Hiromu Arakawa
Fullmetal Alchemist anime

Bones might have been still fresh on the scene at the time when Enix was looking for someone to animate their successful manga, but offering this job to a newcomer definitely wasn't an attempt to go cheap. Enix's producer Taguchi Koji once stated that anime's first season costed the company $5.5million.

Hiromu Arakawa was asked to participate a little bit, mostly in the beginning. She took part in meetings where Bones staff discussed various things and wanted her opinion to verify that what they come up with stays true to the FMA universe.

For some time, Bones staff was set though - many manga episodes were already out, so they just mostly followed their content to the letter. Problems started later.

After seven volumes, Bones ran out of material to work with. Arakawa either had to guide the scriptwriters, or let them loose. Together with Enix, they decided that it's best for the two to work separately and did not provide help from then on.

This caused the anime story to change completely in later chapters, some characters were omitted, others have different background stories than their manga counterparts. Philosopher's Stones are different, too. Since Arakawa did not contribute, the writing the story quality dropped off, but not terribly. People who started with manga and then watched the anime might get disappointed with the anime though.

Arakawa gave contradicting statements when asked if she enjoyed the first anime. Sometimes she said she doesn't like it that much, other times she complimented various things, like general story development after Bones started being "on their own".

While failing to earn any prestigious manga awards, it has scored big with the audience and has quickly become one of the best-rated animes in the history of the genre.

In manga's 20th volume, Arakawa had a wonderful surprise for Fullmetal Alchemist fans - a second anime was in the making! The crew responsible for the first anime were mostly busy with other things, but the manga artist was open to bring in some fresh faces.

The result was Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. This time, the idea was to keep things as faithful to the manga as much as possible. Since the second anime debuted when the manga was still one year from completion, Hiromu decided to trust the director Yasuhiro Irie and tell him how the series is going to end, so the anime will finish exactly the same this time around.

When manga was nearing its end, fans had a real treat, as they could enjoy their favorite characters and stories on paper and on their TV screens, both of exceptional quality. The last manga chapter was released in April 2010, while the last anime episode aired 3 months later.

First anime was fantastic, but it still was no match for the second installment. On paper, following the original story to the letter meant the show would never surprise anyone familiar with it, but the high quality animation, general visual taste, fantastic directing... the list goes on, it all enabled the fans to relive their favorite tale in a stunning and entertaining package.

An even better thing was that most people outside Japan watch a lot of anime, but don't read that much manga. Converting Arakawa's best work in a way that captures almost all of its qualities gave those people a possibility to experience this wonderful work.

Public reaction was so ecstatic that, despite occasional criticism from journalists, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood established itself as the best anime series ever made. Only few years have passed, but so far it remains unbeaten.

To finalize the first anime, the team at Enix decided to make a full-length movie. Exactly the same team that developed the series was put straight to work right after finishing last episode, so both quality and animation style were guaranteed to be good. Continuing with the established tradition, Arakawa was not involved in its making in any way.

Separated, Edward and Alphonse do not intend to give up on each other and spend their days trying to find ways to connect the two dimensions they are now in and be together again. Ed's reality is rather unpleasant - he lands in Interwar period (1920s), where class and racial tensions are on the rise. You can practically feel that one spark could set everything on fire (Roy Mustang would probably find himself at home).

In that alternate reality, he accompanies a man who looks and mostly acts like his brother Al, but is not him 100%. There are other familiar faces, like Führer, who in Edward's new world is the seemingly harmless Jewish film director Fritz Lang (a tribute to one of the most acclaimed early directors, UFA studio makes an appearance too!).

While assisting Lang, Ed is discovered by Ultima Thule, a secret organization that seeks the mysterious Shamballa world, an alternate reality which they believe is going to help them gain a weapon that would enable them to conquer their own world. But to do that, they need to conquer Shamballa first, as the title suggests.

And so Ed finds himself in the heat of things, but it's exactly the kind of heat he wants, because he knows it can rejoin him with his brother.

Movie reception was mostly positive. Fans appreciated the slightly improved art quality and the continuation of the story from the anime seems natural. On the other hand, many fans find too many plotholes to fully appreciate the picture and complain that instead of answering questions asked by the story it is built up on, it introduces more of them.

IMDb average note currently sits at 7.6, while MyAnimeList's average is 7.75, giving it 955th position on the list of top animes.

Conqueror of Shamballa was a commercial success, selling million tickets worldwide.

Satisfied with the way things turned out when Enix extended the anime run with a successful big screen finish, years later Square Enix decided to do exactly the same when Brotherhood was nearing its end.

Bones was again selected as the studio which would handle the task. Fans wouldn't want it any other way, especially after how it raised the bar with Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

The cast is largely different from the anime counterpart. Director Yasuhiro Irie was replaced by Kazuya Murata, mostly known for his assisting gigs in Berserk, Code Geass and Pokemon animes. About half of producers were replaced and soundtrack was composed by someone else, too.

This time, Edward and Alphonse are ordered to capture a prison runaway man. After confronting him, they discover a new form of alchemy. Wanting to find out more, they go to Milos Valley, and that's where things get complicated.

Time-wise, the story takes places between 15th and 24th episode of anime and does little to compliment it. In a video game, it would be considered a lazily-developed side-quest. There's not much that would bring new perspective to anything from the original plot and feels like plain filler.

Just like the first full-length anime tried to improve on art quality from the anime series, this time Bones made some effort to do the same. But they fell short in so many regards it's sometimes painful to watch. Computer animations were nicely implemented and helped in dynamic scenes, but on the other hand character models are often terrible, with drunk-and-wobbly style taking center stage.

The story is complex, but predictable. Characters famous from the series are hastily put in without any reason, just as a nod to the fans (many full-length anime adaptations suffer from it, unfortunately).

It is still a decent work, but this time around instead of a product that's polished, but not thought out to the fullest, we get something that feels rushed out just to make money and move on to the next project.

Just like it's harder to motivate when you're at work, you realize that your shift is over in 5 minutes and just want to get it over with so you can go home, Bones were clearly not too motivated in their last romance with the franchise that they had spent so much time working with.