[Manga][Anime] Arakawa-sensei's Thoughts on the Anime

[Yebyosh]

Free reign here as it pertains to both manga & anime...

Arakawa-sensei has chronicled (in cow-form) a short summary of how the animation for FMA was produced, her role in the process and her thoughts about it.

Read it at http://www.geocities.com/yebyosh04/plokimju.html
(yep, geocities with that bandwidth limitation...*shiver*)

Facts:

Spoiler for Read the above link first to be humored:

- The animation project was started in autumn 2002.
- Enix made the decision. Arakawa-sensei has no say.
- Arakawa-sensei values honesty
- Arakawa-sensei watches Star Wars!
- BONES only wants personalities of characters & the world setting. They would rather set their own story.
- Initial exchanges between mangaka and BONES Story staff though polite, is fright with conflict
- Anime's script is written by BONES' crew
- Script of anime is not affected by Arakawa-sensei in any way (which bears repeating again)
- It appears that when Episode 25 was showing, Arakawa-sensei was drawing up Chapter 34

Personal Thoughts:

Spoiler:

- Arakawa-sensei doesn't really like the thought of her manga getting animated...
1. She never shows enthusiastic cheerfulness for her cow avatar whenever talk comes to the anime. (There's the other strip where the manga staff went to the premiere of FMA Episode 1 - in a movie theater - and the cow was all cold-like but the staff was enthusiastic)
2. Coughing out blood in Eastern culture generally signifies your body is very sick or you are shocked at a negative event (Chinese saying... 气到吐血 or "angry till you vomit out blood").
3. Though she states that there is no quarrel between BONES and her, her sketches (expressions especially) show that the working relationship in her consultancy role in the initial phase is not so smooth, especially when it touches on story development.
4. The evil furrowed eyebrow look on the cow when reading the finale seems to suggest that her comment of "wanting to view the broadcast quickly" seems more in the context of "wanting to get it over and done with"
5. She can't go to Europe for more FMA research.

[Scrumhalf]

Arakawa-sensei is not one happy lady I can tell you that, when it comes to her works.

[hubrisnxs]

Very interesting info, I've been wondering how Arakawa-sensei felt about the anime for a while. Thanks for this info!


Long live the manga!

[dreamless]

Hmm... it says "YAHOO! Sorry the page you requested was not found"

I sooooo want to see

Spoiler:

the cow coughing blood

[OMchan]

Hehehe, nice stuff. Thanks. ^^;

The link should be this: http://www.geocities.com/yebyosh04/plokimju.html

There we go.

[dreamless]

Originally Posted by OMchan

Hehehe, nice stuff. Thanks. ^^;

The link should be this: http://www.geocities.com/yebyosh04/plokimju.html

There we go.

thanks a lot for the link!

hmmm... some thoughts...

Spoiler:

the coughing blood part seems not so negative or angry but rather to show Arakawa-sensei's big surprise of such a famous studio, BONES, doing it...

but the later part where she showed the conflicts between her and the anime crew as boxing and fencing... I guess that means she did strongly disagree with the anime crew about a lot of things

[sarcasteak]

Awww...

I wonder how much of her true feelings were expressed (I don't think it's that good an idea for her to bad-mouth the anime studio), but at least in the end she says she enjoys the difference in creation...(?)

[Sonhex]

Arakawa-sensei is the JK Rowling of manga

I can't really see BONES as a franchise hungry monster trappling over the creative ideas of it's property's original owner, but then again they are relatively new and are building their reputation (and revenue) from creating anime of high quality commercial ideas.I guess they need to be ruthless to a certain extent.

It would be interesting to hear BONES side of the story, for example whether they considered Arakawa-sensei's ideas and suggestions to be unreasonable or whether she simply lacked the necessary experience of working on an animation project...

[devilpim]

I was wondering why the story of anime and manga was so different.
.....how to say it....this is the first story that i like anime version more than the original....
will that hurt Arakuwa sensei?
ah..

[wolfi_1412]

seems that Arakawa-sensei didn't fully support the anime, and then she kinds of doesn't want BONES to do it..

[Pai]

Originally Posted by devilpim

.....how to say it....this is the first story that i like anime version more than the original....

I absolutely agree with you.
I like anime more than manga

[Veritas]

The link isn't working for me. I tried copying and pasting into my browser, but that didn't work either. It says Page Not Found.

[dreamless]

Originally Posted by Veritas

The link isn't working for me. I tried copying and pasting into my browser, but that didn't work either. It says Page Not Found.

I think it's because the page has reached its bandwidth limit

I think I'll take the liberty to upload the images to GHDpro's imagehost service, all credits still go to Yebyosh

[sOnJoOL]

was this in Volume 8 of manga?
o and btw i prefer the manga version.
but anime is cool too.

[birdiedude]

If I were an author my biggest nightmare would be someone copying my ideas and screwing them up.

Though Arakawa-sensei had to expect someone to want to animate his/her work (has Arakawa-sensei's gender finally been determined?). It's sad that so many anime's appear while the manga is still progressing, but it's hardly a new thing.

[Migs]

Thoughts:

Spoiler:

IMO, I think initially Arakawa-sensei was quite happy to see FMA being animated, until the crew began work on it, and realized that there was intense work and conflict, and that the animation would not be following her original plans with FMA the manga.

I agree that the crew might not have wanted her to have a huge say on the production because generally manga-turned-anime tend to have different things than the original work, because having the same thing in both mediums would make it boring. She might have wanted to keep the anime as close to the manga as possible.

I just hope she isn't too disappointed at the final product because I quite enjoy both anime and manga, but I don't want to compare both.

That's a hilarious read.

[Veritas]

Thank you very much, dreamless and, of course, Yebyosh.

That was all pretty funny. Yes, it seemed Arakawa was very excited about the whole project, but like most creators, skeptical of changes being made to their works. I prefer the manga over the anime, especially as it departs completly from what Arakawa intended, but both are very good. I'll keep watching and reading.

[Rattus]

Will I get beaten with a stick if I say I prefer the anime slightly?

I'm sure once the manga has had its entire run, and the complete story arc becomes clear, it will be better, but for the moment, the whole theme of sinning (which Arakawa-sensei seems to have been aiming for?) is much better expressed in the anime.

How the anime is ended, of course, may be another question.. I've already heard a few people muttering that they expect it to be wrapped up too rapidly. :-\

[BetoJR]

Well, I quite enjoy both versions, anime and manga, of this "little" story.
I don't know if I'm in the wrong, but... I kinda understood the tribulations of the production of the anime more as a burden of work and stress and even more work over some needed/necessary/intended changes over the story, than as sheer negativity on the mangaka's part. After all, it's all so ludicrous, and filled with humour, I don't firmly believe that Arakawa-sensei was all that peeved about the anime. Maybe you guys are reading too much into it?

[sOnJoOL]

i enjoy both. like most fma fans.
but manga is funnier to me.
while anime seem more dramatic.