I guess it’s time for me to talk about Fullmetal Alchemist 2003. This should be interesting.
In my last article I showered a fantastic manga with praise. That manga is Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa, and in 2009 it was adapted into a sixty-four-episode anime called Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, considered by many to be the greatest anime ever.
But in 2003 there was another adaptation. This earlier anime quickly caught up with the as yet unfinished manga, and so that the anime wouldn’t affect her own writing, Arakawa gave them her blessing to write their own ending to the anime (I assume her exact words must have been something like “go crazy”).
The drug-trip that resulted is known as “Fullmetal Alchemist 2003,” and it will be the subject of today’s review.
There will be spoilers for both the 2003 anime and the far superior manga, so I suggest you read the manga before reading this review.
Bias and Titles
I’d probably be eaten alive if I didn’t mention that despite straying from the manga in unbelievable ways, the 2003 anime does have its own fans who prefer it to the source material.
These fans will almost certainly accuse me of being biased as a fan of the manga just as I would them since they almost certainly saw the 2003 show first. Here’s where their accusations fall flat; I myself saw the 2003 anime before I read the manga.
I was essentially tricked into watching the 2003 anime first with no knowledge of what Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was. When I finished the show, I immediately called up the friend who’d recommended it to find out why he’d once compared this bizarre show to Avatar: The Last Airbender.
The response I got was that, having sat through the bad adaptation, I was now ready to watch the good adaptation. I was skeptical at first, but the 2009 anime exceeded my expectations and became one of my favourite shows. When I read the manga, I found it to be even better—almost on the level of Avatar: The Last Airbender, in fact.
I may be biased now that I’ve fallen in love with the manga, but I wasn’t biased when I watched the 2003 anime for the first time. I didn’t like it then, and now that I’ve re-watched parts of it for this review I like it even less. I’m not going to pretend the manga doesn’t exist, because I thought this show sucked before I knew anything about the masterpiece it’s based on.
What’s in a Name?
The English title of the 2003 anime is “Fullmetal Alchemist” and the English title of the 2009 anime is “Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.” However, from what I’ve observed, there appears to be a discrepancy in how fans refer to the two adaptations.
Fans of the 2003 version generally refer to it as “the original” or “FMA” and to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood as “the Brotherhood collection.” Fans of the manga tend to refer to the 2003 anime as “the 2003 anime” (or not at all) and to the 2009 anime simply as “Brotherhood.” I’m not sure of the significance of this; it’s just something I’ve observed.
I’d also like to point out that, from what I can gather, in Japan the 2009 anime is simply called “Fullmetal Alchemist”; the title “Brotherhood” seems to just be the English title used to differentiate the two.
Therefore I think it entirely appropriate to refer to “Brotherhood” simply as “Fullmetal Alchemist” and to the 2003 anime as “the 2003 anime,” even if the only thing that should strictly be considered Fullmetal Alchemist is the manga.
If I’m being completely honest, I personally use “Fullmetal Alchemist” to refer mainly to the manga and sometimes even to the 2009 anime. I usually refer to the 2003 anime as “the 2003 anime.” I will therefore refer to the 2003 anime as “the 2003 anime” or “Fullmetal Alchemist 2003” and to the 2009 anime as either “the 2009 anime” or simply “Brotherhood,” just so we’re clear on what I’m talking about.
Unfolding in a Whole New (Insane) Way
After only a few episodes, it becomes swiftly apparent that this series is a far looser adaptation of the manga than Brotherhood is.
Although it seems for the first little while to follow the manga somewhat, nothing here feels as polished as it did in the manga.
Many scenes carry less weight, characters are just a tad off, and the writing is generally just a few notches lower.
Edward has a bad habit in this anime of throwing childish tantrums just to fill out an episode’s runtime, and although the English dub is by no means bad, it doesn’t seem as well-translated as the 2009 anime.
Music and Animation
For those who’ve seen the 2009 anime, 2003’s animation is a definite downgrade, and despite some good motifs, so is the music. The score is just less memorable than Brotherhood’s, and when I try to recall a piece of music from the 2003 series I always just end up with the theme from Brotherhood playing in my head.
As for the opening songs, it’s obvious that none of them can compete with “Again” by Yui (Brotherhood’s first opening), but even ignoring “Again,” the openings from Brotherhood just tend to be more interesting to listen to.
2003’s last opening (“Rewrite” by Asian Kung-Fu Generation) was okay, but I can’t for the life of me remember any of the others. With that out of the way, let’s get on with the plot of the thing.
