End of FMA, Spoilers in this thread

It's been around 10 years that this series started and now the last chapter's spoilers are out. I wasn't the biggest fan of the series around but I gotta admit it is one of the best written manga I had ever seen, in terms of balance between character development, story progress, humor and drama.

The lack of tragedy in the last chapters was something that caught my attention, but isn't this ending just too happy for a story that starts with children looking at their disfigured mother?

I was also expecting some big revelation but it doesn't seem that anything out of expectations happened...

So, what are you guys' thoughts?

Scanlations are out, stop reading spoilers and go read the real thing. :/

Overall I was satisfied with how things ended, even if it's a bit too 'happy' for my taste.
My favorite part was Ed and Winry's ending (no spoiler there, I don't think anyone doubted that one).
It seems alchemy makes for poor confessing material. Dohoho.
I liked how the characters developed throughout the series, literally.
Ed (and this is even more evident in the current anime) looks much more mature physically than at the beginning.

Great series, can't wait for the author's next project.

Never read the manga ...

I'm still waiting for 3 more episodes of Series 2 ... then I'll watch it all from the beginning.
Will be amused if they put an ending in Series 2 coz they didn't have the manga ending available when they did that.

... then I'll read the manga if I get around to it

FMA Brotherhood is supposed to have the manga ending. They already knew the story would be ending soon which is why they did the series; the end for the manga had already been planned a while ago as is standard for these kinds of things. That's also why the Brotherhood anime has 63 episodes rather than the standard 12-14, 24-26 or ~50.

63 was the number of episodes they had determined would be necessary to complete the series based on early estimates of its length, since things were already nearing their conclusion. FMA Brotherhood started airing April 5, 2009, by which time the final battle in Central was already starting. Chapter 94 was released five days later, so they were pretty close to the end.

They've got three weeks to animate the finale anyway, and probably had preliminary storyboards to work from already, so I suspect it will have the same ending, although possibly truncated to fit within the 23-minute duration. The chapter really wasn't that heavy on events though so all of the wrap-up could be covered pretty quickly in an animation medium.

Ah, good, that saves me from bothering to read the manga

Then you would be missing out immensely. Brotherhood is good in that it follows the manga storyline, but it is obviously heavily trunkated.

The ending, great day in the morning, it was awesome. I knew the series was ending but I didn't realise it would wrap up so quickly, but it was near perfect. Almost all of the loose ends were tied up, the characters all progress to the next stage of their lives, there is lots of closure, the action was dramatic, and most importantly to me - the core messages absolutely rang true.

Firstly, the idea of all good things are learnt through hardship as the 'true' nature of 'equivalent exchange' is so true, and was really what this series was all about.

And Ed's answer to 'truth', that for him, 'truth' was to be willing to give alchemy up and rely on others instead, was so apt.

It's a 'happy end' but it's not a 'and ever after' ending, I got a sense that the author was leaving it open to possibly revisit. As Ed and Al mention, there are still things that are to be done, rifts to be healed, and people hurt by alchemy to be helped. Most importantly, the brothers are not static at the end of the series, they're moving forward still.

Wow, brilliant end to a brilliant series. Loved it every step of the way. Definitely right up there with Samurai Deeper Kyo as my favourite manga series.

A bit too happy for me, too.
What Ed did might've caught me off-guard, but w/e.

For the most part, love this manga.
It's cohesive and well thought-out.