#thanks for the general plot and the characters rick but I'll take it from here

[rafyki]

Can you believe that in SoN, when Percy finds out Nico has been kidnappend by Gaea (and may be dead) he doesn't even stop to worry about him? No he's worried about Hazel, bc it's her brother they're talking about and he's like 'don't worry we'll find out what happened to him', but that's for Hazel's sake, bc in his mind Percy's too busy being salty that Nico lied to him (for the whole world's sake, I might add!) to care that he might be fucking dead????

Percy Jackson you're so lucky you're not real otherwise you'd fucking catch these hands what the hell

[greed-the-dorkalicious]

Part 1: Mm!! Super interesting! One thing people say 03 has over brotherhood is the characters. Do you have any thoughts on this? I would LOVE to hear them! You say such interesting things. Here are mine: I definitely liked that ed and al reacted to things better in 03. It felt like trauma affected them more. But, I also didn't like them as much. They came across as.. angsty and moody. If that makes sense? (I'll continue in the next ask)

Part 2; Ok I'll continue:) I didn't care about 03 Roy and Riza nearly as much as I did in Brotherhood. however, Hughes and Ross were much better done. I also HATED 03 Hohenheim, whereas I love him in brotherhood. People say that the homunculi we better in 03, but, while they did have more character depth and screen time, I didn't like them as much. Lust in 03 always seemed unsure of herself and envy was boring. Wrath was amazing though, I love him haha :)

Ohoho you flatter me dear anon~

Yeah, I personally didn’t like most of the characters in 03 very much, at least compared to the manga.

For one thing, I feel like Ed and Al’s relationship wasn’t as close and healthy. In the manga they always communicated well. In 03 they just constantly bottled up their feelings. Ed in particular would always take it upon himself to be responsible for absolutely everything, and Al would kind of just go along with whatever Ed did without ever really getting any say in things. Even when he did disagree with Ed, whenever he spoke up Ed would just shut him down- e.g. the scene where Ed throws a teacup at Al, the episode where I don’t remember the specifics but Al disagrees with something Ed wants to do and then Ed has a total meltdown and they split up for a while, etc. 03 Al will always have a special place in my heart since he’s what really initially sparked my love for him, but in hindsight my dear soft-hearted son needed to be less subservient, imo.

Mustang is also a complete asshole. Manga Roy does of course have his aloof persona, but he is frequently shown to genuinely care for his subordinates, for the Elric brothers, and people in general. Not so in 03. 03 Mustang only seems to care about his career, which iirc was the entire reason he recruited Ed in the first place, and has on several occasions gotten Ed and Al to do things by threatening to let their secret out- in other words, emotionally manipulating children by threatening their lives. He’s also done things like force Ed to work on Tucker’s research immediately after the Nina trauma, and basically just repeatedly tells Ed to toughen up. He has a lot of “If you weren’t prepared to kill you shouldn’t have joined the military” speeches, as opposed to the manga’s Roy “I know they’re actively trying to kill us but make sure you only shoot them in non-critical areas” Mustang. I honestly don’t even remember if 03 Mustang had a legitimate reason for why he wanted to become Fuhrer so badly- all I remember ever being said on the subject was the infamous miniskirt scene.

Scar was also kind of... weird. Like, I don’t think he was necessarily bad, just that he mostly existed to wander around having a circa 2005 emo kid existential crisis. Back when 03 was big, before manga Scar really got his character development, my friends and I used to compare Scar to Shadow the Hedgehog a lot.

I also feel like the “love interests” were poorly treated. I don’t remember 03 well enough to think of specific examples other than Shamballa, where Winry and Riza of course do all they can for Ed and Roy, but then are just... straight up left behind. “Ok Winry thanks for fixing my automail, I know you’ve been waiting for me this whole time but I’m not gonna confess or anything, anyway I’m going to a different universe forever now bye.”

I also never really liked most of the original characters. I think the idea of homunculi being made from failed human transmutation attempts was really cool, but I never actually liked any of the homunculi at all. I didn’t like Dante, I didn’t like Archer, hated everyone in Shamballa, and as you mentioned 03 Hohenheim was also pretty shitty.

That being said, there are a few characters I liked in 03. I liked that we got to see more of Sheska and Maria Ross. Lujon and Lydia, for as much as their plot was dumb, were nice enough. I also really loved Rick and Leo! That’s the other thing, I like that some of the Ishvalans actually had names.