(Author’s Note: This review contains major ending spoilers that I ultimately decided to include despite my very positive opinion of this show, and I would very strongly recommend that you do not continue with this review unless you have already seen this show; go watch it right now if you haven’t, it is one of my easiest recommendations to date despite its very long 64 episode runtime and is more than likely to be worth your time investment. With that being said, if you have seen this show already, you are dead set on reading my full review beforehand or you truly just do not care about spoilers at all, then please enjoy, I’m very happy with how this one came out!)
Before I go any further, I should explain what exactly this show is in relation to the original anime adaptation that preceded it; in 2003, we saw the release of a 51 episode long shonen anime by the name of “Fullmetal Alchemist”, an anime adaptation of a manga series of the same name starring twin protagonists Edward Elric and Alphonse Elric, magic users within the show’s universe capable of alchemical transmutation; at the time in which the original anime adaptation was released, the manga wasn’t finished. We’ve covered shows that fell prey to this particular trap in the past and as such, you’ve heard the story before; a divergence between the canon of the original story contrasted against the wildly different narrative direction of the anime adaptation released at that time resulted in disappointment with what Studio Bones (the same studio responsible for the primary show we’ll be discussing in this review) put out. “Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood” came out from the same studio, 5 years after the original anime adaptation finished airing (which it did over the course of very nearly an entire year from October 4th of 2003 to October 2nd of 2004) as Studio Bones’ answer to the criticism they received regarding their first attempt at adapting the aforementioned source material, intended to be not only completely faithful to the source material, but a re-imagining of how they wanted to adapt the entire story that the manga of Fullmetal Alchemist encompassed. With that being said, I should clarify immediately that I have not seen the original adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist (barring a scarce few episodes of it I watched many years ago during my childhood), and I’ll be talking only about Brotherhood today; I realize that the fact Brotherhood needed to exist at all is something of a folly in-and-of itself, but that doesn’t have any bearing whatsoever on what Studio Bones managed to create this time around, save perhaps for the lessons they were able to learn from the mistakes they made before, regardless of whatever major shifts in creative direction the original might have taken when compared to Brotherhood that I’m not aware of primarily as the result of being unwilling to make an ultimately silly time investment in something that I would only be watching for the sake of comparison and not enjoyment, which when taken and applied to a show 51 episodes long is not something worth doing even for a critic like me who is interested in the lessons he can learn from those kinds of experiences. Contrast that against Brotherhood, a 64 episode long show that I initially chafed against and had a hard time getting into primarily because I am someone who likes a complete story to be told to me in a reasonable amount of time, a critic who is less concerned with monetary investment than time investment partly because that is the concern my readers will likely have as opposed to the payments they might be making to lackluster streaming services and primarily because as I get older and older I find it extremely difficult to simply sit and focus on something for a long time without being distracted by anything else. Let’s be honest here; you have at least heard of Fullmetal Alchemist before if you have even so much as a passing interest in anime or modern day pop culture, it is consistently referenced as one of the greatest anime of all time and took a good 14 years to finally be dethroned from its place atop the list of highest ranked anime ever released by Sousou no Frieren (another show I plan to eventually watch). That made me skeptical right from the outset, not as much because of my own tendency to prefer niche culture to mainstream pop culture though that was admittedly a factor, but primarily a tired, jaded acknowledgment I made from the beginning that “this show will probably be good, but I don’t think it will be good enough to justify its length”, basically “I’m sure this show is fine, but I’ve probably already seen better”. It is easier than I ever assumed to eventually have so many different yet similar narrative experiences, whether they be shows, games, books, movies, or whatever else that you start to fall out of love with the notion of understanding why they were made or the message they are attempting to deliver, because the message is so often the same no matter how different or even how effective the method is which an author or director is using to deliver it; basically, if Mistborn is about hope and the strength of the human will, how effective will another good show be on me if it’s about the exact same thing? Do I really need to be told twice, or is that simply a re-treading of the same familiar territory too tired to make me care for the second time? Well, let’s review—literally. The first thing that stood out to me about Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is its pacing, although I’m getting a little ahead of myself actually—the real first thing that stood out to me on my first attempt at watching Brotherhood a little over two years ago (around the time when I was initially promising a review for the show would soon be