Two brothers, one terrible mistake, and 64 episodes that keep every promise they make.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is the rare long anime that ends as well as it begins. Here are eight reasons it earns the time, one on each slide.
Reason 1 - Two brothers, one mistake
Edward and Alphonse Elric try to bring their mother back with alchemy. It costs Ed an arm and a leg and Al his whole body, and everything after is the two of them trying to put it right.
Al spends the series as a soul bound to a suit of armour, and the show never lets you forget what that means for a boy who can no longer eat, sleep or feel a hand on his shoulder.
Reason 2 - The whole story, as written
Brotherhood follows Hiromu Arakawa's manga all the way to its last chapter. Every turn is hers, it lands, and no thread is left hanging.
The 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist series ran ahead of the manga and had to go its own way. Brotherhood is the full story, which is why it is the one to start with.
Reason 3 - Magic with a price
Alchemy here has one law: to gain something, you must give up something of equal value. It turns every fight into a puzzle and every shortcut into a temptation.
The brothers learn that law the hard way in the first episode, and the rest of the story keeps testing whether it is really true.
Reason 4 - Villains worth fearing
The homunculi are named after the seven deadly sins, and they live up to the names. Greed wants everything, Envy despises humans, and Gluttony simply eats.
Behind them sits a plan that has been running for centuries, and the show reveals it piece by piece rather than all at once.
Reason 5 - It takes war seriously
The Ishval campaign is not background. The heroes are soldiers who fought in it, and the show makes them face what their own army did there.
Scar, a survivor of that war who hunts State Alchemists, starts out as a monster and turns into one of the most complicated people in the story.
Reason 6 - A cast you will miss
Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye, Ling Yao, Olivier Armstrong and Winry Rockbell all want something of their own. None of them is there just to help the brothers.
Before long a dozen characters share the screen, and every one of them has earned the place.
Reason 7 - Music for the big moments
Akira Senju's orchestral score gives the battles their weight, and YUI's “Again” opens the series. There are five openings in all, one for each stretch of the story.
Studio Bones animated all 64 episodes, and the action holds up from the first fight to the last.
Reason 8 - No filler, no wasted weeks
Sixty-four episodes, around 26 hours, with no filler arcs. It moves briskly through the early chapters and saves its time for the final act, where it counts.
It is a commitment, but it is the kind of long anime you finish and then recommend to everyone you know.
Where to watch
Streaming catalogues for Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood differ between the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia, and they change from month to month, so check the services you use.
Shop the Fullmetal Alchemist collection
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Source: the Anime Crush Anime Guide.
