(just for the record, this is a slight alteration of my anime review)

ART: 8/10
The artwork is rather minimalistic when it comes to faces and clothing, but the sceneries are usually highly detailed and really make you feel the pulse of the people living there. The SD slapstick moments may feel overdone for such a dark story but nothing much of a problem. Also, the way all modern manga are made today I am even willing to consider the complete lack of erotic humor and nude to be a major plus too. Almost everyone is drawn handsomely and there is a token loli and mascot critter for the mainstream fans but even those are still not presented as a freaking brothel that distracts you from the actual story and character immersion. Banzai! Also, the series blends in various cultures and nationalities and yet it does not feel disjoined as it usually does in manga that throw in ideas at random. There is uniformity and a good excuse for everything looking the way they do.

STORY SECTION: 9/10

For Japanese standards, the pacing of the story is extremely fast and quite complicating and unpredictable to the most part. That aside, the actual story is ingenious and really full of deep stuff you would never expect in an average show. I know most manga are full of interesting ideas and concepts but very few actually manage to do something with them. Most just throw them in as extra shock value and poor excuses to show off as smart or mature… and do a sappy job with them.

The main story is about finding a magic trinket to gain back lost body parts and even resurrect the dead. But as the story goes on, it is no longer about that. It is about the meaning of life itself in a way and how each one pursues happiness or perfection in his own personal way. It’s not a unique premise; it’s like that in other series like One Piece for example. But over there the objective is unseen and impersonal to the point of not caring about it after awhile. Plus, it reached a gazillion chapters and no exposition of what the hell is going on with it was shown. No more!

Moving along, almost everything in this series is excused. Yes, it’s a series where people use magic to turn water to wine and dirt to spears; yet the inner workings of such a thing are excused to a basic level of understanding. They even offer some scientific explanations to excuse it even further. So, when Ed uses alchemy to soften the diamond-hard shield of an enemy he makes sure to explain how carbon works to make that possible and not the DBZ type of excuse “My Power Level is bigger than yours”. Furthermore, although alchemy looks in practice a lot like chakras and jutsus in Naruto, the superpowers are never overused to a point where a character is defined only by his special move. Plus, there is actual strategy in battles here, unlike there where 99% of the so called tactics is making clones of you and exchanging places with a log.

Finally, there are various side stories and they are all resolved in the end. No open endings or half-baked solutions, like in most series or even the A itself. All of which in far less than 600 chapters, most of which are dead time. So yeah, it is a masterful work that is glitched at some points by the way the plot may or may not move too fast or too slow and the emotional impact on you may or may not be as strong as it should have… or whatever.

Many disliked the ending as they found it too normal and simple. Well I am sorry for not seeing Al throwing galaxies to Father, who has created a 11-dimensional black hole or something. The themes were fine, the resolution was reasonable and the final battle was long and exciting. Not being epicly epical epic epicness in terms of explosions is not a minus.

CHARACTER SECTION: 10/10

Most characters mature or change throughout the story, which is a major plus. From the most superficial detail such as changing clothes, down to the core, like personal impressions of something, goals in life and deep stuff like that. In a span of merely ten chapters you get so much progress that most series out there can’t even see with binoculars and neon light arrows flashing above the target. So the FMA cast has all the elements of a great cast. You like pretty boys and girls? Sure, lots of those. Do they have quirky behaviors? You bet! Do they mature, grow older, wiser, smarter? Uh-huh! Do they have variety in all that or are they all slight variations of one another? Nobody is the same! Did most of them appear out of thin air? Nah, they all have backdrops excusing their place in the story. And do they all get their issues resolved at the end? Yup! Self-realization is very powerful for most and that can lead to some very emotionally powerful moments. Not to mention how many of the cast is actually killed and never returns back to life with some shmuck way.

Another thing is how even small fries end up affecting the story. It usually is about the powerful few protagonists doing all the hard work as the rest of the world just eats pop-corn and watches them fight. Well no sir, not here. In this story even the meekest of characters actually does something. They may not all have an army behind their backs, super laser beams to level those who oppose or Geass eyes to convince others of how cool they are. Yet they actually do something! From digging trenches to stall the enemy, to secretly gathering information about his weakness, to even taking up arms when they can’t take this shit any longer. Heck, the villains themselves need to resolve to deception all the time exactly because they know they can’t just openly terrorize them no matter how powerful they are. Now THIS is what I call an interesting all-round cast. Marvelous! Nothing alike that parade of cardboards that is Bleach or Naruto.

VALUE SECTION: 10/10, ENJOYMENT SECTION: 9/10
I admit that it had boring parts. It is still almost entirely captivating and a fine example of how great action/adventures should be made… in less than 600 chapters. It is almost a crime not to place this in the top adventures of all times. Reread value is very high, as there are so many events and character motives that there is no way to remember them all in one go. Plus, it will show how awesomely planned out every event was made to be since the beginning. It is nothing alike the average shounen out there, brimming with fillers, dragging, ass-pulling and random power-up panaceas. If Dragonball created the golden formula of a successful shounen series, then FMA transmutated it into a marvelous crown, full of jewels and decorations, fit only for itself and those rare few who can only hope to mimic half of its glory.