In the world of Amestris, a world that’s been torn to shreds by war and oppression, there are those who wield unimaginable power... Alchemists. Warriors who bend the very elements to their will. They wield fire, ice, lightning, the ability to reshape the world around them at will... But their power is limited by the laws of Equivalent Exchange. There are some, however, who seek to overcome this barrier, and in order to do so, they seek the power of the Sanguine Star, a mythical stone that offers to shatter the limits of alchemic power. Ironically, those who seek the stone do often seem to pay an equivalent price- Tragedy.

For the Crichton siblings, seeking the Star is their only option. Separated as children after their parents were brutally murdered for their alchemical research, Julia was raised in the valley of the Milos, a holy nation whose land and people have been exploited for generations by a militaristic force seeking to profit off of the power they believe to be hiding beneath it’s soil. With her long lost brother Ashley finally by her side, and the infamous Elric brothers lending her their knowledge, the power of the Gods is finally within her grasp... And none too soon, as time is running out for the Milosian people. Will the Sanguine Star be enough to ensure her homeland returns to it’s former glory, or will the Star itself lead them to their downfall?

If we’re being honest with ourselves, the Fullmetal Alchemist franchise has never exactly looked, well, good. At least not in terms of animation. It’s been a while since I’ve seen either series, but I remember them both having their fair share of visual issues, the 2003 series with it’s constant budget dips and Brotherhood with it’s questionable direction and design choices. Studio Bones has never been the most consistent in terms of quality, but most of their productions(including both FMA adaptations) had enough high points visually to make up for their shortcomings. Compared to both of them, however, The Sacred Star of Milos looks like absolute garbage.

To be clear, it doesn’t ALL look bad. If nothing else, the set pieces were all mind-blowing in the level of depth and immersion that went into them. I’d love to see an artbook for this movie, just to see the concept designs that went into Milos, the underground tunnels, the military base, and even the train that the movie opened on. And speaking of that train, it was CG, and it looked awesome. The same thing goes for all the magical alchemy effects, and even the animation of magma in a volcano that plays a part in the third act of the movie. The other side of the coin, however, in the character animation, which doesn’t just look bad, it looks straight up unfinished at points.

One of the first terms I came up with to describe it is ‘Scuffed Miyazaki.’ At various points, it appears like they’re going for a Studio Ghibli level of motion in their characters, both in the many actions scenes, and occasionally even outside of them. There are moments where a character will be running, and instead of using a close-up and bouncing the picture like most studios would do, they tried to go full body, with realistic, dynamic movements... This is a high risk, high reward move, because while it’s incredibly ambitious and can look amazing when you pull it off, it can also wind up looking laughably cheap if you don’t have the budget to back it up. Hell, most of the new characters even look like a cheap attempt to imitate Ghibli... The Crichton siblings look like third rate Miyazaki protagonists, and even the Black Bats look like henchman pulled right out of something like Laputa or Nausicaa.

Thankfully, while the FMA franchise has never had great animation, it has always had consistently great music. Granted, most people say this while pointing to a long history of awesome opening and ending themes, this movie obviously doesn’t have those... But the soundtrack itself is perfectly up to par. Grand and cinematic in nature, with intense action themes and an over-all celtic aesthetic, some of the tunes sound like they were lifted from the show itself, and that’s not a complaint. For the ending theme, the only real stand-out on the soundtrack, they brought back L’arc-en-ciel, a band who’s known primarily for performing some of FMA’s most popular tunes, and while the song Good Luck, My Way doesn’t hit quite as hard as Ready Steady Go, it still works nicely.

