Kei's Anime Reviews

Fullmetal Alchemist Episode 11

"Gravel Earth - Part One"

I guess Fletcher auditioned for the part of Naruto, but was turned down, and only managed to find work as one of the plethora of unimportant characters in Fullmetal Alchemist. Speaking of bad character designs, how about Fletcher's brother? He just looks like a bigger version of Ed. Nothing like making antagonists that look like your protagonist...

It was kind of cute earlier when there have been alchemy fights in the show, but this one reaches a new low when Fletcher's brother transmutes a fire hose to spew red water at Ed, and he responds by transmuting his dinky arm blade thing into an honest-to-god umbrella.

By the way, before I get a chance to sum up the first ten episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist:

HOW TO MAKE AN EPISODE OF FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST IN FOURTEEN EASY STEPS
1. Ed and Al are traveling
2. They arrive at a town
3. They talk to some of the people, get a meal, something like that
4. The townspeople discover they are alchemists
5. They immediately do something bad to them
6. Quick look at a new character, seems inconsequential
7. Then they realize that Ed's a state alchemist
8. Now they need his help
9. There's a bad guy alchemist around
10. They investigate
11. Turns out that guy you met earlier is actually the bad alchemist
12. Ed wins
13. The town is happy
14. Let's go to the next town!

It's been almost a dozen episodes and we've barely had more than a minute of the bad guys introduced in the first (not to mention being sidetracked by a half dozen flashback shows).

The worst part about episode eleven, though, is the fact it's a part one. We can look forward to more of this crap in the next one.

Rating: D+

Posted by Kei at January 14, 2004 01:12 AM