مثل انیمه با گردی صورت شخصیت‌ها مشکل دارم، ولی داستان محشره :)))

Me ayudó un poco mi hija porque se me hacía lio leer "al revés", pero me ha gustado mucho. Los dibujos son muy buenos, por ejemplo cómo logran representar un grupo en profundidad sólo por relieve, los gestos exagerados y el uso de cuadros más grandes según la importancia de esa parte, muy bonito de mirar además de la historia.
El guion seguro les gusta mucho a los jóvenes, un niño héroe, de corazón bueno pero pícaro, y la manera en que va resolviendo las situaciones injustas que encuentra.

I can't imagine someone not liking this. I just can't....
If you like manga, you will like this.

EN RESUMEN
Edward y Alphonse Elric son hermanos y alquimistas que se encuentran en la búsqueda de la famosa Piedra Filosofal, objeto que los ayudará a remediar un error que cometieron cuando eran niños.

ACLARACIÓN:
Todos estos puntos están de alguna forma influenciados por conocimientos y opiniones que ya tenía sobre la historia gracias a la adaptación del anime, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

ASPECTOS POSITIVOS
- Ed y Al. El contraste de sus personalidades, su relación como hermanos, sus motivaciones como protagonistas e incluso sus momentos de humor los hacen tan entrañables y e interesantes desde el primer capítulo. Hay mucho en ellos para profundizar.
- Tengo la pequeña ventaja (?) de haber visto el anime previo a leer el manga (me refiero a Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood), así que ya sé como se desarrollará la historia. Pero siempre es bueno encontrarse con elementos que me había olvidado o pequeñas cosas que no fueron adaptadas. Esta es la forma en la que Arakawa quería presentar la historia y sus personajes, y captar todos esos detalles de nuevo o por primera vez me da una experiencia diferente a cuando vi el anime por primera vez.
- Amo la ambientación steampunk, todo el trasfondo político y el uso de la alquimia. Siempre la hizo destacar en medio de publicaciones shounen de fantasía.

ASPECTOS NEGATIVOS
- La cosa es que en muchos mangas, especialmente los shounen, los arcos introductorios son bastante... introductorios. Es decir, aburridos. Y Fullmetal Alchemist cae un poco en eso por momentos. Me doy cuenta porque el anime eliminó ciertas partes a la hora de adaptar la historia (again, me refiero a Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood). Hay subtramas y personajes que tomarán importancia más adelante, pero eso no quita que todo lo que lo rodea te deje un poco indiferente.
- El dibujo puede resultar un poco meh. En especial a todo lo que es ambientes y espacios de fondo.

CONCLUSIÓN
Sacando ciertos clichés del género, Fullmetal Alchemist Vol. 1 es una sólida y muy divertida introducción a una historia que promete un desarrollo de la historia y sus personajes mucho más complejo e interesante.

Bueno no ha estado mal el primer volumen
Valoracion: 6.5/10
Sinopsis: Los hermanos Edward y Alphonse Elric viven en un mundo donde la magia y la alquimia existen y se pueden practicar. Después de la muerte de su madre, juntos tratarán de resucitarla a través de la alquimia. Pero algo sale mal y Edward pierde un brazo y una pierna, y el espíritu de Alphonse acaba relegado en una vieja armadura.

Para poder recuperar sus cuerpos deciden apuntarse al ejército de Amestris, en la división de alquimistas, para así poder seguir investigando sobre “la piedra filosofal” que puede devolverlos a la normalidad. Lo que no esperaban descubrir es que detrás de la piedra filosofal hay toda una conspiración escondida para destruir el mundo entero tal y como lo conocemos...

3.5 Stars

This was a super fun first volume! I have the feeling I'm really going to enjoy this series.

*metaphorically cracks knuckles*

- a good start, introduced to the main characters and got a basic background on them and the plot
- i think the overarching plot of the series has to do with the philosopher's stone, but it was only mentioned in chapter 1?
- i really like edward. he's a little shit so ofc i would like him most.
- chapter 1 is probably my fave of the four.
- the art style seemed a little messy, but in a good way.

The best goddamn masterpiece ever in written history.

This was alright. I don't feel compelled to continue, but reading the first volume was fun enough. I wonder if I would have liked this more if I had read it as a kid.

Estuvo bien para el inicio. Quiero saber más.

There are fictional universes that became all the more believable due to strictly applied rules and the creative ways their creators have of making them work. Fullmetal Alchemist is one such fictional universe: it is through a disciplined approach to writing that it has come to be such a watershed moment for shounen, rising above other titles of its kind.

