Review of Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa (2005) by Sze-To M — 07 Oct 2009

2.6/10 --.

What the crap happened!? A full length movie is indeed a good way to wrap up a well respected anime series, but only if said movie doesn't take everything great about the series and turn it into a big steaming pile of shit. It is in this way that "Conqueror of Shamballa" (poorly named since nobody actually conquers Shamballa), actually manages to be worse then the "Cowboy Bebop" movie. At least that, for all it's story development problems, didn't have me banging my head against the wall in disbelief.

The problems stem from the fact that the "Full Metal Alchemist" series left us with Ed trapped in an alternate dimension; that is pre World War II Germany. Maybe, it wasn't the best place to leave our hero because now, for the big finale, someone decided to bring in a whole slew of new characters, none of whom we ever come to care about, and giving them all their own little boring and predictable side stories, rather then catering to the old characters, and you know, wrapping up the series nicely. The main antagonist comes out of nowhere, and there are even resurrected versions of formerly dead characters hanging around, never actually doing anything important, and dragging everything down down into the abyss.

Meanwhile, the people that really matter are woefully underused (Mustang), show up only to be tossed aside (Wrath, Gluttony), or are COMPLETELY wasted (Envy, Hohenheim).

The result is a big shitty mess that thinks it can introduce a million new characters, tell a story about Hitler gaining power in Germany, interdimentional "conquering", casually bring newcomers up to speed on what has happened thus far, and have everybody discuss how they feel about it all, in classic introspective anime style, which by the way is totally not entertaining in the least. All this within an hour and a half.

It doesn't work! You can't do that! All that's left for you now is to bow your head in shame, you goddamn anime ruiners.

And now if you will excuse me, I need to go and think about what Keanu Reeves might look like doing his best Spike impersonation... SIGH.