The entire main voice cast reprises their roles here, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, they mostly haven’t missed a beat. Vic Mignogna will always be the iconic voice of Edward, and while I have some issues with the way the character is portrayed here, that’s not his fault. Maxey Whitehead is still acting as the uncannily perfect replacement for Aaron Dismuke, and while it does kind of feel like she’s just her to pick up a paycheck at times, that’s likely because of how little Alphonse has to do plot-wise. Same exact comment, but even worse, for poor Caitlin Glass. Her character is so pointless in this movie they have to justify her with a plot cul-de-sac, and she sounds like she damn well knows it. More noteworthy are the new additions to the FMA cast, Alexis Tipton playing Julia, Matthew Mercer playing Ashley and the surprise inclusion of Sentai’s Shelley Callene Black, all giving it their all and slotting well into the folds of the FMA universe. I’ll admit I’ve never listened to any FMA entry in Japanese, but with the dubs so consistently good, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.

Okay, so, let’s not beat around the bush over this; If you know who I am, then you know how I feel about Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. It’s practically my signature at this point. I don’t think it’s a bad show, I don’t even really dislike it... It has a lot to offer that the 2003 version doesn’t... But to me, it’s just not as good. I like it fine, but the amount of people throwing around words like ‘flawless’ and ‘masterpiece’ just because it followed the manga and had a more satisfying happy ending do kind of get on my nerves at times. If you prefer it, fine, but you can’t call it a masterpiece when the first 13 episodes had terrible pacing, the chibi slapstick flat out destroyed some of the more dramatic moments, and the plot just hands Ed and Al a pre-made Philosopher’s Stone to side step the moral dilemma over creating one.

Let’s put all that aside for now, however, because I already reviewed that show, it’s done and behind me, how’s the movie? Well, I’ll get the positives out of the way first, the action scenes are really cool. I mentioned earlier how amazing all the various set pieces looked, and they don’t let any of them go to waste. I’m particularly impressed that they were able to build a fun action sequence around a moving train, because let’s be honest, scenes like that are not uncommon in this franchise. They’ve done action scenes on trains over and over again across both FMA series, but this movie was still able to pull off something that feels new, and I don’t think the addition of flying terrorists is the only thing that sets it apart. There are chases underground, battles between super-charged alchemists on steroids, a fight in an active volcano, soldiers and terrorists getting mowed down in combat faster than you can say “Men are expendable...” From a pure action-movie standpoint, it’s pretty fun.

Unfortunately, it also has a plot, and that plot is an absolute clusterfuck. If you couldn’t tell from my plot synopsis, this story is NOT about the Elric Brothers... It’s mostly about the Crichton siblings, and the two pairs do not mix well story-wise. Sure they have some smart connections, both with their thematic correlation as a pair of siblings who were tragically separated by the dark side of alchemy, and the more direct way with their connection to the Philosopher’s stone... But by combining both pairs in one movie, they have to spend a LOT of time explaining both backstories. If you’re watching this movie at all, you probably have some experience with FMA, so you probably know Ed and Al’s backstory like the back of your hand, which makes it kind of tedious to hear it explained to us in multiple scenes... Yeah, we know what happened, get on with it!

To make matters worse, the backstory of the Crichton siblings is actually really interesting, but it feels like they spent so much time telling us what we already know that we didn’t get to SEE a lot of what happened them, which I frankly would have wanted to. The Elric brothers almost feel like their presence in the film was unnecessary, outside of their use as cyphers to have exposition explained to them, their presence in the action scenes, and Ed’s knowledge of how to make a Philosopher’s Stone, roles that could have very easily been reassigned. I don’t think the movie would be better without them, but they could have been tied into things a little better... Unlike the rest of the FMA cast, who are entirely here for fanservice. Roy Mustang has almost nothing to do, Riza Hawkeye has almost nothing to do, poor Winry has nothing at all to do outside of fixing a conveniently timed break in Ed’s automail arm. I don’t think I’ve seen this many fanservice characters crowbarred into a story since Advent Children, or Trigun Badlands Rumble.

