#wrote this really late at night while suffering from insomnia and watching fmab

[whimsicallywiddershins]

You want to talk about interesting color theory? Let's talk about Fullmetal Alchemist, cause that shit is fascinating.

The classic is Red vs Blue, and there is a lot of that going on. First, we have the red of Ed's coat, and the blue uniforms of the Amesteis military. Obviously, we associate good things with red then, because Ed is our main character and the first several arcs establish that the military is horrible (Nina, Ishval, human experimentation, philosophers stone ect)

But. Alchemy is blue. There is a lot of blue light and sparks from the transmutation circles. And the alchemy that is produced by the Philosopher's Stone is red. The stone itself is red, and the homunculi all are associated with red with the red tattoos and red alchemy sparks.

And suddenly blue isn't so bad anymore. Because there are good soldiers, like Mustang, Hawkeye, Hughes, Armstrong, ect.

But Ed still wears that red coat.

Then there is the interesting difference in eye color between Ishvalans, who all have red eyes, and Amestris soldiers, who are depicted often with burning blue eyes in Scar's memories. So we go back to red=good and blue=bad.

It's really fascinating and I think, in the end, these back and forth color themes reflect that there is good and bad in everyone. That you shouldn't take things at face value. Not all of the soldiers are bad. But many of them are. The homunculi are seen as evil, but Greed wasn't. In the end, we are all only human, with different facets of good and evil, and we all have the chance and ability to change and grow.

The only one who didn't was the Dwarf in the Flask, who remained stuck in the flask his entire life, which made him evil, because he couldn't change, couldn't grow.