Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos

Built on the storyline of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which itself draws from the original manga, this is the second film in the franchise after Conqueror of Shamballa, which had instead been rooted in the 2003 anime. It carries an entirely fresh plot and a set of new faces, among them werewolf chimeras, a squad of winged fighters called the Black Bats, an alchemist gifted with water transmutation, and a strange stronghold named Table City.

The story opens as the Crichton family is driven from their homeland into Creta, leaving young Julia orphaned after her parents are brutally killed. Years later, an alchemical jailbreak by the prisoner Melvin Voyager puzzles the Amestrian military until they tie it to a censored newspaper photo of an older Julia being arrested. She is held in Table City, a fortress straddling the Amestris-Creta border, and Colonel Mustang sends Edward and Alphonse to investigate. Their train comes under assault first from werewolf chimeras and then from glider-borne raiders who call themselves the Black Bats.

Arriving amid Julia's escape, the brothers are pulled into the fighting, and Alphonse tumbles into the valley beneath the city alongside Julia and Melvin. There they meet the last of the Milos people and learn that Julia leads their resistance and that the Bats are seeking the very relic the Elrics know so well, the Philosopher's Stone, though local legend gives it a different name. The Milosians recount how Creta and then Amestris each seized the city and forced them to mine for stones said to surface at random locations.

As Julia rallies the Bats to break the military's hold, her main assault fails and a fresh stone is born from the bloodshed. The man who murdered her family surfaces, and despite the brothers' pleas she swallows the Philosopher's Stone and unleashes its power on him. Mustang, Hawkeye, and Winry Rockbell arrive with troops as the uprising plays out. In the end the occupiers are driven off, the valley's survivors reclaim the city and declare Milos an independent nation, and the Elrics linger a while before boarding a train as the freed city slips behind the mountains.

Directed by Kazuya Murata and animated by Bones, the film premiered in Japan on July 2, 2011, with a subtitled cut making its American debut at Otakon in Baltimore, followed by a session with the director. Funimation brought the Japanese version to North American theaters in early 2012 and to home video that spring. Although attached to Brotherhood, the movie is essentially non-canon, seemingly falling after Alphonse learns to transmute without a circle and before Mustang's team is scattered, since Roy has not yet recovered from his clash with Lust.

The picture tells a wholly original tale with new characters, and its look departs noticeably from the series, favoring sharper colors, flatter shading, and rounded rather than pointed hair. Observers liken Milos to another Ishval, a people squeezed between rival powers, though here the land is coveted purely for the alchemical might its Sanguine Stars could grant. Had the film been canon, it would have shown how Edward pieced together Father's plan to forge a stronger Philosopher's Stone.