Full Metal Alchemist General

The fascist regime is still in place because there's no reasonable way in which it could have fallen, given the unfolding of events. But the main distinction here is that there's no apology for what the regime did. It's made clear that the State is a failure, and in general all the blame is laid on humans. There's no easy "the homunculi made me do it" cop-out. In fact, Dante didn't have that much agency. Even if she benefitted from wars, she wasn't the sole responsible, not even remotely. Pride may have been the Führer, and somehow under her influence, but he's shown having his own agenda as well, an agenda which may have been the same of every other human Führer before him. One is left to wonder whether the Ishbal genocide was really instigated by Dante, or it's just that Amestrians are that racist, to put it simply. Besides, there's a progressive distancing between the main characters and the fascist regime. Mustang, Hawkeye, Ed... all of them grow increasingly sceptic or downright rebellious.

I don't understand what you mean by the Ishbalans needing rescue from their oppressors. This applies to Brotherhood, but in which way does it apply to 2003? The White saviour trope is actually deconstructed, in the sense that Ed doesn't do much during the conflict, and it's the Ishbalans who defeat the army and evacuate in their own terms.

It did seem like all of the problems could be put on the homunculi, the issues in 2003 seemed more like actual conflict with world views and racism.

Airin, it's kind of coming off as if you feel you need an excuse to prefer 2003 over Brotherhood or the manga, and thus have to criticize everything about the former.

I mean, the two things are not mutually exclusive. That the Homunculi deliberately riled up human racism and hatred for conflict, doesn't mean the hate and conflicts weren't real.

Same to you Airin, the Homunculus orchestrating the conflicts doesn't some how free the people from blame, and the story never treats it as if does. Humanity, to varying degrees, where willing accomplices to everything that went on.

edited 24th Apr '17 12:29:26 PM by LSBK

I mean there were already conflicting issues, and the Homunculi themselves state they are very much human. They didn't cause them, merely used them.

And yeah, you don't have to try and justify your like for 2003 over Brotherhood, that's fine.

It's not an excuse for liking 2003 more. As I said, I watched Brotherhood first and was biased against 2003 at the beginning. So if anything, I was trying to find excuses to like Brotherhood more. Because "it was the original intention" or whatever, and because I was recommended to watch it instead of the other; both really, really bad excuses, that I've seen some BH fans using all too often even in this short time. Even worse, the people who recommended BH to me hadn't even watched 2003. So the starting point was against 2003, but it simply didn't work that way.

What I'm just trying to explain is the reasons why I think one treated these themes in a more mature way than the other (now, whether one finds this important or not is subjective). It's not that one laid ALL the guilt on the homunculi and the other ALL the guilt on humans. But it's a matter of degree. I feel that BH, while treating these themes to some degree, only scratched the surface and brushed it off all too easily.

edited 28th Apr '17 4:31:35 AM by Airin

I don't really understand "finding excuses" to like one more in the first place.

And I also don't like how debates of cynicism vs. optimism are discussed in the first place, because they often seem be done with the tactic assumption that one (usually cynicism) is inherently more "mature" or "better" than the other when that's not the case. It's all about execution.

I haven't watched the 2003 anime, so I can't make judgements on that, but I do know that I consider the manga, and by extension Brotherhood's optimistic and hopeful tone to be handled very well, and the happy endings to be well-deserved.

Feel free to disagree with that, but as I said, often times it's less people arguing whether it was handled well or not, and more going that because something was optimistic that inherently makes it more "childish".

edited 28th Apr '17 10:51:40 PM by LSBK

I can understand why the more idealistic/optimistic aspects of Brotherhood can feel a bit grating to some but I actually think the series handles that a lot better than many others because I see it as a strong case of Earn Your Happy Ending.

It's really easy to be an optimist when everything works out in the end and nobody really goes through anything horrible or things are easily rseolved, but some of the things that the characters have seen in FMAB are VERY disturbing and weighty, like war crimes, genocide, people callously turning their own family into monsters for personal gain, catastrophes that killed hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, etc. Many of them are still carrying those burdens even when the series is over, and they still had to go a long ways carrying those things anyways. But in the end, things are better.

So it feels more meaningful that way, even though these awful things happen, the show says that in the end maybe everything will turn out ok.

edited 28th Apr '17 10:21:19 PM by Draghinazzo

And god knows this kind of hopeful vision is needed in the current world. >.>

On Brotherhood's Truth: It's already stated several times in many, many places and forums that Truth... is basically Truth.

"Some call me The Universe, The World, God."

