Fans and Critics Are Split On Netflix’s ‘Fullmetal Alchemist’

If you hadn’t heard, Netflix just got an exciting new film that has anime fans buzzing. Fullmetal Alchemist‘s first live-action movie is live on the site, giving fans around the world a chance to peek the Japanese feature. The film, which dropped last year, has got netizens talking as they share their opinions on it. However, if you compare those reviews to those from critics, you will quickly see something is up.

If you head to Rotten Tomatoes and check out the live-action adaptation, Fullmetal Alchemist is hurting. The movie has a 20% from critical reviews as 4/5 of them are rotten. However, its audience score is much highter. Fan ratings have given the film a 72% positive score with a 3.9/5 average.

For netizens, the gap is one they want to explore given how it reflects on Fullmetal Alchemist. When people head to Netflix for a binge, they often find themselves going to Rotten Tomatoes for guidance, and this film’s lower score does not bode well for it. However, when you dig deep into the site’s aggregated reviews, the issue at hand becomes clear.

To put simply, live-action anime still hasn’t reached a point where film critics and otakus can see eye to eye. The genre has notoriously low standards, so anime fans give their reviews on a different scale than critics did.

If you check out The Daily Telegraph‘s review, you can see where this comes into play.

“It all feels grindingly perfunctory – gloopy with jargon and lore, and with no concessions made to newcomers, the film feels less like a worthwhile film in its own right than an invitation to existing fans to buy a ticket, just to see how things turned out,” the site writes.

“Conservative fans might appreciate its craven faithfulness, but adaptation isn’t much fun when it’s just approximation, and Fullmetal Alchemist behaves less like cinema than cosplay on a cinema budget.”

Other reactions from IGN Movies and Variety give Fullmetal Alchemist a bit more leeway as they review the film with fair knowledge of its medium’s on-going pitfalls. To be fair, fans themselves are also being critical of the uneven adaptation, but their reactions have a lower point of comparison to – say – a comic book movie.

Ghost in the Shell and Death Note were marked down as failures by the fandom, and Dragonball Evolution is still shunned by fans worldwide. Fullmetal Alchemist may not be perfect, but it does impress with its worldbuilding and CGI even if its characters fall flat. So, here’s to hoping those issues can be addressed in Fullmetal Alchemist’s sequel.

Do you think critics are approaching their Fullmetal Alchemist reviews the wrong way? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics, k-pop, and anime!