Still, though, most shows that I can think of that are re-makes are either based on very old properties or are dramatically different in some way from previous incarnations. Casshern SINS is based on a property from the 1970's, and Hakaba Kitaro is a re-make of a long running kids' series made for an adult audience, so there's a major change in tone. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is not based on anything very old, nor does it feel like there's a major change in tone from the earlier adaptation, so it seems like it came about too quickly.
The anime itself was and is so popular, that I suspect it was many younger fans' introduction to the wonderful world of anime, and this remake may infringe on that sacred spot that the original inhabits. I know that if some studio decided to do a re-make of Sailor Moon, I would probably roll my eyes at the very least, since at the time I watched it it was just about the most awesome thing I had ever seen (perhaps another viewing might change my mind, haha). Any newfangled version that came out would just seem wrong to me, and I get a sense that the slightly different character designs and pacing of the new season might just seem a bit off to young fans of the original Fullmetal Alchemist.
As for me, having finally watched the first episode of Eden of the East and the second episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (I skipped episode 1 since I heard it was more of an "episode 0" or omake of some kind), I can safely say that, while Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a solid show and definitely worth following, Eden of the East is the anime to be watching this season. It's fresh, it's got a great hook, it's got English dialog that doesn't suck, and it has oodles of potential that I have hopes won't get wastedaway.
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