Well, I can understand why anime fans love this series, but personally, it contains a lot of the stuff I personally *don't* like about anime. My main gripe is with the writing for some of the story lines. I do like the overarching series themes about equivalency, man's role in the world, and more specifically the adult themes of government corruption. However, I felt that the story lines to support these themes were poorly written, as if they were written by a child for a mature audience. For example, in that episode where there's an obvious rift btw Edward and Al, the reason for the tension is completely ludicrous. The method used for this is immature and clichéd, and is the type of plot vehicle used in really bad Jerry Bruckheimer action films to form a skeleton of story on which to base action scenes around. The end of the series has less of this type of trash writing, but it's quite a lot of garbage to wade through in order to get to a decent end.
Overall, good action, cool adult themes, but bad writing from the beginning through the middle of the series made it a negative experience for me. I haven't watched much of FMA Brotherhood yet, but it looks like it's a reboot with less garbage writing, so I'd recommend skipping the original, and watching Brotherhood instead.
Overall, good action, cool adult themes, but bad writing from the beginning through the middle of the series made it a negative experience for me. I haven't watched much of FMA Brotherhood yet, but it looks like it's a reboot with less garbage writing, so I'd recommend skipping the original, and watching Brotherhood instead.