Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is the anime that most people that consume this media are likely to have both watched and highly appreciated. There are varying reasons for which this series has reached critical acclaim, but rather than focus on every one of the reasons for which every single person and their dog think Brotherhood is great, I’d rather focus on what I consider to explain why I consider Brotherhood to be the best show to introduce anime as a form of media to a new audience.

First let me give you the basic premise: In the world of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, everyone is capable of transforming the matter of any object into something else as long as they follow and understand the Law of Equivalent Exchange: in order to gain something, one must sacrifice something of equal value. This means that as long as you are capable of understanding the structure and composition of an object, you can harness Alchemy as a skill and are pretty much capable of doing anything your imagination allows. Certain forms of Alchemy are more complex than others because they require more knowledge and capability from the user. One of the most complex is Human Alchemy, which brings me to the Elric Brothers, our main characters. As a group of normal kids growing up into a rural area of this world alongside their mother, they eventually lose her at an early age. The kids then vow to bring her back using alchemy, and set as their goal to gather enough knowledge to attempt to bring her back. Eventually, they gather enough knowledge to attempt to bring her back, but due to the fact that this is a complex process, they didn’t have all the information required and fail to bring her back. Even worse, one of the brothers loses some of his body parts, while the other loses his entire body, but has his soul affixed to a suit of armor in an attempt to save him. They survive the attempt and realize their efforts were futile after experiencing this colossal failure. After understanding that regardless of their intentions, there are limits to what they can do they set as a goal to regain their bodies and to continue moving forward.

One of the most prevalent elements in anime is the intensity of the goal its main characters have and how hard they attempt achieving it. Be it they are happy go lucky characters that want to be acknowledged by their peers, be it they want to challenge the world to change it for what they consider it to be better, be it they want to improve their life and current circumstances, almost every well received show possesses someone that single mindedly follows their goal with a laser eyed focus. Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood still has that element instilled in its core but in a more grounded manner. One of the main differences in execution is that the show doesn’t just present you the goal of the Elric brothers, but instead makes you understand what caused them to pursue it, how they plan to achieve it, who they are in the process and why they chose this path. And that was all done by showing how they failed to achieve their goal prior to starting pursuing their path. They fail at reviving their mother, because they themselves did not understand how to achieve their goal. They did not understand the fundamental value of the show, that being “in order to gain something, one must sacrifice something of equal value”. It is not only applied in a mechanical sense in the show, but also in an existential sense. In less pretentious terms, this means that the higher the value of said something, the harder it is to obtain, because you will also have to lose something that you value. Since the brothers did not understand what they are doing and what they were trying to obtain, they fail their journey. And this shows to the viewer, that in this story, the characters can fail, and that regardless of how much they intend to achieve their goal, they will have to work hard and sacrifice things they value to achieve what they intend to achieve. The goal of the Elric Brothers is not an idealistic worldly ambition that challenges reality. It is merely something personal, to once again live normal lives, unshackled by their past. So one of the highest appealing elements of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, is how well in its execution it has managed to portray the intent and journey of the characters it is presenting.

Another highly prevalent element in anime is the world it tries to present and all of the fantastical elements existing in the story. Anime tries to intrigue the audience with its world in a lot of varying ways, be it by creating worlds where a lot of threats exist and adventure is lurking at every corner, be it the laws of the world allow the characters to do incredible feats and that are impressive to watch, be it the world is just different from our own in ways that are interesting. Regardless of the approach, Brotherhood creates a world where everything I have stated is indeed present, but the world hasn’t been created to just be intriguing, but rather to illustrate its theme and to create a world where the goal of the Elric Brothers can be best portrayed. It has every element that makes the world of what you are shown intriguing, and all of these elements are not forced, but instead give more depth to the story at large. Rather than overusing the concept of alchemy, it treats this power as something scientific and of high skill to pursue. While it did indeed shape the world we see, the world of Fullmetal Alchemist is believable, and not that different from our own. Rather than having every character shape their life around this power and this world, each live relatively normal lives, not that different from our own, with alchemy just being a branch of science that helps the world further advance. While it did create new threats and opportunities for adventure, while it allows incredible feats to be done by the characters in it, it also manages to be similar to reality. And this happens due to one reason. The concept of its powers is merely abstract and highly reliant on the user’s knowledge and skill. Any character is capable of doing anything in this world, through any approach and way they imagine. Their only limits are: understanding what they are doing, be skilled enough to give shape to what they imagine, and having the imagination to think of it. This means that regardless of how fantastical the powers are, they can only be as impressive as the character that manages to use them in the way they intend. This means that alchemy is a skill that requires training and its results are only as exceptional as the person delivering them. And as a concept, due to its requirements, alchemy doesn’t cause the characters to achieve feats that are impossible to achieve. Only feats that are impossible to achieve in that immediate moment. Anything that you would know how to do or is possible to happen, you can do. The alchemists have the capacity to make this process take seconds rather than weeks, months or years due to their capacity to immediately materialize it. So at the same time, it is a concept that is very open ended that at the same time, it is limited by what we are limited in reality, our understanding.

