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This post is by guest writer Sam Gubitz.
Off the Rails
This is the second half of my review for Fullmetal Alchemist (2003). As stated in the first half of my review, this is the original anime adaptation of the manga of the same name. This show aired as the manga was still being published, resulting in a widely diverging plot. While Part 1 of the series is fairly similar to the source material up to that point in the plot, this second half is where things take a sharp turn away from any source material. As such, without any source material to draw from, the writers of the show were on their own, and it definitely shows at times. While it’s occasionally very strong, the moments when the writers were not at their best are obvious, leaving me conflicted as to how to feel about this series at the end of the day. Finally, this series has one more caveat in the form of its ending, which is not in the series itself; rather, a separate anime film serves as the proper ending to this series.
With these caveats in mind, I had to lay out some rules for myself in crafting this review. First, while major spoilers are avoided for this second half of the series, I had to include spoilers from Part 1 for the purposes of this review. So, if you haven’t read Part 1 yet, please try to finish that before reading this review. Second, the film will not be reviewed in this section; rather, it has its own short review you can check out if you’re interested.
Episodes 25-32 Review
The first act of the second half of Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) starts off on a very mellow note, perhaps to its own detriment. After coming off the high note that preceeded this act, I was expecting things to slow down a little bit; after all, maintaining high octane excitement all the time is neither desirable nor achievable in many respects. But I hadn’t anticipated the whole series’ momentum forward to come to a grinding halt when we’re first introduced to the brothers’ teacher, Izumi Curtis.
Her introduction is done haphazardly, at best, with far too much emphasis on flashback after flashback to reinforce morals and lessons we’ve already learned throughout the series so far. Now, there’s nothing wrong with flashbacks when they’re used as narrative tools to further the plot, but these feel like they’re doing the opposite and they’re downright confusing at times. If you’re going to have a flashback episode, then do it. Don’t go halfway and bounce back and forth between current day and flashbacks; it’s just jarring, especially when the cuts between the two aren’t very clear.
The series easily hits one of its best emotional high notes here.
However, the saving grace of this long story arc is the introduction of a mysterious boy who our protagonists know almost nothing about at first. Interestingly enough, this boy’s incessant crying, whiny voice, and hyperactivity were nauseating to watch at first, but I knew there had to be more to the character. And boy, was I pleasantly surprised to have my original assessment proven dead wrong. When the boy’s fate becomes the subject of a five-way standoff between our various major players, including a new military antagonist Frank Archer and the rogue homunculus Greed, the series easily hits one of its best emotional high notes.
While the animation here seems a bit lazily done, the showdown itself isn’t the highlight of this act; rather, it’s the mysterious boy, now christened “Wrath,” that steals the show. I was pleasantly surprised when he turned heel and, suddenly, all the things that deeply annoyed me about his personality only episodes prior were horrifying strengths. His crying gave way to cruel laughter, his whiny voice became more snake-like and nasally, and his hyperactivity made an unpredictable villain. And I was enthralled all the while. Seriously, even when I thought the series had taken a turn for the worse, it surprised me and even played around with my expectations, and that deserves a heap of recognition.
Episodes 33-35 Review
There isn’t much to say about this very brief act except that it’s rather magnificent from start to finish. It cleans up some loose plot threads while pointing us in a direction for the ending of the series, all while delivering a very satisfying story for its main focus, the various homunculi that populate our lists of antagonists. The only real critique here is that I wish it were longer, and that’s hardly anything at all in a 51-episode series like this.
After capturing Alphonse in an attempt to gain what he sees as a truly immortal body, Greed is drawn into conflicts with not only our protagonists, but the military and homunculi as well, making for some of the series tensest and flashiest fights thus far. It’s fascinating to watch this seemingly unbeatable monster of an antagonist be dragged through major fight after major fight, all the while displaying his various weaknesses, both material and personal.
These two homunculi forced me to confront my conflicted loyalties.
Lust, meanwhile, receives similar treatment in a flashback-centric episode that’s as beautiful as it is jaw dropping. While the execution of the episode was again, poorly done through these rapidly jumping cuts from present day to the past, I really couldn’t complain once I had reached its conclusion. Watching the pain in these two homunculi’s faces forced me to confront my conflicted loyalties; on one hand, Greed and Lust are bad guys, but at the same time, they’re not the bad guys in this story. Perhaps it’s just another testament to the writers that I was able to empathize with two characters so decidedly inhuman.
Episodes 36-42 Review
This act starts out on rocky ground, with little of the plot moving forward at all as pieces are moved into position around the board, so to speak. The start of this act, if anything, feels transitional at best. However, it really kicks it into high gear in its second half, bringing much needed closure on several storylines, including some of our longest running ones like Scar, Kimblee, and Leore.
The filler episodes feel out of place.
