Screenplay:
Hiroshi ŌnogiComposer:
Akira SenjuCast:
Rie Kugimiya, Romi Paku, Iemasa Kayumi, Shin'ichirō Miki, Unshō Ishizuka, Daisuke Namikawa, Fumiko Orikasa, Kazuya Nakai, Kenji Nojima, Kōichi Yamadera (more)Episodes(64)
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Fullmetal Alchemist (E01)
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The First Day (E02)
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City of Heresy (E03)
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An Alchemist's Anguish (E04)
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Rain of Sorrows (E05)
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Road of Hope (E06)
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Hidden Truths (E07)
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The Fifth Laboratory (E08)
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Created Feelings (E09)
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Separate Destinations (E10)
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Miracle at Rush Valley (E11)
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One is All, All is One (E12)
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Beasts of Dublith (E13)
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Those Who Lurk Underground (E14)
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Envoy from the East (E15)
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Footsteps of a Comrade-in-Arms (E16)
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Cold Flame (E17)
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The Arrogant Palm of a Small Human (E18)
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Death of the Undying (E19)
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Father Before the Grave (E20)
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Advance of the Fool (E21)
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Backs in the Distance (E22)
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Girl on the Battlefield (E23)
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Inside the Belly (E24)
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Doorway of Darkness (E25)
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Reunion (E26)
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Interlude Party (E27)
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Father (E28)
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Struggle of the Fool (E29)
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The Ishvalan War of Extermination (E30)
Plots(1)
FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST: BROTHERHOOD, following the brothers Alphonse and Edward Elric as they try to restore what they lost in a misguided attempt to bring back their deceased mother through alchemy - an incident that left half of Edward's body gone, replaced by mechanical prosthetics, and Alphonse's body gone completely, his soul inhabiting a suit of armor. Now, the two must embark on a journey to find the Philosopher's Stone, an artifact with the powers to bring back what they lost. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Reviews (3)
Don't watch the 2003 series, watch this one if you're deciding between them! (not to say that 2003's FMA was bad, not at all, it deserved 5 stars too). Those who knock points off this one just for saying it was terribly boring for them to watch the same thing again that they've already seen in the previous just seem ignorant to me. This runs entirely according to the manga (well, except for the first opening episode), and since the previous FMA also ran for a while according to the manga, it's a given that you’ll find the same things here. So, I just had to quench my burning thirst a little... :-) I'm having a hard time writing any kind of judgmental commentary on this anime, because I loved it from the top all the way to the 64th episode. The opening sequences, ending sequences – perfect. The characters, their personalities, the plot, the animation, the fights, the love, the tears, the tragic and the comic, I love it all here. FMA:B is just an affair of the heart for me. I'll never forget the goosebumps I got with some of the episodes. If I had to recommend someone his first anime, it would definitely be this one. Because for me, it's one of the best the anime scene has to offer. ^^
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One for all and all for one. When the original Fullmetal Alchemist ended with a spectacular final film, deviating from the manga source material, the entire series became an unforgettable fantasy ride and one of the best animes I have ever seen. Everything seemed concluded, and it seemed unnecessary to go through the whole story again with a different ending and a few new characters. And yet the first episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood eventually ended up on my screen, followed by another one. And another one. There was no turning back. The new perspective on the Elric brothers, homunculi, Central, or even the whole Amestris is grander and, above all, more complex. Father and the whole plot with the promised day is exactly one of the few things the original series lacked. And as I devoured the final ten episodes and every twist, even the smallest one, left me with my mouth open exactly where the creators wanted to take me, I realized that this was the anime I had been waiting for all this time. Epic fantasy, sincere confessions, breathtaking action, and a captivating soundtrack. There is no mood where I don't feel like watching at least one episode. The number one anime.
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If there's one thing I really don't like, it's the shonen offshoot of anime in serial form. But from time to time, I give some of the classics of the genre a try to see if I can't break it after all. And it was the younger of the Fullmetal Alchemists who came the closest to this, because I gritted my teeth and tried to take all the annoying "trademarks of shonen" at my mercy, which, even with the best will, is simply impossible. The protagonist behaves in such a way that even a person with multiple personality disorder acts consistently compared to him. Edward is now a single-minded genius, now a naive, now a cynical, horny bastard, now a good-hearted hero, now a wronged little kid, and a dozen other forms. And not within a saga, or from episode to episode, or in different scenes, no, within a single one, over and over again. The solidly staged dramatic moments are deliberately (however incomprehensibly) devalued by a force-fed childish element (initially in every episode, almost not at all during the final episode). Everyone is constantly proclaiming all their thoughts and plans to everyone in sight. The heroes have a macabre penchant for screaming their inner feelings at the top of their lungs, but the viewer sees them through the animation and understands how they feel from the action. And yet, they will still scream it to your face. In contrast to this, such details as the fact that it has a reprehensibly poorly constructed, curtailed and even slow start (it gets interesting around the eighth episode and picks up the pace even later), the fact that the same characters keep meeting each other randomly in every backstreet in the wide world, that it often jumps to an unnecessary plot detour that solves nothing and moves the characters nowhere, or that the main characters are completely in the hands of the writers in terms of their level of abilities. And so, without any logic, they are very good at what they do for a while, only to lose a scene later with one touch from a nobody, but in the end they win by being the best in the world again. That’s shonen for you. Anyway, by biting my tongue, I survived the opening and the "they're going to scream something blatantly obvious for one more minute, I'm going to blow my brains out" elements started to feel like pure guilty pleasure, and eventually Stockholm Syndrome kicked in and I was able to accept them enough to ignore them, to focus on what makes the show so damn good and what makes it a classic. And that is no small feat. Once it gets going, it's downright addictive, the final third is excellently paced, many of the characters are impossible not to like (except for Chang, who is unbearably annoying even by anime standards), the saga is truly epic, full of twists and turns and well grasped big themes, the steampunk-imperial-fascist world is so tangible that you care about its history and the particulars, the mythology and rules of alchemy are also solid, the action is playfully imaginative and frequent, the central brother duo is put on the back burner especially in the second half, giving space to more interesting characters, and there are many a powerful emotional moment. However, every time it looked like it would even begin to grow on me, it would unsportingly trip over its own feet with some of the above. It oscillates to its own detriment too much between "almost absolute quality" and "almost absolute garbage", but the former prevails more and more as time goes on, until it eventually takes over completely. So my allergy to shonen was not cured, but for once, with a proper dose of Zyrtec, it didn't stop me from enjoying it properly in spite of it.
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