#fma story

[tomorrowandtomorow]

thinking about fma, one of the things i love about it is arakawa's very intentional worldbuilding. she never gave the story more than the plot needed. we don't get a bunch of flashbacks detailing the characters' lives, eveything that we know about them is only in service of the plot.

the xingese characters are there because they need the secret to immortality to gain their father's favor. and despite this being so interesting we don't really know anything else about them lol. how well do mei and ling know each other? how do their clans stand with one another? anything at all about their other siblings? they get like two interactions and other than the clans just generally hating each other we've got nothing. we don't even get anything about how lan fan even became ling's bodyguard.

then xerxes, a personal favorite of mine. ed and al are kind of casually confirmed to be descendants of a dead civilization renowned for alchemy. are we going to explore that civilization at all? ofc not. anything about hohenheim's past, other that the things you really need to know? nope. we're just generally gonna mention how he's known as a sage throughout both the east and west.

the fact that grumman is riza's grandfather? left untouched. the fact that roy studied under riza's father? you get one (1) flashback.

i love this style of worldbuilding tbh.

[oifaaa]

As I begin my umpteenth rewatch of fullmetal alchemist brotherhood I am once again reminded about how amazing it is that this show actually exists in the form that it does like can you imagine if a show like fmab was released today an almost 100% faithful adaptation of the source material not squeezed into 8 or 10 or 12 episode blocks so it can fit a season but given just the right amount of episodes needed to tell the complete story start to end

[lunar-lattice]

dunmeshi and fma were already kinda taking up similar niches in my brain bc 'really good story told by a female author' but the more i think abt it, the more im CONVINCED fma influenced dunmeshi

a sibling relationship is a big focus (bonus gold hair and eyes)

dark but relatively simple premise that gets increasingly more complex until you hit cosmic proportions

similar tonal shifts (like how you can get comedy then super emotional beats in the same sequence)

similar art in terms of how it can go from the most beautiful art youve ever seen to low-effort for comedy

well thought-out worldbuilding and politics within said world

a more calm section after the intense climax that largely deals with solving our original issue

[intotheelliwoods]

Little PSA

[owarinaki]

Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 EP13 / FMA Manga Vol.4 Side story

" Dog of the Military ?? "

[motherrrhen]

[eerna]

Rereading FMA is like yay!! Yippie!! I love these characters so much!! I love this magic system so much!! I love this worldbuilding so much!!! This is all so funny and interesting and foreshadows the themes and plotlines we will encounter later in the story so well!! Then you see the words "The Alchemist's Suffering" and cold ice washes over your spine

[rizaposting]

Riza in that paperboy suit from fma03 has had me in a chokehold for years...... ma'am...

[kalibrate]

There's more that I could say on this but oh well

Text in the middle is : "blonde siblings on a quest that gets interrupted by the younger sibling losing their body and the quest becomes to return them to their original form but in doing [so] the older sibling loses something important to them but is more than willing to do it because they love their sibling so much. also there's a whole other plot about saving the world but saving their sibling is more important."

[memesmadefullmetal]

On the topic of Riza and conqueror of shamballa:

I think both riza and roy were ooc, and the main problem was that their story had already ended at episode 57. There wasn't really a reason for them to be in the movie except for a brief cameo.

So I guess my hot take is that they shouldn't have been in cos at all.

Anon, you make a great point! 👏🏻

Roy and Riza’s character growth is definitely detrimentally impacted by their participation in Conqueror of Shamballa (and they only get about five-minutes of screentime!) 😔

When we leave them in 03, their story has come to a natural conclusion. In amongst the bleaker landscape of the 03 series’ ending, they’re also probably the characters with the ‘happiest’ end

They actually reach a point where they’re ready to explore their relationship outside of the Amestrian military so when we see them in Shamballa, it undoes a lot of the excellent groundwork which the 03 series laid down: it rips up the script for a “cameo” which could’ve been removed and had no overall impact on Shamballa’s story 🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏼‍♀️

- Mod Mustang & Mod Hawkeye 🔥🦅

[inthecarpets]

Every now and then i'm thinking of Kimblee from Fullmetal Alchemist. He's quite evil, cruel, and yet he's the one to shake up some of supporting characters by telling them to not look away from the death they are causing. After all, they are all killing innocent people. They should not look away, but live fully aware of the fact.

I appreciate the way this character was created and the way 'he's an antagonist but he's right about this.'

