Current Events > What's the difference between FMA and FMA:B? (All the spoilers)

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I've seen FMA:B twice and love the entire series. What are the key changes in FMA?
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iirc, the FMA went on before the manga was finished, so about halfway through, it does its own thing, and Brotherhood is inline with the manga
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pretty much the anime invented some homunculi cause they were not yet revealed in the manga IIRC and they had that silly thing where alphnse was the philo stone as well as scar fighting without arms because reasons.
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Also Nazis
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The first one is pretty good with its dark theme and high concept ideas, as well as a great expansion on the homunculus idea and tying it to the show's lore.

The other follows the manga from start to finish and has an entirely shouneny feel, with lots of fight scenes, and some creatively done battle scenes sometimes for certain characters, especially with the homunculus powers combined with the good guys' alchemy.

So it depends on what you're looking for. I'd say to watch both, which gives you about 100 episodes of pure FMA goodness. It's just such a great anime, the best.

FMA2003 has a legendarily bad ending.
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I mark the fuck out every single time Mustang goes crazy and starts fucking things up
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In 2003 FMA, the Gate tied the real world (During World War 2) to the FMA world. In the end of the series, Ed stays behind in the real world to destroy the Gate while Alphonse destroys the gate in the FMA world. It's terrible lol

Rest of the show is pretty good
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in fma 2003, homunculi are made by failed resurrections. The homunculus can only be killed while in the presense of the attempted resurrectee's remains

The tone is more conducive to the dark story; there's way less comic relief. It doesn't really feel like a shonen

No xingese people. Or Father. Or coded messages

Scar dies without having a "redemption" arc

Overall I like 2003 better
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averagejoel posted...

in fma 2003, homunculi are made by failed resurrections. The homunculus can only be killed while in the presense of the attempted resurrectee's remains

The tone is more conducive to the dark story; there's way less comic relief. It doesn't really feel like a shonen

No xingese people. Or Father. Or coded messages

Scar dies without having a "redemption" arc

Overall I like 2003 better

Yeah the homonculi concept in 2003 fma is a lot better imo
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Perascamin posted...

In 2003 FMA, the Gate tied the real world (During World War 2) to the FMA world. In the end of the series, Ed stays behind in the real world to destroy the Gate while Alphonse destroys the gate in the FMA world. It's terrible lol

Rest of the show is pretty good

Honestly I thought this ending was leagues better than Brotherhoods. It was a really neat concept and tied into the movie great. Do a lot of people really hate it?
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Bloodmoon77 posted...

Perascamin posted...

In 2003 FMA, the Gate tied the real world (During World War 2) to the FMA world. In the end of the series, Ed stays behind in the real world to destroy the Gate while Alphonse destroys the gate in the FMA world. It's terrible lol

Rest of the show is pretty good

Honestly I thought this ending was leagues better than Brotherhoods. It was a really neat concept and tied into the movie great. Do a lot of people really hate it?

seems like some people want a clean resolution at the end and conflate the absence of that with a bad ending
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FMA episode 25-26 and FMA:B episode 13-ish are at the same points in the story. They're both 52 episodes long. When FMA got to episode 26, the manga wasn't written up to that point, so they started crafting their own story to cash in on the strong fanbase it had garnered. The story isn't the same after that. On top of that, FMA left out important characters that were already present.

There's much more story in FMA:B and much less flashbacking shit too. It's just clearly the superior animu.
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Bloodmoon77 posted...

Perascamin posted...

In 2003 FMA, the Gate tied the real world (During World War 2) to the FMA world. In the end of the series, Ed stays behind in the real world to destroy the Gate while Alphonse destroys the gate in the FMA world. It's terrible lol

Rest of the show is pretty good

Honestly I thought this ending was leagues better than Brotherhoods. It was a really neat concept and tied into the movie great. Do a lot of people really hate it?

seems like people prefer Brotherhood simply because it's the source material. If so, what a biased way of thinking.

There are some differences from the beginning, but the big changes start after Hughes' death.

Spoilers for original + Brotherhood.
The Homunculi and villains are completely different and are probably the biggest difference. Rather than being intentional creations, they're the result of feeding red stones (imperfect, unstable, incomplete Philosopher's Stones) to the flesh monster that happens when you attempt human transmutation. If given enough, their bodies will settle to look like the person the transmutation was trying to bring back. As such, they don't have a Philosopher's Stone at their core. Furthermore, Homunculi are also greatly weakened - to the point of paralysis - if they come near the remains of the human they're based on. There's also a special transmutation circle that can kill them.

Gluttony is still Gluttony, but he doesn't get his superpower stomach.

Envy true form isn't a big corpse monster, he's a good-looking blonde man....because he's Hoenheim's son. And because of that, he fucking hates Hoenheim.

