Kei's Anime Reviews

Fullmetal Alchemist Episode 01

"One Who Challenges the Sun"

Oh my god... Engrish strikes again. The first impression of this show, other than pure insanity, was one of the shop signs in Lior City, that reads, "Dorinks & Food".

On to more important things, this show has some unique and attractive character designs, and some pretty slick animation. If there's any negative, it'd be the fact that Edward (the main character, and the eponymous full metal alchemist) looks like a mini-Vash the Stampede (and the resemblance is pretty strong, too).

This show is based on a Square Enix game of the same name, though I don't know anything about it to compare it to. The pacing of the show is downright frenetic, with Edward lapsing into all sorts of weird facial expressions, and generally spazzing out.

This is the introductory episode, where we're introduced to Edward and his brother Alphonse, two alchemists, as well as a girl named Roze. We're also introduced to the concepts of alchemy, which is basically that matter can be transmuted as long as matter is conserved (bust out your high school phsyics books for more info).

It'll probably take a while longer to get to the meat of this show, but so far it's reasonably interesting, though the pacing doesn't seem to lend itself to much character development. We'll see.

Rating: B

Posted by Kei at October 6, 2003 10:14 PM