Fullmetal Alchemist (Volumes 22-27)

[cahn]

I FINISHED IT. *flails madly*

YES, wow, very tightly plotted, that... had about the highest ratio of truly stupendous plot (and/or character) twists to actual text that I've ever seen, and I am in love with all of the characters, and now I'm afraid to read any more manga because that one was so good, ha.



-I never figured out why "Father" had all those tubes on him. Because he was feeding the homunculi through them? Because they all seemed to come out once he came to Central..?

-OMG the plot involved EVERYONE DYING (but then they didn't, whew)

-So let me get this straight... Ed was able to come back, when he went for Al, because Al was an alchemist and brought them back. This is why Roy couldn't take that route, because there would be no one to bring him back...?

-It's still... sort of... interesting, that Roy accepts the Philosopher's Stone to pay the toll, whereas Ed and Al utterly reject it. I would love to know what Ed and Al thought about that. (I like how Ed and Al are on the idealistic end of the spectrum, the homunculi are on the other end, and everyone else is in between... Olivier is in the middle somewhere, and Roy is between her and the Elrics.)

-Olivier is still MY FAVORITE. ALL THE SPARKLY ARMSTRONG FAMILY SHENANIGANS EVER.

-GREED ALL THE GREED/LING EVER I MISS YOU GREED I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SAY THAT

-I was so glad to see Knox again at the end! As well as really happy that Lan Fan learned from him.

-I totally love that Roy didn't end up as Fuhrer at the end. Also I totally loved Hawkeye pulling a gun on him. FANTASTIC.

-Although, I mean, I gotta say that I thought it was totally okay to kill small little homunculi objects.

-Speaking of which, do we really trust reborn!Selim? (Although his comment about the bird was very sweet.) I suppose Mrs. Bradley will keep him in line!

-...do we really think that no one is going to go around making Philosopher's Stones anymore? Seriously? I mean, Our Heroes aren't, of course, but man, quite a few people figured out the secret, or had clues to it, by the time the Promised Day was over. And it seems like there is no overt cost to making a stone (in particular as opposed to paying the toll)... I guess it seems to take a lot of expertise and possibly a concerted effort by a group of people (?), which might slow it down for a while.

Comments

[genarti]

YES YES YES TO ALL OF THIS. :DDD

I am always deeply interested, yes, by all the different choices people make about moral grey areas like accepting the already created Philosopher's Stone. There are arguments to be made for various approaches, but it says a lot about the characters what ones they accept and what ones they reject.

I think it's ambiguous whether we ought to really trust reborn!Selim, but I think it's quite clear that many of the characters are NEVER GOING TO NOPE. Probably from a distance however.

For Philosopher's Stones... I guess the idea is that Our Heroes know what to look for now, and it's kind of hard to conceal THAT many murders without the machinery of the state behind it...? HOPEFUL YET WORLD-WEARY GRIM OPTIMISM, I guess.

Also I can finally use this icon. :D

[cahn]

OMG THAT ICON. That icon is quite possibly single-handedly convincing me I need to watch the anime.

I wish I had had the fortitude to liveblog these last volumes, because I feel like there's so much I flailed over that sort of gets lost in the OMG SO MUCH PLOT. Like -- AL YOU IDIOTIC LOVEABLE AWESOMENESS, YOU GAVE YOUR BROTHER BACK HIS ARM!! (OH AL, by the way. He is the character I would totally date if I lived in FMA-world, which I'm glad I don't.)

(I just. The unbreakable trust between Ed and Al -- the confident way Al says that Ed will be back for him, no matter what -- AHHHHH.)

Oh gosh and the pictures at the end. Emperor!Ling! Havoc doing physical therapy while Ross and Breda critique!

There are arguments to be made for various approaches, but it says a lot about the characters what ones they accept and what ones they reject.

Yeah. And my reactions were also very interesting -- when Ed rejected it, I was all "That's stupid, Ed! JUST TAKE IT!" and then when Roy did take it, I was all "NO HOW COULD YOU..." It's very interesting, as you say.

Quoting you from a couple of posts back:

And yes, about trying to make the world a better place, and how that isn't actually making up for anything, except that it's what they can do and it's better than not doing that. I can't wait for you to finish the series, because then I can list off some other characters whose arcs are also doing really interesting things with this whole theme, and I can't remember how much of those characters and those arcs you've seen yet.

OKAY LET'S TALK. I am thinking you were referring at least partially to Hohenheim here? What he did is far worse than what any of the Ishval veterans did, although it's on such a large scale that we, the readers, don't feel the impact in the same way... and yet Hohenheim, who had all the souls within him, must have. (I remember that while reading I was a little frustrated with him, that he seemed to be wandering around doing nothing much and had been for hundreds of years, but... a) he was doing something after all (and OH GOD I JUST REALIZED WHY HE LEFT TRISHA WHICH I TOTALLY DIDN'T UNDERSTAND WHEN READING YES I AM REALLY THAT SLOW), and b) yeah, maybe you do need hundreds of years, in general, to come to terms with the part where you were responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Whose souls are actually inside of you so you can't exactly move on in the normal-ish way.)

