Animanga Corner

I recently made mention of doing some anime/manga posts, but I've been a little on the fence about it. Erika of Rescue Reads told me she'd love some manga suggestions, so that finally pushed me over the edge and here I am making a post! :]

I don't think I could ever describe my love for
every single one of these characters.
Source

This time I'll start with my first love: Fullmetal Alchemist.
I started watching the anime because my brother wanted to watch it and I fell completely head over heels in love with it. I've watched the two movies from the series and decided to start the manga when I wasn't satisfied. I always want more of the series! For an intro to the series, I did a post which you can find here, but I'll do a quick overview here in case you don't want to read my other post:

Basically these two brothers (Edward and Alphonse Elric) live in a world where Alchemy is a thing. Alchemy is actually a pretty scientific thing in this world in which you take the elements of something and turn it into something else. Alchemy on humans is a big huge no-no but Ed and Al were just kids when their mom died and they wanted so badly to bring her back. So they tried to use Alchemy to bring her back but Al lost his whole body and Ed lost an arm and a leg. Now their quest is to find the Philosopher's Stone to restore their old bodies.

Ed and Winry's dog. Al in
background.
Source

Manga purists will probably want to slap me for what I'm about to say next, but I'm okay with that: If at all possible, I prefer to watch the anime before reading the manga. I know, I know. It's like the opposite of what a book lover should do, but it's my preference all the same. My reason this is that it makes it easier to picture the characters' movements and voices. This is definitely the case with Fullmetal. I can picture almost every characters voices in my heads which helps bring the story alive for me.

Seriously, if you love a mix of alternate history, magic, science, and awesome characters then you should definitely give Fullmetal Alchemist a try. Actually, I'm begging you to try Fullmetal. Read the first manga and if it doesn't catch your interest then I suppose it's okay if you move on, but pleeeeaaaase just read the first one if you're at all open to the idea of reading manga.

I know this isn't a very well-written post and I know it's basically just a plea for you to read the manga, but I'm mostly okay with that :P I'll try to be a little more well-spoken in my next post ;]