It had a plot.
And an actual antagonist.
Also coherent character development.
Better fights.
Better action.
Better bad guys.
Actual stakes.
But mostly it actually had a plot.
The other was just sorta middling about and then it's like the creators realized they didn't really have a big bad and so then... SURPRISE NAHTSEEZ!
Also, how is everything "nice and tidy"? I mean, their dad is dead, Captain Buccaneer and Old Man Fu die trying to kill Bradley, not to mention everything that happens in 7 second flashbacks in the first one are shown in full episodes.
Like the episode where Xerxes gets wiped off the face of reality, I mean... THE DUDE'S ENTIRE COUNTRY IS SLAUGHTERED AND A CRAZY GOD MONSTER STEALS A COPY OF HIS BODY!
That was fuckin hard core!
Everything was like way more hard core in Brotherhood. Like Pride! He wasn't even in the shit version you watched! In Brotherhood Bradley was Wrath and actually lived up to the namesake.
In the other version Wrath was some whiner baby brat.
Brotherhood probably had several thousand times the amount of death, blood and carnage!
Hell at one point LITERALLY EVERYBODY DIES AND THEY ALL LOSE!
Granted they reverse it, but... again, it had a plot. It had stakes. The characters had motivation and REASONS for doing shit!
Also when Mustang kills Lust... did Lust even die in the other one? Oh, right, a locket was broken and she magically turned to dust, because they didn't actually have to try in the original... like, at all. Like the bad guys were less like bad guys and more like bumbling ~kind of~ bad guys who were like super easy to kill without even any effort.
Did Envy even die in the first one? Or did they turn into a dragon or something retarded like that (in the movie)?
I mean Envy straight up commits suicide in Brotherhood after getting his ass beaten one too many times.
And again... Pride.
The fight scenes with Pride alone make Brotherhood a better watch.
It has a plot. 2003 was about 2 brothers who had nothing but each other after their mother died. They tampered with the natural order in trying to bring her back to life and now have to deal with the consequences for themselves and the whole world.
In 2003, there was Dante. But the real antagonist was humanity itself. The homunculi weren't the product of a being trying to become God, they were the mistakes of lowly humans who committed a sin to regain that which they had lost. These creatures long to be human themselves. They don't want to be the person they were based on, but to be their own selves.
I can't argue with the better fights, and better action sequences. Brotherhood was much better animated. As for actual stakes?
Father wanted to become a being without limitations; i.e. God. Yeah pretty fucking evil, pretty edgy too if you ask me. It's much more realistic to me for someone like Dante to manipulate the world to create conflict. All so that the desperate survivors would seek out a miracle to reclaim what they had lost. The Philosopher Stone. When they succeded in creating the stone, the homunculi would sweep in and steal it, just so Dante could prolong her life. That's it. The "antagonist" just wanted to live forever. Such a petty human reason. Heh heh. It tickles my fancy just right.
Yeah there were some hardcore things in Brotherhood, but isn't it more exciting to think about the implications. Showing not telling? Like when Rose suddenly returns at the end, mute and with a baby. Last we saw of her, some soldiers were taking her into custody, leering at her. What do you think happened? Heh.
Or Scar's sacrifice to create the Philosopher Stone. There he was armless, and bleeding to death. Staggering forward, while reflecting on his mentor's teachings.
I think 2003 was just as hardcore as Brotherhood.
When I say that everything was tied up nice and tidy in Brotherhood, I mean that mostly the brothers got everything they wanted, without losing anything in the process. In 2003 the brothers did get their bodies back...but they lost each other in the process. You would think the followup movie would give some closure, but it didn't. The brothers were reunited, but now had to spend the rest of their lives on the other side of the Gate. Separated from all the people they had known in their whole lives. That's a tough pill to swallow.
As for the homunculi, as I said before, I found them more interesting, because they just weren't Father's creations. They were ours. And they were mistakes.
Lust had a whole arc throughout the show, and even teamed up with Edward at the end.
Envy hated humans in both shows but for different reasons. In 2003 he hated his father who had created him and then left to have a new family. It's a personal motivation.
Wrath was Izumi's mistake. He's just a kid who wants his mother. His "wrath" is a temper tantrum, because he is literally a baby. He had spent almost his entire existence inside the Gate only to come out into a world that he didn't understand.
In general, I think the 2003 homuculi are just as tough to kill as the Brotherhood ones if you didn't know their weakness. 2003 homunculi are weakened by the presence of the human remains of the person who they were supposed to be. It doesn't "harm" them per se. It holds them in place.
The fight scenes are pretty weak in 2003, but I don;t watch a show just because the fight scenes are cool; that's rather childish.