Those Who Challenge the Sun
One of the biggest flaws of the 2009 anime is that it begins with a filler episode that wasn’t in the manga. One of the best things about the 2003 anime is that it begins pretty much where the manga does. The first two episodes deal with the Elric brothers’ time in Liore, during which they expose the cult leader Father Cornello.
I did feel like there was a bit too much comedic filler in the 2003 anime’s first episode, and the filler comedy wasn’t even derived from the manga. In fact I remember these episodes omitting some of the much better comedy from the manga.
The 2003 anime also added some of their own little flares to this arc, but these didn’t bother me. The first two episodes of the 2003 anime are fine, but overall the arc was handled far better in both the manga and 2009 anime.
Mother
In Episode Three, the boys’ mother Trisha Elric is given some more screen time compared to the 2009 anime, which is good. Too bad their father won’t be so lucky here.
A Forger’s Love
It’s with the fourth episode that the problems start. This is the beginning of the filler episodes: little stories with no connection to the manga.
This one’s about an anime-exclusive character called Majahal, and it’s not particularly good. Again, it’s anime filler; what do you expect? The 2009 anime would include two filler episodes; this one has a ton.
The Man with the Mechanical Arm
Episode Five tells a story from the manga that wasn’t important enough for the 2009 anime to include; despite a few small changes it’s nice to see this and other side stories animated.
Night of the Chimera’s Cry
Of course I can’t go without mentioning the Shou Tucker incident. Despite the 2003 anime giving us two episodes to get attached to Nina, I found myself caring more in the manga and 2009 anime. The 2003 anime also makes it too obvious what’s about to happen, where in the manga and 2009 anime it’s far more shocking.
The Other Brothers Elric
In the two-part filler episode The Other Brothers Elric, which is based on a fan-fiction by someone called Makoto Inoue, the brothers discover that they’re being impersonated by the Tringham brothers. Then we’re introduced to the concept of Red Water and the derived Red Stones, which are incomplete philosopher’s stones that don’t exist in the manga.
Despite being filler based on fan-fiction, this episode will send the whole anime in an utterly different direction from the manga.
The Untainted Child
The twenty-ninth episode is when things really start to go mental. Not only does Edward see visions of American flags, but the main characters also discover a young boy with Edward’s arm and leg.
This child is Wrath, who for some reason isn’t Führer Bradley, and he’s supposedly the child that Izumi tried to resurrect.
It turns out that in this version homunculi aren’t embodiments of Our Father’s sins; they’re people who’ve been brought back from the dead—something that’s impossible in the manga.
This means that the brothers actually succeeded in bringing their mother back to life, too. From the point they meet Wrath onward, this show’s story has almost nothing to do with the manga.
The Villains
Speaking of homunculi, I’d like to present one of my favourite examples of how little the 2003 anime has in common with the source material, often standing as its polar opposite.
In the manga, Envy was the only homunculus who wanted to be human, because it was the embodiment of Our Father’s envy. All the other homunculi viewed themselves as superior to humans. In the 2003 anime, Envy is the only homunculus who doesn’t want to be human.
Since the homunculi here are resurrected humans who long to become fully human again, there’s no place for Our Father in this story. For those who’ve only seen the 2003 anime, Our Father is the original homunculus from which all other homunculi are born; he serves as the final villain in the manga.
I know what you’re asking yourself if you’ve read the manga: if Our Father doesn’t exist in this anime then why do the homunculi embody the seven deadly sins? Well, keep wondering that because it’s never explained!
Dante of the Deep Forest
Seeing as Our Father doesn’t exist, the villain for most of the 2003 series is an entirely new character: Hohenheim’s body-snatching ex-wife Dante.
Quite interestingly, Dante isn’t all that different from Our Father, and accordingly there’s not actually that much wrong with her character.
Obviously, this means fans of the 2003 anime sing her praises in comparison to Our Father. To an extent I see where they’re coming from.
The thing about Our Father is that he’s at least partially rid himself of certain traits, losing his once vibrant personality in the process. We experience aspects of his personality through the physical embodiments of those traits; that Envy wants to be human reveals that Our Father once wanted the same thing, for example.
I find this concept more interesting than anything Dante had going for her, and I just love how the manga’s villain is a white-robed man named Our Father. Nonetheless, in theory I do understand how Our Father’s deliberate lack of personality can make people gravitate more towards Dante. If you’re one of those people, that’s valid.
