30DAC – Day 26: Best Anime Fight

I was going to choose Ed vs. Envy near the end of FMA as that fight, next to Ed vs. Greed, is one of the best animated and choreographed fight scenes in the entire series. Plus, the two major twists at the end of the fight were mind blowing.

However, I felt like there was another FMA fight that was way too entertaining to pass up. Ed vs. Roy.

In the episode titled Fullmetal vs. Flame, Ed is up for his State Alchemy assessment to renew his certification. This entails a show of skill to the higher ups to ensure that they’re still good enough to be State Alchemists. It also seems like you may need to one-up yourself on every assessment to ensure that you’re also improving. At least that’s how Tucker’s case seemed to present itself.

After getting fed up with Roy’s attitude and knowing that he was keeping secrets about Dr. Marco, a man who might have information on the Philosopher’s Stone, he decides the perfect demonstration for his assessment would be an alchemy battle between him and Roy.

And what a battle it is. For the most part, this battle is played up entirely for laughs. Ed spends much of the fight running from Roy’s explosions while Roy spends a good deal of the fight taunting him. Roy even starts attacking the audience to get to Ed (with no major injuries of course, being a comedy fight for the most part.)

I told you guys not to eat that candy from Willy Wonka’s factory.

The tides turn in the smoke with a decoy from Ed, who comes up from behind to slash his glove off of his hand. The transmutation circle on his glove is the main way he makes his flames, so Edward thinks he’s won, especially when he decides to make this insanely huge friggin’ cannon to finish it off.

The cannonballs must be the size of my house.

 

But Roy’s not down for the count as he reveals he has another transmutation glove on his left hand and blows up the cannon.

The most interesting thing about this battle is, by all means, Edward should’ve lost. The only way the fight ended up in a stalemate, or if you want to push it, Edward winning, was only because of Roy’s war flashback. That made for a really tone-shifting ending btw. This entire fight, from even before it started, was completely comedy with Hughes’ gigantic picture of his daughter to people booing or making fun of both Edward and Roy when being introduced, then at the very, boom, war flashback.

I guess it doesn’t really matter who won since it was the demonstration itself that meant to impress, but still.

This fight is just so much fun. It’s nice to see Edward actually take on Roy and it’s always fun to see Roy showing off. They play off of each other really well and their comedic chemistry just shines in this fight. Not to mention how over the top and crazy it is. It is definitely a fight I can keep watching over and over and still be smiling all the way through.

Uh oh, I’ve only been using stills this entire time. I have….no gifs? Okay, okay. Don’t panic!

I said don’t panic!

It’ll be okay! Just look at the baby Alphonse!

Okay, I just wanted an excuse to use this. Is that so wrong?

30DAC – Day 2: Favorite Anime You’ve Watched So Far

Urgh, this one’s really difficult. I really don’t like making favorites lists since I know they’ll get changed in months maybe weeks, but since the qualifier of ‘so far’ is included, that makes things a little easier anyway. Still really hard to decide, but still.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is topping my list here. While I really am baffled by how quickly they decided to do a remake simply because they wanted to be more loyal to the manga, I won’t deny that this series does trump the original in certain ways. There are some scenes and aspects of the original that I like better than Brotherhood, but it manages to win out.

I really need to take my glove off before I do that. My glove budget is going dry.

The original FMA would’ve made it, but I can’t deny the fact that Brotherhood does more things better than the original and has a solidified ending within its own series. While I don’t think Conqueror of Shambala is anywhere near the travesty fans seem to make it out to be, it still didn’t make a very satisfying ending to me, plus I’m not really a fan of series having a series finale as a movie, so Brotherhood wins out.

FMA as a whole just has such an amazing flow. It has a great blend of serious and sometimes even dark storylines, fantastic action sequences, hilarious comedy, lovable characters, frightening villains, and it all comes to together so well that it’s just amazing. Not to mention how well the artwork, animation and music work alongside it. It’s so difficult to find shows that have that level to talent to mesh all of that together so well, but both FMA series show this talent off like a superpower and I love every minute of it.

Honorable Mentions: Cowboy Bebop, FLCL, Fruits Basket (which honestly would’ve made it if it didn’t end so abruptly and without including the other members of the zodiac.), Kodocha and the Dot Hack franchise.