I have started watching Fullmetal Alchemist (eps. 1-14), the first series by Bones. I had actually seen about 20 or so episodes a couple of years back, but I’m starting again from the beginning. It is a show from a period of anime where I was a little out of the circle so it has been on the “to watch” list for a while.

I was really impressed that the first scene is so dark and intense and gets right down to business to show the heart of the series. It has an ominous feeling from the get-go. In general, I’m was appreciative of the weighty questions the show brings into the story from the outset dealing with morality, ethics, politics, and religion. It has its silly moments here and there, but it doesn’t shy away from all of these topics which makes me even more impressed that the series was as popular as it was.

I also really like that there is a bit of an investigation bent to the series, at least here in the beginning. The mysteries of Al and Ed’s father as well as that of the Philosopher’s Stone and the military plus many others keep me speculating every time we get another tidbit of information.

I’m nearing where I stopped before, which really had nothing to do with the show being bad, so I’ll be curious to see if they series changes a lot past that point.

P.S. Mustang is the best.

As the season is wrapping up it is a great time to talk about some series that just finished.

My Little Monster just ended its 13 episode run. It was definitely a cute little shojo series with a distinctly energetic vibe. It was always a refreshing treat every week. Sadly you could tell it was also a series based on an ongoing series.

The funny thing is that the first episode left me this distinct impression that the last episode was going to be the conclusion of some majorly important story arc filled with tears and confrontations. If you were waiting the whole series for that you were going to be very disappointed.  The penultimate episode takes place around new years and has a very transitional feeling. Nothing is definitively resolved. Unrequited loves mainly remain unreciprocated and strange relationships  are still quite unusual and somewhat poorly defined. But there is a feeling that things are changing and that the status quo will not remain that way for long.

That also means if you were hoping for an anime original ending you were just out of luck. The last episode even felt more like an extra episode OVA than a finale. There is a little bit of a personal  revelation from Shizuku but realistically that awareness could have happened at any point in the last 3 episodes without missing a beat.

I may be in the minority but with the fact that manga is much more prevalent in English I am far more accepting of a “go read the manga now” ending to an anime. So really I just saw My Little Monster as a great way to introduce me to a quirky shojo series that will hopefully make a great read if it is ever licensed.

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

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