ehalcomb: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) || Anime Review

Fullmetal Alchemist was the first anime that I ever experienced. I had seen American cartoons before but this was something completely new to me, despite its setting being European in nature. Amestris looked and sounded beautiful and the tale of two brothers trying to regain what they once had instantly gripped me. In 2009 there was an objectively better series called FMA Brotherhood based entirely on the original manga, but the original series will always have a special place in my heart.

Two boys try to bring their mother back from the dead and in doing so the older brother loses and arm and a leg and the younger brother loses his entire body; his soul bonded to a hollow suit of armor. They have since left the goal of resurrecting family and only now want to get their old bodies back using the Philosopher's Stone. This setup is what originally grabbed me when I was younger. Before this anime I hadn't experienced a show - a cartoon - to take itself as seriously as this from the get-go. No 'cartoon' before had dealt with death as serious and down to earth as this one. The darkest animated show that I had seen before this was Avatar: The Last Airbender who's themes drastically differ from this. From the first episode, I was on board with wherever Edward and Alphonse Elric would take me.

Fullmetal Alchemist's characters don't stop with the brothers. Winry Rockbell, an all-the-time-worried but strong mechanic acts as a shoulder for the brothers to lean on throughout the entire series. No matter what personal problems they may have, she serves as a constant reminder of not only where they came from but what they are fighting for. And then there's Mais Hughes. Though he is a fuzzy goofball at heart who tends to brag about his daughter, he is really an intricate investigator who will only answer to Colonel Mustang, his best friend. Mustang is quite the character. He is usually cool and collected but brash leader who tends to lead his troops into less-than-ideal places. He does have an eccentric side, however. Anyone who has seen the show remembers the "tiny mini skirts" ordeal. Mustang is one to not take anyone's crap, but still has a less serious side. I could go on for hours with each of the characters getting a paragraph a piece. Even the 'bad guys', the humunculi, have their own unique personalities, though not as expressed as the main protagonists.

'Bratja'. 'Brothers'. This song breaks my heart. No matter how or when I hear it, I cry. This song represents a bond. The bond between Ed and Al that, though clawed at, will never even scratch. This song is the lifeblood of anything Fullmetal Alchemist. The plucking of the strings create an intense melancholy and the russian choir singer starts out cold and distant but is picked up at the chorus for an uplifting feeling. No pun intended, this song is about brotherhood. Every single track in this anime is fueled by pure, raw emotion. 'Taboo' is the short, ominous theme about the sin that the brothers committed trying to bring their mother back and the repercussions of that action. On the flip side, 'Reunion' is just that. A reunion between family or friends. I don't have to even talk about why 'Koukai' is amazing. This soundtrack means so much to so many people for a great reason. The fact of the matter is that it is spectacular. To me, at least, no soundtrack to any movie, game, anime, or T.V. show has topped it or ever will top it.

For the time the visuals were fantastic but obviously don't hold up as well as Brotherhood's. I'm fine with this because the original FMA series does a much better job at one aspect of animation: lighting. Anything from Colonel Mustang's explosions to the dark corridors of Laboratory 5 look great.. This combined with the music makes a very personal experience for the viewer that cannot be forgotten easily.

Fullmetal Alchemist is something special to me and I've been ranting about it for four paragraphs now. This doesn't mean that it doesn't have flaws. I found that its main villain didn't have a whole lot of personality but they were sinister enough and their goals, though scattered, were good enough to keep me invested. Honestly, any other problems that I had with the series would be going into spoiler territory and comparing it to its 2009 re-adaptation which I don't think is fair considering, if I reviewed the 2003 series when it finished, Brotherhood wasn't even an idea in Studio Bones' collective consciousness. However, near the end of the show some of the characters introduced get a little ridiculous and I might even do a video comparing the two in the future. For now I don't think I should critique it any more than that.

Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is utterly spectacular and one of my favorite shows of all time.