Saturday, April 11, 2009

Freshly-Served Anime: The New FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST

In Japan, a new reversioning of the much-loved anime TV series from the mid-decade, FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST, premiered Sunday; and only four days later, American licensors Funimation began streaming this legal, subtitled version of the first episode.

Naturally, in the interim, folks fan-subbed pirated versions of the episode and posted them on the Web.

The new series comes from a new director, and is said to hew more faithfully to the manga that was the source material for both series. Since the first series came out when there were only three or four volumes of the manga issued, and numerous volumes followed, the first anime diverged from the manga's storyline. This version's character designs are closer to the manga drawings, and will purportedly follow the story as told in the manga.

As for the show itself: Well, I hope the studio isn't just pouring its money into the first episode to hook viewers. It looks great.

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