Spoilers – Fullmetal Alchemist: Milos no Sei naru Hoshi (The Sacred Star of Milos)

Fullmetal Alchemist: Milos no Sei naru Hoshi (The Sacred Star of Milos) / 劇場版 鋼の錬金術師 嘆きの丘(ミロス)の聖なる星

 

Criminal Melvin, serving his sentence at the prison in Central City for robbery, escapes from jail, and heads West. Ed and Al chase him to the Milos City, where they meet mysterious girl Julia Criton, member of an organization called “Black Bat”.

Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Shounen

Aired 2nd July 2011

Directed by Muraya Kazuya and produced by Bones and FUNimation Entertainment

Rate NC16 for blood spamming

Official Website

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This is quite sad, but on Saturday night – for the first time ever, in my life – I watched an anime on big screen. Fullmetal Alchemist: Milos no Sei naru Hoshi was screened for only two days, and my brother immediately snapped up 3 tickets for us siblings – but even then it was half full. On the day itself, I was so excited to see that tickets were sold out. They even gave us a free FMA poster! Life as an anime fan is pretty sad for me, since there’s only one person in my life (who isn’t related to me) who holds a passion for manga and anime up to my level (hi chungky). Even then, chungky’s a shoujo fan while I’m a shounen one. Whatever it is, it was an unbelievably wonderful experience to be sitting in the cinema watching the movie with other fans, enjoying and laughing the movie together.

Okay, I live such a sad life I’m becoming sappy. Moving on.

I would write a review for this, but I have a feeling that not many out there have watched it. So I’ll be nice and just spit out what happened from A to Z. Bear in mind that I’ve only watched this once, and the highlight for the movie for me were all the alchemy action scenes so some details may be a little blurry. Some of the sequence of events may not be in correct sequence, and I may have omitted some of the happenings but I’m pretty sure I’ve got the gist of it. Also, the pictures in this post are really blurry and are kinda really almost ultra LQ since I just took snapshots from various trailers. So for all that may be wrong and unpretty, I’ll apologize here in advance.

The setting of the movie is at the border of the two countries, Amestris and Creta. Ed and Al go all the way there chasing a fugitive, and they get dragged into the whole political-terrorism whish whash between Creta and the people of Milos who want to take their country back.

If you’re planning on watching the movie sometime soon, you don’t have to worry if you can’t stay until the end of the credits since I assure you there’s nothing there. This was what made my movie experience quite sweet – even when the credits were rolling and the lights had turned on, hardly anybody got up from their seats. And when there was nothing after the credits, there was a disappointed ‘awww…’ from all of us. Ahh, the sweet experience…!

Spoilers start after the break!

Mushroom Manga – Gin no Saji & Ao Haru Ride

A couple of days back I woefully bade goodbye to Kekkaishi as I read its final chapter. It had a surprisingly quite sad ending in certain aspects, but like many other shounen manga it closed with the promise of future – not just for the characters in the manga, but the manga-ka his/herself as well. So as I read the usual final little side note that went something along the lines of ‘thank you for supporting so-and-so… look forward to next work…’ I thought… A-HAH!

Therefore today I mushroom manga from  two pretty-much super popular manga-ka who have recently started on their new piece of work!

Gin no Saji (銀の匙) / Silver Spoon

Manga-ka: Arakawa Hiromu

Genre: Comedy, School Life, Slice of Life, Shounen

Yugo Hachiken aspires to live separated from his family, so he took the chance by enrolling to an agriculture boarding school. He thinks that the path would be easy for him regardless due to his talent for studying – but he’s proven wrong. Brought up as an all-easy-to-get city boy, he is forced to discover the inconvenient truth about agricultural life. Enjoy Hachiken’s story as he tries to keep up with his friends (mostly farmers’ heirs) who are already accustomed to hardworking farm life.

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I didn’t even bother reading the summary before I started going through this. Gin no Saji, or Silver Spoon, is by Arakawa Hiromu – and being an avid fan of FMA, this was a definite must-read.

One-Shot for the Weekend – Sôten no Kômori

Sôten no Kômori (蒼天の蝙蝠) /  Bat of the Blue Sky

Manga-ka: Arakawa Hiromu

Genre: Action, Drama, Historical, Martial Arts, Shounen, Tragedy

Henpukumaru awakens in the mansion of her enemy. She is introduced to the future lord of the mansion, Chiyozuru. Chiyozuru is able to get the unemotional Henpukumaru to smile and react differently than she normally would. The mystery remains though – who was she in the past?

Published as one-shot in Shounen GanGan 2006.

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I was in one of my post-FMA moods, so I ended up picking Sôten no Kômori since it’s also another one of Arakawa’s works. It was my second time reading it, and I don’t know why but for some reason I enjoyed it more this time round. Hence, I bring it to you as this week’s one-shot =)

It starts of rather typically – the character gets saved by some rich family after collapsing at some random place. The way the story develops from then on however, has more of a realistic touch – the same level of realism that is implemented in Arakawa’s infamous Fullmetal Alchemist (or, at least, as realistic as a fantasy setting could get).

I particularly liked the action scenes – weapons, fighting, creeping around… It’s nice to once in awhile go back to pure action that relied on physical skills and was humanely possible instead of spamming ninjutsu and bankai.

It’s a nice read for a one-shot – the ending felt really complete and well-rounded (the best trait I found about FMA)after all that had happened in the past 60 pages. Despite everything that occurred, the story didn’t feel rushed either. Although Sôten no Kômori isn’t anything like FMA, Arakawa’s trademark skills are definitely exhibited in this one-shot that you really shouldn’t miss out on this weekend =D

Rating: 4.3/5.0

-arawr >=3