Okay, never mind what I said last time; let's start by talking about Fullmetal Alchemist.
This anime has become one of those cartoons that you can be fairly certain many of your classmates have seen or heard of, at least a few of your coworkers and possibly your boss have watched a bit of, and has roughly a 30% success rate as way of striking up a conversation at a bar, which puts it in the vaunted realm of success somewhere between college hockey games and American professional soccer. It's often mentioned in the same breath as Sailor Moon, Cowboy Bebop, and other near-mainstream successes. It was many fans' first anime, and for some, it would be the only they would ever want to watch. When describing the recent success of Attack on Titan on an episode of ANNCast, Funimation reps described it as potentially a new "Fullmetal" for them, and it's telling that they didn't have to clarify which of their two successful licenses that starts with "Fullmetal" they meant. This was, and in some ways still is, a really popular anime, and it seems the only thing that took some of the shine off it in popular opinion was when Studio Bones went back and made a bigger, better "Fullmetal" in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
Which raises an interesting question: is there any reason left to watch this, now that Brotherhood is as easily available as its predecessor on home media and does a better job retelling much of the same story? Does nutjob screenwriter Shou Aikawa's bizarre ending still hold up all these years later? I remember loving it at the time, but I'm not sure now. Can we still forgive those short bursts of filler in its early and latter episodes? Is the Lupin parody episode as great as I remember? The answer is probably easy, because when asked, I have always recommended people watch Brotherhood instead. But I kind of wish it was more difficult.