released) was the show’s overall attitude, its attempt at telling a serious story while simultaneously being consistent in its insistence that you not take that story too seriously at all times, capitalizing on comedic timing in order to periodically dissolve its tension and try to establish itself as something of a lighthearted adventure story more intent on having fun than making a convincing argument as to what its writers are driving at and what you as the viewer are there for; at least, that’s more or less the way in which I took the show at the beginning. I made it about 14 episodes in before losing my focus and my interest, then pivoting to something else, and it was primarily because I went in with the wrong expectation, and ultimately allowed that wrong expectation to make me feel as though my time wasn’t being respected; I viewed the show as a slow burn that couldn’t hook me early and didn’t deserve my attention over the course of its entire 64 episode long runtime because I made the worst possible mistake you can make with any adventure story—I was more concerned with the destination than the journey. Basically, I was, in fact, taking myself too seriously; I wanted to watch Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood not even because I wanted to be critical of it, or because I wanted to experience it, but because I wanted to say that I had experienced it. So with that in mind, let’s start breaking down the experience that I just finished having with it an hour ago at the time of writing. As I mentioned before, the pacing immediately stands out as being absolutely excellent; every episode is interesting, there’s always something grabbing your attention on the screen not necessarily because it is all a part of the writer’s grand master plan to change your life over the course of 64 episodes’ worth of subtext, but instead simply because of the way in which it is presented and the context it is given—the presentation in particular is beyond just amazing, it is some of the best there is, period. Gorgeously hand-drawn animations, incredibly awesome art design, stellar cinematography, epic choreography, excellent sound design and an overall consistently strong direction combined with the killer soundtrack composed by Akira Senju (which I strongly recommend listening to in isolation after finishing the show) make Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood an absolutely riveting moment-to-moment experience right from its outset, and once I was willing to sit down and accept what I was watching for what it was rather than expecting something that would be affecting purely by virtue of it being unique, I realized that the show uses comedy not as a tool for trying to downplay what is happening to its characters in its world, but instead for driving home the outlook they have on the story as it unfolds around them; the tone changes in accordance with that outlook, and the show takes advantage of that by telling a story not about the twin protagonists Edward and Alphonse Elric, but about a huge cast of equally important central characters who are all experiencing the events of the story through entirely different lenses and with entirely different goals in mind, with some aligned and others opposed. As you continue watching, you start to pick and choose the particular plot threads and character arcs that matter the most to you and latch onto those as your primary hook, and the show uses that attachment in order to trap you in the web of intrigue that its weaving and suspend your disbelief; it recognizes that some of the actual plot elements are a little absurd and a little bit over-the-top, that its magic system is not actually that complex and its rules not that strictly defined, that its world is not necessarily deep enough that a viewer will be possessed to read pages upon pages of background and history, but instead of investing time in trying to explain all that away, they make their investment in getting you to buy into the story anyway. As an example, do we ever get an explanation as to what the secret of flame alchemy is? No, because it doesn’t fucking matter; Mustang is the flame alchemist, he was given the secret of flame alchemy by his master, that’s all the explanation you need, fill in the blanks yourself. And then you do, because by that point in the story you are willing to accept anything as long as it isn’t overtly stupid or contrived for the sake of something in contrast to the show’s overall narrative focus. You care about Mustang, therefore you care about everyone else and everything else unfolding around him by association, and by that point the show is primed and ready to start using its incredibly strong presentation as a weapon, beating you over the head with genuinely shocking scenes of gruesome graphic violence, body horror, genocide and psychological horror—which, by the way, is what many of the show’s primary themes and a lot of its imagery actually boil down to, if you were curious. I was having overt reactions to a lot of these scenes over the course of Brotherhood’s entire runtime of roughly 25 to 26 hours not because of the visual alone, but because of the context behind the visual; scenes that are violent and shocking and horrifying not simply because they’re graphic, but because my investment in the world in which the story is taking place grounded them and made the shock factor palpable, so much so that over the course of the final third of the show I was sitting tensely on the edge of my seat completely absorbed in what I was watching. Some of the villains are over the top, but the actions they take and the people affected as a consequence of those actions set against the backdrop they’re acting upon makes them feel truly threatening. Some of the heroes are over the top, but the things happening to