To start things off, a revelation of Winry’s parents’ killers is completely derailed by Ed and Al’s own revelations that set them off in the direction of Leore as Winry heads back to Central City to confront Mustang. However, that too is derailed by two oddly placed filler episodes featuring Colonel Mustang’s team and a brotherly spat between Ed and Al. While the episode featuring Mustang’s hijinks is humorous, and the following episode reveals the terrible identity of Sloth, these episodes feel out of place. And a late reveal of King Bradley’s true motives is uneventful, as the series had been hinting at his identity since the start of the series. But, it was successful in placing the final pieces on the board.
When those pieces finally settled into place in the battleground that is Leore, it’s fascinatingly brutal to watch everyone slug it out with each other. As an interesting web of allies and enemies collide all at once, a three-way battle between Scar, Alphonse, and Kimblee comes to a fittingly brutal end for everyone involved, all the while Edward is forced to confront his biggest regret in the form of Sloth and Wrath. These battles are interesting to watch, if only because they tie up so many plot points all at once. And as tensions over the resulting Philosopher’s Stone mount between the splintered homunculi, the military, and our protagonists, the resulting chaos is a joy to behold; you literally have no idea how things will play out when there’s so many different actors all vying for different things at once
Episodes 43-51 Review
The final act of Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is interesting because, well, it’s not really the final act at all. For whatever reason, the end of the series is not actually the end of the story — the movie is. Therefore, the events that take place during this final part of the anime feel incomplete because, for all intents and purposes, they are. It seems to me, especially given the rather poor execution of the anime’s much-hyped revelations, that the show’s creators thought they had more episodes to play around with and were unaware that there was even supposed to be a movie to end things; that’s just the feeling I get from how rushed the final episodes are and how they don’t end much of anything, really.
I was disappointed by the sudden reveals, all smashed into a single episode.
The first real problem of this act is Hohenheim’s sudden appearance in the show; he literally pops up out of nowhere. This by itself isn’t problematic, but what follows is just poor writing. When you build up an entire series on a set of mysteries or secrets, you need to have satisfying conclusions to those secrets. The problem with Hohenheim is that he acts an exposition delivery device for the entire series, unraveling all of its hidden depth in a single episode. And the fact that these are secrets that had been built up for dozens of episodes now makes matters even worse; in fact, it’s so sudden that it cheapens the reveals entirely and I was left thoroughly disappointed by the whole affair.
From here, with all the chips on the table, the final events of the series proper move into action in an attempt to tie up all the loose ends. Unfortunately, not all of these loose ends are tied up so neatly. Case in point, Shou Tucker makes yet another return and, by this umpteenth time around, he had lost all of the terror he used to strike in me; I felt sorry for him more than anything else. But at least his return wasn’t as bad as Frank Archer, who is quite possibly the most unintentionally laughable character in the series — it’s just bad.
But, perhaps the most insulting conflict of these final episodes was Ed and Al’s over their “mother,” or Sloth. As the two bickered over the nature of what it means to be human, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes while Alphonse defended a homunculus pretending to be his deceased mother. As with pretty much every major conflict centered around Alphonse, I just didn’t care and I wanted it to end as soon as it started; perhaps that’s the greatest weakness of this anime in my eyes. I know his heart is in the right place almost every time, but I tire of Al’s morality arguments and prefer Ed’s pragmatic approach to problems. It may be preference, but I think there’s a serious case to be made that Alphonse is the weaker character.
Meanwhile, as Mustang leads a coup d’état against Bradley, we finally get some sense of reconciliation between Mustang and Ed, or at least begrudging respect. And Mustang’s final showdown with Bradley is as flashy as it is satisfying, giving us one of the finer fights in the series, if not one of its most poignant.
While the final showdown between Edward and the homunculi’s “master” turns into more of an interesting philosophical battle than a battle of alchemy, I was downright befuddled by the last few “twists” in this series; they’re really something you need to see to believe. I don’t know whether or not to call these twists in the plot a good thing or a bad thing though; they’re mostly random and seemingly out of nowhere because there had been exactly zero foreshadowing to this event. Not to mention, they lead to a very unsatisfying conclusion, largely because it’s not the end of the story at all.
Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is not a perfect anime by any means, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its merits. And while it’s easy for many to pass it off as illegitimate in the face of the Brotherhood anime, this series has some serious strengths that shouldn’t be treated lightly. This second half delivered some moments that I don’t think are easily forgotten and characters that deserve to be remembered, even if some of them aren’t necessarily “canon.” Even so, as my review shows, the show has some serious problems that drag it down occasionally, like emotionally-flat conflicts and jarring flashback sequences that derail proceedings. Ultimately, this is a conflicting anime as it seems hell-bent on undercutting itself at every turn; even so, when it delivers, it’s something special.
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