#everything’s better with fma

[stackslip]

the nina chimera thing is practically a meme by now and honestly i remembered not being particularly affected by it in mangahood. imagine my shock when fma 03 manages to make it a billion times more harrowing, simply by giving nina more screentime + letting ed slowly investigate and make his own conclusions re shou + nina being reduced to a splatter on the wall by a traumatized scar, leading to ed desperately trying to transmute her back and his hands being covered in her gore. and then roy comes in and essentially tells him, in the worst way possible, you are a child and this is nothing compared to what you will be asked to do as a dog of the military. you have sold your soul.

[t1meslayer]

Wasn’t expecting to get too excited about the 2024 Pokemon Presents, but that curveball Pokemon Z as a Legends game with Game Freak taking extra time for development is pretty hype.

Kalos deserved better than X and Y, so hoping it gets a lot of love!

Anyway. I’m here because I want to share my day 1 moonshot theory before theory-crafting goes out of style.

It’s all based on this image here from the Legends Z-A trailer:

I understand the point of this trailer is to show Lumiose City’s redevelopment blueprints coming to life. But my brain said “Fullmetal Alchemist.”

So, what if this game reveals that the city planner behind modern-day Lumiose (preferably a cunty, femme-coded ancestor to Lysandre and/or Sycamore, let’s be honest) designed the equivalent of an Amestris transmutation circle? Either to reactivate the ancient weapon or mess with the balance of nature some other way to draw out Zygarde for yadda yadda evil plotting.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

It's so weird watching fullmetal alchemist in contrast to naruto. Because both are set in fucked up worlds where everyone has committed war crimes, has had war crimes committed upon them, or is a war crime. But I trust that fma fundamentally understands how fucked up everything is, including the sinister qualities of the institutions that allowed this to happen. Naruto understands its fucked up on a surface level, but also glorifies the institution and never changes.

[very-lost-hobbit]

I finally finished Full Metal Alchemist and tbh no clue how anyone else might feel about the end of the Manga because I’m over a decade late to the party but I really enjoyed it! It’s a wonderful story with themes that I enjoy and a message about personal growth and improving the world that I desperately needed right now. I’m feeling inspired and better for having read it!

[3rdsday]

Rewatched both of the Fullmetal Alchemist anime and I've got so many emotions. So many of them.

[lostandbackagain]

because i love nuance more than anything today is Shitty Parents Who Genuinely Love Their Kids Day

[maxellminidisc]

Like in all seriousness Bebop is considered an absolute ledge status anime because it introduced a sort of hyper genre hybridity that hadn't been done at such a level before in its respective medium. It's one of those animes who's impact on its industry led it into new playing fields which is something that cements its importance to me. Like there's a reason it's like top of the list for most people that says, "Hey look anime isn't just this one sort of thing, it can be a lot of things, its a complex medium, and it includes this."

It achieved this by creating a perfect storm of execution on multiple levels: character design, strong characterization and backgrounds for all its main cast, general solid main narrative thread under the episodic formula, mastery of tone with a solid sense of comedic timing, killer animation style with a distinctly thrilling use of action sequences, lush world building, script writing with an emphasis on great dialogue, strong understanding of what makes noirs, westerns, and sci fi's tick as genres with their own respective tropes as well as their unique pacing, scoring/soundtracking that not only achieved wonderful synergy to its visuals and tones but ultimately became a character all on its own, creating a perfect blend of Japanese and American influences both in terms of media and culture granting it accessibility to a broader audience, understanding the perfect formula for "cool" and avoiding the pitfalls of falling into cringe try hardness that most people fall into, etc Like I truly could go on!!!

Very few shows as a whole can create that kind lightning in a bottle!!!! Personally I understand why people are sooo attached to fma-b, i think especially because it's a lot of peoples "baby's first serious/mature themes" anime, and that leaves a big impression. But I think there have been works before and after it that handle mature themes a lot better (not the exact theme, just mature themes in general). I think the way it handles it's own underlying main themes is flawed in a way that contradicts it's aims and thats its biggest problem, and I think the older you get (and if you're more conscious of these subjects) the more apparant it gets. To be, idk, fair?? any show trying to tackle the subject of violent colonialism and imperialism written by someone who is of a group of people who are colonizers themselves is going to have a harder time trying to nail an anti-imperialist narrative without bias absolutely showing through and it uh, definitely shows through (once again the mangaka IS NOT indigenous and has never identified herself as such for the love of god...).

[akkivee]

ichiro➡️❤️hatsune miku

kuukou➡️💜urameshi yuusuke

🆕nemu➡️🩷riza hawkeye

is what i’m thinking lol

[rubyintheskywithdiamonds]

apparently "being like Roy Mustang" is not a healthy way to deal with your problems. Who knew? Certainly not me, and certainly not Roy Mustang.

