The 2003 anime Fullmetal Alchemist is a pretty good show, and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a great show, but neither of them could beat the manga they’re both based on. Welcome to my list of reasons the manga is better.
For this list I will focus mainly on why the manga is better than the 2003 anime, but a few of the items on this list apply to the 2009 anime as well.
While writing this article I tried to balance specific differences with more general ones, and I think I’ve gone with my ten best arguments for the manga being the best version of Fullmetal Alchemist.
Needless to say, there are necessarily going to be major spoilers for all versions of the story other than the one whose existence I absolutely refuse to acknowledge. This includes how the manga and its various adaptations end, so if you’ve not read the manga or seen Brotherhood then read no further here. I wouldn’t worry if you’ve not seen how the 2003 anime ends; the manga’s better anyway.
10. The Dead Don’t Come Back to Life
Let’s start off the list with something that seems small but is really quite important. Like most of the items on this list, it deals with differences between the manga and its 2003 adaptation.
Whereas Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 is full of characters bringing each other back from the dead, the manga it’s based on has nothing of the sort.
Instead there’s the vindictive, pitiless deity known as Truth and the altogether horrifying revelation partway through the manga that the abomination the brothers had assumed to be their mother was, in reality, Alphonse.
The 2003 anime ends with Edward bringing his dead brother back to life for what turns out to be the second time. Had Alphonse died in the manga’s final battle, there would have been no way for Edward to bring him back. Not only does this arguably lead to some greater stakes, but it’s more in line with the message about having to accept death.
9. Führer Bradley
Unlike in the 2003 anime, where we get virtually no backstory concerning Führer Bradley’s character, the manga’s version of Wrath is one of the story’s most charismatic and interesting villains.
He’s a homunculus unlike any other, since he was created from a human and only has one soul, but that’s just the superficial stuff. Aside from that, he suffers from a deep boredom that comes from having every detail of his life planned out for him.
On the surface he seems like a kind, compassionate man, but on the inside he’s the embodiment of Our Father’s anger and hatred.
Unlike the Hitler stand-in of the 2003 adaptation, Wrath’s ideals are very different from the standard let’s-racially-purify-ourselves crap. His conversations with the Xingese prince Ling Yao reveal the Führer’s cynical and sociopathic political views. He scorns concepts like loyalty (ironic, given his inability to question Our Father) and selflessness and rejects the possibility of a benevolent king.
Another interesting idea of Bradley’s is that one death can only be balanced by another. He believes that the weak should perish, which is likely his most Hitler-ish trait, but he commits genocide for different reasons entirely. More than that, Wrath’s just a wonderfully captivating villain, and he’s a lot more fun to read about in the manga than he is to watch in the 2003 anime.
8. Envy Gets More Time to Shine
The homunculus Envy is widely considered to be the best villain in Fullmetal Alchemist. It just takes so much pleasure in being the cruelest of the homunculi that you can’t help but be enthralled whenever this shape-shifter is on the page. Unfortunately there’s not all that much for Envy to do in the 2003 anime’s story, and besides, he’s just not as interesting a character.
In the 2003 anime, Envy impersonates Cornello for around twelve episodes, kills Maes Hughes, imprisons Greed, and acts as the 2003 villain Dante’s enforcer. Near the end of the story he fights with Edward, acting way more subdued than it ever did in the manga (though not as subdued as he acted near the beginning of the 2003 anime).
He reveals to Ed that he is, in fact, Ed’s half-brother by Hohenheim. Edward’s shock gives Envy the opportunity he needs to kill him, but worry not—as stated above, people can come back from the dead in the 2003 anime!
After killing Ed, there’s really nothing left for Envy to do in the anime. This wasn’t the case in the manga. The envy of the manga was always committing atrocities with an insane grin and boasting about it.
Sure, the Envy of 2003 turned into his victims’ loved ones to torture them, but the Envy of the manga did all that and more with snarky sadism. Nowhere is this more apparent than when Envy gleefully admits to having caused the Ishvalan Genocide by murdering an innocent child.