"I am Everything and Nothing"

"I am You"

My perception is that Truth basically a mirror, on how you see yourself and your everything, including belief system and all. You believe the World is fair and nice, your Truth will be fair and nice. You believe in act greedy, being horrible and being a jackass, surprise, that's how your Truth works. You are cynical person, your Truth is snarker extraordinaire.

Ed's Truth being jackass and caustic specifically because he is a jaded, broken kid who thinks world being unfair to him. Al's Truth being nice because Al is just that nice.

Fine, but there's no real difference between both shows in this aspect. In both of them horrible things happen, and in both of them the heroes get a happy, hopeful ending of sorts (specially considering Shamballa for the 2003 show). For a real Downer Ending, see the endings of the fan-made visual novel "Bluebird's Illusion". Now THOSE are hopeless endings.

The actual difference between shows is the way in which the characters arrive at their ending. In 2003 they don't get what they wanted in exactly the way they wanted, or they may get instead what they needed, instead of what they thought they wanted. Or perhaps they don't gain anything but just learn to value what they had (like Ed learning to care for a world which is not his own), which is also a sort of gain. Brotherhood, on the other hand, has a tendency of working things out, not just in a good way, but in the best possible way. Again, it's a "tendency", not a 100% true rule. Envy decides to commit suicide precisely at the moment in which we need him out of the picture. So Mustang still gets his revenge, but without the need to do it himself, and thus Ed and Riza can also get exactly what they wanted. Ed gets away with his "no killing" policy against all odds, and also with his goal of not using a Philosopher Stone to recover their bodies. He doesn't need to question his initial ideas because the plot solves everything for him (the villains are still killed by other people, anyway, so he comes out of the ordeal morally unscathed). Even after establishing that there's no equivalent price for a human soul, he can get both Al's body and soul just trading a skill that (no matter how useful for him), most people don't even have, and just at the moment in which he won't really need alchemy anymore, since the fight is over. He's spared the guilt of having killed his mother a second time, because it's discovered that the "thing" they brought back wasn't their mother. He doesn't recover his leg, not because he can't, but just as personal decision. He doesn't even stay short forever! Even if Al was getting his nutrients from the Gate. So I don't see it as a case of Earn your Happy Ending, as much as a case of having your cake and eating it too.

You can get the best possible outcome once, maybe twice, but all the time and for everyone? At what point a message stops being hopeful if is no longer verosimile? Is it hopeful to see Mustang recovering his eyesight and Havoc his legs by magic, when you know things don't work that way in reality? Wouldn't it be more hopeful to see them coping well (as they seemed they were doing, anyway) despite their injuries? Actually, I found that notion that you can't get a real happy ending if you're blind or on a wheelchair rather depressing.

edited 3rd May '17 1:16:15 PM by Airin

Alchemy doesn't work that way in reality.

Say that to people who wears prosthetic legs and have eye surgeries.

edited 3rd May '17 1:45:13 PM by RAlexa21th

I don't think it matters so much that Envy commits suicide, Riza and Scar made it very clear that Envy is not leaving alive, they just don't want Roy to lose himself in the process.

There is no way to retrieve a dead soul that's moved on from life. Al's soul wasn't gone, it was still fully functional anchored to his still living body that was taken by the Gate in exchange for what he gained from the Truth. Edward can give up what he gained from the Truth in exchange for what Al paid and still escape because he and Al are connected.

Ed and Al not killing their mother again is just a thing that has to happen because there is just no way to restore someone to life after they have died. Therefore what they created couldn't be their mother. They still have to live with the fact that they created that living thing with a miserable hour long life out of their arrogance.

Frankly Mustang and Havoc regaining their damage seems fair because it was a plotpoint that Marcoh's expertise with medical alchemy and the stone could do these sorts of things in the first place and if he didn't in the end, it would seem like they are not letting it happen for the sake of drama.

edited 3rd May '17 1:52:10 PM by lycropath

Yeah basically this

Al was never a lost soul, he was just waiting on the other side. Envy was going to die no matter what, they made that clear, but not out of anger of vengeance which this story has dedicated to showing as empty and hollow. A endless cycle of misery that only brings more misery.

What kind of surgery makes you recover fully functional legs and eyesight after total paralisis or blindness? And even if it was so, are only the priviliged who can access that surgery entitled to be happy?

What Edward paid in exchange for the truth he learned was just his leg, and this was explicitly said so. So that's what he should have got in return: his leg. There was never any explanation for alchemy being suddenly an "item" which can be exchanged, that came out of nowhere. If anything, they should have returned the monstrosity they created, since that was exactly what they got in exchange of Al's body.

