Warning: This might get rant-y, but if I don't get this off my chest, I might not sleep tonight, thus making me sleep in, thus making me late for work. And that wouldn't be good.
I was cruising around on Anime News Network when I saw a podcast about the two Fullmetal Alchemist series. The thing to reel in the listener was to pit one series against another. Now, I don't really listen to podcasts, but since the title was "Fullmetal ANNcast Brotherhood", I couldn't resist.
A few minutes into the hour-plus podcast, I could already tell that the victor would be the original Fullmetal Alchemist (henceforth FMA-1) over Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood (henceforth FMAB). The reasoning behind this was deep psychological stuff is awesome and anything about "good vs. evil" is sucky.
Initially, what struck a chord with me was that FMAB was described as a "typical shounen" while FMA-1 was something more. Personally I'd say that neither is a "typical shounen". If you want a typical shounen, you watch Dragonball Z.
When they started singing the praises of FMA-1's Shou Tucker and totally dissing FMAB's Ling and co., I couldn't help but get irked. Yeah, yeah, FMAB is all about eastern supremacy because the easterners use alchemy for good and the westerners use it for eeeeeeevil. Podcasters, don't take this the wrong way, but you're taking this the wrong way.
To make sure that my blood pressure didn't spike to unhealthy levels, I paused the podcast 25 minutes in and walked away. Then I started thinking things like, "Why am I siding with FMAB, even though I still haven't actually seen it? Is it because of the manga? Do I really hate FMA-1 that much? No, but are these podcasters making me hate it?" Then it dawned on me: I'm not very opinionated about many things, but when I am opinionated about something, I get passionate. And I just so happen to be passionate about the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, and therefore, FMAB.
I thought about the last time I was this passionate about something, and I realized that it wasn't too different than this. I'm talking about the time between 2003 and 2005 that I wasted hours on end on an unofficial Bon Jovi message board. I could sort of liken FMA-1 to Bon Jovi's "dark" album, These Days and FMAB to anything Bon Jovi put out after that. The overwhelming opinion on this message board was that not only was These Days frickin' brilliant, but it was the last "good" album Bon Jovi ever made. The reasoning behind that was that dark, sad songs were deep and awesome and anything happy was automatically "pop" and therefore sucky. For the record, I'm in the minority in that I find These Days to be dull, mopey, and very out-of-character as far as Bon Jovi is concerned.
Maybe I'm in the minority with FMAB as well. After all, they stated in the podcast that not as many people have seen FMAB as FMA-1. Then again, I've seen anime-ranking sites where FMAB is #1 out of thousands. But then why was that podcast so one-sided in favor of FMA-1? I guess to each one's own. Still, the next time I hear a podcast pitting two things against each other, I don't want an obvious victor.
