Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shambala ::
by William the Bloody
WARNING! Fullmetal Alchemist: The Series spoilers ahead!!!
When we last left Edward and Alphonse Elric in the series finale.... Al gave up his own life to restore Ed's missing limbs, but shortly thereafter, Ed returned the favor and offered himself in trade to return Al to the world. It worked, too. Alphonse was once again full-on flesh and blood only, he's the age he was when the brother's tried to recreate their dead mother and he has no memories of the adventures he and his brother had over the following years on their search for the Philosopher's Stone. So, our two devoted brothers are now separated. Al, still a young boy in his home world, and Ed, well he didn't die, but rather was transported through The Gate into the parallel world on the other side where there is no alchemy and therefore virtually no way to access The Gate from his side. Edward has been making do in his newfound home. He even located this world's version of Al during his studies of this world's science and physics. Alphonse in the meantime has been studying alchemy like crazy so that he can bring his brother home. Edward unfortunately gets taken by surprise one day by the new political group, the Nazis, and their thirst for power knows no bounds. They manage to trick Ed into opening a portal between their world and his in order to conquer and destroy anything and everything on the other side. Can alchemy triumph over science?
The Good: There is plenty of fan service in this movie. I mean, if you enjoyed Al in his clunky suit of armour, don't worry, we got you covered. This movie checks in with just about every major character who managed to survive the series, so you'll get your dose of nearly everyone. And now let's go on to discuss the beauty of parallel universe stories. Yes, we get to once again see characters who were long dead in new incarnations on this side of The Gate. We see some of the Homunculus, although here the people they represented were never killed and transformed by alchemy. The best bit was the return of evil Furer Bradley, but as his regular self, on this side known as filmmaker Fritz Lang. You heard me. Awesomeness? Yes, we have that here. Of course there are the people you remember as being good who died and are now back and you're happy, only they turn out to be backstabbing Nazis or in league with them. More people do die, too, which is good. Okay, now onto the technical stuff. The animation was pretty good. Not super stellar the whole way through, but it was not below the series standard, and some bits were just incredibly well done. There is this really cool fight scene between Gluttony, Wrath and Alphonse that I really enjoyed. The score is good and they got L'arc-en-Ciel (the band who performed one of the series' main title songs "Ready Steady Go!", which was my favourite one) to return and do the songs over the opening and closing credits. The opening credits were interesting in that they used both the art that appears on the DVD box sets and clips of animation from the series to kind of quickly recap the series, which was a neat idea (kind of like what they did for Spiderman 2, you know what I mean).
The Bad: The fact that the movie opens with super awesome animation but could not maintain the standard. That always bugs me. There wasn't as much hot Winry action as I'd hoped. I mean, I kind of got the impression that there might have been "something" between Winry and Ed, and I was hoping we might get to touch on that, but no. I didn't quite understand some of the stuff that happened to the Nazis when they finally made it through the portal. They get coated with this gooey tar-like substance, but I don't get what that's supposed to be or all about. Maybe I wasn't paying attention for a second and I missed some exposition.
Overall, I was so looking forward to this movie and felt ever so slightly let down, and I'm not sure why. I was still great, don't get me wrong, but just not as all out awesome as I'd hoped. It was directed, written, scored, etc by people who worked on the series so the right feel is there, but there was just a little somethin' missing in my book.
A-
