FullMetal Alchemist the movie
The Conqueror of Shamballa
(Reviewed on 10/12/2005)
The Fulloflife ROSSMAN
FullMetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa is a bad movie. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. It hurt me in ways that only trying to imitate the Overfiend's sexual exploits can. Don't ever question if I suffer for you, my readers, ever again. Oh God, I still vomit, pee and shit blood!....
Why? Why did I actually throw away an hour and forty-five minutes of my life on this garbage when I already thought that the second half of the FullMetal Alchemist TV show sucked diseased yak nads? I don't know. I think it had something to do with the fact that I still had hope. I had hope that Studio Bones could pick up the pieces of the TV show's rushed and shitty finale, and somehow make something more coherent and fulfilling that their viewers dutifully deserved after investing so much time and emotion into their characters and story. Then Bones took my hope, tied it down, and anally raped it while some hired thugs kept me pinned to a chair in the corner, forcing me to watch with a knife to my crotch. Your time will come, Studio Bones... Mark my words. Anything good you've ever done (i.e. RahXephon and the Cowboy Bebop movie) have been soiled thanks to all the shit you've recently heaved upon the world (think Wolf's Rain, and the ending to FMA and Scrapped Princess). Watch you backs, Bones. And be careful what dark alleys you decide to walk down. That's right, I KNOW where you meet your disease-ridden high school hookers at night. I'm watching you.
So, why do I hate The Conqueror of Shamballa so much? Most of all because it didn't pretend that the last few episodes of the TV show didn't really happen... But I guess I kind of knew they'd never retract that. Beyond that though, I hate it because it has absolutely no idea what to do with itself. The FMA world is so rich with deep characters and imaginative places, and yet the movie focuses on Edward Elric as he's stuck in 1920s Germany in our own world. There's no alchemy in our world... No, wait, now there is! Why is alchemy now possible in our world? I DON'T KNOW! They make some shit up and give us a vague reason, but if their reason holds then Ed would have been able to conger up stuff out of thin air like he could in his original world... And he can't. And what was Nazi Noa's motivation for doing what she was doing? And what part did that saucy gypsy actually play in the grand scheme of things? And does everybody in the FMA world have a double in our world? If not, why do only some have dopplegangers? And, and, and... The list of lazy plotlines goes on and on. Right now I can't even think of one good thing about this mess... The animation was only really exceptional in the opening sequence, then that went downhill fast. Bad Bones! Bad bad Bones!
Okay, here's what it's about (I hope you've seen the whole TV series 'cause I'm about to spoil the shit out of things for you). Ed Elric is still in our world, but now it's 1923 and he's in depression era Germany (not from the American Great Depression, you fucking retard... Read some history; after WWI Germany was in the shithouse, which is the situation that Hitler used to rise to power). He's there with an older Al building rockets. What?! Yeah, there are people in both worlds who look exactly alike, despite the fact that they're born to different parents than those in the FMA world. STUPID POINT NUMBER ONE. What makes this even gayer is that this plot device GOES ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE. In the end it doesn't matter in the least that there are people in both worlds that look alike. Anyway, Ed and Al are building rockets because... Well, why the fuck not? But then Ed runs into a hot and saucy gypsy girl who has clairvoyant powers and can see into people's minds. STUPID POINT NUMBER TWO. It was stated in the series and again in the early part of the movie that the FMA world is one of alchemy and almost mysticism, and our world is one of pure science... and apparently telepathy (as a side STUPID POINT, the atom bomb wasn't even made in our world, but the FMA world, and then accidentally transported here... So pretty much our world has nothing going for it).
So Ed and the gypsy hook up when he finds out that the Nazis are after her hot bod, and then Ed runs into Fuehrer Bradley, but in our world he's just a Jewish movie maker... I can't make this shit up. It takes a real crackhead to come up with this kind of stupid storyline. Anyway, Jewish Bradley (and his assistant who looks like Dante) want to see a real dragon in order to make their movie dragon look more realistic, so Bradley and Ed go to some abandoned castle where a dragon is rumored to be hiding. Seriously. Look, why would I lie about this? Reality is sometimes way funnier than any nonsense I could crap out. Well, it turns out that the dragon is really Envy (apparently he made it over to our world unscathed, but unable to transform back into any human form), and as soon as Ed finds him the Nazis show up and capture him. Goddamn Nazis!
Then things get reeeeeally weird. We go to the FMA world, see that the real Al (in his human form) is wandering the world in Ed's old red coat, looking for a way to get his brother back from beyond the gate. When Al makes it to that desert town that we started the series in, he meets Armstrong and Rose, and then the Nazis attack. You read that right. The Nazis apparently needed Envy and Ed and Al's father (Hohenheim) to combine in order to open the gate between both worlds despite the fact that it is impossible to use alchemy in our world. That is of course STUPID POINT NUMBER THREE. They don't even explain how this is possible or how the Nazis in our world even KNOW about alchemy or the validity of the FMA world. Yeah, they have a real dragon now, but he didn't talk, and like Hohenheim's drunk stories of another world would have been taken seriously. And just how the fuck did they plan to capture the FMA world with just suits of armor (that conveniently look just like Al's old armored self) and guns when the FMA world has guns, Fullmetal Archers, and ALCHEMY?!? STUPID POINT NUMBERS FOUR THROUGH 25.
Anyway, the Nazi's tried to conquer "Shambala" (their name for the FMA world, thinking it was some sort of paradise.... a paradise apparently filled with giant man-eating dragons), and Ed's able to get through to his home world safely with them thanks to Al and Wrath (and Gluttony) making a giant alchemy-circle in the abandoned city beneath the capital to form a stable bridge between the two realms. Then a really lame fight occurs and Ed (after FINALLY hooking up with Winry again) decides that he's got to get back to our world in order to destroy the giant Nazi alchemy circle there, so that they can never come through again... As if they'd want to after the asskicking those Fascist bastards got from Mustang and company. This is the final STUPID POINT of the movie, since all Ed had to fucking do was destroy the giant alchemy circle in his own original world -- the one that Al made. This whole movie was a stupid point! It contradicted itself so many goddamn times! And then it ended with that gypsy woman dancing on Al's grave. I shit you not. She fucking DANCED ON AL'S GRAVE. Fuck you, Studio Bones!
The Full-On SKIPPER
Arrrrrr. Now THAT be a weird as mermaid shite movie if I've ever seen one. And I have... A mermaid shite that is. It was off the coast of Zanzibar, back when I was but a lowly cabin boy on the Capsizing Queen Doubloon. I was hiding on the poop deck, sneaking a look at some nudie magazines that the first mate had stowed aboard, when I just happened to look up at some passing rocks. And there she sat. Arrrrrrr. That fat, ugly merlady sat on those rocks, shitting for all she be worth. I think she may have even popped a vessel in her neck she was pushing so hard. Arrrrrr. You would have thought that something so fat would be used to crapping out so much shite... But no. She didn't even wipe or wash her hands off after scraping that huge pile of mercrap into the seas. That was the end of me boner, and the last time this here Skipper ever went swimmin' in the ocean off of Zanzibar, I'll tell you what.
The ROSSMAN part II
Seriously, this movie SUCKED. I couldn't even get Kuni or the MegaPlayboy to view it after how shittily the original show ended. WHY?!?!?!? If you have the budget to make a BIG screen movie, why choose to continue the story of such a bad show? Why not just make a big budget Milk Junkies movie? Oooooh man would I buy that!
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