[gogogoat495]

[Image ID: Tweet by Crimson Mayhem (@/Crimson_Mayhem_) reading "'I hope that someday people will stop viewing animated movies as rough drafts of live action movies.' ~ Owen Dennis, creator of Infinity Train and the Among Us animated series" /End ID]

Me too, man 😞

[fedoranon]

Btw I have watched through the Yu Yu Hakusho live action miniseries on Netflix and I have nice things to say!!!!

Kuwabara's hair

That is all.

[mooshkat]

lol

[littlebigmouse]

List of Small Things™ I enjoy about Fullmetal Alchemist in no particular order

Everyone in FMAB/manga is just Some Guy™ and very human and I love that so here goes:

Falman getting stuck with a serial-killing suit of armor in his appartment for days and his reaction to it. It may have been weeks. He's been on sick leave the entire time. He's a guy in his early thirties with a flock of early-greying hair because being in a dead-end-role in the military is stressfull, ok. He gets stuck at home with a funny little serial killer (and eventually some foreign body guards, and a foreign prince?? lighting signal fires in his backyard?? like man what a week)

The whole military ambush against the Devil's Nest was yes, kind of kickstarted by the gang kidnapping Al for Greed, but it was mostly kickstarted because Ed was down south to do his yearly official report and Bradley and Armstrong just happened to be present when he was informed Al had gone missing. Greed's entire operation was done in by a teen doing his paperwork

on that note, Greed really decided to spend his immortality wisely by pursuing absolutely none of his supposed ambitions and just decided to settle down with a bunch of buddies. An offshot of the buddies he was initially made to guard, too. I don't think Greed is aware of this either

everyone on that radio building. The radio host 100% down to get some coup-shenanigans into his station to drive engagement. The guys sympathising with Mrs Bradley and taking care of her. Breda taking control of the narrative with a perpetual frown by the skin of his teeth.

I know the story of how the Bradleys met is technically not canon(?) but Mrs Bradley slapping her future husband upon their first meeting because he got his flirting tips from his siblings will never not be funny. Idiots. All of them.

EVERYTHING about Darius and Heinkel. They lost their jobs and became wanted criminals upon helping out some scrawny 15 year old. They have families they miss dearly. They haven't looked back since. "You guys don't HAVE to help me save the world" - "It's not like we have anything better to do"

i was going to say the Ice Cream Truck, because it's iconic, but actually, when told to disguise a vehicle, 15-year-old pinacle of edgelord fashion Edward Elric turned it into a colourful nightmare of spikes that barely resembled a car but might be closely related to the worlds deadliest parade float. None of this was necessary. Ed is just like that.

Hawkeye growing her hair out after meeting Winry, and Winry getting piercings after seeing Hawkeye's

Denny Brosh bursting into tears when he sees Maria Ross is still alive. Dude managed to not quit his job despite working in the same city (department?) where his best friend's killer was his supervisor. They were also very real for showing us that this is a guy who oversleeps and is older brother to at least three younger siblings. There was no need to give us more on Denny Brosh but every little detail hit so hard when they reunited.

okay so remember that time Ed and Ling ate Ed's shoe. Remember that Ed spend some time on a "deserted island" as a kid. Gluttony's stomach had nothing on him. Izumi raised some anime-ass boy-scouts. 100% Farm boy behaviour. These kids are so 15 it makes me want to bite things

immortal, soul-spliced dwarf in a flask got rid of his Sloth and still managed to procrastinate on his world domination plan until the last minute. Most Human disaster.

the entire half-episode they spend on Dr. Knox and his regrets and family. FMA is so good about humanising everyone.

everyone bullied Yoki because he was a small town fraud exploiting workers for his own benefit. Simply a jerk. He also hit Pride with a car in an epic rescue, and cried and screamed the whole way through

that one shot of a kid curiously poking a soldier they found bound on the ground with a stick

(I know it's technically not canon, but-) "I'm trying to save your life, asshole!"

Edward Elric

[mrsq8geek]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMsOlhzPEfY

The Floor is Open

What is the best anime opening, no holds no rules

[girls--complex]

hi, love your work a lot! it manages to blend coherence with layers of esoterica, in a fun & meaningful way. do you have any big influences with your style?