Which is to say nothing of all the damage this movie just casually does to the lore of the franchise. It’s a pretty stupid movie in general, which, on the one hand is more or less expected in an action film, so you don’t complain when people grab onto things in midair without breaking their arms, or stand way too close to lava without getting burned. Action movies are allowed to break those kinds of rules, but Fullmetal Alchemist has it’s own rules, and last I checked, healing people’s injuries with alchemy counted as human transmutation. Last I checked, you didn’t need to ingest a Philosopher’s Stone in order to use it, and unless it was a fake like the one in Liore, it doesn’t vanish after being used. Last I checked, transmutation circles were two dimensional drawings, not fucking railway systems that only form the circle when viewed from a certain angle. Last I checked, an alchemist couldn’t just summon a pile of snow out of midair. If I'm wrong any of this, please correct me.

There’s a scene where Ed uses alchemy on a steel structure to create a working pulley, with enough rope to lower him down the side of a cliff. First off, how did he create rope from steel? How was he able to create such an intricate structure, with so many working parts, and if that’s really something he can do, why does he need Winry to fix his arm for him? Why do so many people know who the Elric brother’s are, but these same people are shocked to see Al being a suit of armor? Why are they so quick to realize how he got that way? How has all of this alchemy business, with the creation of a Philosopher’s stone in mind, not caught the attention of the homunculi? Sure it’s happening outside of Amestrian jurisdiction, but you’d think Father would have caught wind of the Sanguine Star at some point.

There are so many more points I can make, but most of them are spoilers, hell, a few of the ones I’ve already given are spoilers to some extent, but my point remains the same. This movie doesn’t make any sense. The plot is incoherent and full of over-ambitious twists, and the moral dilemma over creating a Philosopher’s Stone is handled in extremely immature fashion, with Ed being unreasonably stubborn over his values and the Milosian leaders going out of their way to avoid presenting a very real and understandable justification for their plans. Yes, Ed, wasting human life is bad, and the stone costs human lives, but these people are losing their own every day anyway, and they probably wouldn’t have to look hard to find volunteers willing to die for their nation. I’m not saying I’d be on their side, but there IS an argument to be made, and they’d have made it if this movie was more willing to grow up and explore the issue than just go strawman all over it.

All in all though, I just don’t know what the point of this movie was. I mean, okay, in a meta sense, I get it. It’s more Fullmetal Alchemist. It’s more of the characters we love who we’re not quite ready to let go of, being placed in a new situation, whether they fit there or not. People will pay for that. Hell, I’ll pay for that. And besides, if the first anime had a movie, shouldn’t Brotherhood get one too? Well, first off, Conqueror of Shamballah wasn’t great... It was pretty good at best... But at least it had a purpose. It wrapped up several loose threads and gave the series some closure, for better or worse. Brotherhood didn’t really have any loose threads, though. I mean sure, Ed and Winry’s entire romance was relegated to a time skip, I wouldn’t have minded seeing that explored, but this entire movie feels so removed from the FMA franchise that any reference to it could have been written out in disturbingly simple fashion.

It could have stood as it’s own intellectual property, and I’m not gonna lie, if they’d gone that route, it would have probably been better.

Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos was originally available from Funimation, but much like the entire FMA franchise, I’m pretty sure it’s out of print right now. It would be easier to find this review under the mountain of inevitable downvotes than find this film at a reasonable price. The original series and Brotherhood are available for streaming on Amazon Prime and Netflix, and the original manga by Hiromu Arakawa is still pretty easy to find stateside from Viz Media.

While it’s true that I strongly prefer the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist series to Brotherhood, they’re still both good shows, and I get the appeal of the reboot. Honestly, Sacred Star of Milos is the only piece of FMA media that I consider to be actually bad. It’s not a terrible movie, it’s nowhere near one of the worst I’ve ever seen, and like I said before, there are good things in it. The music and voice acting were good. The fight scenes were pretty cool. There was some promise in the story of the Crichton siblings, even if everything else felt like a generic retread of previous FMA themes. They gave Ed his hair outlines back. The problem is, it feels like a soulless cash-grab. The character animation is hideous, the plot doesn’t make any sense, and it just doesn’t feel like Fullmetal Alchemist. It doesn’t add anything to the franchise, and nothing is really gained from watching it.

I give Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos a 3/10.