them, the things we see happening around them that they never witness, and the way in which each of them reacts differently to those things make them feel believable as people and not just caricatures or role models. The show does a really excellent job at being subdued and detached specifically for the sake of provoking a reaction; it shows you what’s happening in the context of its story and its world without playing it up for the camera, and then leaves you to rationalize it all for yourself. And the best part is that at the end, when you’re sitting down to absorb everything that you just watched, you realize that actually, none of the characters are written all that deeply because most of the meaning behind what you learn about them and what you see them go through is inferred by you; their depth is an illusion you create for yourself based on their choices, their overt reactions and how other characters within the narrative react to them. Presentation; that’s the secret weapon Studio Bones utilizes in order to manipulate you into humanizing its characters yourself, and because of that each and every individual step they take into the intrigue they wade through over each of its many individual episodes becomes defining, and you are compelled to view the ending the show eventually comes to as not just an epic conclusion or an excuse for delivering a ham-fisted message and neat little life lesson in its last few parting lines, but instead through the individual lenses of the characters experiencing it as its happening, and it is precisely for that reason that it is impactful. Not because the day is saved and the villain is thwarted, but because the question of “why” that you ask yourself over the course of the show’s entire runtime finally has its answer re-contextualized by that conclusion; why were you invested? Why did you choose to view the characters the show depicted in the way that you did? You related to them and made an attempt to understand them through your own unique lens just like you would do for friends you make in real life because you saw what was happening to them and what they did about it, but the closer you got to seeing it end, was it because you wanted to see them happy or because you wanted to see them face adversity? I noted numerous times over the course of my viewing experience that I would’ve liked to see the writers more willing to kill off major characters that we ultimately see make it to the end of the story, particularly those who I personally cared about the most, and the reason was my desire to see the potential capitalized upon of using those deaths to make what happens to the characters who live more meaningful, to re-contextualize where those characters wind up at the end following the deaths of those close to them. But ultimately, they didn’t have to do that in order to make their narrative compelling or believable; they chose to let those characters see the ending of their story, then at the very end when the villain is finally made to face the music and confront their failure, when they’re screaming into the void questioning why God abandoned them, the answer God gives them is “Because you don’t believe in yourself.” The villain is abandoned by God because their motivations; to live freely, to be perfect and understand everything in the world, were never honest in the first place; they never believed it would be possible to fulfill that ambition, and right there when you finally see that confrontation between Homunculus and God beyond the gate is when you finally get that both the hero and the villain of the story are the same; in other words, the world, in other words, the universe, in other words, Truth, in other words, God, in other words, All, in other words, One, in other words, yourself. They say it right at the start, and throughout the entire show you’re sat there questioning what the Truth actually is only for the show to turn right back around and question you as to whether or not you see yourself reflected in the TV screen while God opens the gate of truth and casts the Homunculus into the abyss. And the genius in it is that it isn’t necessarily an attack on your character, especially not as an individual, but instead an acknowledgment the show makes as to how the motivations of both its antagonists and its protagonists relate to you as a viewer. It is no secret at this point that I have been dormant for a long time, and it’s partially true that a lot of that time has been spent on other hobbies and interests of mine. It’s also partially true that my lack of written material has been as the result of a lack of inspiration courtesy of the jaded uninterested bent I mentioned struggling against earlier. But it’s in largest part because I spent too much time questioning myself. I’m writing this on the 24th of December, Christmas Eve, the same night that I spent binging the last 13 or 14 episodes of this show just a few short hours ago. You may know that I’m something of a car enthusiast; I drive for a living because I’ve liked driving since I was about 17 years old, and I’ve been doing so professionally for 5 or 6 years now. Now, part of why I like driving is simply because the act of driving itself is fun, but I became interested in driving for another reason entirely; the feeling of being free. Driving to me was freedom, but as I got older, I started to realize I was mistaken, and I became obsessed with trying to claw back the freedom I thought I had. My dream ever since I was a child was to have my own space, to live on my own, do whatever I wanted to do and make all of my decisions for myself, and when I started to drive was the very first time I actually felt like I could do what I wanted to do. I got to live on my own just like I wanted, but somewhere along the line I wasn’t satisfied with just that. So