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[CrazyRah]

Edward is for sure a compelling protagonist. Would easily fall into my top 10 list. And at this point I have almost respect for everyone in the series.

 

Ed is a brilliant protagonist that manages to show remarkable growth, childish behavior but also exceptional maturity. There's always one side for people to start appreciating him before they realise all of Ed is just awesome

[Liamv2]

I can't wait for you to reach his 'final choice' as it were.

 

House and I gush about it from time to time.

 

P.S

 

To the two other Mushishi fans here.

 

Better wait 'till may since there's really only 3 chapters left of the manga to adapt.

 

Saw the end of the 50... Open ending.

 

-.-

 

Ah well...

 

Gonna watch Carnival Phantasm next and then onto MONSTERRRR!

 

Eh. I'm fine with an open ending for a show like Mushishi. How could they not have an open ending? They would either have to eliminate all the Mushi or kill Ginko. Both are pretty shitty as far as i'm concerned.

 

 

F*ck Mushishi and breaking up my Ships.

 

I shipped him so hard with Tanyu it hurt.

 

*snip*

 

I don't foresee love happening in his line of work.

[TheClonesLegacy]

Gaiz. Gaiz.

I beat the Bardock Mission in Xenoverse finally!

[Chewin]

Have to get to Carneval Phantasm as well, though I know I will appreciate it more once I've watched / read F/SN and Tsukihime, so waiting until I've done that.

Ed is a brilliant protagonist that manages to show remarkable growth, childish behavior but also exceptional maturity. There's always one side for people to start appreciating him before they realise all of Ed is just awesome

Concise as always, Rah. Well said.

[Milan92]

Gaiz. Gaiz.

I beat the Bardock Mission in Xenoverse finally!

 

Congratz! 

 

The mission is a pain in the ass because of poor level design.

[TheClonesLegacy]

Congratz! 

 

The mission is a pain in the ass because of poor level design.

Yeah it's horribly designed. But I did it. So I'm very happy.

[TheChris92]

Since people have been talking about Brotherhood, I thought I might as well lay in with some actual coherent thoughts on the anime I hold above most, anyway.

There'll be spoilers, of course, so I'll try to mark them in a moment and write this warning here for those who haven't finished it.

 

Brotherhood is truly one of a kind -- I don't think there'll ever be an anime like it again. It's what I'd call a careful considerate piece of work with a vast array of characters that are all well developed and complex, which is commendable, as unlike the original anime; It understood that FMA happens to have two protagonists, both Ed & Al, who are both immensely characterized and given flaws, whereas the spotlight was more or less placed on Ed in the original. They are the premature unique shonen leads, because they've been dabbling with fobidden science, which has been met with less than forgiving results for others until now. It essentially grants them that particular edge over other alchemists. They can transmutate without the need of a seal -- Relevant to the underlying theme and message the story wants to convey. If you want something then you'll have to give up something in return; Equivalent exchange. They needed that edge to resurrect their dead mother -- Unlike most shonen, it places our protagonists as less like virtuous flower children with love and a smile for all the shiny-coated beasts of God's kingdom, and more like invididuals with their own flaws, committing themselves to something that is considered a sin, in order to selfishly bring their mother back from the dead. The rewards are less than forthcoming, as it only results in them getting punished for their sin, which involves brother Al having his body been taken away along with Ed's left arm. It's like a Miyazaki story with less of the seemingly innocent imagery and colourful creatures and more shady characters with their own selfish desires, some which prohibantly have fuelled pointless wars that have brought about the extinction of an entire race -- It's a cruel, uncaring world, controlled by fanatics, or corrupt government officials in the form of a seemingly totalitarian society, at least in regards to the country of Amestris.

 

Equivalent Exchange; You can't gain anything without losing something first. It is the singular guiding principal that holds together a phenomenally complex yet tightly constructed fictional universe in which all elements are amazingly in balance, nothing seems truly out of place, and no events occur in a vacuum. The series manages to be both global and personal while feeling both diverse and unified.  But any subtraction of any individual element would diminish the story as a whole.  The notion of living in harmony with oneself and with others is the basis of the series’s morality.  The refusal of seemingly negative aspects of oneself and the denial of the fundamental importance of other people as part of the greater whole of humanity constitutes the root of the series’ notion of evil.

