Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
This is review contains spoilers
- Animation: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Soundtrack: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
One of the best-finished anime series of all time, but this time, it is its own remake. The remake, I’m told, is loyal to the manga story (which I haven’t read).
It’s no wonder Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood has goten a 9.1/10 score on MyAnimeList. The series is fun, has great action scenes and the story is just that good.
It has however some bits and pieces that I’m not sure onboard with. More on that later.
Comedy
I love how the drawing style changes from serious to blown-out kids drawing comedy without abusing it. It works very well and the voice actors are superb.
The ending is not great
I’m sorry to be that person but the ending is not great. The whole series plays quite down to earth. People die, the powers of alchemy are strong but they keep them in check. The guy with the flames, the ones with the rocks, each alchemist is somewhat believable.
Even the enemies are not overpowered, they can be killed, you just need teamwork to begin with (which they don’t have until the last 10 episodes of the 64).
In the last segment of the series, the main character goes full-on Son Goku and is practically immortal, the magnitude of his power goes over 9000 and it seems nothing can stop it. We get views of the whole planet and the dude’s aura taking most of him, the dude even triggers nuclear-like mushroom clouds.
They went too far.
Not only that but the way they win is just too simplistic. Sure, Hohenheim did somewhat plant that “seed” and reveal it at the last second, as well as the whole inverse transmutation circle. But in the end, what it was, was a simple fistfight that ended it. They needed to keep attacking, all of them, to lower his health bar (philosopher’s stones).
Al’s body
I felt a little bit cheated that the way to recover Al’s body was simply to give up alchemy. I respect that they didn’t want to use the stones, but those people were already dead, I think from all that you did saving the planet, you deserved to use them. What did Ed really lose? Not much. Becoming a State Alchemist was a consequence of losing their bodies and wanting them back. If on episode 2 would have done what he did at the end we would’ve had no series.
Sure, the bad man would have won but I don’t know… Not sure how I would have ended the series but I expected a little bit more. Maybe because we were waiting for it for so long.
Enough ranting, is it recommended?
Of course. I did enjoy it a lot and I might re-watch it next year. The episodes are very easy to watch and by the very end, they give us some nice fanservice. You always want more, though. To see how the characters continue their journey. Would have loved the story to continue.