I also like how the younger characters' arc is of learning from the older characters', so they don't make the same mistakes. Especially Ling/Lan Fan learning from Knox (but also from Marcoh and Mustang and everyone else), and the Elrics learning from Hawkeye and Mustang.

Also, as you've noticed, I'm slowly working through your and skygiants' fic; any other FMA fic recs you have? :)

[genarti]

Brotherhood is a very faithful anime adaptation! There's a weird intro-to-everyone first episode which is eminently skippable -- it's got some fun bits but it's mostly clunky, and it introduces a lot of spoilers for later in a dizzying whirl that the first-time viewer won't catch and the viewer who knows manga canon will be astounded by -- but after that it settles down. There are some manga bits it does differently, some in ways that work well and some in ways where I prefer the manga version, but they're mostly small things, and I personally really like having motion and color and good voice actors. (I've only watched the sub; I can't speak for the dub, except that Vic Mignogna annoys me in general so I don't really want to listen to his Ed. YMMV.)

YES YES SO MUCH YES -- the Elrics, who can actually grow apart a little and into their own lives, yes, awesome, thank you Arakawa for making that a happy ending while still maintaining that utter bedrock of trust and love! Emperor Ling! Mei and Al! Havoc doing physical therapy, because nothing is 100% easy, yessss! The chimeras in the circus! Scar and Miles, rebuilding Ishval because it needs to be rebuilt BY ISHVALANS at heart even if the Amestrian military also has a responsibility here! SO MANY CHARACTERS GETTING TO COME BACK ONSCREEN. I LOVE EVERYTHING.

And okay yes. You're right, I was partly referring to Hohenheim! Also partly to Scar and to Marcoh, since I couldn't remember where they were in their arcs. But Hohenheim's arc is so interesting to me because a lot of the others -- well, they're complicated and layered and nuanced, but the basic framework of I did this and now I need to figure out what to do with that guilt and responsibility is fairly clear. Hohenheim's backstory takes a while to come out, and it's huge and weird and hard to grasp, and his reactions are also weird and hard to grasp, because he's kind of an odd guy and because he's had literally centuries of grappling with this. But the more you stop and think about it, the more affecting and complex it is. The reveal about how he knew all their names -- I couldn't do anything but keyboardmash for a while. All we'd had was, you know, the souls as a bubbling or occasionally wailing mass, no sense of real humanity left beyond shreds, and then Hohenheim knew their names, he spoke to them, every single person inside of him, and THAT was part of what he'd spent his hundreds of years doing, getting both them and himself past the trauma enough to be able to do that. I hadn't even thought of it as a possibility. And it's so huge, and so in keeping with all the themes of humanity and personhood in this series, that he did that.

And yet he remains, you know, a pretty terrible deadbeat dad despite his best intentions and his genuine reasons for leaving. And that's not forgotten either, and Ed is allowed to keep his anger and his hurt over it. I love Arakawa for that too, because people are complicated, and they're allowed to be complicated.

[cahn]

yes YEEEES to the Elrics having their own lives and yet still retaining that trust and love! Did we see Marcoh in Ishval? I am SO GLAD Knox showed up again at the end!

I honestly did not think about how interesting Hohenheim's backstory was (well, I mean, aside from the FLAIL OF WHOA when it was revealed, and again for the reveal of how he spoke to them all, yes, I too hadn't even considered that as a possibility) in the context of what we know about Ishval until I started thinking about how you were probably mentioning his arc in relation to the Ishval arc!

And YES ALSO to still being a terrible dad, mostly... I'm going to give him a pass on leaving Trisha, but even when he was around for the boys he doesn't seem to have been that great. (Except for that one bonus story in the toilet, which was awesome!)

(Have you read A Solitary Blue? It really has nothing to do with FMA whatsoever except that it shares a changing perspective on a parental figure who does some deeply understandable and at the same time deeply damaging things.)

And YES ALSO with having to think about it. And think about it. I don't think I'm done thinking about it!

[genarti]

For fic recs: lemme revisit this when I get home, and am no longer writing in snatches at work! But I can say that we co-ran a fic/art exchange called fma_ladyfest for three years, and there's some really really good stuff in there. It's specifically female character-centric, so there are some characters I love who don't show up much in there, but still.

Also, cinaed and tiamatschild have both written some really good Scar-fic. I have a couple of friends who wrote excellent Hawkeye/Mustang fic also, but a) there've been a couple of username changes since then so I'll have to do a bit of tracking down, and b) I don't know where you stand on wanting to read explicit pairing fic vs UST?

[cahn]

Ahhhh excellent, thank you!

I must say I adore the Hawkeye/Mustang UST-tinged espionage more than anything, but I'm totally willing to read explicit pairing fic as well. Though I'd draw the line at PWP, I think.

[luzula]

now I'm afraid to read any more manga because that one was so good, ha

May I recommend Nausicaa by Hayao Miyazaki? It is really good, I promise!

[cahn]

Oooooh! I adore Spirited Away, but I don't know anything about Nausicaa. Thank you!

[luzula]

Nausicaa is both a movie and a manga, and the movie is good, but the manga is so much better! The story is much more complex and interesting. Also it's beautifully drawn.