That up there is a PV. I was fortunate enough to see a screening of this movie at Otakon and felt like I finally had something worth blogging about again. Before you ask, no. I do not have screencaps, streams, or anything else of the movie. Buy it on DVD when it comes out.
The movie spends a good ten minutes showing Julia's backstory before Ed and Al get any screentime and it's interesting even though you don't really get the significance of her family fleeing from Milos to Creta until later in the movie. With Ed and Al on the screen just in time to see someone break out of prison in Central Amestris and fail to stop him (seriously, where are Bradley and the rest of the homunculi while this is going on right under their noses?) and then chase him west to Milos in the west, a warzone between Amestris and Creta struggling for its independence from both with the probable inevitability of being used in the Nationwide Amestrian Transmutation Circle either way. Okay, no more jokes about the plot of a filler movie in the grand scope of the overall plot. Also I don't want to spoil things so I'm gonna stop talking about the plot almost entirely now that I've given you a little taste of it.
So, was the movie good? Yes. It stayed plausibly within the story of the series, had a good standalone plot with interesting movie-exclusive characters, catered to the fanbase well (if the mass cheering at the Otakon screening at every little thing that happened were any indication) and stayed true to central ideas, ideals, and themes of the original work despite Arakawa's lack of involvement in the film.
If I were to levy complaints against the film, it would be toward its handling of side characters. Given that the movie doesn't definitively state whether it takes place in the first anime's continuity or the manga's continuity there's a limited character pool you can pull from, but even those characters they didn't do justice to. You'd expect Alex Louis Armstrong to be a pretty strong force in the movie (and chew some scenery. and sparkle.) but he's there for about three seconds . Mustang and Hawkeye have actual roles in the movie, but when it comes to the action the Flame Alchemist who in other events has mass-nuked and burned things does next to nothing and the number of bullets Hawkeye fires in the movie can probably be counted on one hand. Secondly, while the plot is a good bit better than your average anime movie (I've watched seven Naruto movies and three Bleach movies, some of which make no sense at all in terms of plot) the action wasn't as good as those other anime movies tend to get. But Fullmetal Alchemist was never a story about long fight scenes and such I suppose. But while fixing these grievances might've made it better, the grievances by no means make it a bad film.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the film and I honestly hope they make more filler movies like this to explore some of the other areas bordering Amestris and some of the other unknowns of the Fullmetal Alchemist universe. Would be great if they could get Arakawa on board with writing future films too.
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