This post contains spoilers for volume 1-8 of Fullmetal Alchemist and implicit spoilers for the entire original anime. The non-spoiler post is here.
The Homunculi, under the control of “Father,” who looks a LOT like Papa Elric, are making a list of alchemists to use as human sacrifices to make the Stone. They are not made by human transmutation, but by Father, which makes the Deadly Sins aspect more sensible. Sloth and Wrath are different from the anime; Pride hasn’t been revealed yet.
Miscellany:
The Ishbal flashback is so short that it contains no information on the death of Winry’s parents.
Scar doesn’t appear necessarily divergent at this point, but we’ll see.
On one hand, splitting the military chimeras and Tucker is necessary given that the Nina arc is now in the “present,” not during their training. On the other, Tucker was SO CREEPY in the anime that I kind of miss him.
Al can do transmutation without a circle now too. I don’t know if I ever wondered why he couldn’t in the anime.
Several references to a city destroyed in one night, which may not be relevant for the same reasons as in the anime but, I’m sure, will be relevant.
Very interested in the Xing characters—who have not yet been spotted in any promo stuff for the new anime, right?
Gosh, this is fun.
AFAIK, no one has seen the Xing characters in the anime promo stuff yet. I think I would know if they had, because Lin and Ran Fan have lots and lots of fans.
I am not the best person for catching logical plotholes in things I am watching, but I frequently had the experience, when reading the FMA manga, of thinking, “Oh, that’s a much better explanation for that!”
You have so much great reading ahead of you! I look forward to your posts!
Arrgh. I am torn! I read up to vol 9 or 10 of the manga about 2 years ago, but stopped to avoid confusing myself with the anime and, although I have absent-mindedly bought up through vol 16, have not read them and have now forgotten most of the differences.
I would like to read the manga before the anime, but I hadn’t realised Brotherhood was starting quite this soon! I’m currently obsessively reading & annotating Banana Fish in my limited free time, and plus I just this afternoon got a call from a close friend of mine, whom I dumped my first five FMA DVDs on over a year ago. Now that he’s finally watching them he’s zoomed through the end of ep 20 (the lab 5 arc, with Slicer) and wants to know how soon I can get the rest up to him, which is great but discussing it with him and reading the manga/watching the relaunch is going to get madly confusing. Oh hell. Obviously I should finally sort out my episode notes…
Rilina, I don’t know how much I’ll have noticed here only because of the anime’s difference, but I’m kind of not surprised that in the longer arc of the manga things are worked out more sensibly. Also, only one person instead of a committee (if that still applies in anime production?).
cyphomandra, yeah, that’s a tough call–there’s much to be said for the fun of watching things with everyone else on the first go-round, but the confusion potential, it is high.
(Have you seen that it’s going to be officially streamed? This is so exciting!)
Ooh. Thanks for the streaming info – that makes it very hard to resist! (now, if I could just get the the NZ branch of the Australian distributor to confirm that they’re also doing screenings…)