“You have no idea how good that felt! I ravaged their entire country with a single bullet! I mean talk about invigorating!”
The evil monster revels in every single human life it destroyed with that one bullet, from the man it framed to the country it ravaged.
I should mention that the 2003 anime diluted the incident by not only leaving the victim’s age ambiguous, but also by having it turn out to have all been a misunderstanding; it was actually a couple of priests who got killed (or something equally baffling).
And the dragon Envy turns into at the end of the 2003 anime is nothing compared to its grotesque true form in the manga: a huge, disturbing green monster covered in the tormented souls (including those of babies) that make up its philosopher’s stone, each one screaming in pain.
7. Scar
Like Greed, the fascinating character of Scar is short-changed in the 2003 anime. There his status as the killer of Winry’s parents is revoked, making him instantly less interesting, and then he gets killed off before he can get much development.
The only thing the 2003 anime really added to his character was a history with Lust, but I’m not sure it really goes anywhere, and it certainly doesn’t replace all the things that made him what he was in the manga.
The way the story introduces Scar is also noticeably different. The 2003 anime changed it so Scar is introduced through his killing of a girl who’d been turned into a chimera; her psychopath of a father survives.
In the manga, the first time we see Scar he kills both Nina Tucker (a character we like) and her father Shou (a character we loathe) in the same scene, meaning our feelings towards Scar are instantly conflicted; he just killed pretty much the worst person in the world, and we understand that his killing of Nina was in many ways an act of mercy, but at the same time he just killed an innocent little girl whom we, like the Elrics, have come to care about.
Aside from the 2003 anime more-or-less lacking Scar’s entire arc, there is one scene whose omission was a terrible crime against his character.
I speak, of course, of the scene where Winry finds out that Scar murdered her parents, points a gun at him, and demands he bring them back. It’s one of the most powerful scenes in the whole manga, and since Mustang killed her parents in the 2003 anime, it’s not there.
There’s no contest; while perhaps not as striking a difference as with Greed, Scar is also way better in the Manga.
6. Better World-Building
Fullmetal Alchemist has some great world building, except that the 2003 anime really doesn’t. Let’s start with the nation of Amestris, whose name is never mentioned; indeed, it’s Shamballa in the 2003 anime, though it’s sometimes called Britain. Or maybe in that version Amestris is the name of the world they live in and Shamballa/Britain is the name of their country? It’s never made clear.
Nor are we given a map of the country, if I remember correctly. The world of that anime is always very vague, other than being Germany in a parallel universe, which has no connection to the manga. It apparently wasn’t even worth explaining why the homunculi embody the seven deadly sins.
None of this is true of the world the manga is set in. The manga takes place in an original and detailed fantasy world.
Unlike many such worlds, it’s neither a Medieval fantasy world nor one in which technology is just anything the story needs at any given time.
Basically what I’m saying is that despite the technology not corresponding entirely to any one point in history, there aren’t characters with running around with synth keytars.
The story takes place in the Republic of Amestris. Amestris has its own history spanning centuries, as do many of the lands around it.
The way alchemy works is even more interesting in the manga than it is in the 2003 anime. There are also a number of deities, including the Eye of God; the being known as Truth; Ishvala, the god of Ishval; and the fabricated sun god Leto.
Not only is there alchemy, but there’s also Xingese alkahestry, as well as a strange blend of the two. The world of the manga feels lived-in, and it’s much more fleshed out than that of its first adaptation.
5. Pride (Selim Bradley)
If there’s one plot-twist that sums up why the manga is better than the 2003 anime, I’d have to go with the revelation of Selim Bradley’s true identity. You see, in the 2003 anime, the Führer’s son is introduced late in the story, and we know immediately that his homunculus father will kill him by the end.