[spectra-bear]

To all the fma fans here who have been following me for a while now, I'd like to bring a few chapters to light in consideration to the recent tragic palestinian apartheid

FMA has made sure to speak out about these reoccuring events, and whoever hasn't noticed from reading yet needs a critical thinking class.

Let's start with chapter 90:

Chapter 90 of the series, although censored heavily in the anime (but we'll get to that later), played a HUGE role in establishing what kind of message arakawa was building up to deliver to her audience as a plot B (ishvalan genocide) sided with plot A (the search of the philosopher stones, eventually turned plot A (overthrowing the military), a message meant to awaken her readers to the truth, and one that serves as a warning

Does this not all ring familiarity?

One of the reasons arakawa wrote this story was to bring this side of history into light,

the oppression, the abuse of military power, the imbalanace in arms between two parties at "war", the perfect guise of "protecting the people from radicalized terrorists", and using it to justify the murder of countless lives, committing war crime after war crime, massacring the land and lathering it with the spilled blood of countless innocents and people fighting back for their freedom, for their home. Those that die have their lives tragically cut short, too soon.

A total extermination

And to those that remain alive,

Forcefully immigrated from their own homeland

Or exploited for their bodies, harvested for their organs, abused, tortured and humiliated

Not only that, but the emphasis on making the reason behind starting the war in the first place, being the first bullet shot at a young child by a soldier, and intentionally making it seem "trivial" for the ishvalans to retaliate because of that, and painting them as animalistic

Writing off roy mustang and maes hughes as heroes for doing whats best for their country, glorifying their relationship as war buddies, and believing theyre in the right for putting down the people of the holy land, when they couldve backed down from contributing to this one-sided war,

and when they do step back from the field, theyre labelled as cowards. When they inevitably realize the abnormality and inhumanity of their actions, that theyve been solely used as tools and weapons of destruction, that impact is softened with rewards, of medals and cheers of accomplishment from the population-wide brainwashed by lies spread by the people in power, and if theyre lucky, accomodations for the negative mental effects of being part of a war

(arakawa interview source)

What do I conclude from this?

That the author of your favorite manga does not support genocide and in fact, condemns those who partake in it

If it isnt obvious, She included these stories because they have happened before

She is telling these stories, while not 100% protrayed correctly, to fill the empty gaps in the western perspective that have been contaminated with propaganda and demonization of these indigenous people

The designs of ishvalans and cultural clothing are intentionally influenced by japanese ethnic groups, middle eastern and south asian cultures, and the military intentionally european/western looking as an example for their expansion and dominance in mind

And now we are watching all this happen in reality, again, witnessed live, in much worse conditions, throughout history

Where the heroes arent kids who can sway elements at their command with the flick of a hand, but the people who stand against it in mass, marching in the streets to break the suffocating silence, and spread the voices of those seeking help and demanding their freedom back

Does everyone realize how fucked up that is? That the lines drawn between fantasy and reality blur so much that they become indistinguishable from each other? That is true horror, when the monsters and tyrants in your stories no longer stay on ink and paper, but are on your screens broadcasting their crimes, beyond humanity

You must understand that if these stories are included for you, the reader, they are not written just for the plot, but to bring awareness to you, and avoid history from repeating itself, and work against committing the same irredeemable mistakes as before

(thanks to @borkthemork for the help in outlining this and proofreading)

[oifaaa]

No joke I honestly think Mei Chang is one of the best characters in fma like this girl at the age of 11 with nothing but a small panda and the clothes on her back crossed a deadly desert that's stated alot of grown adults find difficult to cross, found a serial killer and his weird weasly little sidekick and went yep these are the guys I want to travel with from now on I will also defend this serial killer like im his professional bodyguard despite me being a tenth of his size, finds a sentient suit of armour and proceeds to fall deeply in love with him and later when he asks her to help sacrifice him to get his brothers arm back she does not hesitate and all that's on top of her being an outstanding fighter, alkahester and a princess

[auxwired]

take this mei and envy comic i am literally never going to finish

[intotheelliwoods]

Oh yeah, thanks everyone for being patient with me! 2AL is still going to be on hiatus until about mid-may as a warning! 🙏You are all the best!

[inkinthetypewriter]

so i realized that maybe, just maybe, izumi curtis was so mad at ed and al for preforming human transmutation not just because she knew how it ended from first hand experience, that they could be killed by the government for it, and that they could’ve died but because they were her rainbow children, children that gave her a second chance of being a mother to kids who don’t have a mother of their own, and the thought of losing them like her son would’ve destroyed her.