It's a magical world

I'm trying (futilely) to clean out my 'posts' folder. A surprising amount of things in there are not actual posts. But here, have some AMV recs with a side of recs for AMVs of the first FMA anime, in honor of the fact that I am going to see the FMA movie on Wednesday. Both of these posts were written in…May.

Better late than effing never! ( 13 AMV recs for various anime )

FMA AMV recs for stultiloquentia

This is the "spaghetti at the wall" approach to AMV recs: basically I raided my download history on the org for everything FMA and 4 or 5 stars. Yes, there is a lot of Nightwish, because that's the flavor I wanted out of most FMA AMVs at the time. Also, most of these are for the first anime. I may be in the minority of thinking that the first FMA anime was a stellar example of how to adapt an in-progress manga and do it well, but I stand by that opinion, as much as the actual Arakawa ending was much better. And unlike FMA:B, the first anime wasn't lead-footed in the beginning.

Contains my questionable college taste, but I did rewatch all of these and still find them acceptable.

( 10 FMA AMV recs )

Actually, a lot of my highest-rated FMA AMVs aren't available any longer. Part of that is because of the Evanescence Affair, which makes me feel old. Of course, now I want to make FMA AMVs.

For those of you who love Fullmetal Alchemist (which should be all of you, it's so good, you guys!), I have to recommend kaigou's post on arakawa's reversal of the usual:


You will see me in the comments. I really ought to find and post those notes I took on historical echoes in FMA the year that I lived in Japan and read every volume published until that point (19 or 20 by the time I left, I think)--I don't want to reduce FMA to just an allegory or whatever, because Arakawa explicitly disavows that and because Tom Lamarre points out that reading manga only for what it says rather than how it does its thing is its own kind of reductionism, but you do get a richer reading out of it if you bring some awareness of historical context to the reading.

To a point, of course. I would never have thought to connect the Amestran invasion of Ishval to the American invasion of Iraq/Gulf War II, as coffeeandink did in her awesome post on the series, which is a failure of imagination on my part--I'm sure the idea occurred to other readers globally, and those interpretations are another way out of the "manga is Japanese"  feedback loop Lamarre decries. Anyway, go read.

First, rodo is having a poll on language and fandom participation that is crying out for some participation. Go vote!

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As some of you have heard, I started a new job today, as a CS rep at a mumble mumble major company whose local offices are really close to my house. Close enough that I probably will bike to work once I get a better handle on the whole "return to employment" thing. Currently I'm working 6hrs/day, 30hrs/week, but as summer is the busy season, I will be full time starting next month. The money is good for a temp job, the people seem nice, it's not difficult work, yadda yadda yadda... And my first impression is that I want to run screaming for the hills. I am desperately awaiting my financial aid letter from IUC, and probably am going to try to throw together a MEXT scholarship application, and will be applying to graduate school this fall (unless I get said MEXT scholarship for an April 2010 start date). Hey, at least now I can afford the transcripts!

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I've been paging through a lot of my old, old posts, and you know, I used to talk about anime a lot. But then, when I started this journal I watched anime a lot. And you'd never know I've received grants to research manga for all that I talk about it on here. So, in the spirit of recharging the manga/anime elements of this journal, I note here my thoughts on the new Fullmetal Alchemist anime, "Brotherhood."

• I sort of enjoyed, and sort of didn't like, how the first episode is a completely AU way of transparently setting up/foreshadowing the ending. I mean, there's probably people out there who are watching the anime but haven't read the manga (okay: I know some of them), but is the bloody obvious signposting really necessary?
• Relatedly, while I suppose that ship has sailed in terms of folowing the manga and getting the big reveal of Ed and Al's true condition in Lior, I had mixed feelings about how blithely they gave away the automail/full armor suit in the first episode, and about how they just shoehorned the entire past arcs into the second episode. Well, not the entire past--their training with Izumi was glossed over completely, and I hope they do the flashbacks to that in future. I guess I just think that following Arakawa's own pacing is best, because she's a genius.
• Voice actors! When Ed first showed up on screen, for the first ten seconds all I could think was "Why is Hitsugaya talking out of Ed's mouth?" but then my mind was able to dissociate them, which was probably good for my sanity. Also, after Ohkawa Tohru, Roy's new voice actor sounded way too high-pitched, but I also got used to that by the end of the episode. He's Urahara's voice actor, I think we're in good hands. My jury is still out on Hawkeye's voice actor though. I still think she sounds a little too...I don't want to say "feminine." I don't know. She's Rukia's voice actress, she's perfectly capable of sounding kick-ass. Maybe I just haven't watched enough. It's a Bleach reunion party!
• I still can't stand Rose. But I can certainly sympathize with her dilemma more than ever. Relatedly, go Arakawa for foreshadowing chimeras and the army that doesn't fear death so early on. Although, the army does do both of them better.
• Cutest ending credits ever! I like the opening song too. But the man saying "Fullmetal Alchemist" in the middle is unnerving. Also, embedded sponsor credits: good from the perspective of more time in the show, bad for occluding the view.
• I'm going to spend a lot of brainpower considering whether FMA could be called steampunk, and what that says about both FMA and steampunk if the answer is yes. If anyone has any suggestions for a good place to starting finding out what steampunk is all about (in a really obvious, newbie sort of way, since I've been dealing with it at a higher level without ever investigating the foundations), I'd welcome them.

I need a fandom tag. I've been marking everything "otw," which is sort of metonymic, and kind of fitting for that reason.