And titles of its kind are a dime a dozen. If there is a competitive space in manga, this is it. The alchemy in this manga looks, at face value, just like any other fantasy trope. Conjuring up magical weapons apparently out of thin air, springing walls of sheer rock from the ground, casting fire with cool flourishes is precisely what one finds in something like Fairy Tail just to give an example. The key difference is that in FMA we are dealing with power born from an understanding of the material world.

While Gray can just just pump ice structure upon ice structure with virtually no restriction other than plot convenient and/or nakama spirit, Ed would need the presence of water or a combination of its constituents in order to arrange them into ice structures. Ed cannot rely on talent and training alone, if he doesn't have a way of making a circuit his alchemy will simply not work. These limitation can seem a disadvantage but they are absolutely essential to both injecting a surprising degree of realism and enlivening the battles.

Ed has to think on his feet and be able to use what he has at hand in order to do anything. The physical scenario where the battle is taking place gains an importance that grounds the action, making it extremely engaging. This first volume only gives us hints of this but it is more than enough to keep the reader salivating for more.

This emphasis on the material reality underpins the very philosophy of this manga. Alchemy is ruled by laws, the overreaching one being that of "Equal Trade": in order to gain something you must lose something of equal worth. The meaning of this and its implications will become deeper and wider as the story develops. It is a brilliant concept precisely because it is so simple yet echoes actual science along the same lines of laws of motion and the like.

Right away, from the very first chapter, FMA introduces the contrast between faith and science. This can be somewhat tricky territory to tackle. Of the many so called "Crystal Dragon Jesus" religions out there- a term applied to fictional analogues to real world religions as they appear in fiction- the ones in FMA are some of the better accomplished. They go to the heart of the matter of God as creator and life after death, two themes that crisscross and get hijacked by nefarious cults in ways that we are all too familiar with.

Because for all the flashy practical magic on display, at the core FMA is a tragedy about coming to terms with the irrevocable truth that the dead stay dead. Ed's "sin" was going against this. Using alchemy to resurrect his mother resulted in his losing a leg, in Al losing his entire body, which in turn forced Ed to lose an arm in order to transmute Al's soul into the armor. It was not that Ed had not trained enough, that he was yet to reach shounen hero status. Hubris is the problem and at the same time it is entirely understandable. He may seem too cruel to Rose in this one but he knows all too well why Rose what she did.

Few times have I seen manga actually go into the horrifying effects of believing in life after death. If there is one idea that has been idealized and turned itself into a source of worship- to the point even those who do not even believe in it will defend not disabusing those who do, least they lose hope- it is this one. It is also the strongest power religion wields over believers.

Much is made of the comfort people derive from thinking their loved ones live on somewhere else, in perfect bliss. But not enough is said about what happens when people realize this is not the case. Rose's bubbly self at the beginning does seem much better than her distraught state at the end. But her happiness was built on a lie, it was illusionary. She needed to mourn in order to move on and the last we see her in this volume- not the last we will see of her- is the ground zero of doing just that. It is a necessary pain which is preferable to patching up a wound with the flimsy stuff of faith.

All this is only possible because Arakawa-sensei is savvy enough to introduce us to the Elric brothers already as working alchemists, marked by life experience, although still very much kids as will become all too clear later on. We skip, at this point, the formative period of training and the like in which a lot of shounen spends so much time and ink that by the time the heroes are past schooling, readers have moved on to something else. There are titles that seem completely stuck in this "school mode"- will Deku ever actually graduate and how many readers will still care once that actually happens?- that they completely lose their bearings. Other times, we hit that stage only for the manga to abruptly end so that we had volume upon volume upon volume of the character going through examinations and whatnot in preparation for a career that is hardly represented.

Of course, school is a major element in shounen- partially because it is so meaningful to the lived experience of the readers- and it can work in tandem with fantasy. But already there are so many titles that botch this combination that I greatly appreciate how FMA knew how just how to pace itself when it comes to presenting the protagonists' progress from childhood up to when we meet them.