Greed's more or less the same. He's still killed by his creator, but it's with the transmutation circle I mentioned above. He also lives long enough to tell Ed about the circle and about the weakness to human remains.

King Bradley is Pride instead of Wrath, but is more or less the same character. He was given the name because he was an aging Homunculi, something complicated enough that his creator was very proud about it.

Rather than a big lazy dude, Sloth came from the Elrics' transmutation. As such, she looks like their mother. Instead of superspeed, she can transform her body into water.

Wrath is a weird case. He's about a ten-year-old kid, the result of Izumi Curtis trying to bring her baby back. When she saw the result, she gave it to the Gate. This turned out to be a bad idea because the Gate was torturous and he grew to hate her. When Ed sacrificed his arm and leg, Wrath somehow acquired them and they became his arm and leg. Sometime later, he was able to break out of the Gate and ending up on the secluded island Ed and Al were left to train on. They eventually discover him, but Envy is unfortunately around and manages to feed him red stones.

So Wrath turns evil and basically adopts Sloth as a mother figure. Because Izumi used his original body in the transmutation, he doesn't have that weakness, but he does have such a strong phobia of the Gate that he freaks out whenever it's around or he hears a baby crying. Because he has Ed's arm and leg, he's unique among the Homunculi in that he can use alchemy. Either because of that or because of his natural Homunculi power, he can fuse his body with other substances.

Lust is actually a much more interesting character. The stated goal of all the Homunculi in this anime is to become human, but she cares about that far more than any of the others. Her human form was the wife to Scar's brother and she begins to regain her memories of that life. She eventually realizes that her boss is never going to actually make her a human, so she joins Ed until Wrath manages to kill her in retaliation.

More next post.
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Mackorov posted...

Bloodmoon77 posted...

Perascamin posted...

In 2003 FMA, the Gate tied the real world (During World War 2) to the FMA world. In the end of the series, Ed stays behind in the real world to destroy the Gate while Alphonse destroys the gate in the FMA world. It's terrible lol

Rest of the show is pretty good

Honestly I thought this ending was leagues better than Brotherhoods. It was a really neat concept and tied into the movie great. Do a lot of people really hate it?

seems like people prefer Brotherhood simply because it's the source material. If so, what a biased way of thinking.

Nah, we just think "suddenly nazis" is a fucking idiotic idea.

I love 03 on the whole but that ending is fucking awful. I just think of 03 as an edgy fanfic. Lot of good stuff in it, but like a lot of fanfics it devolves into something incomprehensibly stupid

Darklit_Minuet posted...

Mackorov posted...

Bloodmoon77 posted...

Perascamin posted...

In 2003 FMA, the Gate tied the real world (During World War 2) to the FMA world. In the end of the series, Ed stays behind in the real world to destroy the Gate while Alphonse destroys the gate in the FMA world. It's terrible lol

Rest of the show is pretty good

Honestly I thought this ending was leagues better than Brotherhoods. It was a really neat concept and tied into the movie great. Do a lot of people really hate it?

seems like people prefer Brotherhood simply because it's the source material. If so, what a biased way of thinking.

Nah, we just think "suddenly nazis" is a fucking idiotic idea.

I love 03 on the whole but that ending is fucking awful. I just think of 03 as an edgy fanfic. Lot of good stuff in it, but like a lot of fanfics it devolves into something incomprehensibly stupid

What country do you think amestris is based on
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averagejoel posted...

Darklit_Minuet posted...

Mackorov posted...

Bloodmoon77 posted...

Perascamin posted...

In 2003 FMA, the Gate tied the real world (During World War 2) to the FMA world. In the end of the series, Ed stays behind in the real world to destroy the Gate while Alphonse destroys the gate in the FMA world. It's terrible lol

Rest of the show is pretty good

Honestly I thought this ending was leagues better than Brotherhoods. It was a really neat concept and tied into the movie great. Do a lot of people really hate it?

seems like people prefer Brotherhood simply because it's the source material. If so, what a biased way of thinking.

Nah, we just think "suddenly nazis" is a fucking idiotic idea.

I love 03 on the whole but that ending is fucking awful. I just think of 03 as an edgy fanfic. Lot of good stuff in it, but like a lot of fanfics it devolves into something incomprehensibly stupid

What country do you think amestris is based on

Pretty much this. 2003 follows everything to its logical end. Thematically, it just makes more sense. Nothing has a clean ending in war... and everything has a cost. I don't feel like they paid those costs in FMA:B. That said, newer viewers or manga fans seem to prefer FMA:B. I like the show but not the FMA:B fanbase.
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Brotherhood probably is the better anime, but it's always annoyed me when people act like the original is some horrible, unwatchable mess. There's stuff it does better than Brotherhood.
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