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Feb 1, 2017
Pandora Hearts
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
While it may not seem like it, this anime is probably one of the most in-depth, well written anime of the last century. It's characters and setting are so great that they manage to rival the greats such as Akira, Ghost in the Shell and Neon Genisis Evangelion. The main protagonist, a kid with spunk, clearly outclasses Shinji in both class and personality. The main antagonist is really great to, reminding me of deep characters such as griffith from berserk, or Dio from Jojo's bizzare adventure. I love how it goes against anime shonen cliches by only going up to 26 episodes. I like the
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Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Feb 27, 2014
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings Spoiler
This review isn't going to be as detailed and in-depth as I feel it should be, and while I do address various things, I don't address every single thing I like or dislike about this series. Regarding that, there are some things that stood out to me within this series that definitely would leave it a 5, or maybe even a 4, out of 10 for me. I will also be trying to address things in an overall sense rather than picking out individual details and events to help explain them because if you've seen this show, you know what happens, basically, so you know
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what I'm talking about without me needing to address every single little thing that happens. That being said, unfortunately, there are some spoilers in this review.
This series was very disappointing, but the fact that it's rated number one on this site honestly doesn't surprise me. First, though, I'll just go over the less significant of the flaws before addressing the deal-breakers. Keep in mind, I did watch the original 2003 anime. Immediately before having started this one. This review is not based on any amount of bias or nostalgia, because I never grew up with FMA, and I finished this last week. I try to draw as few comparisons as I can between the two different shows, as a result. Pacing issues are a constant theme, apparently. The first season relied too heavily on you having had seen the original anime, or read the manga, which I think is a bad decision because regardless of whether or not similar things had happened, the events that did happen within the first fifth of the series are still fairly important. Season two was alright (I honestly consider it to have been the best season), and season three was good, as well, up until about halfway through, then it started getting a bit slow. Season four was bad, and oh, god, season five. I had no idea what went wrong with season five. It had all started out too fast, then it found the right speed to take things in season two. Season three started getting slow, and then four and five jumped back up to high speeds, even faster than how season one was going, it felt like. It really left out a lot of room for things to be explained, because important matters were discussed in one or two lines of dialogue, and as the series progresses, a lot of build up garners a minimal reward. There is absolutely no atmosphere in this show. There is no mood at all. What is the mood? What is the tone this is trying to set? The soundtrack has literally ten songs, and the same three are used in every single episode at least once. The only moods set by the music are "tense" and "action," and very rarely is it "cool". The song that plays during Hohenheim's backstory and during a majority of season five is actually really good, and one of two out of ten songs that I like, but the rest of them are severely overplayed. The present mood is predictable, as a result. The overall mood, however, feels completely nonexistent because there is no emotion in this show. Even people who praise this up and down, I've seen mention how there's no atmosphere and emotion behind anything. How are you supposed to get anything out of it, then? In addition to it having been a result of pacing issues, the backstories and reveals are just treated like nothing, because there's no emotion behind it at all. When they were at Central, I guess, and they were cheering because they thought the Fuhrer was gone but he popped up on the phone and said "Surprise, I'm back," that could have been so cool! But it went immediately from an intense scene, to a slight pause, and then back to the same intensity as it had before. There was no rest at all, and as the series went on, there felt there wasn't any room for emotion because there was just too much going on, and like the emotion was a negligible feature, thus leaving the whole series rather soulless, even during the best parts of the show. The plot is way too goddamn complex. After a certain point, there is just way too much going on to keep track of, even in the sense of the storyteller's perspective, as characters will appear for one scene and then not return until a whole season later. I honestly thought they forgot about Scar's and Riza's backstories, and characters with NO backstory end up being the most important, such as May Chang. There is so much filler with just nameless generals having gun fights, and it really feels like a completely different show once they get to Briggs. It goes from being a fascinating fantasy story with a unique set of physics taking place in a split