Tomopop Review: Square Enix's Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood Trading Arts Vol. 2

6:00 PM on 07.29.2010   |   Rio McCarthy

Oh Colonel Mustang, how much I adore that you're in this Trading Arts series. Oh? What's that? Oh, right. Yes! It's that time again, and I'm here to share with Vol. 2 of the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Trading Arts by Square Enix, which are the newest to date.

This set includes Roy Mustang, Alphonse Elric, Envy and Olivier Mira Armstrong, all in adorable trading figure form. You have absolutely no idea how giddy I was to get a chance for another Roy figure! I squee with delight just thinking about it!

Anywho, we're going to jump right in and see if my excitement withstands our photoshoot. Hit the jump to check out the rest of the story!

Of course, we start off with the usual style of boxes from the fabulous team at Square Enix. If you haven't figured it out by now, I adore window boxes, so each time I get something new from them that keeps with their usual boxing, it's a breath of fresh air. It's the little things! They share a nice photo of each figure on the back, which definitely got me excited to open the box.

Inside we've got our normal plastic home that the figures like to reside in. Usually, I'm fine with this as well, but shortly you might see why I may have changed my mind a bit. Stay tuned for that, but so far we can see they're resting comfortably.

One of the first things I noticed is that, like the first series, I adore the sculpts for these figures. I love all of the poses, the way their clothing flows and they almost as dynamic as the first set. The sculpting is definitely something I look forward to with any of the Trading Arts figures, as I have yet to own any where they've let me down.

The backs are just as detailed, making sure to carry over any of the detail so that it can be viewed in a 360 degree range without missing anything. Al is definitely my favorite in the sculpting, because I can only imagine how hard it is to make a suit of armor look that dynamic, while keeping his personality at hand.

Unfortunately, when we start talking about the paint jobs, I can't gush as freely. I'm not sure what happened either with the quality control of the paint, or if the colors didn't work for what they were hoping, or if Envy just got dropped in a bucket of rust water - because that's what it looks like. If I'm thinking correctly, I see what they were trying to do by giving his muscles more dimension, but the color needed to be a little lighter and a lot less messy.

It's just really unfortunate considering how nicely they paid attention to detail, especially by making sure key parts of the characters were there. As you can see above, they remembered to have Envy's mark of the Ouroboros, but I'm afraid key points like that will be overshadowed by the fact that you now see seams, and the mishap paint job going on below it.

Another paint issue, which is hearkening back to when I said I wasn't sure about the plastic packaging anymore, are the bases the figures stand on. A few of them ended up with random white scratches all over, which I think is a result of them somewhat rolling around in the plastic packaging on the ones that happened to come loose from their figures in transit. It's not so bad if it's where the character stands anyway, but on the case of Olivier's, you can see it's elsewhere and very visible. Some scratches also occurred on her jacket that you can see on the top of the photo.

Now on to my favorite duo of this set, Roy and Alphonse! Don't they just look badass and ready for battle? Wee! I love it! These two are especially dynamic, and they make me so happy sitting my shelf looking like they'd jump any intruders. I definitely think Al is the stand out figure of the set, and it thrills me so much to see how well he looks, especially since I have his brother standing next to him on my shelf now.

Envy and Olivier aren't quite as dynamic, but are badass in their own way. I love Envy's face that sports his ever so creepy and evil grin. Olivier just has that "I'm so going to kill you" look to her, and her stance gives off such a great attitude. Envy is the shortest of the set, with all of the figures measuring around 4 to 4.5" tall.

See what I mean about the attitude? I love her bright eyes giving you that Ice Queen glare she's so great at. By the way, I definitely want to have a furry state alchemists' jacket like hers for my very own. It'd be awesome for cosplay and those lovely harsh Midwestern winter blizzards we get blessed with every year.

Roy Boy's back in photo action, and although I love him, I think I would have thinned his hair around his face a bit more if possible. You can see his left eye relatively ok when tilted more head on, but it's really hard to see both of his eyes from afar and you probably could have seen his look of intensity a bit more if the eyes were visible. That being said, if you know, want to make ten more different Roy figures or something, I definitely wouldn't mind having my very own Roy horde. Just putting that out there!

Envy looks so cool, but was just a victim of an unfortunate paint job, so if you look around please find one that has better paint because it's so worth it. I just love how conniving he looks in the above photo, and it's just so darn creepy. I do like how the hair color was done; it might not have shown in the photo that well, but it does a nice job of fading the dark green on his hair color with some black tint to show the shadows.

I can't stress how much I love that Square Enix is making these Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood figure sets, and I hope to see several more in the future. I definitely would love with every fiber of my being to see a new Maes Hughes figure, and even as creepy as he is, I'd love a Shou Tucker figure, if only because I adore his voice actor, Chuck Huber.

Anyway, I would suggest picking these up if you're a fellow FMA fan, but I would definitely try to find them in person if at all possible. Try to make sure that you get one with a little better of a paint job on Envy than I did. If you can't find them nearby, you can always order them from the Square Enix Shop online for $39.99. Other than that small paint issue I think they're golden and want to see more like ... now! Now excuse me, fellow toy lords, I think I need to pop in my DVDs again — I feel a marathon coming!