The way it defines the character motivation and world building is what is exceptional about Brotherhood. From this point onwards, I’ll outline the elements that are familiar to other anime.

Throughout the story, the characters will face moral dilemmas and a lot of the themes presented in the show will relate back to meaningful relationships. A lot of the times characters will have to weight how much they value their achievements against how much they value their peers. From a moral standpoint, it has the same heart most shows have. The good guys put their selfish interests aside for the benefit of everyone else. While the bad guys selfishly follow their goals without any qualms about the people surrounding them. The Law of Equivalent Exchange relates back once again in an abstract way to the execution of the show. One question that it asks its characters is, are you willing to achieve your goals right now by sacrificing the people you value? It does cover the subject really well in a manner that fits the world it presents, and executes on this well, but this is a subject that will be very familiar to you in other series moving forward. So be informed that anime will often criticize selfishness and portray it as evil while portraying groups of people that are interdependent as the morally righteous ones. Not saying this is something that is not earned in Fullmetal Alchemist, but rather that this is something frequent in anime and one of the things you should expect going forward unless you are searching keenly enough.

A common way anime tries to be entertaining is action. Showing confrontations between two or multiple characters using their superpowers to injure or kill each other. Due to its world, Fullmetal Alchemist has a lot of success in being entertaining in each fight through interesting ways. A lot of the confrontations are memorable not only due to their stakes, but also due to the solution the characters in the confrontation find to resolve it. Another way it attempts to be entertaining is humor which I will say is not Brotherhood’s strong suit. Not because the jokes themselves are bad, but because they are often timed poorly, in a dramatic moment where they temporarily deflate a situation briefly, or said too often. Still, the style of humor used by Brotherhood, that of character quips and slapstick, is something that is present in anime, especially of Brotherhood’s era, and it is something that Brotherhood can help you familiarize with. While humor is subjective, the way it is used in Brotherhood is not helpful in carrying the story across and is often an obstacle you will have to get used to.

Other ways anime tries to appeal to you is with its characters, by presenting you characters with interesting designs, personalities and powers. While all of these elements are covered in Brotherhood, characterization is actually something that is hurt by the story’s themes, since the characters are often presented through the lense of “do they base their decisions on how they can achieve their goals at all costs, or do they have moral principles”. You understand that each character has a goal of their own and a distinct personality, but the way they make decisions is often always predictable. Very few of the characters perform outside of the theme presented by the story, and because of that, their alignment often determines the behavior they have moving forward. There are characters that do not fit this description and certainly give the world more color, but given the sheer amount of characters presented in a 51 episodes series, they are not enough. Most people are probably going to be fine with understanding how the characters will act before they do, because each character is distinct enough, but this is yet another flaw anime has. Due to its strong focus at portraying the theme of the story and the goals of its characters, it will often end up being predictable if you understand the story enough and the characters will keep revolving around it.

Another flaw that anime that are strongly orientated towards a character achieving one of their goals is the fact that the goal they seek to achieve is the very reason the show exists, and that being resolved would end the show. As a result, they cannot achieve or attempt to achieve that goal until the show ends. That is one thing that is unfortunately true about Brotherhood as well. More often than not, the show relies on presenting the characters through the journey they managed to complete in the past and its consequences rather than gaining tangible progress towards the goal they sought to achieve. The pace then becomes predictable and you are waiting for events to progress in certain scenarios if the series is too uneventful. Luckily Brotherhood is often eventful and there is often always something going on or something more to learn about the world and its characters, but the fact that the characters cannot resolve what gives their journey meaning because the story cannot reach its conclusion yet is something that had bothered me. Still, I can understand that the characters need as much information as possible to understand their journey and how to achieve their goal, since a lack of information is what caused their current situation, but in a story where the fundamental power given to the characters is to cause things to materialize fast, not having a tangible progress towards their outcome is questionable, because all they are doing is reacting to the world based on their moral principles while searching for the right answer. This is the reason why a lot of the people that never watched Brotherhood but watched a great number of shows decide to not pick it up. It is predictable and the theme it presents while executed well in a very interesting world is not something worthwhile to put up with if you understand how everything is going to play out. Its laser focus on the execution of its theme has caused it to not be able to think about anything else that might be interesting about it.

To conclude, you should watch Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood if you plan to start exploring anime as media. It is a great starting point and a great first experience for one of the most frequent themes presented in this medium. But I do not recommend Brotherhood to anyone that understands that these flaws have bothered them in the past and at the same time have seen shows like it. It is a good execution on its themes, yes, but if you are already tired of them, the show can only at best keep you entertained with its action and world and at worst bore you because you have already been presented its theme in a bunch of different ways. However if you are not tired of its themes, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood presents you with a world that has a lot of depth and a goal that is set up really well and valued. It is consistently entertaining and its humor should not detract too much of your viewing pleasure if you are interested in the other elements.