 

Spoiler

Thinking back, I recall how much the story felt very similar to Brian Konietzko's Avatar universe, in regards to how they both borrow a lot of elements from both eastern and western litterature, the usage of implementing heavy subjects like race, religion, horrors of war and is well established, but also the plotlines and how they compare to classic litterature from all corners of the world.

It's no secret that FMA's world is very steampunkish, which makes the setting appear very late 18th century to 19th like from a technological viewpoint.  Two 19th Gothic Horror works, in particular comes to mind, namely Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which both reflect some of the deeper moral structures of Fullmetal Alchemist.

 

Frankenstein tells the story of a man who seeks a way to shape and create life, but to his surprise and disgust, when said life proves to be horrifying to him, he runs away in fear and abandons it. The Creature seeks revenge against the creator who abandoned him, destroying everything he knew and loved. All of this will sound familiar to those who finished the anime -- The core theme of Frankenstein explored by Fullmetal Alchemist is Hubris.

 

Hubris refers to excessive pride, the kind which somewhat reflects the laws of karma, as hubris is a sin that comes packed with consequences in toe. In ancient Greek, hubris referred to actions that shamed and humiliated the victim for the pleasure or gratification of the abuser, which would always be reflected on the perpetrator as well. It starkly mirrors the dangers of alchemy and its hold on the world itself. Alchemy operates under the law of equivalent exchange, to get something, something else of equal value must be given away. The creation of life, however, is not meant for humans.  That is why so-called “human alchemy” is treated as the greatest of all possible alchemical sins. Every instance of human alchemy in the series goes awry in some fashion.  The Elric brothers’ attempt to use human alchemy to resurrect their mother. They sought to exchange the materials that made up a human body to recreate her. Instead, the process destroys their bodies.  Edward loses his arm and leg and Alphonse’s entire body is obliterated.  In order to save Alphonse’s soul, Edward bonds it to a suit of armor. The missing parts of their bodies are absorbed by “The Truth,” the god figure of the series.  In exchange for their bodies, The Truth grants them great alchemical knowledge, but not without a thorough mocking and scolding. Their failed experiment made it abundantly clear that a person is more than the sum of the chemicals used in their creation.

It is the anime's uncaring and cruel method of showing the faults of human nature, and why limits exists to what can be accomplished. In fact, a lot of it can be interpreted through the character Greed's understanding of Greed itself.

"I disagree. You want to bring back someone that you've lost. You might want money. Maybe you want women. Or, you might want to protect the world. These are all common things people want. Things that their hearts desire. Greed may not be good, but it's not so bad, either. You humans think greed is just for money and power! But everyone wants something they don't have."

Everyone wants more than they don't have -- If we didn't have anything to strive for then life wouldn't be worth living. It's an ever expanding journey of bettering ourselves as people, individiuals, becoming something more than we are, or achieving new heights as a speices to make lives better for ourselves.

 

 

Understanding all of this we can perpetuate Human alchemy is the source of the series’ greatest evil. Father, a small fragment of sentient knowledge, was created from the blood of a slave. He was created for the purpose of granting immortality to the Emperor of Xerxes.  Like Frankenstein’s Creature, Father was neglected by his creators.  He was kept trapped inside a flask and treated as a tool.  Also like Frankenstein’s Creature, Father would come to resent his creators, ultimately betraying them.  Using human alchemy on a nationwide scale, Father kills not just the Emperor and his alchemists but every single person in the country with the exception of Von Hohenheim, the slave whose blood was used in his creation. In the process, he makes himself and Hohenheim immortal beings, living Philosopher’s Stones filled with and empowered by the souls of Xerxes’s dead.

 

The Father chooses to repeat his crimes at the expense of his freedom -- He plans to utilize all of Amestris as one big human sacrifice in one big transmutation circle, to transform himself into a powerful being that is capable of devouring truth itself, thus becoming the most powerful and all-knowing being there is.

