Fullmetal Alchemist: The Movie - Special Edition (2 discs)

Introduction

Has it been a year already? The Limited Edition of The Full Metal Alchemist movie is here for my perusal, a month or so before it goes on release, and I'm a tad ambivalent about it. I remember scratching my head at the decision to delay its release for a year, allowing the single disc version to have a year by itself, and wondering just how it would work out. Eager and impatient fans would just import, while casual fans would be happy with the single disc version, especially as it isn't shy in the extras stakes itself, and that would leave the chronic double dippers, and those fans that are loyal enough to stick with a series, but patient enough to wait another twelve months. The worry was that after twelve months surely the hype would begin to fade, and fans will have moved onto the next big thing. Well Revelation have really lucked out, as to coincide with the release of the Limited Edition, a tsunami of hyperbole has washed over the anime world with the announcement of a new TV series of Full Metal Alchemist. So all that remains is to ask if Full Metal Alchemist's movie is worth the double dip…

The film's the same, my opinion hasn't changed, and so here come the italics of a hasty cut and paste…


Adapting a television series to the big screen is always a tricky proposition. A balance needs to be found between catering for long-term fans, as well as attracting a larger audience. How many of the characters make it into the film? How much of the back-story is relevant? How far can you go with the story and the characters in the film that won't have committed fans spitting tacks in disgust? These are quandaries that have scuppered many a big screen adaptation, and it's no less true for anime. Films spun-off from long running franchises like Urusei Yatsura and Ranma½ have on occasion resulted in thin plots held together by a series of character cameos. The big screen spin-off from Full Metal Alchemist therefore has a tall mountain to climb. It has to appeal to broad audiences, satisfy long-term fans and tell a good story as well. Fortunately this is Full Metal Alchemist we are talking about.

I have been raving like an idiot over this spectacular anime series for the last two years, ever since the first of its thirteen volumes was released here. Over 51 episodes, it told a gripping story with amazing characters, it was a show that just got better and better, and rarely put a foot wrong. Best of all, the movie was planned before the series ended, so the filmmakers got a chance to deliver the ending that fans of the television show deserved, while setting up the film with a minimum of back-story required.

Full Metal Alchemist took place in an alternate world in the early years of the twentieth century where alchemy was commonplace, and where alchemists could transmute matter with the aid of mystical circles to focus their will. But for young alchemists Edward and Alphonse Elric, alchemy was more than just a parlour trick. They broke the first law of alchemy, the law of Equivalent Exchange that stated that for every alchemical transaction there is a price, and that the dead could never be revived. Trying and failing to resurrect their dead mother, Ed lost his arm and his leg, while Al lost his body, his spirit sealed at the last minute into a suit of armour. The series followed them on their quest to find a way to restore themselves. At the last, Ed found a way to restore his brother, but the price was high. Al came back at the same age he was when he lost his body, losing his memories of the intervening years. Ed had to pay a higher price; he had to leave his world and his brother, and crossover into ours, a world where alchemy doesn't exist. And that is how events stand at the start of the film, The Conqueror Of Shamballa.

The summary for the disc describes the plot well enough so that all that I could add would be spoilers.

Picture

This is wonderful, a film to PAL transfer, complete with 4% speedup. Most anime in the UK, especially television series get NTSC-PAL transfers, with a concomitant lower resolution, jerkiness and ghosting. It something you get used to, but to see a proper PAL image is heavenly, with its smooth animation and crystal sharp image.

Full Metal Alchemist finally goes widescreen and the transfer itself is largely fine, with the only problem early on during an action sequence when the image suffers from some noticeable compression, but it's really only just a couple of frames out of the whole movie. For the animation itself, it's much more fluid and detailed in comparison to the series. The character renditions are more robust, and the detail given to the backgrounds and settings is splendid. It doesn't quite reach theatrical quality though, with the televisual roots occasionally visible with some hasty animation, or slightly sub par character design. But as stated in the extras, given the tight deadline the filmmakers were under, it's a miracle that the final product looks as spectacular as it does.