I employed countermeasures and drove with the goal in mind of spiting the ones who wanted to take my freedom away. And then, two years ago to the day, I nearly died—I sent my car sliding off the side of a mountain (I won’t go into detail regarding exactly how for the sake of my pride). I was miraculously uninjured and I was the only one involved in the accident; I distinctly remember struggling for a solution other than calling emergency services to help me, and ultimately I was too high up in the mountains to find reception and was forced to try and make my way back down to civilization on foot, eventually being saved by a passing car before turning into an ice cube; and that only came about because I summoned enough willpower to actually do something other than lay on the trunk of my wrecked car and question my life choices that night. I have spent the last two years trying to come to terms with the reality that taking responsibility makes me happier than being free; that, to me, is what Fullmetal Alchemist is truly about, a 26 hour long epic exploring the philosophical notion that even if you were given the opportunity to obtain true freedom, seizing that opportunity would mean sacrificing everything important to you, and I found not only the conclusion we see during the second to last episode but also everything else which happens over the course of the show’s narrative viewed through that lens having a really profound effect on me because of that. If you asked me to describe the worst feeling in the world, it would probably be “not being able to trust the words coming out of your own mouth”. If you asked me to form that feeling into a thought, it would probably be “Do I believe in this just because I want to believe in something?” A while ago when I was spending time trying to write my own original book, something I’d still like to do someday, I stopped writing after penning the line “making rationalizations is the only thing I truly believe I’m good at” and realized that I had somehow managed to probe too deeply into my thoughts even by the standards of what you’re reading now. Part of the reason for my stream-of-consciousness writing style in these reviews is probably because at any given point in the script, I could choose to say two entirely different things and honestly mean either of them, and if I allow myself to think of too many, I’ll simply never say anything at all. I had the opportunity to attend an art exhibit showcasing the work of a very skilled friend of mine going over such themes of perceived inhumanity—”self-perception”– not long ago (and bear with me because I recognize it sounds absurd to say I attended a friend’s art exhibit, it wasn’t half as ostentatious as what you’re probably imagining), and what stuck out most to me was the notion of using that kind of purely visual artwork as a substitute for a direct written or spoken statement; don’t get me wrong, there are lazy so-called “artists” out there who will mark a canvas with their painted palm-print and claim it represents the depths of the melancholy within their soul, not to mention those willing to play along with them by dubbing the palm-print a stroke of cultural genius, and I’m sure that of all people you might expect me to have the opposite extreme opinion. Why shouldn’t you simply say what you mean and leave it at that? Well, at risk of exposing myself as the hypocrite that I am, I believe it is both the visual art made for the sake of showcasing what can’t be spoken aloud in combination with the words inspired by that visual art which results in genuinely great and impactful storytelling; basically, if you were to ask me to do something as reductive as explaining what art is in simple terms, I would say “it’s something that can only exist because we’re all the same, but have different ways of expressing ourselves” instead of saying “it’s something that can only exist because we’re all different”. There’s no expression if there’s no reference, after all, and of all the stupid things to believe, the notion that “bad art doesn’t exist” is one that I as a self-professed critic categorically reject. It’s precisely because bad art exists that I can call Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood a god-damn masterpiece; excellent writing, pacing, plot structure, characterization, cinematography, animation, artwork, art design, music, sound design, choreography, voice acting, and a unified direction bringing each of those individual elements together in such a way as to lend the show a strong sense of identity among other things I’m probably forgetting and would spend too much time talking about anyway make this show one of my easiest recommendations since Re:Zero; beyond that, this is a show you absolutely need to watch if it interests you even vaguely and that you will more than likely enjoy even if you have no interest in it at all to start with. Whether or not it’s popular is utterly irrelevant, and if we’re being honest, it’s not as though you’re guaranteed to have a profound life changing experience—in fact, the chance of that happening is probably small and entirely dependent on you as a viewer, and I would be lying if I were to claim that my experience was truly “life-changing” or even “profound”, but it was deeply affecting, inspiring and introspective. But forget that and simply acknowledge the show for its ability to entertain; in that regard, it is easily the best shonen anime you’re ever likely to watch, and that alone is enough for most people for good reason, not to mention a big part of what the show leverages against you in order to make the case for why you should invest yourself in its storyline and think about what you’re left with in the aftermath of your viewing experience. Anyways, as per tradition, it’s 11:30 AM. I’m gonna go pass out now.