I’m a little surprised nobody seems to have mentioned Fullmetal Alchemist, which is an excellent manga. It’s been adapted into two anime series. The first one is just called Fullmetal Alchemist, and after the first couple of episodes it diverges pretty heavily from the source material as the manga was only in its early stages at that time, and the original artist requested that they do their own thing. The second anime, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was made a few years later, and pretty much follows the manga’s storyline. I’ll explain what I think of these further down.
The story is about two brothers who live in a world where alchemy actually works (it’s depicted as kind of a sciency magic). After their mother dies they attempt to ressurect her using alchemy. Of course, it goes horribly wrong and Edward, the older brother, loses an arm and a leg whilst Alphonse, the younger brother, loses his whole body, and ends up having his soul bonded to a suit of armour. The series starts a couple of years after this event, showing the brothers travelling the country (kind of an early 20th century European type of place) looking for the Philosopher’s Stone, in the hopes that they can use it to amplify their powers and get Alphonse’s body back. The series pretty quickly moves beyond this premise into something much bigger, but it’s hard to go into without spoiling it.
One of the things I like about the manga is how tightly plotted it is. A lot of manga I’ve read tend to have lots of filler chapters or meandering story arcs. But almost every chapter of Fullmetal Alchemist feels like it advances the story in some way. Some of the early chapters give you the impression that it’s going to be quite episodic but it very quickly builds into a bigger narrative. The early chapters are mostly there to give the reader a good grip of the characters and the setting.
It’s also very good at mixing drama, action, and comedy. The action scenes are never over-long, unlike some shonen series. They’re also pretty cool to read, especially since every character has their own unique abilities. The author puts in lots of little comedic moments, and for me at least, they work. It’s actually quite impressive in some parts, as sometimes she manages to slip in a decent joke into a dramatic chapter without ruining the tone. The series ends up touching upon issues like the effects of war (on both civilians and the soldiers) and it handles them pretty well.
I’ve seen a couple of posters in this thread complaining about the depiction of women, and Fullmetal Alchemist actually has a pretty diverse set of female characters. The female characters include soldiers, mechanics, alchemists, housewives, bodyguards, and villains. There’s not really any ‘fan service’ (that is, no gratitious outfits or ‘camera angles’), and the characters usually dress as you would expect them to. There are a couple of times you could maybe count as being fanservicey (perhaps unintentionally), but they’re kind of balanced out by the fact that male characters appear in similar scenes. It probably helps that the writer/artist Hiromu Arakawa is a woman. (I think the first anime, and maybe some of the video games have more fan service, but that’s made by other people).
SIDE NOTE: The manga is rated ‘T for Teen’ by Viz. It can get pretty violent, but the effect is lessened by the fact that it’s in black-and-white, so wounds are pretty much just black smears. Some people get some pretty bad injuries though (like I said, Edward loses an arm and a leg (he gets metal replacement ones)).
I haven’t watched all of the first anime yet, but what I’ve seen is okay. There seems to be quite a bit of filler though, which is disapointing. Some people like it better than the manga/ second anime, but these people are usually people who saw this one first and consider it the ‘original’ (even though it isn’t). The second anime is pretty good, although it is pretty much just the manga. It does add some scenes , and it isn’t always successful when it tries to be funny. Also, they sometimes reorder events, which sometimes ruins the tension. For example, there comes a point in the manga where the reader isn’t sure if a certain character is a good guy or not. It isn’t resolved for several chapters, making it all the more interesting and surprising when you finally do find out. But the anime reordered some of the events in this part of the manga, meaning that you find out literally in the following episode. Scenes where the reader wasn’t supposed to entirely trust him end up being less interesting as a result, because that extra tension is no longer there. But otherwise it’s a pretty good adaptation.
Personally I’d recommend reading the manga before watching the first anime (or at least watching the second anime), so you at least get the characters in their original context.
But oh well. The Raven episodes definitely were great.