More things I've translated from interveiws in Anime Yawa to be organized for
ura_hagaren that are of interest.
Aikawa in regards to Izumi: Izumi didn't debut until the third season, so already half a year had passed for viewers. Of course, they were throwing around the word "Sensei, sensei" (written shishou) from early on so they (the anime staff) had to think about her place in the story too, while looking ahead at what she was in the manga.
"Ed and Al's mother is already dead. While she's like another mother figure, she's not merely a substitute. Their already dead mother, being dead, is also idealized, living on as an ideal like that in their hearts. So what does that make Izumi? Is she perfect after all? No, she is alive and, just as their mother may have been, she of course has human weaknesses in her. While we were thinking of that, we compiled Wrath's settings and because there are no perfect people in this work, I thought that this would be a way to display the incompleteness of the master who appears flawless at a glance."
When asked how Wrath came about, Aikawa said: "She asked 'Will the full 7 Homunculi appear?' " "They will." And so she laid out their details "They're like this and this and this. But it'd be bad to reveal that early. "
Mori's favorite was Scar. They talk about how he died even though he's still alive and well in the manga, and host Sato tries to give Aikawa guilt about not bringing him back to life.
"That's how it goes. There's certainly problems with managing the life and death of a character still active in the original work. As Scar is a character with quite a bit of anime settings added to him, we worried over quite a few of those details ourselves. For example, if you only read the manga his voice comes off a little younger that you'd expect. That was exactly what we were going for but even Okiayu (Ryoutarou) asked "Why are you having me do this role?" and seemed troubled by it. "Are you sure it's okay for someone like me with the voice of a boy in the prime of his youth to be doing the voice of this man who's like a Terminator, this sturdy guy," you know? That was something intended by Sound Director Mima, Director Mizushima and myself. In the original, Scar is immediately a man with a dark, mysterious grudge, but in the anime he has inconsistencies, feelings for his brother, feelings about Ishbal, and feelings towards those called State Alchemists, all making him into a wavering young man. So in all of that, in order to save Ed and Al, it was necessary to purify him to some degree, to show that there was no escaping that fate. "
They asked what Scar's appeal to women was, to the token chick.
"Just in the original, he sucks."
Thanks, that was insightful. (She says more, but she's not a staff member, so who cares about fangirl A? I just thought her frank first sentence was funny.)