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logicbuttonWow, I can't believe it's over. Here, have some running-commentary-turned-stuff-written-afterwards.
Eeeee the AS disclaimer. ♥
Yay, Al actually acknowledges that Ed's dead.
NO. WHERE IS THE SCREAM. NO.
I MEAN. GAH.
AND "GENERAL"? WTF.
...okay. Re: lack of scream. I suppose I would rather have that than a really half-assed crappy scream; I mean, the original would have been seriously hard to top. Still, I have been saying since the beginning that that scene would make or break Colleen Clinkenbeard's Hawkeye for me, and. Man. I'm sorry, but...I just don't know about that. I feel bad, especially since I'm feeling generous toward the episode in general. But, yeah.
Actually, I'm far more annoyed at the "General" thing. NO. I mean, okay. So in the original, Hawkeye calls him "Colonel". Well, she calls him "taisa" (pretend that was kanji). There is no room for interpretation on this. And it's not like the scriptwriters just kind of forgot about his promotion, because Scieszka calls him Brigadier General in the second half. "Colonel" is what Hawkeye calls Roy, no matter what his station is. She calls him Colonel, and he calls her Lieutenantin bed and everything, not as titles, but as terms of endearment. It's like Mulder and Scully calling each other Mulder and Scully--they could be on a first-name basis off the clock, but they choose to call each other by names that an outsider would see as unnecessarily formal. Hawkeye calls Roy "Colonel" when she thinks he's dead because that's who he is to her, and his real name is more of an afterthought, like oh yeah, maybe he'd be more likely to respond to this name he's had his whole life, and it's uncomfortable for her, because on the most basic level she doesn't see him as Roy Mustang with a variable rank, she sees him as the Colonel, whose name also happens to be Roy Mustang, whose true rank (whatever that might be) is irrelevant when they're not in a professional situation. I liked some of the other things the scriptwriter did with this episode, but that one really stood out.
On a more positive note:
Dear Travis Willingham,
I love you so much right now. You win at Roy Mustang. A++++++++++++++
Squee,
Diana
In related news, Vic Mignogna wins at Ed.
I'm not sure how I feel about the script making it really obvious that Scieszka was Writing A Letter To Winry. On the one hand, if I had seen the dub first and then the original, I probably would have been appreciative of what they'd done with it. So objectively, it was fine. But in the original, it wasn't even obvious that it was a letter that she was writing, or even if it was, whether it was a real letter or just something she was throwing around in her head. So of course it also wasn't obvious who she was writing it to--was it somebody in particular, or was it the hypothetical audience that she was imagining might look to her to explain everything that had happened since Mustang's coup, which of course would be part idle fantasy and part trying to get her thoughts on the matter organized? See, this speculation is way more fun when we're not told that she's just writing a letter to Winry. So, yeah, I'm still not too set in my opinion.
The only other thing I can remember wanting to comment on was the German accent that guy at the end had. Are they going to dub the whole movie like that? Because I can see it getting old fast. And there would be too much room for inconsistency. I guess we'll see.
Okay, I know this post was kind of dominated by my reaction to what was probably a cumulative five seconds, but seriously, it was fine overall. I love this series, and I highly approve of the dub as a whole (after a somewhat shaky start, anyway), and this episode was not disappointing. It's just that Hawkeye's my favorite character, so I've been hypercritical of her VA and any creative license taken with her lines. And again, it would have been virtually impossible to top Neya Michiko's scream, which breaks my heart and makes me want to give Hawkeye a hug and tell her everything's going to be okay every single time so yeah, it's kind of hard to live up to. So.
In conclusion
Episode 51: Check.
Series: Check-plus.
Eeeee the AS disclaimer. ♥
Yay, Al actually acknowledges that Ed's dead.
NO. WHERE IS THE SCREAM. NO.
I MEAN. GAH.
AND "GENERAL"? WTF.
...okay. Re: lack of scream. I suppose I would rather have that than a really half-assed crappy scream; I mean, the original would have been seriously hard to top. Still, I have been saying since the beginning that that scene would make or break Colleen Clinkenbeard's Hawkeye for me, and. Man. I'm sorry, but...I just don't know about that. I feel bad, especially since I'm feeling generous toward the episode in general. But, yeah.
Actually, I'm far more annoyed at the "General" thing. NO. I mean, okay. So in the original, Hawkeye calls him "Colonel". Well, she calls him "taisa" (pretend that was kanji). There is no room for interpretation on this. And it's not like the scriptwriters just kind of forgot about his promotion, because Scieszka calls him Brigadier General in the second half. "Colonel" is what Hawkeye calls Roy, no matter what his station is. She calls him Colonel, and he calls her Lieutenant
On a more positive note:
Dear Travis Willingham,
I love you so much right now. You win at Roy Mustang. A++++++++++++++
Squee,
Diana
In related news, Vic Mignogna wins at Ed.
I'm not sure how I feel about the script making it really obvious that Scieszka was Writing A Letter To Winry. On the one hand, if I had seen the dub first and then the original, I probably would have been appreciative of what they'd done with it. So objectively, it was fine. But in the original, it wasn't even obvious that it was a letter that she was writing, or even if it was, whether it was a real letter or just something she was throwing around in her head. So of course it also wasn't obvious who she was writing it to--was it somebody in particular, or was it the hypothetical audience that she was imagining might look to her to explain everything that had happened since Mustang's coup, which of course would be part idle fantasy and part trying to get her thoughts on the matter organized? See, this speculation is way more fun when we're not told that she's just writing a letter to Winry. So, yeah, I'm still not too set in my opinion.
The only other thing I can remember wanting to comment on was the German accent that guy at the end had. Are they going to dub the whole movie like that? Because I can see it getting old fast. And there would be too much room for inconsistency. I guess we'll see.
Okay, I know this post was kind of dominated by my reaction to what was probably a cumulative five seconds, but seriously, it was fine overall. I love this series, and I highly approve of the dub as a whole (after a somewhat shaky start, anyway), and this episode was not disappointing. It's just that Hawkeye's my favorite character, so I've been hypercritical of her VA and any creative license taken with her lines. And again, it would have been virtually impossible to top Neya Michiko's scream, which breaks my heart and makes me want to give Hawkeye a hug and tell her everything's going to be okay every single time so yeah, it's kind of hard to live up to. So.
In conclusion
Episode 51: Check.
Series: Check-plus.
