Without question in my own collective up keep of live-action anime/manga-adapted feature titles to come, Fumihiko Sori’s take on the sprawling epic, Fullmetal Alchemist, is sure to be on radar for many an otaku. It’s also been one of the more tedious animes to follow with there being two versions – the latter being Irie Yasuhiro’s Bones-produced Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood providing a more complete telling of the Arakawa Hiromu manga.
Boasting actor and J-pop band Hey! Say! JUMP! member Yamada Ryosuke in the title role, the film takes its cues from a story that perhaps sits as one of the deepest and darkest, and notably horrific in certain instances. It’s a story brimming with action, suspense, intrigue, drama and mystery, and with an inherent spotlight on matters of “equivalent exchange” and the consequences of mankind’s own subjugation to bad habits – war being a central aspect of the narrative here.
At the center of it all, Edward Elric and younger brother Alphonse – talented alchemists and trained to survive from a young age. Gravely afflicted and robbed of much more than their innocence in a failed act against the rules of Alchemy to revive their late mother, the two embark on a solemn journey following their induction into the military to search for a powerful stone of legend that could help bring their bodies back to normal. The real question, however, lies in the stone’s origin, and with a story that spans from a modestly contained mission to one that confronts the existence of paranormal doorways to supernatural afterlife demons, and terrible truths that will ultimately test how far the Elrics’ are willing to go to bring balance to the science that nearly destroyed them.
Needless to say, it’s a journey that will ultimately worsen over time before it gets better. Monsters, monstrous battles and moral life lessons are abound for this adaptation from Warner Bros. Japan, and it’s coming to cinemas in late 2017. Actress Honda Tsubasa stars as Winry Rockbell with Fujioka Dean as the military’s own in-house flame alchemist Roy Mustang, Kunimura Jun as Dr. Marco, Sato Ryuta as Mustang’s best friend and close comrade Maes Hughes, and Ishimaru Kenjiro who plays Cornello, a corrupt small town priest intergral to introducing the Elrics’ to one of their first biggest battles as State Alchemists. The actor in question playing the younger Elric, whose soul is encapsulated in a knight’s full-body armor, remains a mystery.
This is only the beginning, and with a story so big and branched out, provided that this one does the trick, I really hope the fan support will make way for a sequel. The story here is just so crazy, deep and wicked from top to bottom and courtesy of the official website, we finally get to sample it along with an upload of the brief thirty-second teaser in the player below.
