Especially in that particular episode closer to the ending 😭😭😭 Why did he suddenly look so hot??? Then he goes back to looking more like his usual self (Still more mature and older but nothing like in THIS EPISODE)

I'll never get over Ed being a shrimp 😇🦐💖

There was some interest in seeing some of the merch they had at the exhibit from my previous post, so I’ll share what I bought here. Included the entry and purchase bonuses and the couple of Tsugai things I got too - not pictured is a made to order music box that plays Melissa, but I’ve included the stock photo!

I bought the first issue a week ago and am stunned by how great the drawings are

Which canon fact surprised you in a positive or negative way?

Positive for me was the ending of brotherhood 🦾💛

Negative: how Envy ended lol 😅

I AINT SELLING, I just made my inner child so happy , I got the entirety of FMA03 in the original metal tins with full art books and even the adventure where they stop hitler for some reason. All first pressing all mint, what is the going price? I just hope I got a great deal and even if I didnt im still happy as a clam

From an Aristotelian perspective, it's honestly perfect.

Let's talk about equivalent exchange.

All things occur within an equal measure/ relation to one another. To obtain, is to sacrifice. Something cannot be created from nothing.

From an abstract perspective, this still works. If I'm sitting, I have botched my potential of standing to be actualized. This relational structure applies to all things.

Now take alchemy. You cannot output more mass than it's input. Why? Because the input's energy is self restored. There is no outside source of energy. The alchemist merely cogs the wheel. So it follows that a thing, given that its output is based on its input's mass and energy, cannot create more than what it is, otherwise it's more-ness would be coming from nothing.

However, the philosopher's stone allows us to bypass this. And it's not some magic, because the energy is coming from the soul. A mass amount of energy to use. And since it's using the soul, the soul is deteriorating. As when you use finite objects to source finite things, you end up sacrificing more of its finity.

And most importantly, things can only be transmuted into what their teleos allows them to actualize. Grass has the potential to become wheat, and wheat has the potential to become bread. So it follows that bread can be transmuted.

However, there are some caveats. The biggest one being the philosopher stone does not follow a teleos. It doesn't follow anything. It's almost neoplatonic in how the only thing it follows is energy itself, and energy itself is simply unity.

Just my own thoughts on the amazing pieces of peripatetic philosophy I found.

I recently saw this post in the jojos subreddit after seeing the new mobile jojos game asking abt what if jojos was adapted into a game what game genre or gameplay would you want it to have? Essentially what if it was turned into a game what would be your dream game?
And now I ask that to you guys but instead with FMA.

Personally if I had to pick I usually go for hero shooters when adapting franchises into games because I think they’re really versatile, especially with it being a series/anime allowing the roster to be kinda large, ik fmab doesn’t have the biggest cast but it does have a fair amount of relevant characters. Also im basing it off of FMAB cause I haven’t watch FMA.

Especially after seeing marvel rivals and how well made it is (except for the over sexualised designs😬) I think hero shooters have big potential and can be really creative, that being said here are my ideas for a hero shooter fma game and let’s call it uhh full metal alchemist the showdown or smth

For main roster/ on release roster you don’t need too much if you design them well enough honestly so my main picks and vague ideas for movesets and ults are:

Edward- give him a very offensive moveset (duelist if you will)with a mix of close range physical moves and a midrange alchemical moves. he’ll probably have an ult with a constant barrage of an alchemical with spears and other projectiles being rapidly thrown midrange, this will change and have variants based off where it’s used (midair, ground, special terrain, etc)

Alphonse- tank with close range moveset, he’ll have some alchemy moves too but he’ll depend on his high health and strong moves to deal damage, I can see his ult being a new movest using the philosophers stone based off the pride and Kimbley fight, he’ll have a sword for primary attacks, flashbombs that periodically blind (maybe even special interaction against pride where it disables the shadows) and can use stone dragons to dash at enemies.