Hubris being Hubris, however, it backfires. 

While the comparison between Frankenstein and Fullmetal Alchemist is interesting, the Jekyll and Hyde influence is perhaps even more so. Jekyll and Hyde has been adapted, re-adapted and re-purposed for more than a century in literature and film alike. But most interpretations of the material miss one of the work’s most fundamental themes: the necessity of guilt. Fullmetal Alchemist is one of the few works, where Jekyll and Hyde's reflection of guilt is truly taken to heart.

When the goodly Henry Jekyll created the potion that would ultimately transform him into the monstrous Edward Hyde, he sought to separate out the parts of himself that he thought were corrupting him.  Instead, he managed to create a version of himself devoid of his own virtues.  But Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde were not equal and opposite as is often the case in most adaptations. Jekyll was a fallible man who had both good and evil within himself. It was his sense of guilt that kept his evil impulses in check. Jekyll was fully aware of the crimes he perpetrated as Hyde and took great pleasure in them.  When he reverted to Jekyll, his guilt was restored and he was struck with horror at the acts he had performed.  But, over time, the joy of being the guiltless Hyde began to overwhelm him and he began taking drugs not to become Hyde, but to remain Jekyll.  But those drugs too ran out and, failing to replicate the formula that would allow him to remain himself, Jekyll commits suicide.

Guilt, and the fear of that same guilt, is ultimately what encourages Jekyll, to treat others with kindness and becoming a constructive member of society. He has all the same base desires as Hyde. It is only the removal of his guilt that turns him into a monster.

 

In retrospect, a thorough observation of FMA's characters is enough to draw interesting comparisons between virtually any two characters.  When one considers the impact of guilt to the series, the easiest comparison lies between Roy Mustang and Solf J. Kimblee. They are both dark haired alchemists, armed with potent explosive abilities, and share a similar position of being low level officers fighting on the side of Ametris's military during the Ishvalan War of Extermination. They both carried out their brutal genocidal orders with great efficiency, no questions asked.. or at least not in a literal sense. -- While Mustang acted out of a sense of military duty and ultimately comes to regret his actions, Kimblee, a pure psycopath, was unsatisfied with the violent joys of killing Ishvalans and murdered his superiors as well.  Kimblee, having no sense of guilt, had to be locked up.  Mustang, who followed orders and committed atrocities, felt guilty for his actions.  The guilt acted as a prelude to Mustang's understanding of corruption and evil among his own -- Realizing he cannot fight the corruption at the heart of his country alone, he begins to gather allies, good soldiers motivated by the same sense of guilt, and seeks to rise up the ranks to change the country from within. His goal is to ensure that no further atrocities like the ones he and his fellow soldiers committed would occur. 

 

 

 

Similar to Mustang is Scar, an Ishvalan survivor who turns his violent wrath on the Amestrian military.  While Mustang acted out of duty, Scar acted out of vengeance, but the results of their actions are the same: innocents were murdered.  When he encounters Winry Rockbell, the daughter of two Amestrian doctors whom he had murdered in a violent rage after they had saved his life, he offers her the right to kill him.  She refuses.  It is in that moment that his rage begins to be replaced by guilt and his desire to serve his people and save others begins to grow, turning him from an anti-villain in search of death into an anti-hero trying to preserve life.  In the process, he achieves a level of redemption for himself, and helps to create a new future for his devastated people.

This sense of guilt permeates the entire storyline, from the Elric brothers’ guilt at being unable to save Nina Tucker, to Hohenheim’s guilt at having unwittingly enabled and benefitted from the destruction of his country. In this universe, where all is one and one is all, to destroy another person is to destroy a part of the universe that cannot be easily replaced.  Diminishing a portion of life damages all of life.  One feels guilt because one has diminished the life of the world and that guilt causes one to devote their lives to try to find a way to rectify the damage.  This is made most symbolically clear when one considers that Scar’s special alchemical skill is deconstruction, the ability to literally destroy the bonds that hold things together.  By the end of the series he is using reconstructive alchemy, using his skills to put things together again. 

