Wednesday, July 7, 2010

[Ended] Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood: Perfect Solutions


After 64 episodes intense struggle, the "real" story of Fullmetal Alchemist finally came to an end. This, in my opinion, is far superior than the original series (there probably would still be some debate about which you should call "original", maybe I should just call it the older version). In fact, I was never a big fan of the "original" Fullmetal Alchemist because I felt it dragged for a bit too long and it was just too out of whack towards the end. This series actually fixed all that.

The ending, I would say contains the "perfect" solutions to all problems that arose from the story. Literally, it solved every single problem that arose out of series...to a perfection. Personally, I'm not a big fan of perfect ending, in fact, I'm not even a fan of good endings (If you've followed my blog long enough, you'd know I'm big fan of tragic endings). But come to think of it, what really bothers me is the Deus ex Machina most stories use to get to the good ending. So in this case, because all solutions had some amount of foreshadowing, I'm actually liking how it ended. (Well, except that last philosopher's stone, but it doesn't really affected any of the outcomes, so it's ok).

Then there's that last part of the last episode, that is really one brilliant touch to put a period on an already perfect ending. Very well done.

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 95 (Totally)
Comedy: 90 (Pretty good for what they had)
Action: 97 (Great!)
Art/Animation: 90 (Not very fond of its art style, but I grew to like it)
Sound/Music: 90 (Very good)
Character: 98 (Best character development I've seen lately)
Plot: 97 (Well written)
Ending: 98 ("Perfect" solutions)

Re-watch value: 80 (Because it's very long, you could actually re-learn the story and might discover something new)

Overall: 96 - One of the best multi-season series I've seen

Recommendation: If you liked the "original" Fullmetal Alchemist, you should watch this, because this is what it intended to be. If you weren't too fond of the "original" Fullmetal Alchemist, you should also watch this, because it is far superior than the "original".
Basically, unless you really really really hated the series, you should watch this.

3 comments:

yoekix said...

this anime has taken the n1 spot in my top 10 anime of all times.

Brandon P. Otto said...

While I agree that Brotherhood tops the original in animation and action and plot complexity, I just never felt emotionally connected to the characters. If anything, I felt worse for the Homunculi than for Hughes...and that's bad. I feel like that's the one thing that, at least for me, the first series was better at: emotional power (and background music as well). But Brotherhood is still a good show.

The Evil Cat said...

Why is feeling bad for the homunculus a bad thing? Don't you think it is more powerful emotionally when not only you are emotionally attached with the hero, you also feel the pain of the villains?