There\u2019s more anime being made now than at any point in the medium\u2019s history. Each season brings a nonstop flood of new shows vying to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the canon heavyweights\u2014from the mecha deconstruction of Neon Genesis Evangelion <\/em>and the old-school cool Cowboy Bebop<\/em>\u00a0to the modern blockbuster that was Attack on Titan<\/em>. But no show has proven to have arms long enough to box with God\u2014and that God, for me, is Fullmetal Alchemist<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n Every time a new series crops up, firing on all cylinders, I find myself asking\u2014almost involuntarily\u2014whether it\u2019s better than Hiromu Arakawa\u2019s magnum opus. The answer is always no. Simply put, Fullmetal Alchemist<\/em> didn\u2019t just raise the bar; it rewired my brain chemistry for what anime can be.<\/p>\n In the decades since its finale, it\u2019s become my standard\u2011bearer of greatness, the rubric against which every subsequent anime is measured. And to this day, no anime has ever ruled quite as hard or as completely as it did. The chasm between it and other shows only grows more apparent every time I revisit it.<\/p>\n Fullmetal Alchemist<\/em> tells the tale of Edward and Alphonse Elric\u2014two brothers who, on October 3, 1911, paid the ultimate price for meddling with alchemy, the world\u2019s closest thing to magic, in a desperate attempt to bring their mother back from the dead. The brutal consequences of their naivety are the loss of Ed\u2019s right arm and leg and Alphone\u2019s entire body. Outfitted with automail prosthetics and a full suit of armor, respectively, the brothers rove out in search of the Philosopher\u2019s stone\u2014a long-coveted alchemical artifact rumored to have the power to restore what they\u2019ve lost.<\/p>\n Along the way, the Elrics gain allies among state alchemists, clash with the literal embodiments of the seven deadly sins, and confront moral gray areas against the stark backdrop of a world forever warped by the horrific price of power.<\/p>\n Calling Fullmetal Alchemist <\/em>the greatest anime of all time is about as cold an arguable take as you can get. Its GOAT status is so widely accepted that a quick scroll through MyAnimeList all but solidifies it as a permanent fixture in the pantheon of the most beloved anime ever made. If not at the apex, it\u2019s at least in the top five in the decades since its premiere. It\u2019s the kind of series that seasoned fans instinctively place on the shortlist of gateway recommendations in the same breath as Death Note<\/em> because it\u2019s a well-rounded showcase of everything the medium has to offer and then some.<\/p>\n A lot of FMA<\/em>\u2018s reputation owes a lot to the superb artistry of Studio Bones and Akira Senju\u2019s divine orchestral score, sure, but the rest of it comes from the story itself. FMA <\/i>is unflinchingly political, morally tangled, and deeply human in ways that most shonen could never dare to be. What\u2019s more, Arakawa\u2019s absurdly resonant storytelling extends far beyond the Elric brothers, touching every corner of its ensemble, \u201cgood or bad,\u201d in ways that blur the lines almost immediately.<\/p>\n Guilt and absolution might be the biggest concepts in FMA<\/em>\u2018s thematic word map. And rightly so, they reverberate through the entire ensemble.\u00a0Both versions of\u00a0FMA\u2014<\/em>but especially its more manga-accurate remake,\u00a0Brotherhood<\/em>\u2014serve up that moral complexity without pretension and dense world-building without drowning viewers in lore soup. You can see the bones (quite literally) that set the Elrics on their journey to right the wrongs of their wide-eyed hubris. Their journey, ultimately, is not to seize a new level of power as we\u2019ve become accustomed to in shonen but to surrender it. <\/span><\/p>\n Along the way, FMA<\/em> builds a narrative scaffolding around the brothers\u2019 odyssey that refuses to flinch from its politics. It presents a cast of so\u2011called heroes wrestling with the truth that, beneath all the medals and the mythmaking titles, they\u2019re war criminals living every waking moment haunted by the events that made them so. Key among them are Colonel Roy Mustang and General Riza Hawkeye, a duo whose austere obedience enabled genocidal atrocities, giving rise to the \u201cvillain\u201d they insist on calling Scar\u2014a survivor of their crimes in the Ishval Civil War.<\/p>\n Deep in their souls, they know that while they\u2019re meant to thwart his terrorist acts, his vengeance is justified because he is the living consequence of their sins. And still, they push forward, trying to safeguard a world they helped break. The show lets that contradiction sit heavily on their shoulders for all 64 episodes, never offering them\u2014or us\u2014an easy way out of the messiness of their road to redemption.<\/p>\n And yet, for all its heaviness and Lovecraftian horror, FMA<\/em> is also goofy as hell. It\u2019s an anime that\u2019s unafraid to indulge in slice-of-life-tinged wanderlust, found-family softness, and the outright clownery of its world in an equivalent exchange of tonal mastery. It also doesn\u2019t hurt that one of its many contributions to the anime zeitgeist is its female cast. Drawn with Arakawa\u2019s signature\u00a0\u201cva-va-voom\u201d sensibilities, her heroines are the gold standard: competent, complicated, emotionally layered characters who are allowed to be funny, furious, tender, and terrifying all at once.\u00a0<\/span>Most shows are\u00a0lucky to have one woman written this well; FMA<\/em> has an entire roster of them.<\/p>\n What makes FMA<\/em> so outstanding is its trust in you to sit with the weight of it, interrogating heady concepts like grief, sacrifice, state violence, the cost of ambition, and the ethics of power with a clarity sharper than most prestige dramas. What\u2019s more, it stands the test of time as a rare shonen series that grows up with you without ever talking down to you. And unlike so many series that come with the promise of \u201cgetting good after X episodes,\u201d\u00a0Brotherhood<\/em>\u00a0is the\u00a0picturesque horse-on-fire meme\u2014good from the first frame to the last, rivaled only by its original anime series\u2019 opening stretch, which handles\u00a0its first big WTF moment with far greater poignancy.<\/p>\n FMA<\/em>\u2018s touchstones echo everywhere I look: I see its earnest call to action in Witch Hat Atelier<\/em>; its blend of the grotesque and the divine in Delicious in Dungeon<\/em>; its unflinching critique of cults of personality in Attack on Titan<\/em>; its quiet awe for the mundane in Frieren: Beyond Journey\u2019s End<\/em>; and its brutal road to absolution in Vinland Saga<\/em>. It\u2019s also why I\u2019m downright giddy watching Studio Bones and Arakawa spin the block with Daemons of the Shadow Realm<\/em>, which is already showing early glimmers of the hallmarks that made FMA<\/em> the undisputed GOAT.<\/p>\n Decades later, FMA <\/em>endures as an anime I can\u2019t help but measure everything else against, because nothing else has ever quite reached its level, because it is the peak.<\/p>\n You can stream the anime on Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Hulu.<\/p>\n Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote><\/div>\n![\"Fullmetal](\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2026\/04\/fullmetal-alchemist-brotherhood-studio-bones.jpg\")
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