600https://i.ur.com/rtVpJGQ.png Spoilerfree review Review in brief: Fullmetal Alchemist possesses a dark tone some amount of moral ambiguity mixed in with the usual forcefed blackandwhite morals and frequent drama within a shounen adventure core. Unfortunately despite its high underlying potential it chooses not to maintain the level of detail needed to keep its ambitious story consistent or preserve suspension of disbelief prioritizing its quota for mindless action and comedy instead. Review in full: 2003s Fullmetal Alchemist may reside in the shadow of its younger mangafaithful sibling FMA: Brotherhood but many still recommend watching it beforehand. It is said to feature a slower more digestible pace a darker tone and deeper thematics. I havent watched Brotherhood for comparison but I can attest that this anime does at least attempt to make good on these points but not in an effective manner. In fact the theme of this review will be that this anime does have many commendable aspects to it but its mixed with some wholly uninspired elements that result in a product with a frustrating lack of purpose akin to a gemencrusted plunger. Even from the very beginning problems are made apparent thanks to the decision to start off in the middle of the story. The first episode starts by saying close to nothing about the setting lore and simply throws the Elric brothers into action while bluntly stating their basic motive of get our old bodies back. It establishes rules for its world mostly pertaining to its alchemy and immediately proceeds to break them without explaining what allows it to do so. This occurs throughout the show but starting off like this makes it especially difficult to suspend disbelief as it keeps happening. Some of these rulebreaks are explained many episodes later but said explanations are often done quickly and handwaved away as though the anime doesnt want to explain itself. These faults in the storytelling appear in both visuals and dialogue. 400https://i.ur.com/P5kY8xD.gif Yep there was totally enough metal in the stone wall to make a castiron door complete with bullthemed decor. What are tailings anyway? The main issue with the visuals is that the explanations for many transmutations dont match up with their animations making them hard to believe. In the first scenario Edward is able to transmute both a woodandmetal spear and a large stone wall from sand with only the slightest visible disruption/reduction in said sand. Its animated as though these objects teleported into the scene rather than created from nearby materials the given explanation and given some of their compositions relative to the materials they spawned from they may as well have. A large amount of transmutations have this problem. Edward is also able to animate a giant stone statue early on without any known catalyst. This is given a explanation through dialogue but only at the very end of the show and even that explanation is questionable vaguely expressed in an attempt to cover multiple inconsistencies at once and something Edward had no idea about at the time. More to the point the show waited nearly 50 episodes before even attempting to explain where the energy needed to make a multistory stone statue walk somewhere else last I checked statues arent even made with functioning joints comes from in a system that supposedly requires equivalent exchange to function. In the end transmutations with this inconsistency are never directly questioned. They are only indirectly and partially answered in about 40 seconds of exposition. In spite of its exposition issues the story of Fullmetal Alchemist is actually quite involved and entertaining. Theres many intriguing details and events that build up who the Elric brothers are and what they do. At the same time theres also plenty of needless comedy and filler fights thrown in that detract from what is a touching journey at its best and make it a stale shounen slog at its worst. It is this disjointed method of storytelling that sees serious plot points explained in a convoluted way raising many questions such as the previously mentioned transmutation issues and forgetting half of them before a point is reached where the show feels comfortable with providing answers. Perhaps it would be more tolerable if these sidetracks provided a worthwhile experience but when half of the jokes are just Edward having a height complex Al being an empty suit of armor and half of the fights are mostly basic melee slugouts with minimal amounts of alchemy involved its hard not to see it all as being tackedon. 400https://i.ur.com/uxOV0r2.jpg 400https://i.ur.com/V7nPP5O.jpg Apparently using alchemy before its absolutely necessary is just too darn complicated for the writers Edward. The Elric brothers journey is by no means a walk in the park and they often find themselves getting involved with shady characters and sinister happenings. Sometimes rather complicated for a shounen anime issues that have no clearcut answer are brought up leaving the brothers and the viewer to find their own. At other times the show goes out of its way to be extra dark and forcefeed a particular moral to the audience not with reason but with shock value through gratuitous violence gore or emotional manipulation. Its frustrating because there are plenty of moments in the story where interesting subjects and events come up that practically beg to be mentally digested but theres also many moments where the show clearly expects your brain to be turned off. I consider dark edgy stories to be a guilty pleasure of mine but here it mostly felt unnecessary. In particular the ending emphasizes a lot of the problems Ive mentioned and raises many unanswered questions. Many actions taken beforehand such as motivations for some of the villains as well as some of the lessons the Elric brothers learn and grow from are rendered pointless by it and its not helped by all the meandering pointlessly melodramatic dialogue leading up to it. It also creates a lot of holes in the final explanation of the gate. I wont spoil the gate here as its a major plot element but I will say that the way the ending abuses the function of the gate by conveniently forgoing the conditions for it to do what it did just 2 episodes after explaining it was its worst aspect since so many key events are built up around it throughout the show. Out of all the times this anime threw its own logic to the wayside this last one with no hope of being explained is by far the worst. It all seemed to happen just to present sequel bait for a continuation the Conqueror of Shamballa that doesnt promise to answer those questions. All but one of the villains are overly corny predictable and simple. Many of the sinbased homunculi such as Gluttony and Envy can be entirely characterized by their names alone. Many of the villains in general are nothing more than psychopaths that know no other actions than gloat and kill because what else would they need to know to fight? and the amount of them means a lot of seeing the same cutout villain appear many many times with a different face and not just because characters dont always stay dead when theyre killed. Meanwhile just about every nonvillain character even the filler episode side characters can be defined by a sole desire they possess. This approach to characterization is both nonstandard and uniquely fitting to the underlying theme of the anime but these characters need more than a desire and a couple bulletpoint traits to be truly convincing. While there are some characters that receive decent development many of them end up dying partway through clearing room for much shallower characters that dont really develop. Its a shame because this clear effort to give as many characters a place in the story as possible even down to filler episode characters does end up making the world feel more alive but only at the high cost of some of the animes standout characters. 600https://i.ur.com/RKhOhrk.jpg Enjoy your favorite characters while they last. No really not all of them last. Outside of the lacking visual explanations the animation is fairly standard though with the caveat that it tends to go light on the visual effects. That said such conservatism doesnt add to its presentation. On a more positive note the animators did a great job with their use of color palettes to complement each scene. The sound is of considerable quality with a fair number of memorable settingappropriate music pieces and convincing voice acting I watched the Japanese version. The OPs are all quite nice as well so nicely animated at times that it makes the rest of the anime look worse. All in all its enough to make the setting feel fairly convincing and whole even though maps and regional history are rarely brought up. This isnt an issue however since the rest can easily be filled in with a gradeschoolers level of understanding on European history. I could say so much more about this anime even without veering into spoiler territory but it would all just be discussing more fantastic toppings on a cardboard pizza. I really want to like this anime and aside from the ending I dont regret any time I spent on it. Unfortunately every awesome thing it does is sandwiched between two unbearably uninspired elements. It makes me wish I could just pull out the meaningful parts of this show and throw away the poorly utilized shounen action comedy it was all glued to. Verdict: You would be hard pressed to find a person who truly dislikes Fullmetal Alchemists story with its interesting journey and the myriad of themes it at least attempts to explore. However that story is put at odds with the shounen conventions it was placed with and the experience is diluted to the point where its standout properties can barely be tasted within the watery and stagnant concoction it became. Related reviews: Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballahttps://anilist.co/review/3816