It’s definitely worth watching, at least.

No-one is saying it isn’t.

But of course the manga “set the standard”. The parts of 2003 that were adapted from the manga, follow its writing.

The writing past that point, even if it had nothing to “follow”, and is since original, was by someone else. And in my opinion, you can tell. I watched 2003 without even knowing about Bortherhood, or the manga. And while I like it, I did feel it went “off the rails” in terms of the writing, charachter development and worldbuilding.

And that’s without knowing at the time that those feelings co-incided with the change in who was writing the story.

As a narrative, IMO, the original manga/brotherhood is a more internally consistent narrative, with charachter arcs that make more sense, and a world with greater implied detail.

That is simply down to the fact that when you pass the bat on writing the way the 2003 series did. People can tell.

Like two halves of a painting done by two artists, where one didn’t expressly try to mimic the other. And even when they do, it’s never the same.

The difference doesn’t make one or the other half worse, but unlike art where creators collaborate throughout, when you “draw the rest of the owl” the “new” artist will never be able to tie up every thread the original set up, and in ways that’ll make sense in the context of things only the original artist is aware of.