..... Because eating it is okay...
I don't have anything to complain about so this review will look a bit different from my usual...
Alright let's go!
The acting was great and the casting was surprisingly uplifting. I think they picked great actors for each and every one of the characters and they all did a perfect job. I have to admit that Winry could have been a bit more realistic. Even though it's been a while since I watched the Fullmetal Alchemist anime, I do not remember her being this girly and passive.... anyway...
The CG that we all feared is actually the best I've ever seen, coming from japan. it did have some minor misses here and there but it didn't bother me as much as other CG movies have in the past. Most of the effects were very beautifully done and they did a great job with the Gate of Truth and Al. I am so impressed and moved!
Going into the story, they did a very good summary of A PART of the Manga/ anime. It's a given that a live action movie with a 2 h running time wont be the exact copy of it's original but thankfully they did not change that much. I personally think the writers did a great job staying within their limits and keeping it familiar to FMA fans such as myself.
I really want to give extra credit to the director for his beautiful art work with this live action. It's been a while since I saw a movies as passively beautiful as this one. Some scenes were just shot in the perfect place with the perfect light during the perfect situation from just the right angle and it gave me such strong impressions.
I'm not a crier but I cried and I will let you guess which scene that caused it. Prepare for a challenge because the creators did an amazing job with relaying emotions here. Everything I felt okay with watching in the anime provoked such strong feelings in this adaption and that is one of the most important things to get right when making a movie.
Hopefully this will get a sequel because the writers did not end the journey after the end credits. which was a very wise decision in my opinion. Had they tried to finish the whole story within the run time of this movie, it would have felt rushed and everything would have felt out of place. I am also pretty sure we would have lost a whole lot of detail and plot resulting in another AoT failure.
I have a lot more to say but I will end my review here.
============SUMMARY===============
This adaption is one of the best I have ever seen of a Manga/ Anime and I think it was amazingly executed with great CG, great actors and accurate roles with all their relationships and situations intact. The camera work was art and all the emotions were properly relayed to the audience. Luckily, the writers were wise enough to only cover a part of the story in this movie so let's hope the sequel is released soon!
ENJOY!!!
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PS. I'm not against the Japanese casts but if they will make another movie or series, they can at least get the proper actors that will mirror the true races of the characters. ????
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If you prefer to have movie that must follow the anime or manga faithfully, then I don't recommend this movie for you.
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This review may contain spoilers
Breathtaking Cinematography!
The best thing that caught my eyes in this movie is the beautiful cinematography and colors, my eyes love them!Overall I found the movie quite fast paced and entertaining, I'm fine with the cast and action, and the CGI is quite good too considering this was released 5 years ago from when I write this. I have no problem understanding the plot but it could be because I still remember the plot of the anime well.
There were some difference from the anime's plot and some characters from the first version anime that I watched were excluded, but the movie was still able to retain the main premise and major characters were intact.
I'm glad Nina and Hughes' parts were included, and I still shed tears for Nina, but somehow Hughes' demise did not affect me as greatly as the anime version.
In conclusion the movie was quite enjoyable for me.
.
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This review may contain spoilers
Exceeded disappointments
I LOVE FMA. Love it. I adore the manga, which I reread about once a year, I watched the original anime, and was over the moon when they remade it into FMA Brotherhood, and I was so, so, SO excited when this was announced. I suppose I should have tempered my expectations to Bleach live action level, not Rurouni Kenshin quality levels. I'm going to place some, if not most, of the blame on Netflix because they're known for doing things quick and cheap, and this was no exception.Now, I've watched this twice, when it first came out, and... a few months (?) ago because, surely, it couldn't be as bad as I remembered. Sadly, it remains terrible. They should've done a live action *series,* not try to squish what is a very intricate, intentional, and tight plot line into this-- mess.
I do appreciate most of the casting (Hughes is a blast, Ed is pretty funny), the costumes are pretty good, but that's about where I stop with the praise.
Now, for the rest...
- I agree with the other reviewer who said the casting for Envy isn't great, and I do love Kanata Hongo but not in this role. The personality feels prosaic, something's missing (maybe overall hating whenever he shows up? Lol), which ties into my next point...