Hohenheim of Light
For some reason, the 2003 series decided to change the name of the Elric brothers’ father from Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim (usually shortened to just Van Hohenheim due to his past illiteracy) to Hohenheim of Light.
Why anyone thought it a good idea to change a name like “Van Hohenheim” to something as bland and nonsensical as “Hohenheim of Light” is beyond me. They also changed his and other character designs and made them look younger, presumably so they’d be easier to draw; it just looks terrible.
The Rockbells’ Killer
The decision to cast Roy Mustang and not Scar as the killer of Winry’s parents was an interesting idea, but it has the opposite of what I assume was the desired effect on the story. I think they were trying to make Mustang more interesting, but in practice this change weakens his and every other character it touches.
Firstly and most obviously, we have Scar, whose backstory is made less interesting and whose character is less complex as a result. You’d think that adding this instead to Mustang’s character would make him more complex, but let’s just look at his character for a moment…
Weakened Motivations
In the manga, Roy Mustang was one of many soldiers who followed orders during the Ishvalan War of Extermination, and his plan to become Führer and change Amestris is driven by his guilt and horror at his role in the genocide.
In the 2003 anime, now that he’s the Rockbells’ killer, his motivations are driven by his guilt over the assassination of two Amestrians, with all the countless Ishvalans he killed now coming second.
Even if we ignore the moral implications of this, it still makes his character inordinately weaker. Lastly there’s Winry, and although there’s some interesting internal conflict on her part due to this change, it didn’t even compare with the scene in the manga where she points a gun at Scar and demands that he bring her parents back.
Amestris or Shamballa
The absence of coherent world-building in the 2003 anime becomes apparent when you realize that the characters never refer to their country as “Amestris.”
In fact, the country the story takes place in is only ever referred to as “Britain” (yes—Britain!) or “Shamballa,” and even then you usually have to watch very closely to catch it.
Most viewers will go through the whole 2003 series and still not know what the country’s called.
The Biggest Spoiler Alert
One of the manga’s most brilliant twists was when Führer Bradley’s fake son Selim, whom we all thought was a naïve innocent unaware of his father’s true nature, was revealed to be a monster just like his fake father.
We all thought Selim was the wretched little kid with a target on his head, doomed to be caught up in something he had no control over just because his adopted father was really a homunculus.
The reveal of Selim’s true identity as Pride was a stroke of pure genius. Guess what the 2003 anime does with his character… That’s right; nothing even the slightest bit interesting!
In the 2003 anime, Selim is introduced late in the story, and here he really is just the little kid doomed to be killed by his father. Much unlike Nina Tucker, however, Selim’s death in the 2003 anime has little impact on the main characters and is therefore pointless.
Nazis and Alchemists
All the major characters have their own story arcs, and the 2003 anime follows none of them to the conclusion they had in the manga. Some minor characters are given greater roles here, and these can sometimes be more interesting than their manga counterparts, but that doesn’t make up for weakening many of the real main characters.
If all this doesn’t sound like a drug-trip, just you wait! Get ready to ask yourself what in Truth’s name these writers were on! Get ready for an ending that makes Naruto’s big “Aliens!” reveal look like something planned out from the start!
Rosé the Cult Leader
After Scar dies transmuting Alphonse into a philosopher’s stone (just roll with it; it’ll only get crazier), the little armour boy is taken prisoner by Dante, who plans to use him to transfer her soul into Rosé’s body.
O, and in this version Rosé gets raped and impregnated, which apparently leads her to start her own cult instead of heeding Edward’s advice that she should “stand up and walk.”
Despite having become another Father Cornello, the Rosé in this story is Edward’s love interest. What about Winry, you ask? Strictly platonic in this version, I’m afraid!
Resurrections All Around!
Edward goes to confront Dante and winds up dancing with a richly-dressed Rosé. There follows a conversation followed by a fight, which leads to Edward… travelling to our world. To the show’s credit, he doesn’t end up in New York City, but he does find himself in London during World War I. He makes it back but is almost immediately killed by Envy…
Good thing you can bring people back to life in this version! Alphonse resurrects Edward at the cost of his own life, and then Edward resurrects Alphonse at the cost of his own life… or not! No—Edward just gets sent back to our world, where he’s destined to kill Hitler by his very presence there.
Conquerer of Shamballa
Alphonse returns to life with no memories of the years he spent as a suit of armour, and after several years of training he decides his brother must be alive and resolves to bring him home. It is around this point that the late Maes Hughes, the slightly obnoxious but good-hearted best friend of Roy Mustang, is brought back as a Nazi!