Writing this as a narrative because my whimsicall mind can't seem to organize information logickally otherwise

So

When I was a child my Dad would show me a lot of comics/cartoons in all different styles/eras and so I was internalizing comic book logic from the very beginning. He really liked American comix both capes and Indie stuff but was also into franco belgian artists and let's be clear my papa has good taste so I was readying good stuff though I couldn't remember it all too reliably... Also Comics Journal, so I was reading comics & meta about comics. So basically I have like a deep archetypal brain stem dark spring of mind that spits out raw comic information like a dream that I can't place until I rediscover them, and a lot of deep unremembered imprintations that R kinda roiling around under the surface #Stupidsoldier

N then I was a deviantart kiddo and a reading manga at barnes and noble kiddo, and then I went and got a formal art education and learned about all these artists that sort of did pseudo comics or cartoons but didnt articulate it that way-- The German xpressionists are a big example of this -- and also about overall principles of like scale and hierarchy and time and presence -- and also just that I really like drawin the human figure in particular :)

I'm really grateful that my parents especially my dad were actually really supportive/invested in me being an artist even though they had very little faith in my character or overall competence. so I was always doing art activities to make me better at drawing because that was like the one redeeming quality I had, a lot of household resources went into me having art tutoring or doing community classes, and I was really strongly encouraged to get ma BFA

So 4 influences well I like things that are very stylish but very specific in how they represent figure N physiognomy... Naoki Urosawa & Jeff Smith were fascinations 2 me along this line... Arakawa is good too... I feel like this is a strength of American and British cartoonists generally but struggling to think of names

My favorite painter is tied between two commies: Siqueiros, who was a Mexican muralist and chaotic socialist, really specific markmaking and texture, pathos drenched figuration, charged epic landscapes, and Petrov-Vodkin, Russian ikonographer who became a propagandist for the USSR, semi-social-realist, semi-ikonographic compositions in which space is wrapping around itself to organize human figures according to a mythological logic, flattish, very cartoons/comics aligned, strange treatment of color but all really effective

History painting overall is everything to me it really doesn't show in Coward but I think it shows elsewhere some of my other dramatic sensibility is a lot from 00s action movie shlock which I would always enjoy to go see when I was younger and was somehow fascinated with the environment of government buildings and prisons and secret operations happeningunder the surface of every day life erupting into wet violence of men punching each other

I love the movie THE RAID redemption !!!!

I learned a lot of the logic of pacing N building pages around Tezuka's work as well as FMA N Death Note I think were big 1s to teach me that logic. Tezuka is a really good artist to look at for how to compose a page that supports the energy of the events that are happening on it, not that that's something I personally am good at. Favorite mangaka for tone and environment and visual identity are Katsuhiro Otomo, Tustomu Nihei, Suehiro Maruo, Nishioka siblings, Hideshi Hino

A lot of my sense of timing is also from news paper strips tbh. It's just a gut thing to me at this point hehe , Character design is also a gut thing for me I draw a little thing and I can either ensoul it with psychosexual fixation or I can't

I was born in the hospital Henry Darger worked at St. Joe's he's an ancestor to me but ofc inimitable by virtue of GOD being his sole audience

As for the esoterickal dimensions I feel like it's all it's own post let's just say I lack the inclination and ability for systematic and rigorous study but I am really interesting in gathering little packets of information and arranging them into dioramas and the longer I do it the more packets I accrue

I want to make a list of artists on here that I like/admire sometime too but that's too much for me rn. I also suspect a lot of people R mad at me for arbitrary reasons just as I also am mad at a lot of people for arbitrary reasons so I dont wanna bother no one ...

Oh well so I'm intentionally reorganizing how I draw right now because I sense a shift in my trajectory again so thanks for making me reflect

[stackslip]

I'm curious, at the point where you're at in FMA 03, have you met Dante yet? I'm curious at what you think of her.

late but now that i'm done: i adore her. like, she could have benefited from a few more episodes' worth of development (like envy, really, and many other aspects of the ending that were clearly VERY rushed for time), but i fucking *love* what we got of her. i find her a thousand times more compelling and thematically appropriate an antagonist than father is.

the first thing i enjoy about her is that she is, fundamentally, a human. she claims to have surpassed humanity and looks down on them, but she is a real human person who just happens to have used alchemy to extend her own life, and the process costs not only her but everyone! she isn't a supernatural being, and in fact her bodies are all extremely fragile even outside of the whole rotting thing. what she is is really the ultimate alchemist: someone who really does see the world and everyone within it as material to be analysed, decomposed, and recomposed to her will. someone who dehumanizes others so profoundly they are just tools to her, things to be manipulated or destroyed or remodeled at her will, and who's fundamentally baffled when they react as people. but outside of being that good an alchemist, she's also just....... human. she's scared, and petty, and honestly a bit cringe and old-fashioned. she's cunning and used to manipulating people and movements, but she's good in that human, predatory and slimy way rather than as an inhuman force of evil. her motives too are human! she wants to keep living. she claims to be above it all but she is really just another human, among many MANY in the show, who struggle with the concept of dying and letting go of an idealized life. she isn't special among them! she isn't particularly unique in her motivation! she's one of a dozen characters of fma 03 who cannot cope with death as a part of life.

