The anime foreshadows how things are going to turn out beforehand, and if you are an experienced anime watcher, then you can predict %90 of what is going to happen. From the fakery of Hawkeye's death to Scar's abducting of Winry being a ploy, I was able to predict many of the events taking place.
The MC is an annoying little brat that we are used to seeing so many times. He is clumsy, insecure about his height, emotional and morally patronising. He is supposed to be the equivalent of a Major who had tons of childhood trauma, and yet he is incredibly well-adjusted in his own way and tries to avoid violence and destruction, even if it serves his interests or even if it makes perfect sense from a conventional morality viewpoint.
Corollary to what I said about the MC, character development is an utter joke in this anime. Every character is a trope that we have seen millions of times. Not a single original thing about the characters exist. Just examine Winry's behavior, from her cliché expression of her love towards the MC by being a tsundere to her forgiving Scar for killing her parents, every single thing about this character is a cliché.
Edward fighting that automail guy at Briggs Fortress is another example of a cliché. Instead of showing his badge and quickly avoiding the misunderstanding, Edward says the most braindead useless verbal diarrhea imaginable, as if him being targeted by his own army member is no big deal. The stupid soldier instantly attacks him instead of asking for his credentials so no misunderstanding can take place. This is what I'm talking about. I simply can't stand the MC who despite being a soldier cannot follow even the most rudimentary line of logic and is in a state of constant moral outrage. B-O-R-I-N-G.
The art is fair. It matches the story well, and I especially enjoyed Briggs fortress. The uniforms also match the story quite well. Art is probably the best aspect of this anime, the original elements of the story are captured quite well.
As for the music, could've been better. no song stands out in its own, but no song is painful to hear either.
As for enjoyment, at this point I'm basically forcing myself to watch the anime just to get to its ending. The amount of unnecessary scenes/dialogues make the anime nauseatingly boring. The show is packed to the top with clichés and tropes that I have seen many times. Overall this anime is highly overrated for no good reason.
Update: I have finished the anime. Because the build-up took so long, a lot of stuff went unexplained, which is my kind way of denoting the lazy writing.
The ending was pretty much how I expected it would be.
The ending was rushed and unfulfilling. The battles didn't make sense, as someone who loved the battles of HxH, this was very feeble in my opinion.
This is the most generic shounen anime you could ever watch. I think a lot of the good reception towards this anime stems from the fact that this anime is one of the first anime people ever watch.