timeline to being just a boring military show, preferring gunfights over alchemy and science which is meant to be a main theme of the series, and because of how much screen time the nameless grunts get just shooting each other and the Homunculi, it, again, leaves no time for things to actually be explained. Scar's backstory had been addressed in season two to a degree but there were still unanswered questions, and with Scar personally being a character I loved in this one and in the original anime, I was hoping his backstory would be more than two sentences given in the second to last episode that makes no real sense and removes all the magic from the series. It treats important issues like that, and like the Homunculi, the Philosopher's Stone, and like the Gate and Truth, and Father, especially, like it's just nothing, like they're not important, and after a certain point there's no mystery or any amount of credibility to any of these things because of the explanations they give that fail to really explain anything and because of how aware everyone in the world is to these things that are meant to hold an amount of mystery, thus making them interesting and having you want to get more out of the series. If everyone knows about something that's supposed to be mysterious and taboo and mythical, then it's not mysterious and taboo and mythical. There are too many characters to focus on and even in the last season they're adding more and more people it expects you to keep track of, and it's insane. One of the few comparisons I'll draw with the original 2003 anime is that while the story did have plot holes and was far from perfect, it was concise, consistent, and every character got development, rarely diverging from the central themes even in the filler episodes. Alphonse Elric, the protagonist's brother, feels like he isn't even a character. He is the protagonist's BROTHER. He has been there the /entire time/, his goddamn body was missing and he was a skilled alchemist like his brother, most of Edward's story has to DO with his brother, and he doesn't even feel like a character because he's barely in it and you only realize that he's not in it when you stop and ask where he is. There is a severe lack of character development in this series, treating major characters like they don't mean anything and treating minor characters like the world rests on their shoulders, like with May Chang, and another thing that worsens that is when there has been a massive amount of build up to something, it just doesn't even matter because, like I said, the payoff is nonexistent. Father had such immense potential to be an amazing villain. You see him sitting there, around all these wires and tubes, looking like a figure from Biblical theology. His voice is strong, and commanding, and he's always sitting in that chair, and there's this intense feeling of mystery around him. He looks like Hohenheim, the protagonists' father, and you ask yourself, are they the same person? Did Hohenheim leave his kids to go create the Homunculi? Is it a split personality, or is it an illusion? Who could he be, and what? You then find out his backstory, along with Hohenheim's, in about eight minutes. You learn the history they share in eight minutes. Eight whole minutes to explain the backstory of the main antagonist and one of the primary characters in the show, who have both had massive build up to be these mysterious, powerful figures, and while the explanation they give is perhaps the best in the entire series, it all comes crashing down when, without giving major spoilers, everyone in Central knows who Father is, why he's there, what he's doing, and he ends up being a generic shounen villain who stops using alchemy and starts using magical powers. If everyone knows he's there, why he's there, and what he's doing, then he's not mysterious anymore, and it takes away all credibility the story has in that sense, and he was probably the most disappointing part of the entire series. He went from intriguing and mystifying and fearsome to Sephiroth and Anubis from the Yuugiou movie. It stops being about alchemy. I mentioned that already, but I still can't get over that. If you wanted to make a show that focuses on corruption in the government and in the military, then just do that. Don't give it a unique fantasy setting only to not focus on that after a certain point, and especially don't have a fantasy setting that relies on scientific fact and the legitimate physics of that world, explained by science, end up being about magical powers and plaTE TECTONICS???????????? The military in the show is way too advanced for that time period, anyway, in terms of the techniques, strategies, and even the weapons they use, but that's minor and it doesn't even fucking matter after a certain point. Nothing matters after a certain point. The show is about alchemy, and that stops mattering after a certain point. It also has less to do with real-world alchemy than the original anime did, actually, and I find that interesting seeing as how the 2003 anime diverged relatively early on and made a vast amount of changes to the story and characters. A homunculus, in terms of real-world alchemy, is a failed attempt at creating a human being. In the 2003 anime, a homunculus is a failed attempt at human transmutation. In Brotherhood, they don't tell you what it is. Ultimately, in the end, they don't tell you what a homunculus is. It mentions that the seven deadly sins are formed