To answer your question Regulith, FMA:B does back up a bit.
It's a bit late for that lol, I finished the last episode of FMA not long ago and I'm getting ready to watch The Conqueror of Shamballa
I was pretty pleased with the series as a whole, though to be honest I felt much more involved with it during the first 15-20 episodes than the rest (I was heartily laughing, nearly crying, or very enraged at least once per episode), I'm guessing that's because that part of the plot wasn't written by the same person depending on when it branches off into FMA:B (or maybe things just got too complicated after that, I can't be sure).
The ending didn't really sit right with me though. It definitely took me by surprise,
████████████████████████████████████████, but I've never really been a fan of those open-ended endings where
███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████. I'm hoping the movie will remedy that (I heard it's sort of a glorified epilogue?) but I guess I'll start to find out on my own as soon as I make this post.
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