A while back I talked about Dragon Ball Z and how it handles death and raising the dead in a previous Magical Mondays post. To recap, I found the way Dragon Ball Z went about this to be lacking. DBZ didn’t offer nearly enough consequences or limitations on its magic, and as a result, the narrative suffered. Raising the dead—or rather, attempting to—is a big part of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and unlike DBZ, the story sets hard limits on its magic that are never broken. This means that the characters are never able to pull a deus ex machina and instead they have to operate within the story’s rules in order to learn about themselves and develop as characters.
Trigger warning for body mutilation up ahead.