After so much talk about how using a Philosopher Stone made of living people for your personal gain is a bad thing (something that we're supposed to agree with), seeing them using it so casually (and specially by people who were involved in the regime which created those stones) is kind of jarring. Is it possible for them to do so? Yes. Does it make sense for them to grab the opportunity? Sure. But it creates a big value dissonance. You can't just sell to the viewer that something is bad to the point of not using it when your brother is in danger, and the next moment pretend him to agree with it and see it as good.

If Mustang was going to lose himself into that path of anger, then he was already lost. From the moment he had tortured Envy in a horrible, sadistic way. There's no logic behind the idea that killing Envy would lead him to endless revenge or make things worse, because there's no real parallelism between Scar's fight against a nation, which he would never finish, and Mustang's personal fight against the concrete murderer of a concrete friend. We're just sold the notion that Mustang killing Envy is a bad thing.

That brutal sadistic torture was the sign it was in the cycle of revenge, he could kill Envy. Easily. A few clicks incinerating the big boy over and over again like he did with Lust and then it's all over.

Instead he wrathfully tortures Envy in excess and makes him feel nothing but pain, never just ending it. Envy had to die, but not in a cruel excessive way.

edited 3rd May '17 3:39:08 PM by EchoingSilence

Plus, refusing to let Mustang kill Envy was primarily a means of removing the final step down the path of revenge he was traveling; the satisfaction of the kill. If they allowed him to kill Envy and fully realize his vengeance, then it's likely such means would be acceptable to him in the future. Being cut off prior to completing it allows them to talk him down.

As for Marcoh, the thing with Philosopher's stones was only ever with Ed and Al. They were the only ones who ardently refused to use them because they didn't want to use the lost lives of others to fix their mistakes. And him healing Mustang was hardly "blind people don't deserve happy endings", it's just that in this universe such things are possible, therefore Marcoh offered such a treatment to them as a final thank you for helping him and putting an end to the creation of Philosophers stones. If a disabled person could reasonably have their disability removed via a relatively cheap method, pretending they wouldn't barring specific circumstances (i.e Ed and Al's guilt, which Mustang wouldn't have since he was forced to open the gate) would be silly, and it's disingenuous to try and paint the writing as something so callous when it's nothing like that.

Hell Mustang's blindness being healed pretty much has Truth's blessing. Recall what Hohopapa told Izumi: he couldn't return what was taken from her, only stop the blood vomiting, and this is a dude who is literally a walking, talking Philosopher's Stone, and who taught the people of Xing how to perform Alkahestry. If this dude can't return what was lost, nobody can. And yet Marcoh was able to return Mustang's sight with a Stone the size of a pebble.

Unlike Ed, Al, & Izumi, Mustang never chose to perform human transmutation. Even when tempted with Riza's life on the line he refused, and Pride had to force Mustang's body to serve as a conduit for the transmutation. Mustang never consented to it, and when he woke up at the Door and Truth had to invoke the rules, He took away the one thing that is completely irrelevant to Mustang. Mustang's eyes were redundant to begin with because he already had Riza to see for him, and after the battle we learn that he alone can regain what was taken from him without losing anything else in return.

The only logical explanation is that Truth knew the whole situation was bullshit and so not only took the most trivial thing, but also allowed it to be returned. If Mustang hadn't allowed Marcoh to heal him he would have been spitting on a gift straight from God.

edited 3rd May '17 4:46:15 PM by TheAirman

x4 Your confused, the Truth exchanges knowledge for an ironic price. The raw material that was used to make the thing Ed and Al brought to life was exactly that, the raw elements that compose a human body that could be payed for in pocket change. That Ed can exchange his whole connection to "The Truth" for Alphonse seems to be a fairly fair exchange, he's certainly giving away more then Al paid for even with his whole body.

The beauty of Fullmetal Alchemist is that Al and Edward's morals are not the only ones in the manga and it never treats them as the be all to end all. Only Edward and Alphonse have moral compunctions about using the Philospher's Stone. Ling, Marcoh, and Mustang are all okay with making omelettes out of the metaphorically broken egg and are not demonized for it because the issue just isn't a black and white one.

edited 3rd May '17 5:25:30 PM by lycropath

Are you really saying disabled people shouldn't try to have themselves fixed when the means are available? That's basically the premise of the franchise.