This sense of pervasive guilt and regret permeates the series’s aesthetic as well. The soundtrack to the Brotherhood Anime series is profoundly mournful and somber.  Outside of the opening and closing pop tunes, the score is most notable for a wailing choir and combat that only further emphasizes our heroes' compulsions. The characters carry scars for much longer than they do in other series, many of which never heal. Photographs are seemingly everywhere and almost universally depict early, happier times.  They serve as constant, painful reminders of lives that have been damaged through the characters’ actions.

 

Another interesting juxtaposition towards Jekyll and Hyde lies with Father.  Father, like Jekyll, seeks to rid himself of the aspects of his personality, which he believes is holding him back -- He seperates them into seven lesser homunculi, each named after one of the Seven Deadly Sins of the Christian religion. The evident symbolic importance is probably clear to most, however, while the homunculi are named for sins and exhibit those sins, many of them clearly display great virtues Father has sacrificed as well, none of them more clearly than Greed, the homunculus who seems to be the container for Father’s cast away sense of guilt.

Greed is the only homunculus to rebel against Father.  In his first incarnation, Greed becomes the leader of a group of cast off Chimeras, the subjects of horrific medical experiments, neither human nor monster.  Greed claims that he is using them to help him achieve his dream of acquiring “all there is in the world.”  But he never really acts on that desire.  When Edward and Al first encounter him, he is looking for “immortality,” and thinks that Al can help him separate his soul from his body.  We discover not much later that Greed is already immortal.  Why then would he want Al’s secret?  Perhaps to transform himself sufficiently to escape Father’s influence.  Regardless of his motives, Greed is reabsorbed by Father, who quickly attaches him, memory erased, to the next available host, in this case Ling Yao of Xing.

This second Greed is the show’s most visible and obvious comparison to Jekyll and Hyde, being two different people who fight for control of one body.  Though Ling is seemingly consumed by Greed, the two are, in fact, much more kindred spirits than either acknowledges at first. Both Greed and Ling DO lust for power, but they both intend to use that power to protect the people they care about.  Greed is in denial about this truth about himself.  When he kills one of the chimeras he protected in his previous incarnation, he is so overcome with guilt that he regains his memories and Ling begins to have a stronger and stronger influence over Greed.  At times, Greed even voluntarily allows Ling to use their body.  The second Greed, like the first Greed, seeks to assemble followers.  What he finally realizes, just before his second, permanent, death, is that he wasn’t seeking followers, he was seeking FRIENDS. He was greedy for bonds with other people.  He experienced guilt, perhaps alone among the homunculi, because his actions against other people diminished the people of the world, depriving him of possible friends and connections, dooming him to a lonely, joyless existence.

 

Father’s final fate is to be cast into a void by himself, deprived of all connections.  Having severed the part of himself that understands that he needs others and feels pain at their loss, Father doesn’t understand how his actions diminished himself and the world.  When confronting the Truth, the embodiment of ALL, Father begs and screams demanding to be told what he did wrong.  He is punished because he sought to be above all things.  When Edward Elric confronts the Truth at the end of the series, he exchanges his ability to use alchemy for his brother’s body.  When the Truth asks him why he would sacrifice the one thing that makes him special, Edward replies that he doesn’t need alchemy, he just needs other people. The Truth tells Ed, unequivocally, that he gave the right answer.  All is one and one is all.  One must be part of the world, not apart from it. 

Greed’s goals are the inverse of Father’s, who seeks not to connect with others but to surpass them.  He seeks to be above existence and not part of it.  Having Greed in his body reminds him of the madness of his goal and that is perhaps why he is so quick to get Greed out of his body at the earliest possible convenience. 