- Characters/relationships: we're not given time to get to know characters, their relationships aren't drawn out or portrayed with any depth so we have no time to grow fond of them and thus want to root for them, which makes it hard for anything to have any emotional impact and so... why bother watching? (I'd say don't, go read the manga or watch Brotherhood instead)
* Related: Sho Tucker's portrayal, meh, I really don't get his craziness, that whole arc doesn't land (especially with the plot changes), which...
- Story/plot: why? T_T Why did you hack it into pieces and rearrange it like this? (Time constraints, blah blah, I know, but NO)
* It really doesn't explain anything to anyone unfamiliar with FMA, so again, why bother with this?
* You can't take Scar out of the Tucker/Nina plot line?? Or take Scar out at all, from this first movie??
* Using too many characters now instead of later (again, glossing over relationships), discombobulating whatever sense could be made from the story resulting in low emotional stakes
* Really?? You're using the immortal army NOW?? What the hell is gonna happen in the sequels!? (More disaster)
* Winry really was in this too much (and I like her!), and it didn't do shit for the plot, which leads me to...
- the Japanese-ification of... everything. To sum up my chat with a few Japanese friends, who don't watch Japanese productions for these and other reasons:
* the sexism is showing - female characters being mostly "useful" as long as it's being a love interest (re: Winry) but losing agency or being, frankly, out of character (see: Hawkeye), which is devastating because the characters in the manga are so much more (I hate losing that for all of them, but especially for the female characters where it's most visible)
* the acting is... Like That. I used to love Japanese productions, truly, but anything I've tried watching lately has felt obviously fake, the acting not credible because you can always predict the script and the characters reactions. Maybe it's stylistic? But I'm rarely surprised so it becomes boring and unimaginative after a while. Maybe I'm just used to Korean quality now and everything else now feels too obviously staged, I don't know
- the amount of (bad) CGI. This isn't just this movie but Netflix, and others, as a whole, but UGH, no! Al looks terrible, the automail looks meh, even the alchemy I'm underwhelmed by, and the "sets" (green screens) are also ehh (some of them are pretty, yes)
Watch it if you want to cringe, or can only watch it 15mn at a time, otherwise honestly don't bother, stick with the manga and anime and go watch the actors in something else.
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P.S. there will probably be a sequel, as the story was left unfinished.
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This review may contain spoilers
Story: 5.0Real quick rehash: The story follows the Elric brothers, Alchemists, as they try and get their original bodies back after trying (and failing) to bring their dead mother back to life.
But the story of FMA is so much more then that in the long scheme of things that they don’t really go very deep into in the film. Such as blind patriotism, Authoritative governments, & a discussion on whether ‘just because we can, does it mean we should?’ sentiments. The Ishvalan war is a major theme that they kind of minimized in this film. Scar isn’t present at all & some character arcs have merged into others. Leaving me confused on who is supposed be what from the original story line.
When viewing it the first time, I remember thinking how it felt like they were trying to write a book report on a book they read years ago and were having trouble remembering how it went without looking at the source material. On a second watch, I could understand the flow a little bit better, but it still falls flat in terms of how I, a fan of the series since I was 15, would have liked to seen it done.
The problems I had mostly with it, was how they decided to pace things out. Having watched the Anime and Read the Manga, I can see their viewpoint. I wished they would have stuck more to the timeline of the overall FMA instead of trying to condense so much into one. With FMA where there really is no clear “arcs” throughout the manga or Anime it just blends together and mixes like a fluid storyline, this would have been better paced out over 3 or 4 films.
I still found myself enjoying seeing characters I love brought to life in new and invented ways. The film was still an enjoyable watch and even though the storyline is kind of different in terms of how things progress and who is who, I still think it’s worth a watch. In terms of ranking, I would place it below Brotherhood and the Manga but better then the 2003 adaptation. So third overall in the series of my FMA Journey.
