Saturday, February 24, 2018

Should You Watch The Live-Action "Fullmetal Alchemist"?


Does the live-action adaptation live up to the masterpiece of Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood?

At this point, live-action anime adaptations are expected to be laughably bad movies and fans have to try their best to forget that it ever happened or almost strain themselves to defend. Both Hollywood and Japan have not had much success in making a good live-action anime adaptation, Toho Pictures' Attack on Titan and Netflix's Death Note being recent examples.

That should explain why many anime fans were obviously worried about Japan's live-action adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist since the anime, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, is one that many fans call their favorite series and is currently the number one series on MyAnimeList. So...was Japan able to pull off a good live action adaptation?

I think so.

Japan's Fullmetal Alchemist is not a perfect adaptation and I think that it has plenty of flaws but I am willing to call it a decent adaptation and I would recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen either versions of the Fullmetal Alchemist anime and use the movie to encourage people to watch the actual anime.

I think that the live-action adaptation is able to accurately recreate some of the best moments and characters from the anime and I think that the adaptation was able to fit a good amount of the 60+ episode anime into a two hour movie. Of course, some sacrifices had to be made in order to fit the story from the anime and manga into a movie, like how only the first (maybe) half of the anime was adapted and characters like Scar, Greed, and Izumi Curtis, were omitted.

The Fullmetal Alchemist adaptation was fun and it reminded me how much I enjoyed watching the 2003 anime series and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. A lot of the moments from the movie were faithful to the source material but they failed to carry the same emotional impact since the story was condensed so much. There was also some failure in the animation and CGI or it was, at least, very inconsistent. I thought Al's armored body looked pretty good while the effects used for Gluttony looked really really bad.

Like I said before, the Fullmetal Alchemist adaptation was full of flaws and it should have been so much better, but I think that it was not as offensive to fans as something like Netflix's Death Note (even though I kinda enjoyed Death Note). Maybe as live-action anime adaptations improve in the future, I'll realize that the Fullmetal Alchemist is awful and should just be forgotten.

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