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.