I've seen a lot of movies, watched a lot of tv series, played a ton of amazing games.

And across all of that, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood ends up as one of the best experiences I've had, across all media.

To say that it's one of the best tv series you've never heard of will have anime fans frothing at the mouth. I'm fairly new to anime, I didn't really even know what anime was. Having watched a few series I would define it as something like American cartoons, only not episodic, with true story arcs and changing characters and scenarios with a definite end in sight. They are often more intelligent, deeper and fully formed, you also have a sense of progression with the characters. It's not like a reset switch is hit at the end of every episode which can happen with US series. But being Japanese the storytelling can often not flow properly or be slightly... weird to us westerners..... sometimes offputting or boring.

FMA is not that. FMA Brotherhood is blatantly brilliant.

FMA was actually only the second anime series I ever started watching, quite randomly, it's like being new to gaming and starting with the best game of all time. Lucky me. What I noticed when researching anime to watch online was that FMA was a regular in nearly every top 10 anime list I could find. http://thevgpress.com/forumtopics/can-anyone-recommend-some-good-anime-series_2498_1.html&perPage=20#comment166863 and usually in the top 3.

So here is the low down on FMA. There are two series. Full Metal Alchemist was first series then Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood came along. But they are both based on the same source material. When FMA was being made the manga was not complete so it veered off in its own direction. So imagine both series as two cars on the same road, then they come to a fork in the road and go off on different journeys. FMABrotherhood is accurate to the manga and totally awesome. FMA is great too but not as good. If I was new to it I would watch FMA first then watch Brotherhood after, because Brotherhood is sooooo good it will make everything else seem ordinary. There are also two movies:

Conquer of Shamballa which follows on directly from the end of the FMA series. It's pretty eh, feels completely different from Full Metal Alchemist in general, non-canon just some way for someone else to make money on it.

Movie 2 is the Sacred Star of Milos, that was great and was somewhere between Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood and a Studio Ghibli film crossed with it. It was based on the original manga writers work, like Brotherhood was. It's fairly removed from the main storyline of both shows, but I would watch it after everything else for the sake of familiarity.

Comparing both FMA series, FMA starts slower and you get into it. Brotherhood comes out with a bang, then follows the same path till the fuhrer enters the picture and the story grabs you by the balls and never lets go. It also has superior production values. You know the stories of Brotherhood and FMA diverge when it comes to the island in FMA and when the fuhrer does some crazy shit in Brotherhood.

Brotherhood, hits the ground running, getting into some epic stuff that it took the original series a while to get into. That said, without the background knowledge from the original series I would probably have been fairly lost starting Brotherhood. The original eased you in slowly like an old man into a warm bath, Brotherhood starts out like a rocket. Brilliantly they have used the same English voice actors so the familiarity is there and I'm not annoyed by a change. The production values are higher in Brotherhood.

Initially Brotherhood seemed quite strange watching it after FMA, there is a lot of crossover with the original series, it's like watching the same thing in a mirror with tiny differences here and there. The original series was a bit better in some aspects, slower paced so the story revelations were more rewarding. In Brotherhood they just dive straight into it so it will probably be more appealing while the first is a slow builder. The original series seemed a bit better fleshed out, but in retrospect it only fleshes out the smaller things that aren't really that important to the overall story. For completionists though, there is filler here, extra stuff you wont see in Brotherhood and it's well worth checking out FMA in its own right, as a great series.

It also feels like more of a journey in some ways for Ed and Al as it picks up early and shows them becoming state alchemists. There are a few revelations that aren't successful overall and the final confrontation is nowhere near epic enough but there is some other great stuff in it I won't spoil for people. It's definitely worth watching both but Brotherhood will make FMA seem a bit disappointing if you watch it before FMA.

Brotherhood is another story.... once it gets going it's like an unstoppable freight train of awesome that never stops. It builds and builds and builds to an ending so suprising, exciting and enjoyable that I literally forgot to breathe. I had to physically remind myself to intake air during the penultimate episode, was leaning up off my bed. I would equate the series to the epicness of Lost if you ever made it through that series to the end. The only difference with Brotherhood is that it's almost a perfect series. In most tv shows live action or animated there is some redundancy there, some episodes that are average or not worth bothering with, badly written etc. Brotherhood feels like everything is just.... perfect.

It's such a good series that I won't even recomend you rent it. I would say you should buy the whole series on Bluray stat, then sit back and have the ride of your life.

Here's a fan made trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn1cDfaMoLg

And don't worry, there's a very good english dub too.