Starring Rie Kugimiya, Romi Park, Hidenobu Kiuchi, Maaya Sakamoto, Toshiyuki Morikawa
Directed by Kazuya Murata
It’s been a while since I saw the Fullmetal Alchemist series, and my memories of it are pretty vague. But I suppose that’s OK since this film doesn’t rely too much on the source material. The series is about two brothers, Edward and Alphonse, living in a fantasy world with technology roughly equivalent to the mid-19th century, but with cyborgs! They try to use alchemy to bring their dead mother back to life. This does not work. In fact it doesn’t work so much that it literally costs Ed an arm and a leg while Al loses his entire body, winding up with his soul fused to a suit of armor.
Around a decade later, the brothers have grown up (or in Al’s case, not changed at all) and now work for the government with the idea that they will eventually figure out how to restore their bodies. For this film, the government sends them out on a mission to find an escaped criminal who turned out to be an alchemist himself. This quest takes them out to a border town called Table City which has a ton of political tension as two large countries have displaced the original natives to the area, and there’s a ton of rebels and spies running around.
So I was wondering just what the film would do for its actual climax. I’ll just say that it involves a huge flood of magma and a lot of people getting shot, stabbed, and otherwise mutilated while alchemists blast magical attacks all over the place. In short it actually does live up to its spectacular beginning. The middle of the film has its fair share of milder action scenes as well, but it’s also filled with loads of explanation, which is pretty necessary to understand what’s going on. It’s paced very well, though, never putting in too much exposition to make the film dull, but also managing to provide enough explanation that the plot never feels too complicated to follow.
I was never in love with the Fullmetal Alchemist series. I always felt it was just OK. But I had a lot of fun with this film and enjoyed it a good deal more than the series. So if you were never a fan, then this movie might change your mind. It’s a solid film without any glaring issues and stands on its own without any knowledge of the series, so for those who aren’t familiar with the series at all, this is a good place to jump in and test the waters.