the second thing i enjoy is, how despite her manipulations and how she is, in essence, responsible for everything the brothers have been through (they wear her mark without knowing it for most of their life for fuck's sake!) she is not actually the only one with agency in the world, and while she pushes amestrian towards its genocidal policies the show makes it very very clear clear that she is not solely responsible for them, and that excising her does not suddenly make everything better or end racism or all that fucking nonsense lmfao, it's so clear that really, dante has been taking advantage of existing prejudices and amestris's own imperialist ambitions for her own gain. amestrians support the genocides and wars! it brings them resources, and national pride, and racial superiority! it strengthens the might of state alchemists! again what dante is is first and foremost a manipulator. the homonculi are all lost, and hollow, and desperate OR they are her own creations from past lovers and children she views as her property and lies to. they are inhuman and yet genuinely intimidated by her. she knows what buttons to press. dante doesn't implant or create things in others, she takes advantage of what is there and remolds it to her desire! equivalent exchange if you will :)))

third reason is: again. she is slimy. she is cringe. she is predatory but in a weird flailing way. she is so obviously a predator, and a very much older woman who knows nothing about the times and thinks she's still hot shit. she is sloppy at times in her handiwork. she is deeply, unbelievably petty. she is so awful it becomes campy. she throws a baby in the air for fun and experiments. she is so mad hoheinheim got himself a wife she uses the wife's homonculus for fun. she is EXCEEDINGLY creepy about rose and sexualizes and exoticizes her openly in a way that feels.... genuinely real and pathetic and racist (she is racist tbc, the narrative is v clear about it and isn't doing this for fun points). i think there need to be more evil girlfailure villains who aren't like just, hot sex machines but are this kind of realistic kind of everyday awful and evil.

fourth reason is that she's an excellent foil to a number of characters, starting with hoheinheim obviously and his own fucked up actions, and his own predatory nature towards younger women (and btw just like.... the little we get of their relationship and interactions has my head spinning, it's so good and juicy) and refusal to accept death until he does. but also edward--she isn't just trying to convince him bc he's hoheinheim's son and she's a fucking creepy, but bc again and again the narrative has shown that ed IS teethering on the edge of morality with his alchemy, that his curiosity and drive to prove he CAN do these incredible things deemed impossible, that he IS no ordinary alchemist and his love for al can lead him to dark places. he isn't dante, not yet! he turns away from her values! but had dante played her cards a bit better, maybe he could have been. and of course there's the izumi parallel too: izumi, dante's student who flees her master because there's something wrong with that woman; who grieves her son and tries to bring him back and is stuck with the homonculus that resulted--where dante tried to resurrect her son and used him as a tool. and all those who committed human transmutation in the name of bringing back lost loved ones, when pride and greed are said to be based on dante's former lovers she killed and controlled. did she ever really love them? was her first transmutation genuinely out of grief? when did she lose sight of the common humanity at the core of these other people? was it from the start, or did she lose it gradually as her soul rotted with her bodies?

i think that's also one of the most fascinating aspects of dante. she is, for all intents and purposes, a living corpse who refuses to die and move on. a zombie. in a show full of ghosts and people who are unable to die or move on, in a show about how idealizing the past and trying to freeze it or recreate a pitch perfect version of it stops you from seeing the love and possibilities right in front of your nose. and nowhere is that seen more than in dante: whose bodies rot faster and faster and yet she keeps believing she can fix it. she can use a thousand more lives to let her use a body for a few more months. why should she have to die and move on? why can't the world just stop for her? it should. everyone in fma 2003 keeps trying to repeat the past, to start up the same old cycles, to drag the long dead and buried kicking and screaming into the present. dante literally lives in a city so old and forgotten people have forgotten its existence and that it is the foundation on which central is built. she drags the bones of the homonculi's former selves to threaten them. she tries to immediately start up a relationship with her ex's son, believing she can remodel him to her liking. she takes and she takes and she takes. she has forgotten that one is all and all is one and that all struggles are connected, that the old must give to the new, that you cannot make the same mistakes over and over and get what you want whenever. she is rotten inside and out. i think it's fitting then, that she isn't killed by ed or al's hand, but that she simply storms off mad when things don't go according to plan (because she is just that petty) and that she is killed by the rebound of her own actions of untethering gluttony. she has so thoroughly dehumanized others, literally and figuratively, that she gets swallowed by the results of it, and dies the same pathetic death that the priest did in episode 2, and marcoh did, and many others that she sent gluttony to clean up.

like gd i do wish we could have gotten another full ten eps of her. but i'm also fine with her as she is. she sucks so bad. she's so delicious to dive into, the layers of her fucked up ness.