Guest Post: Fullmetal Alchemist!!

Laura from My Baffling Brain is here to talk about my favourite anime show today! Woo! Take it away, Laura.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

First of all, thank you to Allison for having me on her blog, and giving me the opportunity to write about one of my favourite things!

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is my favourite anime; I’m currently watching it for the fourth time in less than a year. It really is the best I’ve seen, so far. Here are my reasons:

Characters

There are a lot of characters involved in this anime, but every single one of them is necessary to the plot. The characterisation is excellent; each character has their own distinct personality and style. The villains are also amazing for the same reason – at times you even feel sorry for them, which I think is good in any story. My favourite character is Ed, one of the main characters (I also love Roy Mustang and Lin Yao). I don’t think there are any characters I really disliked, except for the villains (and I had a real love/hate relationship with them!)

I also think the Japanese voice actors do a great job, particularly considering that the two main male characters are voiced by women.

Plot

The pacing is really good – each episode moves the story along, so there are no fillers. I’ve seen it three times so far and there still aren’t any episodes I would skip past to get to the good bits. It can be quite a dark anime, with some really sad, tragic moments, which makes it quite mature. I like the humour that is used to balance it out – it works really well and doesn’t take away the seriousness of the story.

The story is heavily themed around sacrifice, and this is probably one of the reasons I love it so much. Stories with sacrifice are my favourite kinds.

Emotion

So many emotions ran through me while watching this anime, and I think it’s hard to create something that brings up so many emotions. It can make you feel sadness, anger, joy and fear, all in one episode!

Alchemy

I love the concept of alchemy in this anime – it’s such a unique idea, and I really wish I could clap my hands together and change something. Although I think if I could I’d use it for everything, and become really lazy!

I also really like the law of equivalent exchange, and think it makes a lot of sense that everything comes at a cost.

Ending

The ending was great, even better than I had expected it to be, and it tied up all loose ends just like an ending should.

Soundtrack

I love the soundtrack to this anime; I listen to it all the time. It really suits the story, with some dramatic pieces, some incredibly sad (to the extent that when I listen to them I nearly burst into tears) and some very playful.

So if you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it.