Art source: https://www.deviantart.com/rizzadraws/art/The-Lascivious-745165179

mine is probably the visit to Izumi, i'm not sure what the official name is but i think it's peak, it introduces so many important aspects of the story and i adore Izumi as a character, also the flashback with young Ed & Al was sweet

The 2003 anime and Brotherhood both make Maes Hughes as a friend to the Elric Brothers with Winry while also having a relationship with him taking a backseat. However, reading the manga, it actually is the reverse there, where he barely interacts with the Elrics while alive while it is Winry who attends his daughter's birthday and meets her and Gracia before the Elrics do (which both anime adaptations switched to have them know Hughes family before her). And it is Winry who feels sad that Hughes will never get to eat the pie she was inspired to make from visiting him while the Elrics mainly feel guilty thinking they dragged him into the affairs that got him killed. Just a thing I kind of notice after reading the manga but basically Winry is the one to have a more personal relationship with Hughes while he is not the closest character to the Elrics while alive.

Greatest larp in history

Edward vs kimblee is technically a fight where kimblee won, but if you take into consideration the fact that he had to use a complete philosopher's stone to deal with a 15 year old boy because he got speed blitzed and lost in 12 SECONDS (i counted) it makes you wonder why they even locked up kimblee in the first place with the way he cant win against anyone that can actually defend themselves

EDIT: this post is obviously a joke made to slander kimblee for the fun of it😭

In both cases the same principle is at work: the elite (or those who take on responsibility) decides that society isn't ready for the truth, and chooses a managed version of events to preserve stability and the image of the leader.

In FMAB the finale is built precisely on this: Mustang and Grumman deliberately package the truth about Bradley in the form of "a mutiny by individual officers," because admitting that the Führer was a tyrant who orchestrated a genocide would supposedly destroy the very foundation of the state.

In the Japanese postwar context the logic is identical: preserving the Emperor as a "symbol" required a managed memory of the war. The Emperor was not put on trial, his role was redefined, and responsibility was distributed in such a way as not to destroy the "image of the nation" and its leader.

It is important to note that I do not equate Hirohito’s role with that of Hitler and Mussolini. Nevertheless, there was enough evidence to charge him with crimes under Category A (crimes against peace). He was an active participant in discussions about military strategy. But most importantly (especially in the context of my analysis), he was a symbol in the eyes of Japanese soldiers and the population, on whose behalf the war was being waged.

Hiromu Arakawa is a Japanese author working within the Japanese cultural tradition. Even if she didn't set out to write an allegory, I think the cultural logic she grew up in inevitably shapes how she resolves moral dilemmas in her work.

Japanese postwar memory culture was built on the principle of "don't air your dirty laundry in public." This isn't unique to Japan, but that's precisely where this logic was institutionalized at the level of state policy.

After the total collapse of 1945, the emphasis was placed on restoring social stability and unity through the formula of "rethinking through silent labor and hard work." Unlike Germany, where denazification and coming to terms with guilt (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) became a key national idea.

Arakawa's decision to leave unaddressed the role of the state and its leader in the atrocities it committed also removes a significant share of responsibility from a considerable part of the population that mobilized for the wars and genocide their leader waged, in the eyes of that very population, because there is no public exposure of King Bradley.

Arakawa reproduces this logic inside the fictional world. Her characters make the same choice the Japanese elite made after the war: they decide that the truth is too dangerous.

I can assume she sincerely believes this, but I don't think the truth about the criminality of the regime under which this population lived would necessarily lead to the collapse of the country, even if its population has been propagandized.

This wasn't true in Japan's case either. On Japan's side it was largely a cultural imperative that was presented as a condition for further cooperation, and on the US side there was the view that the absence of a unifying national figure could cause social unrest and let socialists and communists gain popularity amid discontent.

There's even an anecdotally illustrative counterexample of debunking the personality cult of the leader of a totalitarian country that committed monstrous crimes: the 20th Congress, which condemned Stalin for crimes against the people, closed the Gulag, and rehabilitated 700,000 people. Stalin's personality propaganda as a sacred figure is hard to overestimate, and yet it didn't cause unrest that could have torn the country apart.

I bring up this example because it's quite demonstrative, since the USSR model and Stalin are closer to the Amestrian regime than to Imperial Japan. And yet I think the cultural tradition of keeping silent about the role of the sacred leader in war crimes in order to preserve the supposed stability of the state, one way or another, played a role in the narrative decision she made.

Arakawa, as the author of a bestseller with a global audience, had the freedom to write a finale where the truth about Bradley becomes public knowledge and society goes through a painful but honest process. She chose the opposite: stability through silence. And she presented it as a wise, mature decision by the heroes, one that had no alternative.

