Fullmetal Alchemist: The Movie - Conqueror of Shamballa

This movie is a direct continuation of where the first TV series leaves off and it’s STRONGLY suggested you watch the TV series first in order to understand this movie, and to see this movie as a complete closure to it as well. A good portion charms I feel of what defines the TV series are still present, and the returning characters do have presence, but not to their fullest use in my opinion. Mustang does his thing, but I think in some way they could have still developed his character. But for general character development with Ed and Al as well as their relationship, it really does the job which I feel you have to see for yourself on how that pans out. Yes, it does give closure, but some of the movie does have some unsolved questions. Such as it doesn’t explain why Noah has the power to see somebody’s life just by touching them. And outside of that, she really has no use to the story though her presence does symbolize that gypsies were scorned by the Germans just to make emphasize the history going on in Germany at that point. Another factor I didn’t like was how little significance the opening becomes after that. It’s supposed to be something important and you get an idea of what it’s supposed to be (based on your knowledge of science and history), but after that, it really has no overall contribution of the story, nor did I felt it really established anything. Take what I said about the TV series and times it by 2, and you perfectly get the quality of the art and animation of this movie. The moment that Ed’s mechanical arm first appears, it’s so detailed and rendered and yet syncs perfectly with the 2D art. The designs of the characters are simply for the sake of theatrical quality, but of course shows maturity to the features as well. Specifically, not just Ed by growing taller, but by placing his pony tail closer to the crown of his head to symbolize that he’s an adult and to make him more scholarly looking. And my thoughts on the environments and action sequences still remain the same and the qualities are still there, but obviously better. Pretty much what I can say about music and voice acting has already been said in my review of the TV series. The voice acting in both English and Japanese is still a quality that I consider a standard to look up to. In addition to new characters, we got new seiyuus. Noah is played by Sawai Miyuu, who actually happens to play Sailor Moon in the live action version. She does a great job of being scared, isolated, and yet curious, as well as her actress in English. Alphonse is played by Oguri Shun, who was also in the live action versions of GTO and Gokusen, and also played the voice of Asakura Akio in the anime version of Wangan Midnight, an anime that I also previously reviewed. I thought he had a good chemistry with Park Romi, the voice of Ed in bringing a new kind of sibling relationship between the two characters. The music is just incredible. The opening and ending themes, Link and Lost Heaven are both sung by L’Arc~En~Ciel, the 2nd best J-Rock band of all time (behind X-Japan), and if you recall, they also sang the 2nd opening theme of the TV series. Their style for these songs are more in tradition of being hard, but yet still captures the franchise’s romanticism. If you’ve already seen the first TV series, then it’s a highly likely possibility you’ve watched this already. But if you haven’t the TV series and have been meaning to watch it or currently watching it, then naturally you’re going to watch this anyway. In the extras, it is revealed the original first draft was going to be between 2 to 3 hours long and I felt that a 95 minute movie was really too short to really give this installment of Fullmetal Alchemist a little too small of a conclusion. Personally, I think maybe an OAV series based on the initial script could have worked, or maybe just made the movie based on that script in the first place. There are anime movies out there that are over 2 hours long, so why give this the shortening treatment? It adds some confusion to some things, but the big picture is….forget it….it’d be a spoiler if I got into that, but I got about around a good portion of what I wanted out of it.

A great way to wrap up FMA ‘03. Sometimes I wished there was more after this, but I’m still satisfied with how it turned out

Nonostante che questo finale non combacia con l'opera manga originale, è molto bello, si nota che Arakawa ha prestato suggerimenti.

The Conqueror of Shamballa will be a highly entertaining film for those who enjoy morally ambiguous endings and the Fullmetal Alchemist universe. As for the quality of the design and art, there's nothing to criticize: a resounding 10/10.

With a story pitting Edward against magic Nazis, you'd think Conqueror of Shamballa would at least be dumb fun, but with the same poor direction and inconsistent writing as the TV series, it's an overall poor excuse for an epilogue.