There’s more anime being made now than at any point in the medium’s history . Each season brings a nonstop flood of new shows vying to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the canon heavyweights—from the mecha deconstruction of Neon Genesis Evangelion and the old-school cool Cowboy Bebop to the modern blockbuster that was Attack on Titan . But no show has proven to have arms long enough to box with God—and that God, for me, is Fullmetal Alchemist .

Every time a new series crops up, firing on all cylinders, I find myself asking—almost involuntarily—whether it’s better than Hiromu Arakawa ’s magnum opus. The answer is always no. Simply put, Fullmetal Alchemist didn’t just raise the bar; it rewired my brain chemistry for what anime can be.

In the decades since its finale, it’s become my standard‑bearer of greatness, the rubric against which every subsequent anime is measured. And to this day, no anime has ever ruled quite as hard or as completely as it did.…