from Father's emotions, but that doesn't have any effect on anything and feels like it was just shoe-horned in, as does most things; and, like I said, if you've seen the series you know that those aren't the only Homunculi I mean. The deadly sins are also a Greek concept, as is alchemy, but in the original it feels that, universally, they have more to do with alchemy as a real science than they do in Brotherhood, which is supposed to be the "real" story. They even go more into the actual science behind alchemy in the original anime, and in Brotherhood their explanation is plate tectonics. I guess. There was the Gate, though, which was very loosely implied to have more to do with real alchemy, as each person who passes through the Gate has their own symbol on the door related to ideas presented by alchemists in the real world, which I actually had to look up on my own and I felt it would have definitely added to the story, but at that point I simply didn't care and at this point I just find it really cool. They never explain what the Gate is, or why it contains infinite alchemical knowledge, or why the Truth provides it for you. The Truth gets an explanation, though. He's supposed to be God. Literal God, in a series where the main character is a vehement atheist and the theme of religion being a farce was made very clear in the first three goddamn episodes. Truth isn't Consciousness, or an idea of sorts. He's literally God, in a series where God isn't supposed to /exist/. Between you and me, I'd take Nazi Germany over that any day, because at least it's an explanation that makes more sense than "it just exists, and it's controlled by God". There are things I liked more about this, though, than I did the original 2003 anime, to show that I don't think this whole thing is a complete crock of shit. Hohenheim, for example, is a much greater character. He's actually on my top list of favorite characters. It explores the world more, and Mustang and his entire crew are more likable in this one. Mustang and Riza are amazing together. I loved Wrath and Pride in this one a lot more than in the original. I liked the ideas of the Gate and of Truth, and I'm just going to pretend the last five episodes didn't happen. Scar was cooler in this one, and I loved Olivier. What do I wish they would have done differently? Aside from the pacing, lack of focus and character development and reasonable explanations, as well as a lack of consistent themes, there were some things that I wish they would have changed to have more of an impact or to make it stand out more. I wish the Homunculi were more of a collective, because then it would have made more sense regarding their origin and Greed's defecting in both instances. I wish Father's base of operations were elsewhere, and I wish all of season five was just rewritten. It starts going into the plot again completely out of nowhere partway through an episode in the last season, and ugghhh I don't want to go into all of that. I wish the Gate and Truth were more explored, I wish the lands around Amestris were more explored, I wish that Pride and Wrath got even more development than they did. I wish Envy didn't turn into a giant six-legged green hair dog lizard thing with people on it. I wish May Chang wasn't even in it. Overall, and in conclusion, I can best describe Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood as being a whole amalgamation of mystery and buildup only to have the writing in the story dismiss it with little explanation and by not addressing things that feel like they should matter. I still have a lot of unanswered questions, regarding Ishbal, Xerxes, and the dwarf in the flask. About Xing, about Drachma, about the fate of the Philosopher's Stone and about alchemy as a science. I have unanswered questions about the characters, and I'm never going to get any of those answers. Brotherhood was generic, disappointing, and while I'm aware this review isn't the best I could have written, I hope you found it useful. Why does Pride become a fetus with a nipple on his forehead.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Feb 1, 2017
Pandora Hearts
(Anime)
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While it may not seem like it, this anime is probably one of the most in-depth, well written anime of the last century. It's characters and setting are so great that they manage to rival the greats such as Akira, Ghost in the Shell and Neon Genisis Evangelion. The main protagonist, a kid with spunk, clearly outclasses Shinji in both class and personality. The main antagonist is really great to, reminding me of deep characters such as griffith from berserk, or Dio from Jojo's bizzare adventure. I love how it goes against anime shonen cliches by only going up to 26 episodes. I like the
...
Feb 27, 2014
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
(Anime)
add
This review isn't going to be as detailed and in-depth as I feel it should be, and while I do address various things, I don't address every single thing I like or dislike about this series. Regarding that, there are some things that stood out to me within this series that definitely would leave it a 5, or maybe even a 4, out of 10 for me. I will also be trying to address things in an overall sense rather than picking out individual details and events to help explain them because if you've seen this show, you know what happens, basically, so you know
...
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