Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Review — Still the Gold Standard

Some shows age. Brotherhood calcifies into legend.\n\nWhat still startles on a 2026 rewatch is the pacing: sixty-four episodes that never once idle. Every training beat, every reversal, every quiet Winry scene is load-bearing. The Elric brothers' bargain — a law of equivalent exchange that the show itself refuses to break — gives the whole run a moral physics most fantasy never attempts.\n\n## Where it earns the score\n\nThe Promised Day arc lands because the show spent forty episodes placing its pieces. Villains get philosophy instead of monologues. And Arakawa's humor — the sudden chibi gag in a war story — still works as pressure release, not tonal whiplash.\n\n## The one honest caveat\n\nThe first thirteen episodes retread 2003 territory at speed; a first-timer should push through to episode 14 before judging. After that, it does not let go.