Sound

A step up from the television series in that we now get a DD 5.1 Japanese track in addition to the DD 5.1 English. As usual for an anime release, you have the option of translated subtitles, or a signs only track. The dialogue is clear in both versions, the music from Michiru Oshima certainly lives up to the theatrical soundstage while remaining consistent with the television series, and the theme tunes from L'Arc en Ciel suit the film well. The English dub actors remain unchanged from the series, so if you liked that, you'll like this too. There are also plenty of action sequences to give your surround set-up a workout.

Extras

Are you annoyed by layer changes? Sometimes it feels as if I'm the only one who notices them. The Full Metal Alchemist movie has one or two depending on which version you watch. The English version has the expected one pause, but if you choose Japanese from the language select menu, then through the magic of not-so-seamless branching, the end credits change from English to Japanese, necessitating a second pause. Note to self: Next time, play the English version and change languages in the film via the remote. Update: I forgot to do this the second time I watched it…

I'm a little odd that I rarely wish to see the packaging with review discs, after all it's what's on the discs that is important, not how they are held, and let's face it, the prospect of struggling for hours with a Scanavo case fills me with an ominous dread. But I really wish that I could have seen the packaging for the Limited Edition. It's a chunky looking case on the PR sheet, and like so many special editions of anime films, comes with an extra booklet featuring production artwork and behind the scenes goodies from the film. The thing is though that the booklet is actually built into the case. Ok, it doesn't sound the most sturdy of contrivances, but it's just the sort of thing that you want to see in your special edition DVDs.


The extras are distributed a little oddly, but you have to remember the margins that anime companies have to work with, and a wholesale re-authoring of discs isn't to be taken lightly. In an ideal world, you would have your film and commentaries on one disc, and the extras on the other, but just like the US Funimation release, this Revelation set keeps disc one the same as the single disc release, and repeats the film with only the commentaries on disc two, along with the other extra gubbins that make up this limited edition.

Disc 1

The usual anime disc features are there, the animated menus, jacket picture, dual stream credit sequence, as well as trailers for Gunslinger Girl and quite appropriately the Full Metal Alchemist series.

You'll find two image gallery slideshows totalling about 3 minutes in length. One shows stills from the film, while the other features production art.

There are around 10 minutes worth of trailers for the movie, including the US trailer, the Japanese theatrical trailer and several TV trailers.

The meatiest extra is the Behind The Scenes featurette. This lasts 40 minutes and is a retrospective with director Seiji Mizushima. Made 4 months after the film's release, it looks back at the making of process. It takes us from the original script, to the storyboards and animation, the editing and music, as well as the ADR process and the hefty deadlines that had to be met. There is much of interest here and it is well worth a watch.


Disc 2

The least of what you get on this disc are trailers for School Rumble and Hell Girl, and with those out of the way…

The Talk Session lasts 54 minutes, and features the Japanese cast and director. Romi Park (Ed) chairs the discussion, and with the director Seiji Mizushima, voice of Al Rie Kugimiya, and Toru Okawa (Roy Mustang), they go over the film and how things have changed from the series. There's two years of character growth to touch on, the ADR session, memorable scenes, and it's all very enjoyable, with a lot of good-natured ribbing. The discussion is interspersed with some 1 on 1 chats and it's all kept light but informative.

Having the commentaries on this disc means repeating the film over, although there is no native English or Japanese soundtrack; it's just the commentaries only. It's also worth noting that this is the longer, NTSC version of the film, which offers a nice compare and contrast to the native PAL transfer on disc 1, as an indication of how we usually get anime in the UK.

The Japanese director Mizushima and his staff, Yohei Miyahara (technical director), Yoshihiro Oyaba (production desk) as well as a moderator from Mainichi Broadcasting get together to discuss the making of the film. It's a commentary that does get a little technical, although with the jovial atmosphere it never gets too dry. From time to time, other crewmembers pop into the recording to talk about their contributions to the film. There are some interesting things to be heard here, including the difficulty of researching depression era Germany (photographic records were thin on the ground), and also that the film was still incomplete when it debuted in theatres, and small bits of animation had to be finished for the DVD release.


