Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood Marathon Complete

For the past five days I have set aside everything but work, absorbed in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. The marathon is finally finished and before I peel myself away from my computer monitor, I will lay this affair to rest with my thoughts.

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood may be the most serious anime marathon I have been through as far as episode total, and time investment. Just about the only thing that broke it up from about episode 12 on has been sleep and work. As someone who watched the first Fullmetal Alchemist, the first 12 episodes were terribly boring. I understand the need for them, because you cant assume that people had watched the first anime adaptation of this story, but it did not make it any less painful to sit through again. 

The first part of this story was done much better by the first anime. There were pivotal emotional moments that serve as motivation for the characters throughout the series that were rushed in Brotherhood, which took away from the feeling of importance. It took me about a month to watch the first 12 episodes, but after the point where this shows plot line diverged from the first anime, I was hooked till the end. 

Ed and his friends from Xing

Season two introduces some new characters that play a huge roll in the outcome of the story. May Chang, and Lin Yao are both separately introduced as travelers from the far east kingdom of Xing. Both of them on a pilgrimage trying to acquire knowledge to further their chances of becoming the next emperor/empress of their country. I liked the introduction of Xing, it added a whole new dimension to the world and opened things up, making it feel like the consequences of failure were much more severe. 

FMAB did a fantastic job with character development. While the story focused on Ed and Al's quest to get their bodies back enough, many of the more intriguing plot lines were with some of the supporting characters. At times you can almost forget about our main characters when, for episodes at a time, they are not highlighted at all in favor of, in my opinion, more interesting plot lines. This show runs the gambit as far as story arcs,( mystery, genocide, war, political ambition, coming of age, romance, friendship, horror, and more..) but I was honestly amazed at how well everything tied together so well. I cared about more characters in this story than any that I can remember (even some of the bad guys can tug on your heart strings from time to time). without spoiling anything, the ending was handled nearly perfectly.

These weird animated scenes were too common

The animation was good for a 64 episode show, though wasn't anything that really stood out to me. Typically, the more episodes a show has, the worse the animation is, or at least there are parts where the animation drops off a cliff because of a budget shortage. The fact that this show had consistently good animation is a feat, but i cant say that it ever blew me away. I am not sure what the little animated scenes shown above are called, but I personally didn't like them, and didn't feel like they fit with the overall mood of the show.

The music was good throughout the series, with a couple of great openings and closing songs. The background tracks seemed to fit the mood well enough, but were not memorable. I watched up to episode 39 with the English dub, and completed the series with Japanese. This is one of the few times that I honestly think that the English voice actors nailed it, better than the original Japanese voice actors in fact. My favorite opening was for the 4th season, and closing was 2nd. 

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is in a different league from is mediocre predecessor. The story gripped me  through one hell of a marathon. (At one point on Sunday after watching it all day I imagined making stone fists pop out of the ground while walking my dogs) After being plunged into a world of alchemy for the past five days, I better get back to doing another things now. My fiance has been seriously neglected, but she hasn't complained once (I'm so lucky!)