Full Metal Alchemist

Anime/manga Title: Full Metal Alchemist
Reviewer Name:Cool Beans
Anime/manga Rating: 5/5
Creator/Artist: Hiromu Arakawa
Short Summary: In a world where the practice of alchemy has overtaken science, two brothers attempt to revive their recently deceased mother through the forbidden art of human transmutation. In the process Edward loses his arm and leg, and Al loses his entire body, with only his soul remaining which Edward manages to graft onto a hollow suit of armor. The brothers set out on a quest to find the legendary philosphers stone which they believe will allow them to be able to restore their bodys back to the way they were before. During their travels they learn just how badly the powerful art of alchemy has been abused throughout the world and find themselves pawns in several mysterious figures plans.
Manga/Anime status: Ended-51 episodes and 1 movie

Review:

Full Metal Alchemist is widley regarded as one of the greatest anime series to date and after watching all 51 episodes and its movie sequel it is not hard to see why. The series contains so many different themes and morality issues throughout its run that it makes it a challenging yet highly enjoyable watch. The series has its funny moments but not to the extent of the manga; it also is not as cartoony per se as the manga instead the anime remains more relistic setting which makes it seem a lot more serious. The anime follows very closley to the manga particually in the first half of the series however it deviates completly around halfway through its run.

The story paces itself comfortably, virtually every vital character is given a bit of back story and depth. Certain characters change and evolve as events unfold in fact character building seems to take precedent over story advancement at times. Everybody plays an important part in the story whether it be a few episodes later or even 20 episodes later. Its a nice little touch to the show that makes you appreciate the forward planning of the author and the directors of the series.

Funimation have done an excellent job with the dub of this series, the voices of all the characters are well cast. Al's voice actor in particular does an excellent performance as the little boy trapped in the hollow body of a metal giant and he maintains this performance throughout the series. There are no silly or over the top accents that plague so many dubbed animes, its one of the few animes i preffered dubbed version over the subtitled version, however as always its the viewers preference.

My only gripe with the series is the second half of the series and its overall ending, obviously the anime caught up with the manga releases when it was being produced and they had to come up with their own conclusion for the series,in fact the author herself requested that the anime writers do their own version of the story so she could concentrate on the manga version. While it does sort of go off on a bit of a tangent, it isnt overly off the rails it does seem a little bit. The seriousness of the series takes precedent over the comedic part of it and overall there is just something about the second half of the series that just isn't as good as the quality of the first half of the series. The ending of the series is a little bit open ended and for a sense of closure you have to watch the sequel film the conqeror of Shamballa which was a good film in its own right but there was a distinct feeling of fan service about it, the idea seemed to be to squeeze as many of the series characters into the film as possible with minimal impact to the films plot (which is a problem with a lot of anime tv based movies); it could have been better and again doesnt quite capture the magic of the first half of the series.

Recently another series has been released Full Metal Alchemist-Brotherhood, it is not a sequel to this series but more like another interpretation and it has a lot more comedic moments in it than this series much more like the manga, and it will follow the manga more closley than this series did. Both series are well worth watching as they are the same yet different it is best to think of this series as the more serious character driven approach to the story and Brotherhood as the funnier more action driven version.