He serves as the little kid who gets killed horribly, but we already had a far superior one of those: Nina Tucker! Indeed, Selim’s character in the 2003 anime is almost a beat-for-beat rehash of Nina. There really aren’t many differences between them except that Nina was the better of the two.
In the manga, Selim is introduced quite a bit earlier, and we know immediately that he’s going to end up just as dead as Nina did. We see a little boy who looks up to his father, tragically unaware that his father is actually Wrath and would kill him at the slightest provocation.
We feel so sorry for little Selim… until we find out that Selim is himself a homunculus named Pride the Arrogant! If anything he’s even more of a monster than his fake father, embodying the strongest negative traits of his real Father.
Even the other homunculi consider Pride a monster. What happened to Nina primes the reader to think the same thing is about to happen again, and instead we’re suddenly presented with another great villain. It’s better than anything the 2003 anime offers, and I’d even say it’s the best twist in the manga.
4. Van Hohenheim is More Sympathetic
Now, this is one that applies to both the 2003 and 2009 adaptations, as the manga’s portrayal of Van Hohenheim is better than either of them.
The Hohenheim of the 2003 anime (renamed Hohenheim of Light, for some reason) was a reprehensible, selfish deadbeat who sacrificed countless people so he could live forever.
The Van Hohenheim of the 2009 anime was mostly in line with the manga, but many of his character moments weren’t handled as well. When he sees Edward again, Van Hohenheim acts too cold, making him pretty unlikeable at the start. It’s also not made clear enough that Hohenheim was unaware of the homunculus’s plan to sacrifice the people of Xerxes.
None of these are a problem in the manga, because Van Hohenheim is handled perfectly. Not only is his younger self clearly unaware of the homunculus’s intentions, making him instantly more sympathetic than a mass-murderer, but he also doesn’t act like such a jerk.
His reasons for leaving in the first place are flawed but understandable. The parts that are most different between the manga and the 2009 anime are those scenes where Hohenheim interacts with Edward.
We can see that he’s desperately trying to reconnect with his son, and his attempts are often pitiful, often making things worse. And his death at the end is just beautiful. The Van Hohenheim of the manga is a deeply flawed, tragic, and sympathetic character, and he’s better here than in either anime.
3. Major General Olivier Mira Armstrong
Hiromu Arakawa went out of her way to subvert loads of sexist tropes that are prevalent in many manga. The 2003 anime also did this, but not to anywhere near the same extent.
Nowhere is this more obvious than with Major General Olivier Mira Armstrong, a character who doesn’t appear in the 2003 anime but who’s one of the most badass characters ever.
She’s almost like a good-side foil to Wrath, considering her “survival of the fittest” philosophy and utter lack of mercy. Olivier is ambitious, cold, and completely horrible to her kind-hearted younger brother. At the same time she’s surprisingly moral and understands that a leader is nothing without their people, which sets her far apart from Wrath.
She likes things to be black-and-white, but when faced with more complex problems she still doesn’t hesitate to do what she feels is right. I’ve even heard people say that Olivier is really all you need in order to prove that the manga’s better than the 2003 anime.
In spite of the fact that we’ve two more to go on this list, that statement isn’t too far off. As anyone who’s read the scene where she kills Lieutenant General Raven will tell you, Major General Olivier Mira Armstrong is awesome.
2. Better Plot
There’s no getting around this. The plot of the 2003 anime can’t even compare with the real story. Besides the manga being better-paced than either anime, lacking the rushed feel of the 2009 adaptation and the filler of 2003, the plot is just amazing.
There’s no getting around this. The plot of the 2003 anime can’t even compare with the real story. Besides the manga being better-paced than either anime, lacking the rushed feel of the 2009 adaptation and the filler of 2003, the plot is just amazing.
This is to be expected, as the manga was likely planned out from the beginning. All the twists and turns are great, and it all builds up to a mind-blowing final battle.
At first one is likely to be confused as to why the country of Amestris is a perfect circle, but then it’s revealed that the entire country was created by Our Father to serve as a massive transmutation circle.
