Mmmh... So even the Absolute Eye can get distracted by a solar eclipse. Interesting.
So, yeah, epic battles. And I don't think they came back from the dead, they just weren't dead to begin with. Hohenheim explains it pretty well. Anyway, we can have different visions on death and life in FMA, but yeah, that weren't deaths for me.
And I thought that the transmutation circle put in place by the Ishbali would be to save the people and to bring back alchemy, but no... There were two different things...
For the number of chapters, it may be 108. I didn't know that it had a special meaning, but I had another theory that gives the same number. If we suppose that the anime and the manga finish more or less at the same time, it'll be around chapter 108. With two chapters per episode. Those aren't exact calculations, but it should work.