I will comment no further on this, as it speaks for itself. In case you’re wondering, they bring back the genocidal Führer Bradley as a Jewish filmmaker. Like I said, this adaptation is barking mad.
Dietlinde Eckhart
Dante gets killed early, and we’re introduced to the final villain of this series. The final villain of the 2003 anime is Dietlinde Eckhart, a Nazi scientist, and she is by far the weakest villain in this whole thing.
With characters like Führer Bradley and even Dante gone, Eckhart fails miserably to fill the void. Eckhart is introduced so late in the story that there’s no time to develop her character, which makes her an incredibly shallow villain.
Aside from being a Nazi who invades Amestris and gains supernatural powers due to passing through the Gate, Eckhart’s role is primarily to exposit all her innermost fears and prejudices in the most unnatural manner possible.
Edward manages to return to his world along with the Nazis who seek to destroy it. Alphonse, now stripped of an entire show’s worth of character development, can now transmute parts of his own soul into suits of armour (again, just roll with it), and along with Roy Mustang they get up to Eckhart’s airship.
Eckhart confesses that she seeks to destroy their world because she fears the people of Shamballa and views them as animals because she doesn’t see herself in them.
I highly doubt that most Nazi scientists would confess their innermost insecurities, let alone be able to articulate their prejudices so accurately. Had her character been given more time to develop naturally, we could have understood all this without the unnatural exposition.
Edward Elric Kills Adolf Hitler
The Elric brothers defeat Eckhart, and in a laughably contrived ending, Edward has to leave all his friends behind and return to our world so he can close the Gate from that side. Alphonse follows him through to Germany, and then it’s revealed that Hitler’s coup failed.
It’s heavily implied that something Edward did in our world caused Hitler to die in the attempt, and the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party falls apart. We’re meant to assume that Hughes instantly sees the error of his ways and learns to accept others’ differences, and then World War II therefore never happens. Hooray!
Fan-Fiction at Its Craziest
The craziest part of all this is that I’ve actually heard fans of the 2003 anime say that the manga is reminiscent of fan-fiction. So the story that doesn’t set up the protagonist with some background character or end with a bizarre crossover reads like a fan-fiction, does it? Particularly ironic when you consider that the 2003 anime is itself, by most definitions, fan-fiction.
The Anime-Only Ending
The 2003 anime ends with the Elric brothers successfully bringing people back from the dead. Instead of accepting death and learning the importance of friendship as in the manga, the 2003 brothers learn… well, I’m not entirely sure what they learn.
I’ve heard from people who like the 2003 anime that Edward’s character arc involves learning to accept death and that nothing’s ever perfect, but not only does he succeed in bringing his mother back (even if it was as a homunculus)—far from learning from his mistake, he tries again to resurrect someone.
Then he succeeds without even losing his life; he just gets sent to Germany so he can stop the horrors of World War II from ever happening! In the end, our hero Edward is so amazing that he actually stops Hitler from ever coming to power. This is the version of the story where Edward brings back the dead and kills Hitler. Remind me which one is fan-fiction-ish?
A Happy Ending
O, and for those who say the happy ending of the manga makes it fan-fiction-ish, may I just remind you that your version ends with Edward destroying the Nazis! The manga ends with Edward having to sacrifice everything to restore his brother’s body.
In Fullmetal Alchemist 2003, Edward is unable to transmute, yes, but it’s in a world where no one is able to transmute, meaning he’s on equal footing with everyone else. In the manga, Edward becomes unable to perform alchemy in a world where everyone can, in theory, transmute. He’s given up the very ability he devoted his life to.
Conclusion
As bad adaptations go, Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 isn’t that bad when taken on its own, I suppose. Even so I didn’t care much for it. When compared with the 2009 anime, however, it’s honestly quite awful.
I cannot recommend enough that you watch Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood instead; it’s better-written, the characters are more interesting, the story makes more sense, the world is more fleshed out, the production values are better, and most importantly it’s Fullmetal Alchemist the way Hiromu Arakawa intended it to be.
Granted, Brotherhood can feel a bit rushed for the first handful of episodes, but that’s a small price to pay for a story that doesn’t go batshit the moment it hits the halfway point.
My Advice to You
If you want to experience Fullmetal Alchemist without the pacing problems of the 2009 anime and without the pacing problems, bastardized story, and drugged-out insanity of the 2003 anime, then I have only one piece of advice for you: read the manga!