I write my reviews based off 5 elements: Story, Characters, Music, Animation/Production Quality and Impression. All of my reviews are spoiler free. This review is based on the subbed version
One of the all time greats when it comes to originality, pacing, planning and overall storytelling. Fullmetal Alchemist is the first (I believe) to take Alchemy as a main power and builds well upon that as well as crafts a well thought out world. The twists and turns don't feel forced and instead have been properly foreshadowed with just enough breadcrumbs to keep you guessing but are not inconceivable leaving the reader wondering what the hell is happening.
The main characters in Edward and Alphonse Elric are wonderfully written with clear motivations, strengths, weakness, past, and goals. The main characters are highly likable and most will find them endearing enough to become emotionally invested in their success. The supporting cast of characters is also extremely well written. There are few characters that have little impact on the story and the majority of side characters don't feel like they were introduced for the relevancy for just one arc.
The soundtrack while not amazing, is still very very good. The soundtrack does well to invoke emotions such as hype and sorrow during key moments. The opening and ending tracks were very well picked and I have a lot of those same songs on my playlists as they do well in both capturing the essence of the arc they are placed in and are absurdly catchy to begin with. That said, the OST doesn't have many memorable tracks in my opinion and doesn't have a "Lost My Pieces" like Toradora does.
Fight scenes are fluid and very well animated. I can't even seem to remember a scene where bones drops off in quality at all like some battle shounens. The biggest fight scenes always deliver and there are some fight scenes that are simply burned into memory due to how impressive the animation was. The voice actors were also an integral part in making sure all was packaged well. I never felt that there was any one character that had a voice that didn't fit them.
Because it is a "first of it's kind" type of show in which Alchemy was able to play a major role, if you ask any anime fan what show comes to mind when you say "Alchemy", as long as they have watched this series, this is the first one to come to mind 95% of the time. There are several key scenes that have stuck with viewers forever and no doubt there are memes and screencaps that live on to this day because of how memorable these moments were. It just goes to show that even years after watching, plenty of people still remember how they felt during those scenes and is a testament to how great this anime is.
Final Words:
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is for sure one of the greatest animes of all time. I've read a couple reviews on the series myself and one line I read in another review struck as ringing true: "Do not watch this as your first anime." As this is in the top 0.1% of all anime, if you set your expectations so high, you will be sorely disappointed. That said, there are other anime that stack up, however until One Piece ends, I can say I firmly believe this to be the greatest anime of all time. That said, this is currently the closest thing to perfection that I personally can find so I am comfortable with rating it at a 9.7 (97) as I will never given something a 10 unless I believe it truly has no chance of ever being beaten.
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