The second commentary sees Mizushima again, and this time he's joined by Romi Park (Ed), Rie Kugimiya (Al), and Megumi Toyoguchi (Winry). Here's the absolute muck-about of the commentaries, although there are some cogent comments about the ADR process, the characters and the story. Giggles do abound though, and don't be too surprised when the commentators let the film play while they eat their lunch. Both these commentaries are in Japanese with English subtitles of course.

The US ADR Directors host the final commentary, although it really is only tenuously attached to the film. Instead, this is really set up as a set of interviews with the English language cast. Directors Mike McFarland and Colleen Clinkenbeard take turns in inviting members of the cast into a small box and then quiz them about their characters, their views on the series, and on occasion ask them something about the movie as well. Volume 13 of the series had something similar, a featurette with interviews with cast members, although that was understandably shorter. There is the opportunity to go into more detail here, and it's certainly well worth a listen.

Conclusion

The creators of Full Metal Alchemist had a simple choice to make, whether to cater solely for existing fans or to aim for a broader audience. In my opinion they made the right one, and this film is truly a gift to fans of the series. If like me you have followed the epic series avidly, then this film delivers on the story set up at the end of the show, with a tale which if anything is even more epic. It takes what was strongest about the series, the bonds of brotherhood between Ed and Al, and builds on that to give an emotionally satisfying couple of hours.

Something had to give however, and the complex storyline of the series, the multiple plot threads, and the several character arcs are dispensed with to focus solely on Ed and Al. This helps when it comes to broadening the audience of course, as it is easy to relate to two brothers, torn apart across dimensions, fighting to be reunited. And the film can be enjoyed at that simple level. But for those who are familiar with the characters, the back-story, and the world of Full Metal Alchemist, the film is an infinitely more rewarding experience. Instead of the random cameos of other tie-in movies, we find the supporting characters of Full Metal Alchemist in context and contributing to the storyline.

Setting the film in 'our' universe was a brilliant move. The series often showed the darker parts of human nature, the desire for power, fear of difference, the desperate need to survive. By placing Ed in Germany between the wars, the allegory simply gains dimension. He's faced with a society strikingly similar to his own, where minorities are persecuted, where the powerful seek scapegoats to gain personal power, and seek to mould the thinking of the common man. And as we know, the Nazi movement may have been the most evil, inhumane scourge in history, but it makes for great cinema. There are always rumours that Hitler was obsessed with the occult, and throwing alchemy into that mix simply spices things up. Here the Thule society is seeking power to help Hitler's rise in depression hit Germany. Edward Elric is the key to a whole other world, full of alchemical wonders, a world that could fuel Germany's resurgence. It's pretty nifty how the fantastic story of Full Metal Alchemist meshes with real world events and characters.


Watching the extras a year after the single disc release was something of a deflating experience. It's like one of those mail order chess sets that build up piece by piece. I felt that I was watching the DVD in instalments. I would have loved to review the final package, but I only received the review disc. But this truly is one of those limited editions, and cheapskate reviewers are justly denied from hogging the merchandise. There are only so many copies out there in Region 2 land, and any self-respecting Full Metal Alchemist fan will have their copy firmly pre-ordered, double-dip be damned. And it is worth it, even without having seen the special packaging with the built in art book. The featurette on the first disc gave us a look at the making of the film, and this is balanced by the featurette on the second that gives us the actors' side of things, their views on the film and the characters they played. There's also a whole heap of variety in the three commentaries for the film. The Japanese commentary tracks are surprisingly light-hearted and fun, although the staff commentary is still heavily loaded with the technical aspects of the making of the film. This is balanced by the abject silliness of the actor commentary, which somehow still manages to get a decent amount of pertinent information across, even through the giggles. I was most impressed by the US cast commentary, which could easily have been a simple, 'and here's what's happening on the screen' tracks. Instead we get what amounts to a 100-minute interview with the US cast members of the show, and even if they don't necessarily talk about the film, they do go into a lot more detail about their characters and the show, certainly more than the sound-bite interviews there was only space for on volume 13 of the series. Anyway, my recommendation still stands; fans of the show will have already put in their pre-orders, but if you've never seen Full Metal Alchemist before, I urge you to buy the special edition of the movie, and put it to one side. Then buy the series, and watch it all from the beginning before watching the film. It's worth every penny.