Full Metal Alchemist General

IIRC Ed mentioned something about studying with physicists, thinking they could eventually build a rocket to take them back to Amestris or something. He also thought that Einstein had everything wrong. It was probably the most hilarious moment in either series.

On the subject of the Amestrian dictatorship, there is a chapter that does actually revolve around Edward and Mustang discussing government reform called the 520 Cenz Promise. From what I remember its Mustang's intention to gradually reform into a true democracy when he siezes power.

edited 31st Dec '17 1:19:41 PM by lycropath

That. Mustang's end goal is to change the government altogether and have himself arrested, tried, and convicted for his actions in Ishval. The point of the "promise" is basically Ed making Mustang swear he won't get himself killed out of his sense of guilt and self-loathing.

edited 31st Dec '17 2:37:06 PM by TheAirman

I got the impression that Mustang's likely to take over when Grumman dies or retires.

And Gruman seems to have no problem with that, as long as Mustang marries his granddaughter.

I just noticed that Netflix now has all the episodes of both TV series but neither of the movies!

Hey, fic-research question for you all: in FMA 2003, there's no mention of how Hawkeye joined Mustang's team, is there? I don't remember anything of the sort (her tattoo / connection to Mustang's flame alchemy is definitely not in it) but it's as well to be sure.

None that I recall.

Hawkeye in general was rather ill-served by the 2003 adaptation - as someone who never read the manga, it seems to me that all of her best scenes were in the stuff that Brotherhood adapted.

I always thought it was awesome how she saved Roy Mustang at the end.

It kind of felt like a That's it? Moment for me to be honest Killing Archer by shooting him in the back a couple of times with a handgun I mean after he had spent a fair bit of time as an Implacable Man.

edited 7th Jan '18 4:37:51 PM by lycropath

I mean, that was alright, but it really doesn't compare to some of the stuff she does in the manga/Brotherhood.

Not to mention that her character in general is rather underdeveloped in the 2003 series.

Yeah, it did kind of feel like that.

edited 7th Jan '18 4:39:05 PM by KarkatTheDalek

http://fernysbasement.tumblr.com/post/165809680403/fullmetal-alchemists-silver-spoon-and-the-new

More footage of our enigmatic author.

Someone PM me the movie spoilers like is anything different from the main canon like in [[spoiler Attack on Titan's film]]?

Oh, is that a new Fullmetal Alchemist movie on Netflix already? I'll have to make time to see it this weekend! (Okay, the reviews are saying they may have tried to squeeze too much into it...)

Cross posted from the Bleach and Jojo threads:

My work here is done.

I don't know anything about Jojo but Edward is faster then Orihime but he'll make it extremely gaudy in the process so I'm not sure if that is a mark against his score.

I think the sunshine hurts some of the scenes.

Like ◊ Ed...ward.

This is kind of old, but I wanted to address it anyway:

Considering the entire point was that Father was not a god, and could never be one, saying that feeling going away is an issue strikes me as completely missing the point of the character.

And this is blatantly untrue. Ed is most certainly opposed to a dictatorship, and it's implied that Mustang's ultimate end goal is to reform the country into a proper democracy in which, most likely, he and all the others war criminals from Ishval will be punished for their crimes.

...And? Yes, dicatoroships can have military successes and the lives of ordinary people can generally be happy. That everyone isn't miserable isn't an endorsement of dictatorships, especially when the general public has no idea what's actually been going on for the most par. This is an argument I find very hard to take seriously.

edited 7th Mar '18 8:14:38 PM by LSBK

I'd argue it's a happy ending because now we got the right people in charge to reform it, with Scar's help, even though it'll take awhile for change to be enacted, they are free from the machinations of father who made it a dictatorship.

"The right people in charge" is a bit of a stretch. When the manga ends, the guy in charge is a career military man who only helped Mustang and his crew because he wanted to be Fuhrer, and aside from no longer being engaged in a war (for the time being at least, as Amestris's neighbors still likely hold grudges against them and aren't going to buy the whole "a demigod made me do it" excuse for their previous conflicts), the country seems to be about the same.

