Oh yeah, I have the fever. I’m currently on the 5th DVD, and the series improves with each installment.

Volume 2: Scarred Man of the East

Volume 3: Equivalent Exchange

Volume 4: The Fall of Ishbal

Volume 5: The Cost of Living

The best aspect of good anime, and particularly of this series, is a result of a very different culture of origin — or so I must assume, since I do not have first-person experience with the culture of Japan.

From a review of American cartoons and Japanese anime, one must draw the conclusion that America’s idolization of youth in combination with a desire to continue youth into perpetuity — i.e., to protect the false ideal of absolute innocence — has led American animators to create utopian worlds for their characters by accentuating the absolute goodness of their protagonist children and the absolute evilness of villains.  American cartoons deal in hyperbole, archetypes, stereotypes; and these obsessions, when all alternative approaches are entirely forsaken — as they are, they are — leads to…well, cartoonish cartoons.  Cartoon children might lie, steal, hurt others, etc., but these errors are always ‘by accident’ or occur as a result of their prevailing innocence and naiveté.  The lesson of Good versus Evil will be learned, and the Good always wins in the end.  In order to accentuate the errors of naiveté and bad behavior and to restore the ideal innocence and good behavior, American animators as a matter of course never allow their Good Child to appear really evil or malicious, although while maintaining their focus on archetypes they may be sure to always show some cartoon children as being irremediably Bad Children. (Often, these are the stereotypical bullies, the absolutely villainous villains.)  The occasional transformation of a Bad Child into a Good, Chastised Child is really the restoration of innocence to a child who erred through some lack of education or good upbringing — i.e., a kind of naiveté — and who, coming into contact with the Divine Protagonist Child, is almost instantly and entirely ‘transformed’ by the encounter.

What makes American cartoons so much worse: the apparent belief held by the invisible animators that American children, perhaps all children, are quite stupid.  Children cannot be taught complex thinking, cannot deal with complex issues, and so this struggle between Good and Evil must be stripped of all complexity.  This belief leads to the archetypal constructions.  Worse, we see in American cartoons the same thing we see in American sitcoms and comedies and American television commercials:  very stupid, bumbling protagonists and villains.  Within the framework of the American cartoon world, Good Protagonists may well seem to have a solid footing and understanding of that world, but looking in from without reveals them to be rather silly and foolish — unless they are quite obviously intended to be supermen and superwomen who can never err.  Super men and women represent the Divine Good to be emulated absolutely; Good Bumblers represent the Mundane Good which sometimes strays from the Divine Good but with a little correction can reclaim the path to salvation.  The Bumblers are used to show children how superior they themselves are in comparison to those Bumblers, because, it is assumed, children can only know the right path if errors are splashed all over the screen and made rather obvious to those children: then, children can’t help seeing the foolishness of the Bumblers and believing from their observation, “I can do it better.”  American animators know, first, last, and always, that stupid children must be led down a path without obstacles and, besides that, with signs every few feet telling them which direction to go.

The best Japanese anime does almost the opposite of what American cartoons do.

The spice of good Japanese anime is complexity.  Good and Evil are real forces in Japanese anime, but they are forces that do not regiment so easily for the discerning eye.  While true that the Good Character is basically good, and obviously so, he may often be unaware of his own goodness or, in fact, of exactly what is good and what is evil.  He may commit truly evil acts without knowing it and spend the rest of the series paying for his transaction once he realizes what he has done.  When he meets a villain, he will not understand his villain:  Unlike American cartoons, the villains in good Japanese anime are not drawn in sharp relief but may for a long time appear to be good, perhaps even friends with the main protagonist.  Such hidden evil is often kept hidden from the viewer as well.  Unlike American cartoons, the Basically Good Protagonist may spend a long time pondering the nature of good, the nature of evil, and this is part of the reason why he may mistake his friends and his foes.  Whatever obvious villains are used are often kept in the shadows, only appearing partly from time to time, so that they become dreaded cyphers to protagonist and viewer alike:  they are obviously evil, but we don’t know the full extent of their evil or what forms it will take.

When evil acts in good Japanese anime, it is not bumbling (even if occasionally such actors are not adept in their fields.)  The Basically Good Protagonists may not even stop the evil act, despite their efforts.  Unlike American cartoons, the villains may occasionally be superior to the heroes.  In the second DVD in the Fullmetal Alchemist series,”Scarred Man of the East,” the heroes — Edward Elric and his brother Alphonse — fail to protect a little girl from two shades of evil, one utterly evil and, later, one mysteriously, unaccountably evil.  The first evil act is the result of a cold, calculated ideology, but the second is presented as merely destructive, perhaps even merciful, with some shades of an actual religious fervor.  (The detailed shading of the wickedness of the last is left to much later episodes.)

As with most anime, Fullmetal Alchemist has its share of silliness.  One convention of Japanese anime that can become trite is handled well, however:  Those odd brief transformations of characters into real cartoonish characters.  I can’t help feeling that the convention is closely related to the cartoon parodies we see in political cartoons, where features of real politicians are exaggerated: big ears, big noses (the Nazis did this, btw), long chins, broad foreheads, a stove-pipe hat, long jowls.  In the best anime, cartoonish physical transformations serve as parodies of the characters and add depth to what might otherwise be, well, cartoon characters of the American Super Person type.  In Fullmetal Alchemist, the characters themselves, or if not then their companions, recognize the transformations as they happen.  When Edward Elric stretches all out of proportion out of fury and embarrassment because someone has called him a shorty, we know that his brother sees the transformation and understands Edward’s deep insecurity.  When Alphonse Elric turns into a flat black-and-white drawing after being mistaken for Edward’s father (Al is the younger brother), we know — unaccountably, perhaps — that he is feeling blanched and does not know how to react.  Paradoxically, these cartoon transformations serve a purpose that makes good anime quite unlike the American cartoons the transformations call to mind:  they enlarge the character, give the character depth.

Readers can follow the links above to find more background on the actual story line.  I will only say that I’ve rarely been affected as deeply by an anime as I’m being affected by Fullmetal Alchemist.  Graveyard of the Fireflies and Now and Then, Here and There have moved me as much, perhaps more — I’m not finished with this series yet! — and others, like Kyo Kara Maoh! and Gravitation are great entertainment with some moving episodes; but Fullmetal Alchemist appears to be living up to and even surpassing all the hype.  What happens at the end of the 5th DVD will actually stun you, if family relations — particularly between siblings — are very important to you.  Fullmetal Alchemist is a great family drama and an epic masterpiece not to be missed!