Te good news.. there will be a Full Metal Alchemist Live action movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihc964sRt8MThe bad news.. despite this being one of the most widely seen Anime of all time, popular world wide, set in a fictitious European country, the main character, Edward Aldric, a blond white kid, will be played by a Asian with a bad hair dye job. Because we all know you couldn't possibly find a blond who speaks Japanese fluently. I am sure the other characters will also suffer... In a movie that will have world wide appeal, whose characters are naturally diverse, including Asian, and middle eastern, they cast a Japanese guy as a blonde. His hair is no where near long enough either.
Also got to see Koe No Katachi.. which beat our Mokoto Sinkai's "Your Name" for best Animation of the year.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/28851/Koe_no_KatachiWell, the Animation was pretty and well done, and many say it is as emotionally moving as 'Your Name.' - but not for me it wasn't. Its a fine well made movie but I didn't like the characters, found them frustrating and pathetic and really couldn't get into this one.
I think its "An Affair to Remember" phenomenon - I have met many women for which
"An Affair to Remember" is a crying-inducing, heartfelt romance. For me its about two disgusting people who cheat on their spouses, and then can't communicate well enough past the needs of their own hurt feelings, ego and pride to discover that they still want a relationship. And I am supposed to care if they get together? They can't even communicate well enough to continue a courtship, and I should be expected to care about their longer term relationship?
SPOILERS: If you are going to see Koe No Katachi. stop reading.
The story opens wit a teenage boy contemplating suicide as a teenager in High School. Why? Because he bullied a deaf girl in grade school, felt guilty and decided he was unworthy of ever having a friend again in his life. He went to apologize to the girl before offing himself, and instead pledges to be her friend, and she basically grants him the opportunity - so I suppose he is obligated to stay alive- especially after his mother discovers his clever plan to kill himself by noticing he has a calendar where he has written what he needs to do before he dies and then labels one "the last day" with the remaining days of the month torn away. She extracts a promise to not kill himself by threatening to burn the money to "pay her back" he sold all of his possessions to obtain.
Why does he owe is mom Money? Well because he was a little sh*t in grade school. He picked on a deaf girl for talking funny- stole and broke her hearing aids, and his mom had to pay for them.. Of course he wasn't the only little sh*t. He had two guy friends, one of whom he routinely was bullying, and a "Mean Girl" friend who also had her enabling friend. When the news of the hearing aids reaches adult ears a senior school administrator enters the class and asks the child responsible to own up.. no one does, so the teacher asks our main character to admit to it ( if he knew why did he do nothing to stop it? ) His friends testify against him , suggesting they were trying to stop it, instead of being willful participants. As a result the main character is bullied and shunned by the other students, and he decides he deserves it, and starts to withdraw from everyone. ( Find a character who sounds cool yet?)
The deaf girl accepts the bullying for the most part, gives a little smile and vainly tries to still be friends with her bullies. She befriends on girl in the class who abandons her ( and leaves the school) when she is similarly targeted. Even after our main bully is outted, the deaf girl is cleaning slurs off of his desk before he sees them. His response? He blames her and starts slapping her around ( literally) for ruining his life.. which then gives us te ONLY satisfying moment in the film, where she kicks him off and pummels him yelling she is trying her best. Soon after she leaves the school as well.
The flashback ends, and our bully is deliberately not interacting wit anyone and therefore has no friends. These grade school friends all go to different schools save one. ( Te girl who enabled the mean girl) He stops the bullying of some other person and as a result gets a "friend" - who then encourages him to continue seeing the deaf girl - who then says she would like to find the girl who abandoned her in grade school. He does so by asking the one girl still attending is school. As a result he make her a friend again, along with her boyfriend. IN that same neighborhood he sees the mean girl, and she makes an overture to be friends wit him again. He is cold to her and rejects her but she is persistent and ends up attempting to bully the deaf girl again. She convinces him to go to an amusement park where she arranges for him to meet with his own enabler. He coldly rejects him as well. This pisses mean girl off to te point where she takes the deaf girl aside, tells her she hates her for breaking up their friendships, and when she apologizes ( because she always tries to make nice with her tormentors) Mean girl starts slapping her around ( again, literally) The situation devolves from there - Mean girl tries to get the co-conspirators to admit their wrong doing in grade school. Her enabler denies it, and instead decides to make it well known in high school that our bully was a little sh*t in grade school. Her boyfriend tells the bully he is a terrible person. The girl who abandoned the situation the first time, abandons it again, and again out "hero" feels isolated again, and the deaf girl who witnesses this massive blowup decides that mean girl is right and she is at fault...
The bully decides to try and make deaf girl happy and throws all of his effort into doing things every day with her.. and then , yes, She attempts suicide by jumping from a balcony. The bully saves her, but falls in the process, and ends up at deaths door in a hospital bed. Mean girl comes to take care of him, blames the deaf girl even more and ends up beating the crap out of her and breaking her arm. Deaf girl just feels more guilty till our main hero recovers and they forgive each other in what I am sure is supposed to be the big moment of the movie. The group prepares to welcome him back to school, and he is back to thinking himself unworthy of friendship, so tries to reject their welcome and hides in a bathroom. But tey love him and get him out.. Then there is a final confrontation between mean girl and deaf girl, were mean girl signs "stupid" wrong and gets corrected by deaf girl ( A Victory of standing yup to your bully!) who then storms off to get food. Meanwhile the bully realizes what he should have realized sometime between grade school and high school - everyone is a little sh*t as a kid, some people get better, and forgiveness is required, and suddenly he feels like he is worthy of being talked to again. The end.
Its so emotional and heartfelt. Bah. Yes Little kids are sh*ts. Yes sometimes they get better, and sometimes they don't, but it happened in grade school . Get the f*ck over it. If you met your grade school bully ( or the kid you bullied) in High School - or later- would you really still find that crap relevant beyond perhaps an admission that someone was sorry and a promise that we aren't doing that again?
Meanwhile...
'Your name' is being released in Japan next week. available as a pre-order on Amazon and totally should have won best anime last year. I guarantee it will be the best body-swapping, time travel, romantic disaster movie you will ever see. I fell petty damn sappy liking it so much. Just a bit surprised how little I was emotionally involved in this other one vs. 'your name'