First of all, I just want to warn you that I’m a Brazilian using Google Translate to write this review, so reveal any grammar mistakes.
It was really a surprise, I thought it could be tiring from the slower start and the original ending, but I was wrong.
The whole part of the anime that covers the manga is very well adapted, the direction of this series is not far behind Brotherhood. For someone who had only seen the other version of the anime, accompanying that version adds a lot, because a lot is lost at the beginning of Brotherhood, since it is much more busy.
Episodes like Barry's presentation in his human version, or the one where they are going back to Resembool after the fight with Scar are phenomenal, they deepen both Ed and the universe of Fullmetal itself.
In addition to these events that do not exist in the Brotherhood, we still have others that are much better in depth, such as the character of Nina, who in the other version, appears only in one episode, and here she appears well before, at the time when Ed still is taking the test for Federal Alchemist. If I'm not mistaken, Nina appears in four episodes in this version, and because of that, there is a greater impact when the climax of her arc arrives.
The same goes for Hughes, which has 30 episodes of participation until its completion, which becomes even more dramatic than in Brotherhood.
Finishing this part that presents the material of the manga, we still have the original part, which does not lose much in quality.
I confess that I like this version much better when it comes to explaining homunculi. The way they are born is completely consistent with what has been presented to us before.
The work climate also becomes much denser, as we find ourselves in a more melancholy plot. Presenting the protagonists as people who not only tried to bring their mother back, but also created a being who brings tragedy with them, creates a much greater weight in the work.
As the series gets closer to the end, certain things start to get a little weird. I find the plot that our world is on the other side of the door quite interesting, and even the explanation for how alchemy works, but it is quite disconnected from the story so far, because the plot was presented in the penultimate episode .
The ending makes me very uncomfortable, not because he is bad, but because he is very bitter, he has good things, like solving Al's problem, but Ed being in another world, Winry alone, Izumi still without his organs restored and without the child ... all this is quite unpleasant. I know that there is still a film that continues the story, but I don't have much faith that the ending is minimally positive.
In conclusion, Classic Fullmetal deserves to be watched, because many of the dialogues are still very interesting, the producers were able to capture the mood of the work and applied it very well to the original plot.