Full Metal Alchemist - Anime Review

Welcome to my first ever anime review and the first non-gaming post on my blog. Today’s topic is the first Full Metal Alchemist anime. This series began in 2003 and the plot quickly starts to differ from the manga, simply because the anime went ahead of the source material as manga books take longer time to make. This review is going to be as spoiler-free as possible.

Fullmetal Alchemist centers around the Elric Brothers who are on their search for the Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary stone that is said to let the user ignore the regular laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. Originally, the two brothers; the younger brother Alphonse and the older brother Edward, lived together with their mother Trisha Elric in the countryside town of Rizembool. Their father, a great alchemist, has left a long time ago which made Ed hate him. When the brothers’ mom dies from a sickness, they decide to revive their beloved mother using alchemy, ignoring the fact that human transmutation is the most forbidden thing in alchemy. Despite the two gathering all the required materials to create a human body the transmutation ends up horribly. Not only was the thing they managed to create a hideous monster-like thing, it also cost Ed an arm and a leg and his brother Al an entire body. Luckily, Edward managed to bind Al’s soul into a set of armor and that way he didn’t disappear for good. The brothers’ current guardian Pinoko Rockbell has equipped Ed with artificial limbs called auto-mail so that he could function normally. The two brothers now made it their goal to return each other to their normal bodies. In order to do that they set out to the Central City to become State Alchemists.

The series consists of 51 episodes and a feature-length movie that takes place after the last episode of the anime. The plot always keeps the watcher exited and it never gets boring as more new things are unveiled all the time. The seemingly simple plot soon becomes deeper and darker, with many twists and things that will make you reconsider what you previously established. While I really love One Piece, there’s one thing that it does that I was happy to not see in FMA: very long fighting sequences/suspenseful moments that lasted multiple episodes. Fullmetal Alchemist manages to not do that and instead the plot never seems to just stretch out too much in one place.

Balance is a good thing and FMA does a good job at keeping a nice balance between being serious and being funny. The same episode can have Ed getting mad at people calling him short and a few minutes later something important or even heartbreaking can happen. There are a few really sad moments in the series with important characters being killed. Another great thing about the storyline of this series is the many smart quotes and thoughts. A common belief in that world is that you cannot gain anything without sacrificing something of equal value, hence why alchemist can only transmute something into something of “equal value”. There’s quite a few smart quotes in the series.

The characters themselves are really enjoyable, many of which are developed during the series. Most of them have their own unique personalities and things that make them easily recognizable. 

The animation in the anime is really good. Everything is rather well-detailed. The use of over-the-top anime animations is well used. I watched the series in Japanese with English subtitles so the voice acting was good, however, those small bits of the English dub that I’ve seen, surprisingly, had rather decent voice acting. The music is really amazing. It manages to settle the mood for any situation: sad, serious, scary, happy, you name it. The best part of the soundtrack must be the song Brothers (Bratja) sung in Russian. The openings and endings are nice as well. READY STEADY GO! is easily my favorite anime opening.

Overall, if you are unsure whether to watch this or the Brotherhood version, I’d say… watch both. The story differs quite a lot and has some really unexpected twists in the end that you may find good or bad. I personally though they were weird but okay. If you’re completely new to this series, I strongly recommend it.