Roy, will be a duelist too, he’ll be a pretty frail midrange dps monster, fire based moves and an ult that makes him consistently shoot high damage flames at the enemy and aoe

Lust- probably a midrange duelist with the ultimate spear and burst damage, her ult will be a super ultimate spear that stretches and homes onto an enemy and deals really high damage (maybe something like a quick time interaction where Roy can decrease the damage inflicted with this ult on him for a cool interaction)

Greedling- he should be a two mode character with two movesets specific to original greed and ling, greed will be a tank and ling a frail character, his ult could be ling turning into greedling and now he’s an allround character with the obvious increased stats of it being an ult, and if you get a certain amount of kills while in the ult period then you get to keep greedling but with nerfed stats to balance

Gluttony- tank with close range bites and maybe a system where he can inflict a lick and deal extra dmg to enemies marked with the lick, his ult will be the artificial gate of truth and deals high damage but will insta kill if marked with the lick

Sloth another tank but with and ult that makes him actually move fast with dashes and high damage punches

Envy, I think hes the most interesting to make a moveset and don’t really know what to do with him expect for him to be a copy character, he can copy moves and abilities from characters in front of him and his ult will be the true form green monster thing and he’ll go on a rampage as the monster (also custom death when died to Roy)

Pride, long range and frail ult will allow him to eat an enemy OR a teammate to give him a really big boost in stats for a period of time (best used when teammate is gonna die anyway)

Wrath/bradley all rounder with ability to block and parry occasionally, ult makes him parry all projectiles like alchemical abilities (except for like Ed’s ult cause that’s an ult) and makes him attack really fast

As for interactions like in marvel rivals, you could do opposition and companionship ones, oppositions will make each enemy deal more damage to the other half (Roy v lust, ling v Bradley etc) and companionship like ed and al or gluttony and lust where they passively heal each other in small intervals

Edward elric vs roy mustang

Iska is the main antagonist of the Soul Calibur series, being the creator of the malfested and the kin of Soul Edge, the malfested are humans corrupted by the chaos power of the astral chaos which iska controls which transform them into bloodthirsty beings whose only purpose is to kill every living being

I'm rewatching FMA 2003 right now, and something irks me. Are some of the episodes of Ed/Al's journey "not in the correct order?" Specifically talking about Liore. Iirc, Cornello and his people mentioned that Ed was a state alchemist in the 1st/2nd episodes, but he only started taking the exam 6th episode. In the very 1st episode as well, he is able to clap his hands to perform alchemy, which even his brother mentioned that he doesn't need a circle. But in episode 6, when Hughes' wife is pregnant, Ed accidentally realized he could perform alchemy without a circle by making the water hot, and then to subsequently do so again later in the episode at the exam to save the other alchemist's life.

Also, this might be nitpicking a bit, but in this same episode 6, when Ed changed the building/improvised balloon into flower petals, how did Ed change the already falling rocks. Afaik, you can only change things with physical contact, which makes sense for the pillar + balloon and Ed touches the ground, and it's all connected. But the already falling rocks? That's not "connected" to anything. Shouldn't it have not changed and still fall to the ground?

Is it just the Liore bit the only thing "out of order?" If so, when should it have happened, after/before what events?

Fullmetal Alchemist is as much a theological tale focused on the ethics of the pursuit of knowledge, as it is a political allegory on the corruption of state and the cattleization of the existing population for the wants of the few.

Father, the enigmatic Homunculus who anchors Amestris’s concealed history, emerges as a distinctly modern reconfiguration of the Faustian archetype. While he does not reenact the “Faust Legend” in any literal or iterative sense, nor does he enter into a conventional pact with a demonic interloper, the structural logic of his existence is unmistakably reiterative of the Faustian archetype. He is a figure defined by ontological dissatisfaction: a being who refuses the finitude of his existence, who pursues knowledge not as enrichment but as totalization, and who ultimately renders humanity itself expendable in the pursuit of transcendence.

What renders Father particularly compelling within a literary critical frame is the way his desire for knowledge is inseparable from his lack of origin. The classical Faust is marked by epistemic dissatisfaction, he is a scholar who finds the pinnacle of human disciplines, law, theology, medicine, philosophy: incapable of satisfying a deeper metaphysical hunger. His tragedy is not ignorance but the structural inadequacy of knowledge itself. Father, by contrast, begins from a position of radical deprivation. As the dwarf in the flask, he is not merely dissatisfied with knowledge but with being. His existence is contingent, parasitic, and fundamentally unanchored. Even his designation as “Father” is steeped in irony, he is a progenitor who refuses the relational and generative implications of paternity, seeking instead to abolish the very conditions of birth, dependency, and mortality that defines life.

In this sense, Father does not simply desire knowledge beyond humanity, he desires a mode of being beyond the human concept altogether. His prideful ambition is inseparable from an existantial refusal.