With this knowledge, our heroes figure out that Our Father intends to sacrifice the entire population in order to create a giant philosopher’s stone from their souls.
The backstory, too, makes far more sense than anything in the 2003 anime. Rather than the ever-popular motive of racial purification, the Ishvalan War of Extermination was part of Our Father’s master plan, carving a crest of blood into the land.
Not only is the 2003 anime’s explanation for the conflict unendingly confusing (it involves some sort of black-ops attack on a temple being covered up as a single murder for some bizarre reason, among other oddities); it also plays a much smaller role in the story.
O, and the 2003 anime says that Kimblee was put in prison for “making women and children go boom,” even though that was what he was supposed to be doing (in the manga he was imprisoned for betraying the military for personal gain).
There are shockingly few similarities between the plots of the manga and 2003 anime, but in almost every case the manga comes out superior. There’s just no comparing the two; the manga wins.
Honourable Mentions
Better Character Designs
This was a bit of a small thing, which is why I didn’t include it on the list. Presumably to save money on animation, the 2003 anime redesigned many of the characters to make them look younger.
They don’t look nearly as interesting as their designs in the manga do, and many of them look terrible.
Solf J. Kimblee
The 2003 anime reduced the philosophizing gentleman-psychopath to your run-of-the-mill unrefined, thuggish psychopath. Fullmetal Alchemist already had one of those in Barry the Chopper!
Better Comedy
I know this sounds weird when talking about something that’s on the page and not the screen, but the manga has better comedic timing than the anime do—either of them.
The 2003 anime also replaced many of the manga’s jokes with its own, and the results were bad. My favourite example is when they replaced Rosé telling Edward that her god could make him taller if he’d only have some faith with a far less funny joke about Alphonse being filled with sand.
Ling and Greed’s Relationship
In the 2003 anime, Greed dies not long after he becomes important. In the manga, he goes through a big character arc where Father erases his memories.
He is then injected into the body of a prince, with whom he forms a bond after regaining his memories. This leads to Greed growing into a great anti-hero and eventually realizing the importance of friendship before his death.
1. The Ending
There was nothing else I could have gone with. There is no difference more obvious. The 2003 anime ended with Edward going through a portal to our world and fighting the Nazis, apparently leading to their suddenly realizing the error of their ways and becoming decent human beings.
Then there’s the cliché where he has to leave his world forever in order to save it, but it’s okay because he’s met Rosé’s doppelgänger in our world. That’s not how the story is supposed to end. The way it’s supposed to end is glorious!
With his brother’s soul trapped at the Gate of Truth, Edward agonizes over what to do. He’s offered solutions, but they all involve sacrificing others’ lives. Eventually he realizes what he has to do, and he makes his great sacrifice for his brother.
In what I consider the best scene in the manga, Edward sacrifices his own gate along with his ability to transmute, allowing Alphonse to return with him to the world. The boys’ father, having used up his stone, dies while sitting at his wife’s grave, and one-by-one the loose ends are tied.
The manga ends several years later with Ed proposing to Winry, and its awkwardness makes it the most genuine proposal I’ve ever seen in a story.
As near-perfect as Fullmetal Alchemist is, no other scene beats Edward sacrificing his powers in order to save his brother. It’s a culmination of everything in the story so far, and I can think of no other aspect of Fullmetal Alchemist that proves the manga’s superiority so thoroughly.
Conclusion
Are there any other reasons I might have missed? Or are you one of the people who prefer the 2003 anime? Regardless, I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments.
For me, however, neither adaptation can quite match what Hiromu Arakawa created. When I wrote the first article on the subject of this story, I expected to write three of them and be done. This is the seventh article I’ve written about Fullmetal Alchemist, and I’ve had fun writing every one of these.
I may write more on this subject in the future, but I think my next article will be about something else entirely. And if you’re wondering how to consume this story, I think I’ve been pretty clear in my message: read the manga.
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