Speaking of the protagonists, Ed is the hotblooded type that we have all encountered before and Al is the more reasonable (although their interaction will vary and change) one. Together they work very well as a duo whose bond is really something we root for. And while Ed is in many ways the template of the shounen hero, in others he is not. Basically, the siblings' motivation is personal and scaled down, in a sense, while it also intersects with wider issues in this amazingly detailed universe. Ed and Al don't want to be the best alchemists, at least that is clearly not their main reason for having Ed enroll as a national alchemist, a position that means he belongs to the military. Ed is also not out to seek revenge, which already sets him apart from a lot of his counterparts. What he is seeking is atonement: getting his body back and much more important as far as he is concerned, getting his brother back into a human body.

And perhaps because Ed is a working individual, he gets to see his world through a lenses in which class is very much a thing. In this volume he encounters an entire village that is being screwed over by the state, via a clique of rich goons that have basically deprived them of the mine the villagers used to own. The way Ed handles it is quite interesting. The justification for this deprivation is that national alchemists require raw material provided by the mine and thus the villagers nurture a strong hatred for these. Ed gets to suffer this but still decides to help in his snarky kind of way. But unlike the typical hero, he does not simply beat up the villains. Instead he swindles them back by transmuting rocks into gold and convincing them to give him the rights of the mine in a contract that makes it clear the rights were freely given. Thus a legal loophole is created that fools the villains into thinking they can get away with receiving illegally created currency while in fact they are the ones being swindled as the rocks revert back to being just that and now Ed can resell the rights to the villagers for the price of an overnight stay at the inn from which he had been formerly expelled. Not only is it a very neat way of going about dismantling corruption as it gives us a better notion of who Ed is as a person.

I have mentioned before that there has been an erasure of class as a topic in 2D culture. Even in fantasy manga about oppressive regimes in which poverty is supposed to be a theme, it ends up being sidelined and utterly irrelevant more often than not. Take Akame ga Kill!, for example. The baddies do overtax the population and that is seen as most definitely wrong. But the solution is just the usual, beating them up to a pulp without actually establishing alternative means for the people to survive, let alone thrive. And to be fair, one does not expect a detailed economic policy in such a manga but the contrast is still quite interesting.

All this to say, FMA is famous for a reason and for once the hype is entirely justified. If you have not read it yet and were looking for a shounen with substance, this is most definitely worth picking up.

I. LOVE. THIS. The story is exciting and I love the author's take on the whole concept of alchemy. There is a lot of humor, and Arakawa has the highly coveted ability to make the jump from serious to silly without seeming forced or insensitive. I love all the characters- except for Scar, he's kind of an asshole. They all have a way of making you love them.

I'd heard of this before, but I'd never read it, simply because I'd always thought, "Oh, it's just another of those long unrealistic adventure stories like One Piece or Naruto- I don't have time for that." But when I actually started it, I was amazed by how much I loved it. Unlike those common adventure series, it's realistic and non-repetitive.

By realistic I mean that despite the magic and sorcery involved, the story does follow a set of rules, and it is clear that the characters have limits. In most adventure series, the main 'good' characters always live. No matter what. Even character dies, it will be either a VERY minor character, and/or they will die in a flashback that occurred a minimum of a year ago. It gets to the point that it's ridiculous. I mean, exactly how many times has Luffy been almost burned to death in One Piece? And what about Naruto, who can't go five minutes without someone stabbing him? They always win their battles, they always live through everything, and they never experience any real risks in their adventures. Why should I care about invincible characters?

Not to mention that they repeat the exact same storyline with each arc: "Team travels to new place. Team meets new character, who is the 'good guy'. Team becomes friends with good guy. Team meets bad guy. Team starts fighting bad guy and his henchmen in drawn out, unrealistic fight scenes. They discover bad guy's master plan (that's right, AFTER they started fighting him-_-). They keep fighting bad guy. They all win their fights. They become even BETTER friends with good guy. Repeat." It's dumb. It's boring. It's terrible writing.

But that's why I love Fullmetal Alchemist- because it doesn't do that. There is on long, continuing plotline that remains engaging throughout various plot twists. But that's not the only reason I like it (after all there are other mangas that have an actual plot too.) The main reason I love Fullmetal Alchemist is the genuine emotional connection I have to it. I care about these people. I think they're hilarious and well-developed, and I want them to succeed. And one of the reasons you get so attached to them is that you know they aren't invincible. Arakawa makes that clear. These people can get hurt. Several characters have already died as far as I've read- not just bad guys. I mean, Colonel Hughes death in book four absolutely killed me. Do you know how long it's been since I've cried over the death of a fictional character? A really, really long time. But his death got that reaction out of me. That right there should tell you how good it is.

Read this manga. It's one of the best I've read in a while, and I can promise you that you won't regret it.