The series ends with the final notion that, because everyone is accountable for one another, everyone is enriched by other people.  No one person is complete by themselves.  Roy Mustang is made more complete by Riza Hawkeye, and they are made even more complete by their squad and the country they serve. Ed is made more complete by Winry, both literally and figuratively, and ultimately, their completion of each other results in a family, an expansion of all life. Ling, realizing that wars between the clans of Xing only end in suffering, decides to use his victory in attaining the imperial throne not to aggrandize his clan, but to protect ALL the clans, Xing made all the greater through the acceptance of all of its components.  This is perhaps a utopian and unrealistic ideal, but I was raised in a tradition that carries the saying that to save a single life is like saving the world entire.  Life is a good thing, and we are all responsible for enriching and protecting it, and if we diminish it, we diminish ourselves.

[Liamv2]

Chris novels. I'm gonna save that for later.

[Chewin]

@Chris

Looks impressive. Gonna have to get back on this once I've finished the anime.

[CrazyRah]

Have to get to Carneval Phantasm as well, though I know I will appreciate it more once I've watched / read F/SN and Tsukihime, so waiting until I've done that.


Concise as always, Rah. Well said.

 

 

An essay's worth in just two lines.

 

That's mah bro

 

Haha, figure I might aswell leave long posts with pretty words and beautiful phrases to those that enjoy writing them. 

[Vroom Vroom]

Huh? It works for me. It's king from HxH.

It still isn't showing up for me, I'm using Chrome. Maybe it has to do with different browsers or the internet is just doing its own mysterious thing again?

 

Silly Vroom

 

It's King.

 

I can see this one just fine tho. 

 

I was concerned for your well being, I thought Lotion might have pulled some freaky **** and was wearing your face  

 

 A world without Mr. No Touch is a world not worth existing (I mean, who else am I going to have Waifu Wars: Operation Hentai Storm with) 

[Puzzlewell]

Still very excited to eventually hear your thoughts on Monster when the time comes, Sim. I've been tossing around the idea of lining up the differences between manga and anime once the time comes and I've digested both.

 

I'm still nowhere near done the manga by the way. I needed a break so I've only read one chapter in the last few days. It seems the older I get, the less I can binge. That being said, I like the fact that I still can't really predict end game at this point. There's a lot of little one shot moments that don't directly deal with the main plot that I do hope the anime still covers cause I felt they were a very nice touch.

[Liamv2]

It still isn't showing up for me, I'm using Chrome. Maybe it has to do with different browsers or the internet is just doing its own mysterious thing again?

 

I use chrome and it works. Must just be your internet being all dumb and stuff.

[Zeroth Angel]

It still isn't showing up for me, I'm using Chrome. Maybe it has to do with different browsers or the internet is just doing its own mysterious thing again?

 

I can see this one just fine tho. 

In that case we both have a case of "the mysterious thing".

 

I can see the second picture but the first also shows up broken.

[Mr.House]

Edward is for sure a compelling protagonist. Would easily fall into my top 10 list. And at this point I have almost respect for everyone in the series.

Ya, the cast is just so much more stronger in the manga/brotherhood then FMA imo. I see people praise FMA for character dev and I just don't see it.

[Mr.House]

That's all I'm watching it for.

Watch them all baka.

[Liamv2]

Watch them all baka.

 

Wait. Tsukihime has an anime? 

[Mr.House]

Wait. Tsukihime has an anime? 

No, nope anime. Read the VN. There is no Tsukihime anime at all, nope. Does not exists.

[Mr.House]

 

Does not exists!

[Liamv2]

Probably a case of it already being in your cache actually.

http://pic.pimg.tw/m...-3762872579.jpg

Vroom, click this link, refresh the page and tell me if the image doesn't show up just fine.

Lotion is so terrible with broken images because he can't even tell when they're broken, since they show up fine for him. Same thing here. That's why I generally only trust tumblr or wiki image links, otherwise I use an image hosting service. pimg.tw? Nah.

 

Ah that must be it.

 

No, nope anime. Read the VN. There is no Tsukihime anime at all, nope. Does not exists.

 

 

Does not exists!

 

O-ok then. I'll read the remake when it happens in 2021.

[TheClonesLegacy]

 

 

Does not exists!

Ah optical illusions!

My eyes!