Acting/Casting: 9.0
I think this was really well casted in the actors they chose to play the roles. In terms of whether they should have actually casted it in terms of non-japanese actors, it was clear that this wasn’t a quote “hollywood” movie like Death Note (Thank God). This was a Japanese produced, Japanese Animated, & Japanese casted mainly for a Japanese Audience. Which clearly the backlash it got on twitter was stupid.
I remember my first time watching it took me a while to get used to the animation and Ed’s terrible hair, but the second time I realized how well casted the roles were. Though Winry can be more comical, Tsubasa Honda has very good chemistry with Ed, Ryosuke Yamada. I think for Al’s voice they should have gone with a voice actor that actual did anime and not someone who mainly appears on screen. It’s two different types of acting and I think they would have gotten more out of someone being more acting vocal wise. Dean Fujioka was great as Roy Mustang and had great chemistry with Misako Renbutus, Riza, & Ryuta Sato, Hughes.
Overall it was well acted compared to other Japanese dramas and films. Everyone was very good, fit their characters, and the style of the overall film.
I believe what a lot of people who don’t seem to like this film haven’t really watched Anime adaptions before. So some the characterization or mannerisms that I’m used to Japanese Dramas & films.
Music/Costume: 8.0
I finally decided to talk about music & Costumes, something I can actually talk about!
Music - So firstly the music throughout helped place me in the world of FMA. The little orchestra sounds helped me focus on whether they meant the scene to be more of a Joking vibe that FMA is famous for or the serious part. Just like other Japanese Dramas, this has a very lack of musical elements to it as well.
Costumes - what I have a degree in. I applaud them for trying to be true to anime/manga. They don’t take as much liberation in character design as I kind of wished they did on some aspects (Costume wise). For me what I found that made this feel low budget and almost too Cosplay like, instead of a big budget studio produced film, of the types of fabric used & wigs. These were heavy fabrics for the uniforms that gave it the almost cartoonish look rather than realistic. Some of the fabrics clashed with the real life background, making it feel slightly unnatural rather than more fluid and something you would find in this world. The wigs also threw me off with how fake they look. It’s the kind of wig level work I expect from people on a very low budget and people who have been taking care of wigs to be at conventions not films. I also think Al & Ed’s Arm and Leg shouldn’t have been animated in some instances. When Al & Ed are fighting, it makes sense, but when they are standing around talking or doing simple movements it wouldn’t have seem so out of place & unnatural. I believe the main reason it seemed out of place was how realistic everything else was in the background. (They literally shot it in Italy.)
Rewatch Value: 8.5
I’m reviewing it on a second watch. The story plotline isn’t hard to follow if you know FMA at all. It seems to keep more closely to FMA: brotherhood then the original anime (Which is a good thing). The weird little quirks that the show has for me, don’t hinder my viewing experience. It’s not that deep that it’s hard to rewatch over and over again. A solid movie I would again. Not the best anime to live action I have seen (That title will always be hold by Rurouni Kenshin), but not the words. *Cough* Death Note (2017) *Cough*
Note: After writing some of my review I found out that Warner Bros only bought the rights and didn’t really have any help in making the film. When I saw Warner Bros name attached I kind of thought this had a must higher budget and more of inter-country working film sort of like The Great Wall did with China and the US markets. That was not the case for this film. (most of this has to do with the animation & costume part)
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Eu achei que o filme foi ótimo e que todo mundo está esperando muito. Eles se saíram bem com seu orçamento e atores que foram capazes de capturar a personalidade de cada personagem. Cada anime feito é apenas um teste e ponto de partida para uma nova história ou produto. Por ser constantemente negativo sobre cada um faz nada, mas parar de tentar criar algo que você pode amar. Você quer que seu favorito melhore? Em seguida, tente apoiá-lo em vez de abatê-lo. Eu sou um verdadeiro fã de FMA e sempre vou apoiá-lo, porque eu só quero mais dele, seja um jogo, filme ou qualquer outra coisa. Mesmo eu vejo alguns erros ou falhas nele, eu ainda digo bem feito e continuo! Dê-nos mais e mantenha o bom trabalho. Ansioso para mais FMA.
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