Sure, the country is most likely to change at a very slow pace, but that will most likely take decades, if not centuries, and all of the main cast will have been long dead by then. Remember, in FMAB, Amestris has been a dictatorship for most of its existence (several centuries, at least): it's gonna be a long time till that goes away.

Grunman actively disliked how Amestris had been run and was Reassigned To Antartica in the east specifically because this. That he helped Mustang is not only out of blind ambition but because he and Mustang are of a like mind and agree upon the way they think the country should be steered.

edited 16th Mar '18 11:47:31 PM by lycropath

True, but even he was aware of how little he could actually accomplish, and had resigned himself to letting the youth solve the worlds problems.

And as stated, a centuries long dictatorship doesn't go away overnight just because someone wants it to. Not without lots and lots of blood.

It would be frankly irresponsible if Grunman didn't seize power because as much support from the populace as Mustang gets he is just not qualified to be the Fuher yet given how young he is. That's why Grunman is able to seize power over him which is better then someone with much less altursitic motives do in the power vacuum of Central command.

For all Drachma, Aerugo and Creta hate Amestris there has been little more then border skirmishes for a reason, having the leadership now being open to diplomacy rather then Bradley's policy of "Fuck you and everything you stand for." could do wonders for foreign policy.

Besides that if the dictator with absolute power is deciding to increase democratic checks and balances to the government (However slowly) there is not a lot to stop him, especially since a lot of the corrupt elements in the top brass where arrested for the murder of Bradley.

Bloodshed doesn't have to be the only option.

edited 17th Mar '18 12:21:14 AM by lycropath

2 things

1) We seem to be on the same page for the most part on some things: the turn of events is really the best that could be hoped for given the circumstances. But that doesn't really make the ones in charge much better than those who came before (other than the whole, ya know, trying to kill everyone in a transmutation circle thing. which is a really big thing, mind you.) from a purely governmental standpoint. And this is because...

2) The idea that the characters would introduce a democracy at any point in their lifetimes without a country-wide pushback is laughable. They live in a country which has been a dictatorship for centuries. Read: centuries. Never mind how they seem to believe in a modern western democracy working in their world to begin with (considering there don't seem to be any functioning democracies as of the present day in the series, nor were there any in the past), it's also somewhat strange that they would even have a fully formed idea of how to create, implement, and run such a system which is so antithetical to their people's (and their own) way of life. To use a real world example, when the USA (the first modern democracy of comparable origins) won their independence, their idea of what constituted a democracy was near unrecognizable to what democracy looks like today; and even then, they had foundation's to build off of (previous democracies in the past, libraries full of works written on the subject, over a centuries worth of animosity towards their monarchic rulers and growing democratic sentiment, etc.). FMAB doesn't have that, nor is their anything to show that they do have that. So historically what is more likely to happen is that after Grumman (and more likely Mustang) try and rewrite the book on Amestris government during their reign, after their death their reforms will be quickly undone, and the power base returned to the military.

Because without Mustang and his small handful of loyal troops, nobody has shown themselves to actually be loyal to his ideas as opposed to just him as a leader. Even Olivia, his most powerful ally, would rather the system stayed as it was so long as her men don't get used as cannon fodder. And considering her personal views, it's not unlikely that supposing Mustang dies before she does, that she herself wouldn't try and take over with the military in charge.

edited 17th Mar '18 12:41:11 AM by Eldritcho

Actually Amestris has not been a dictatorship centuries, Edward and Riza discuss it. Amestris was formerly governed by a democratic parliament which was implied to have been stripped of power when Fuher Bradley took power. The military also isn't as popular as you seem to believe, much of the country calls State Alchemists dogs of the military disdainfully after all.

And Armstrong also lost her bid for power when she ordered her troops to shoot to kill, remember that she lost her bid for power because her troops took much of the blame for the bloodshed in the incident and for all of her hardness, she specifically supports the reforms especially in Ishval where she specifically saved Scar to help Miles with its rebuilding effort.

edited 17th Mar '18 1:00:58 AM by lycropath