The Otherwise Perfect Cheesecake
I recently finished watching the anime series Fullmetal Alchemist. Seriously, its really really really really really good. But some things about it hurt. It hurt because I wanted the series to be perfect, but no, they just had to screw parts of it up. I feel like the series would have benefitted from subtraction. If they subtracted some of the series’ length and some of its characters, it would have been better, but I’m not really totally sure.
So here are the ways the series could be improved:
1. Adjust the English Dub
I watched the English dub version of this, and I don’t know if this problem exists in the original language version or the various different subtitled versions of the series that circulate around the internet, but about a fourth of the dialogue in the version I watched sucked. It was painfully bad.
However, these days, with the various digital editing tools and things that exist in the animation industry today, this kind of thing shouldn’t have to be. I recall listening to the audio commentary on the Futurama DVDs. They had tools that allowed them to very easily do changes to dialogue with lip-sync all up to the very last minute. This makes me wonder, “Why don’t localization companies do this when they do English dubs of anime?” It’d allow them to have whatever dialogue they wanted in the space of a mouth movement. There would be no reason for bad dialogue.
2. Re-edit things for tone.
This show had some major issues with tone. Nearly entire episodes were light-hearted and funny, and then they end by cutting away to some other characters talking and they reveal something that is actually very depressing. Edit more depressing stuff into the silly episode or move it over to a new episode. Either way, just make it consistent. Consistent tone isn’t something you’ll notice and appreciate but inconsistent tone is jarring and irritating.
3. Re-design and Re-cast Gluttony
Gluttony was this character who I found to be really annoying. Gluttony had a character design, voice and dialogue style that was like absolutely nothing like anything else in the series. Whereas most characters looked somewhat human, Gluttony was a 1930s Disney cartoon. When characters spoke realistically, Gluttony played the part of being stereotypically insane.
His mere presence broke frame. That kinda sucked. He needed a redesign and a different voice-actor. New dialogue would also be good. I’d suggest his removal from the series entirely, but towards the last ten episodes, he gets kind of important.
4. When Wes Archer died, Leave him Dead
Wes Archer was a very well-done character until he died. He had a great death that was a well-done, important part of the series, so then they brought him back to life. Any purpose he had in the remainder of the series could have been accomplished with characters who weren’t dead or even, where anonymous characters. His resurrection was pointless and lame.
What is more?
They gave him a crappy new character design in his revived form. This design looked cool sometimes, but usually just looked really silly. He had a gun that could come out of his mouth. This looked really really dumb. He should have been left dead and not resurrected.
Conclusion
I really really loved Fullmetal Alchemsit and I only write this because it makes me angry. It should have been a perfect series. It really should have been. Unfortunately, it isn’t and I really wanted it to be.