I chose to watch this movie in two parts. I watched the first part last thursday, and today I concluded the movie as a whole.
The battle scenes were the best choreographed and impressive more than shounen standards, however, I have to digress that the animation employed not only was crappy but made injustice to those awesome battles. Because it felt that they switched to low-grade flash animation when the characters have no other choice but to duke it out.
The themes of growing-up, childhood innocence compromised by adults' responsibilities, and family bonds are remarkedly present at all times during the film's running time.
Even if this film is not canon to the manga, I can't stop to think by myself that many years after the end of the manga's story....
Spoiler:
Al in one of his journeys to repaid the debt back to the many people that helped both he and Ed, long after he was restored to his original body, came back to Table City, and I want to believe that he formalized a serious relationship with Julia and later after that the two got married.
But that's fan-fic, wishful thinking from my part.
There's a question I have in concern to both Ashley and Julia.
Spoiler:
If both swallowed the Philosopher's Stone shard into their bodies, then wouldn't that make them both beings very close to Homunculi?
I know that Ed warns Julia that putting the stone inside herself would eventually consume her soul, and that's because of the many souls violently sacrificed and merged to make the stone.
Second thing, Julia Did perform human transmutation on her brother, Ashley, but not to resurrect her brother but to restore his remaining life.
There wasn't a true resurrection because Ashley didn't die, but his life was flickering in-and-out at the verge of death. Hence, in order to save him, Julia performed the ritual to see the "Truth", however, unlike Ed, Julia only got to catch a glimpse of her Gate of the Truth but was never swallowed by it. Recall that when someone performs human transmuation to raise the dead, he or she is met by the mysterious being: "The One", "The World", "The All"; the little fella with different names; Julia never saw it but only her Gate of Truth.
Nevertheless, Julia's left leg was taken from her as the toll she paid to restore her brother's life. Or maybe she intentionally exchanged part of her life to restore her brother, which in his case, he got his skinned face returned to normal at the cost of Julia sacrificing her left leg.
Anyways, it was a good movie ranking little above than
Conqueror of Shambala in my scale.
The other element that I liked about this film was the ending sequence featuring the train with our heroes onbord traveling back home to Central, and I love trains.