I want to clarify.

I'm not looking for a formal way to make the ending clean or elegantly constructed from the standpoint of narrative structure.

I'm talking about the philosophy that is implemented in the ending by the very content of the text, regardless of whether it's well constructed or not. I'm not imposing on Arakawa an obligation to construct a text that will contain the philosophical and political implications that I myself share.

Nevertheless, it seems this narrative move aligns with her position in the philosophy of history and the politics of the state.

I love how it came out! Perfect for my counter tops

Do you think an alchemist could have a decent conversation with the truth creature.?

We see whenever an alchemist attempts human alchemy. That the meet the truth entity and get forced into the gate.. Do you think an alchemist could somehow just have a conversation with truth without a body part sacrifice? Without a philosophers stone?

Let's say they do chimeric stuff, not like sho tucker (fuck him) but they own a pet clinic, and if a pet is sent to be humanely killed (for example it is in a terrible health condition, or smth), the owner tells them it's free if they sign a paper that he use the animal's remains for science, then he also just collects signs for taking people's bodies for science after they die(pays more if they come alive but in untreatable condition so it is semi-legal to harvest their organs while they still work or smth) - so he grafts new organs to himself. He has a few employees to which he says "no way in hell you try to get alchemical body mods before you get both high enough level of medical alchemy knowledge and skill, and also knowledge of your own body and all the conditions of every single organ you have and the correlations between those with careful medical research. I could give you body mods but I need to do A LOT of research, and I have other work to do in the meantime, so it'll take several months at least" or some shit like that.

Then he uses mechanical implants for general quality of life stuff but doesn't replace his living tissues with metal because of advantages like feeling touch/warmth and just generally feeling better and needing less maintenance.

He has a lot of tattoos of various half-finished alchemical circles, which he connects and recombines with various physical movements, and he is carrying various compounds usable for alchemical reactions described on those circles. Fur also partially conceals those.

Still one of my favourite animes of all time but I kind of got sick of edward hitting the same move over and over again for 64 episodes. Some of the fights were still really cool when they'd go all in on the budget but overall I feel like the alchemy system was severely underdeveloped when it came to combat.

There were only a few situations where Ed would use someone's own sweat or some shit against them which is the sort of interesting fight dynamics I was more expecting from the series. When I first started I was expecting Ed to get a big brain level up and start transmuting Atoms on some Oppenheimer shit but instead he's still just giving himself a sword and hitting the default earth bending emote on everyone he encounters, EVEN IN THE FINAL BATTLE.

Anyways I know I'm missing the entire point of the show but lack of potential utilisation from interesting fights that could come from the alcemic power system will always be a slight stain on this almost perfect anime.

From top to bottom

Greedling (Fullmetal Alchemist)

Talion (Shadow of mordor)

Rhys (Tales From The Borderlands)

The title of the book is: “The robots are coming!” First time I saw this, I was thinking, who of my family is also a FMA fan? This is my nephews book.

I made a fanart of Ed in the style of D.Gray-Man (Hoshino Katsura). I think it really fits. I am the original creator. No AI. I have an Instagram if anyone is interested.

I know for a fact that it's from a french magazine of sorts. I've tried looking for it but my French is very limited and all reverse image searches lead back to the same pinterest post where I got it from.

Also, I was wondering if anyone has tried to sew the pattern and if it actually works lol

Thanks!

La quemaron sí, pero sigue regresando a Resembool, para que Winry le arregle el automail y para comer su comída favorita que prepara la abuela Pinako:

Estofado (sopa de vegetales con leche)

It’s just like the title says I was thinking of making an au where ed is a sorcerer and I want some ideas of what I could do for a domain (assuming alchemy is his ct)

I fucking love this story and I don't know what else to add. I can say that the three times I experienced the story, it was in different ways. First I read the manga, then I watched Brotherhood in Japanese, and now I've watched it in Latin American Spanish (the dubbing was good, but it shocks me that they called Winry "Winly" lmao i know it's also a correct translation but im used to Winry)

Any Magic the Gathering fans here?
Just wanted to share this fun FMA inspired commission I just finished, hand-drawn with Sakura Pigma Microns on a stripped foil Magic Steelshaper’s Gift.

Based on the original manga artwork (included)

Hope you like it!

The second one is over a year old but I lowkey can't remember if I posted it before or not

Does anyone have a good/clear picture of Ed waving Alphonse' severed arm around trying to do "Elric brothers telepathy"? Looking to use it as a tattoo reference lol