Bleach Metal Alchemist Omake

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A 4-koma parody omake of two of my favorite shounen anime/manga Full Metal Alchemist and Bleach to celebrate the coming out of the anime Fullmetal Alchemist 2: Brotherhood.

I had this idea back in 2004(?) when FMA and Bleach were both starting to gain a lot of popularity. I'm the sort of geek who loves looking at animenewsnetwork at all the overlapping roles of different seiyuu. As you all know, Paku Romi does the voices for Ed and Hitsugaya. She is one of my favorite seiyuu, and the range and emotion she shows portraying Edward Elric is amazing. Hitsugaya Toushiro is my favorite Bleach shinigami, but he reminded me of another short prodigy. (Ed and Shiro-chan: who are you calling a super-midget?!) And of course, Al's seiyuu Kugimiya Rie (most known recently for her Tsundere roles like Shana, Taia and Louise) plays Ichigo's tomboy little sister, Kurosaki Karin (and Nemu as well.) Hence, this omake resulted, because I've been getting back into the FMA spirit with the new (manga-based) anime.

I love Bleach episode 132 where Toushiro interacts with Karin--it's very reminiscent of Ed and Al and the running gags about Ed's height. Anyhow, I'm predominantly a shoujo artist, but it was an interesting challenge trying shounen-style, especially 4-koma. I love Hiromu Arakawa's sense of humor in her 4-komas. Actually, sometimes, I like the omakes for Bleach and FMA better than the actual manga. Lol. It was fun giving Toushiro Ed-like expressions, especially since Shiro is the more serious of the two characters (or takes himself more seriously--I think Ed, though he has his angsty moments, doesn't take himself as seriously, probably because he has Al to keep him in check.)

Anyhow, I'm excited about Fullmetal Alchemist 2: Brotherhood, especially how they deal with the storyline after episode 27 of the original anime (which overall was already executed to near perfection, albeit the ending.) But the manga has so many intersting plots to come. And I also like how Roy Mustang's character develops (he's one of my all-time favorite characters).