Yay! This is one of the series I lost when my HDD went away. Now I can see the rest of it! --Vitenka (well, sometime in five years or so, when the licensor actually does something, anyway.)
From the con summary:
Surprisingly mature and intelligent, and occasionally very dark despite its cartoon-ish styling and good sense of humour, FullMetalAlchemist follows two brothers, both experts in alchemy, as they seek the Philosopher's Stone - a magical object which may allow them to repair the damage done to their bodies when they tried to use their powers to resurrect their dead mother.
SunKitten: I thoroughly enjoyed this. It's a cross between SlayersSeries and TriGun, and possibly better although I'd have to see more. It certainly has the potential. It has more plot than Slayers, but the older brother Edward (arguably the main character and the eponymous Fullmetal Alchemist)has very similar reactions to Lina with respect to comments about his size (height in his case), since he's very short. There's less humour than in Slayers, but not much. It's plot-driven with humour as a large side-helping, I think, while Slayers is the opposite, which is where FullMetalAlchemist resembles TriGun. The setting is a fantasy world. Alchemy is a science that looks like magic (up to and including the magic^H^H alchemical circles that one draws). The overriding principle is that of conservation - to get something, something of equal worth must be given. One example is the creation of a doll from a pile of dirt of equal mass to the completed doll. This principle is part of what goes wrong with the forbidden attempt to use Human Alchemy to resurrect the brothers' mother. It starts with two episodes about the effect the two brothers have on one town, but then starts from the beginning. We are unsure whether the first two were flash-forwards or the second two were flash-backs. More episodes will help. I'm a complete fangirl after four episodes, so I need more anyway.
Seems (as of episode 4) to be aimed squarely at an audience about the same age as the protagonist (15), although not in a bad way (I'm going on general theme to date here, as well as styling). I'll agree with the 'surprisingly mature and intelligent', although I find the vaguely biblical allegory a bit heavy-handed (nothing compared to what the japanese make of our butchering of their beliefs and attitudes, I'm sure). Features a VERY Trigun?-like coat, and is probably the current series I'm enjoying the most. Definitly has potential to continue getting deeper, in which case, I'd recommend it as WednesdayAnime fodder. Judging by the BitTorrent saturation levels it generates (episode 4 took down their tracker), I'm not alone here. -- TI (Did I mention it was also just rather cool in (quite a lot of) places?) - Oh, and I think 3-4 are flashbacks, but that there will be quite a few such. 5 BTing now. Poing.
Just watched episode 14, and the question that's now buzzing incessantly round my head is, what did they do to the theme tunes??!! They removed the funky, tuneful opening and ending tunes and replaced them with cr*p and slightly-better-than-cr*p. *cries* - SunKitten
Couldn't agree more on the theme tunes. I was away many weeks and missed most of the series so I got the whole series off BitTorrent and caught up on all episodes missed in a day. Nothing like getting used to and ejoying a melody for a few hours then having the following one have you fast foward through it ;) - Taz
As for the series itself, It's the one I've enjoyed most since ScrappedPrincess. I certainly see why it was compared to SlayersSeries (which I also enjoyed a great deal) because the humour is similar. Definitely not a kid's anime though since (as stated by others) there are some dark moments... Not least episode 7 with Tucker-san's experiments...<killed semi-Spoiler> (those who've watched this episode will understand). I think it's a pretty much a must see series :P kind of impatient for wednesday now and tempted to watch it on my pc first... - Taz
Episode 18 has Yomiko from ReadOrDie in it. She's had a hairdo and changed her name, but it's her. The appearance of her room clinches it :) - SunKitten
Anyone know how many episodes this will consist of? I've just caught up with the subtitlers which is highly annoying. Incidentally ToriyamaWorld? is scanlating the manga and has reached volume 3 but reading the manga in the middle of watching the anime is highly confusing since it basically consists of the same basic plots rearranged and set in fractionally different ways. --K
Ok, ok, you got me, I'm starting rewatching it. --Vitenka