Full Metal Alchemist

[KLSymph]

Well, just finished the series, so before I forget it all, I'll do a review.

Distilled down to one sentence, FullMetal Alchemist is the story of the brothers Elric, who are on a journey to find the Philosopher's Stone.  The motives and backstory are quite complex, involved, and well thought out, for your average anime. Of course, since the second to most recent series that I watched was Galaxy Angel, I might not be in the best state of mind to judge that sort of thing.

In a nutshell, the world is a fantasy one, with technology up to your basic tank or so, but with the added inclusion of a magic called "renkinjutsu", alchemy. Studied scientifically, alchemy is the process of understanding matter, deconstructing matter, and recomposing it into another form, using some undefined (for most of the series) energy that certain people can harness through the drawing of alchemistic "arrays", which are beautifully drawn circular geometric diagrams of some nebulous significance that I don't remember anyone ever explaining. Anyway, they look cool, which I guess is the important thing. Alchemy is governed (supposedly) by some universal rules, the two most important being:

1) "touka koukan" - equivalent trade, the idea that to get something you must give something of equal value, and that if you sacrifice, you'll be rewarded in turn.

2) "jintai rensei" - human transmutation, or rather, don't do it. The idea being that nothing is of equal to human life, and so it is impossible to perform human transmutation, and if you try, you'll get... what's the word? Screwed.

The major premise of the story is that the Elrics tried to perform human transmutation, and got completely screwed for it. Now the two brothers are on the quest for the Philosopher's Stone, which legend says allows an alchemist to transcend the law of equivalent trade, to repair the damage that they had done to themselves.

The story revolves around the two Elric brothers, Ed and Al.

Edward Elric - Blond, golden eyed, and most importantly really, really short. In the process of messing with the universal laws and scrambling to fix things, he lost his right arm and left leg. Now they've been replaced by mechanical ones (auto-mail, artificial limbs, which can be controlled by a person because every severed nerve is connected to the limb, a rather advanced technology for a world whose primary transportation is still steam locomotive), hence the State Alchemist title of "Hagane no Renkinjitsushi", which is of course the title of the anime, as the first villain says REALLY LOUDLY at the end of the first episode.

Alphonse Elric - Giant hulking suit of medieval armor. Unlike Ed, Al lost his entire body, so Ed attached his brother's spirit to a handy suit of ye olde full-plate, which just happens to be not quite twice as tall as Ed. People usually think he's the "Full Metal" one of the pair, which fuels one of the running jokes of the series (the other being Ed's shortness). Often times Al is the more maturing acting of the two, but he's also the more emotionally vulnerable one sometimes.

There's also Colonel Roy Mustang, the "Honoo no Renkinjitsushi" (Flame Alchemist). Winry Rockbell, the childhood friend and auto-mail expert. The fellows of the military who are the Elrics' compatriots. And of course the villains, the Homonculi, who help or hinder the Elrics on their quest for their own reasons. And some other people I've already forgotten about. They're probably important somehow.

I liked a lot about the series. Visually, the artwork was clean and well done, and the special effects were impressive as such things go for me. The music was also excellent, with an emphasis, I think, on melancholic and moody orchestral or piano pieces (though to be fair that's the kind I pay more attention to). Storywise, it's complicated, but reasonably straightforward, and the questions raised get answered. There is a lot of darker themes in the story, though, especially as the series progresses, with emphasis on the morality of human sacrifice, war, what makes a human "human", and quite a bit more death than you'd expect, though at least the series isn't shy about putting this last thing in early. But that's nothing I would turn away from, so I can say that if they're going for emotional impact of death, they did it rather well. My impression was that it was just a little bit too frequent, though.

I also like the comedy. I wish there was more of it, but what's there was quite good in my opinion. The "short" joke isn't so funny after the first few times, but some of Roy Mustang and the military guys' scenes had me cracking up, a fairly uncommon occurance.

The only part that I wasn't so eager to embrace was the ending. I'd give the standard spoiler warning here, but since you're reading the Review Board, you've already accepted spoilers. Edit: Wait, no, I changed my mind. I'll let people come to their own conclusions about the ending. So far, only seven views on this anyway, so I'm taking this out.

I'm not one for number-out-of-total ratings, but I'd definitely recommend this series to someone, though it's something you should watch beginning to end to get the full effect of. I don't think you can watch it just for action scenes or comedy, since there's really not so much of either (the action is definitely there, but they're not really the centerpiece of the series). But if it's a good story with dark overtones, I think you'll like Full Metal Alchemist.

There's also a comic and I think a game(?) for FMA, but I haven't gotten my hands on either, so....

[DB]

Actually I think someone said the anime was created to plug the game, amazingly enough

I too just finished the series, and enjoyed it greatly.  Much drama, tight storytelling, little dashes of humor, decent villains and protagonists, make this one of the better things to come out in a while. Our heroes are flawed. The villains are villainous, yet human. You want them dead (they've regularly commited genocide of entire populations to achieve their goals), but feel sorry for them as well.

I will say one thing of special note that impressed me.  Some of the seeming 'filler episodes' in the early parts with throwaway characters are nothing of the kind. All but a thief in a humor oriented one appear again in one form or another (although the faux-Elric brothers popping up at the very end seemed forced.) But it has a feel that nearly every single thing that happens in the series is important, and you can say that about very few 51 episode things.  Bravo to the writers.

The Homonucli were interesting (welll, except Gluttony). Each one has his or her own motives for being there, and the secret behind many of them fit well into the plot.

I will sort of disagree with ksylph regarding Roy and company. I found them distracting to the main plot. Everyone but Roy, Hawkeye, and Armstrong, could be replaced with statues and you'd never know the difference. And frankly, Roy's whole "I wanna be the Fuerer and change the world the way I see fit' was dull. But then, I didn't really find him interesting.  HIs verbal fencing with Ed was good, but Roy wasn't interesting enough to merit his own scenes the way he did. Also what lay on the other side of the gate was... disappointing. It's a gimmick used many times before, and in this case I found it uninteresting.

The ending is definitely not what I expected. I daresay I was stunned. I will simply say much was left hanging, and leave it at that.  It was definitely interesting, and not predicitble.

Overall, I highly recommend this one. 8 out of 10. That's an incredibly high score for a series by my scale (Short OVAs and movies are about the only thing that can snag a 9 or 10)