Oh, and let me tell you, cataract removal has been done by charity, so stop throwing the word "privilege" around like it's Tumblr

Huh. It's funny; the fact that Truth told a negligible toll because it knew Roy did not purposely open the gate was pretty clear, but I never thought of the Riza thing. I mean, that's exactly what happened: she acted as his eyes during the fight.

Truthfully, there are so many reasons for why Roy only lost his eyes that that one totally slipped by me.

I think this is a more nuanced issue in that some people with disabilities (like people who were born blind or have been blind most of their life) are comfortable with the way they are and don't really want people looking down on them or want to have themselves "fixed" because they can't imagine their lives being anything else other than what they are.

With that said I don't think that it is wrong to want to restore your limbs or something like that.

The difference being, Mustang and Havoc, nor Al and Ed were born with their disabilities. In the case of Mustang and Havoc, they gained theirs against their own will, forced into these situations. Ed and Al were the result of their own arrogance in human transmutation.

It is a difficult discussion, but it is a interesting one.

So killing Envy, a non-human entity which is just a representation of a sin is a path of no-return, but having participated in genocide is not? That doesn't compute.

And yes, I'm aware of the in-universe explanation that Mustang never refused to use a Stone. You can always find in-universe explanations for a plot element; it's as simple as giving some info-dumping by a character explaining his motives. But that doesn't mean such plot element is automatically a good writing decision or that is thematically coherent. This is the same issue as the one brought up a few posts before by another user: the show presenting both the heroes' non-lethal ways and Briggs' trigger-happy ways as equally valid. Choose one or the other, but don't expect the viewer to agree with both. And no, I don't buy for a moment that this is a case of showing different scales of grey morality. Brotherhood's characters are painted in very white and black colors. It's a battle of good against evil, and both parties are clearly defined, a bit like Lord of the Rings. The difference is that Lord of the Rings knows what its message is about and delivers it coherently, while Brotherhood falters here and there. It's trying to deliver a message but often it doesn't know what this message is, and ends being contradictory or treating weighty, complex issues in a far too shallow, simplistic way.

Fine, but at the end of the day, this is just a headcanon to fill a plot-hole. We never see Truth being reluctant to take away Mustang's eyesight, or being charitable when doing so. On the contrary, he seems to have some sadistic delight in taking his sight, since as the next Führer his goal was precisely to "see" his country's future. And Ed curses Truth at that time, reinforcing the idea that it was cruel and unfair. And there's never an implication that Truth somehow blessed Marcoh's healing.

That raw material can't be the only price for the abomination, since the monster had some life in it, so there must have been something more given in order to create it (in this case, Al's body). In the Blind Alchemist OVA they even show one of such monsters being kept "alive" in a room, and breathing. If the raw material was a perfect equivalent for the monster, there wouldn't be a rebound; it would have been a normal transmutation without consequences. The rebound occurs when the exchange is searching in vain for an equal element for a lost human soul. And since it can't find it, it backfires on the alchemists, in this case taking Al.

And I never said that people shouldn't try to cure themselves if they can and they want. But it's very presumptous to think that only those who do so, can lead fulfilling lives and in many cases be much happier overall than others with perfectly healthy bodies. The 2003 show never demonizes Ed for using automail, and automail is seen as useful and good, but at the same time it shows a different viewpoint with the ex-soldier who willingly refused to use automail to replace his leg, because he neither wanted nor needed it. A nuanced issue should be treated in a nuanced way, not in such black and white terms.

The thing they made was an empty vessel, born suffering with no soul. That's why Al's soul went into it when his body was taken by the Truth. People can create synthetic bodies without the intent of resurrection and the Truth won't do a thing (That's how the Hommonculi are created, and Marcoh and Mustang both did it to trick the Homonculi with fake corpses). Creating a functional human body wasn't the problem, trying to resurrect their mother was.

edited 4th May '17 11:54:30 AM by lycropath

I still don't see how that equals Al's body with the truth they learned, instead of with the monster. That, or we're interpreting this radically different. For me it was clear that Al's body (plus raw matter and Ed's leg) was the price for the failed creature. If what Ed renounces at the end was that truth plus alchemy, then he should have recovered not just Al, but also his leg, which he doesn't. I don't have at hand a more authoritative source, but the FMA wiki makes it seem as if the lost body part was primarily the result of the rebound and the failed creation, and only secondarily the price paid for a glimpse of truth. Or rather, after paying with a body part in exchange of the monster, the person is given some truth in compensation (taken from the Alchemy article):

Notice that it says that the size of the loss generally equals the size of the creature, not the size of the knowledge obtained. This is just a wiki article, but I suppose that after all these years, it would have been corrected if this was wrong.