After a December release in Japan, the new live-action adaptation of Hiromu Arakawa's legendary manga Fullmetal Alchemist slipped onto Netflix this past President's Day along with both anime adaptations of the equally beloved manga.

Much like we did for Death Note last summer, we've put together a guide looking at the various versions of Fullmetal Alchemist out there and how they tell Arakawa's epic story. Let's get cracking.

Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa (manga) (2001-2010)

Arawaka (whose pen name is the male variant of her real name, Hiromi) began publishing Fullmetal in the pages of Monthly Shonen Gangan, a monthly magazine published by Gangan Comics, an imprint of Square Enix (and home to other series like Heroman and Corpse Princess), in 2001. It ran for nine years. Collected in 27 volumes, the series was translated, adapted and published in print by Viz Media and published digitally by Yen Press.

In an alternate world where alchemy is a legitimate branch of science, alchemists are able to create almost anything they want through a process called Transmutation. But they must obey the Law of Equivalent Exchange (aka conservation of mass): In order to gain something, something of equal or greater value must be lost.

In the country of Amestris, kid brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric, both natural talents at alchemy, live peacefully, but their world is upended when, years after their father leaves, their mother falls ill and dies. Heartbroken, the brothers finish their alchemy training and attempt the one single alchemic taboo -- to transmute a human soul to bring their mother back to life.

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The process backfires horribly, with Edward losing his left leg while Alphonse is dragged into the afterlife. A dying Ed hurriedly writes a Transmutation seal in his own blood on a suit of armor, bonding Alphonse's soul to it at the cost of his right arm. In the depths of his grief, Ed is approached by Col. Roy Mustang and Lt. Riza Hawkeye of the Amestrian military. Mustang -- himself a gifted fire alchemist -- invites Ed to join the army's State Alchemist program and, in return for his service, get full access to government archives to find a way to restore himself and Alphonse.

Ed agrees and commissions his childhood friend and gifted mechanic Winry Rockbell to make him prosthetic metal limbs called automail. He quickly becomes, at just 12 years old, the youngest State Alchemist in history, earning the nickname "Fullmetal Alchemist," both for his prosthetics and because of his affinity for metal-based alchemy. Ed and Al then undertake various military missions while searching for the Philosopher's Stone, the most powerful alchemic object in existence.

Fullmetal Alchemist (anime) by Seiji Mizushima and Bones (2003-2004)

FMA's runaway success made it a no-brainer for anime adaptation, with this 51-episode series debuting just two years after the manga's debut, with Arakawa serving as an advisor. But because she respected the work of both Bones (the studio is best known these days for My Hero Academia) and director Mizushima (who'd just come off Shaman King at the time and went on to direct Mobile Suit Gundam 00 and Concrete Revolutio), she requested they work independently, and specifically that Mizushima and show writer Sho Aikawa make their own ending.

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And so they did, with the final show differentiating from the manga after the 25th episode. Regardless, the series was an enormous hit in Japan ad internationally. Translated, dubbed and released by Funimation in the United States (although their rights to it and all other FMA media they dubbed have now reverted to the American arm of the franchise's production company Aniplex), the show wound up on Adult Swim where it became an enormous hit and a touchstone for a generation of anime fans as their first "serious" anime after growing up on shows like Pokémon.

And there's a good reason for that. While the show's largely dismissed these days, both for slightly dated visuals and for reasons we'll explore in a moment, it's still worth watching. Currently streaming on Netflix, it takes its cues from the manga's sensibilities while going in its own compelling direction. Combine that with these great characters, great Japanese and English casts and an astonishing soundtrack by Michiru Oshima, and you've got a show that's a great adaptation and thrilling, compelling TV in its own right.

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Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (anime) by Yasuhiro Irie and Bones (2009-2010)

When the manga's 20th volume was released in Japan in August 2008, it had a message from Arakawa announcing that Bones was working on a new anime adapting all of FMA from beginning to end. The new show, called Brotherhood, was directed by Yasuhiro Irie, who has worked on everything from Revolutionary Girl Utena to Cowboy Bebop, and ran for 64 episodes. It was again a big hit in Japan and on Adult Swim in the United States.

And it's no surprise why. This show is absolutely gorgeous to look at and utterly engrossing. It takes everything that makes the manga work and doubles down by amping up the amazing fights, compelling visuals and great characters. While the 2003 anime is a great example of how to take a manga and use it to tell a story that's true to the world you're working with, Brotherhood is a great example of taking a great story and telling it in another medium in the best way possible.

Fullmetal Alchemist (2017 live-action film) by Fumihiko Sori

Directed by Fumihiko Sori (Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker) and written by himself and Takeshi Miyamoto, the new-to-Netflix film premiered in Japan last December, with Arakawa even making a new manga chapter to be handed out at screenings. The movie -- available subtitled and dubbed in multiple languages -- is now exclusive to Netflix.

The key to appreciating live-action adaptations of manga is to realize that not everything can make it in. A roughly two-hour movie (though this film runs slightly longer than that) simply can't fit 20-plus volumes of comics. It's just incompatible on an adaptation scale.

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That said, this movie has the problem of at once having too much story and not having enough. Rather than taking the approach of both anime in just finding a chunk of story and cleanly following it, Sori and Miyamoto's screenplay makes the baffling choice to include as much familiar beats and famous scenes as they can, but ultimately goes with original choices that seem more in service of a big act three blowout than anything else.

While there's a lot to like about this movie. The cast, particularly Dean Fujioka as Roy and Atomu Mizuishi as the voice of Al, are terrific. The CGI (which in these sorts of movies tends to be wonky at best, atrocious at worst) is quite good, particularly with Al's suit. But there's also some baffling choices made.

Edward and Winry are implicitly aged up to accommodate their actors (Ryosuke Yamada and Tsubasa Honda, respectively), which is understandable. Winry then winds up tagging along throughout the whole film, but instead of contributing in any way she's merely there to react. Not only that, Riza -- who, in every other version of this story, is a hyper competent, take-no-fools sniper -- is essentially a blank slate.

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It's disappointing in a lot of ways, less for what it gets wrong then for how close it comes to getting it right. Given the rich well of material this film has, that's a shame. If a sequel gets made (as a post-credits teaser clearly implies), hopefully Sori and company don't spend too much time worrying about what to cram in for fans, and focus instead on taking the genius material they've got and finding a way to appropriately dole it out to fit the big screen.

After all, if you can't find space in your FMA movie for the pride of the Armstrong clan, what's the point?