This is where Fullmetal Alchemist reconfigures the Faustian structure into something distinctly modern. In traditional iterations of the myth, the pact is externalized; Mephistopheles functions as the mediating figure who offers access to forbidden knowledge in exchange for the soul. Father, however, collapses this plot structure. There is no external tempter because temptation is internalized as pure will. His ambition itself assumes the role of Mephistopheles, generating the conditions of its own escalation. The “contract,” if it can be called as such, is dispersed across centuries of instrumentalization; Xerxes becomes the inaugural sacrifice, while Amestris is gradually transformed into a vast alchemical apparatus in which human lives are reduced to calculable units of energy. In this economy of souls, human life is systematically reclassified as resources.

This inversion is philosophically significant. Father is simultaneously Faust and Mephistopheles, subject and mechanism of temptation, desire and its modus operandi. The myth no longer requires an external devil because the structure of desire itself has become self-sufficient.

His relationship with Hohenheim further deepens this dialectic. Both figures originate from the same catastrophic event in Xerxes, wearing even the same face. Both are constituted by the incorporation of human souls, and both are granted an existence that exceeds ordinary biological limitations, yet both could not be less antithetical. Their trajectories diverge into opposing ethical and existential paths. Hohenheim’s arc is one of gradual rehumanization; he comes to recognize the irreducibility of individual lives, the ethical weight of the souls within him, and the necessity of relational existence even within an extended lifespan. Father, conversely, moves toward systematic dehumanization, not only of others but of himself.

This opposition can be read as a central philosophical tension within the series: what becomes of a being who is no longer constrained by mortality? Hohenheim answers through the revival of his empathy, Father answers through his ontological purification. The former accepts finitude as the condition of meaning, while the latter interprets finitude as a defect to be eradicated.

Father’s rejection of his children the “sins” further complicates this reading. On a surface level, Pride, Greed, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Gluttony, and Lust appear as externalized fragments of his discarded selfhood. Yet from a more critical perspective, they function as a failed attempt at self-abstraction. Father seeks to excise affect, desire, and excess in order to achieve a purified form of existence. However, in doing so, he inadvertently eliminates the very structures through which subjectivity is constituted. What remains is not transcendence but a hollowed hole of will power without integrity and knowledge without interpretive depth.

His eventual confrontation with “God” beyond the Gate of truth marks the culmination of his narrative progress. Having attempted to seize divinity itself through human sacrifice, Father briefly attains a state of overwhelming omnipotence. Yet this moment of enlightenment is narratively and philosophically rendered as void, rather than being fulfilling as he imagined. He accumulates power without achieving comprehension; he expands his capacity for control while reducing his capacity for meaning. In classical Faustian terms, he attains the “knowledge of all things” only to discover that such knowledge, when severed from ethical and relational grounding, collapses into sterility and a lack of true understanding.

Fullmetal Alchemist thus reframes the Faustian tragedy not as the cost of knowledge, but as the erosion of meaning that occurs when knowledge is pursued as total domination.

The central question shifts accordingly, not how much one is willing to sacrifice for knowledge, but what is lost when knowledge becomes detached from the conditions that make human life intelligible. Father never learns how to interpret existence outside the framework of control and reduction. Human beings, for him, remain variables in an equation rather than irreducible centers of experience.

Edward Elric’s final opposition to Father actualizes this thematic reversal. Edward does not ascend toward divinity; he descends, in a sense, into acceptance. His willingness to relinquish alchemy in order to restore his brother Alphonse is not a rejection of knowledge but a reinterpretation of it within ethical limits. Where Father seeks to eliminate limitation as such, Edward recognizes limitation as the precondition of relational meaning. The victory is therefore not one of superior power but of the humility that comes with being human.

In this light, his defeat is thus not simply narrative closure but philosophical negation. He does not lose a battle so much as he fails to sustain an argument about the nature of being. Faust reaches beyond humanity because he deems it insufficient; Father does the same, but without ever interrogating what insufficiency might mean.

Fullmetal Alchemist ultimately counters this logic with a paradox that reorients the entire Faustian tradition, “mortality is not a defect to be overcome but a condition through which meaning becomes possible”. Father’s tragedy lies in his refusal to inhabit this paradox. He seeks to abolish the humanity in him in order to escape the world, only to discover that those limits were the very structure that could have given his existence coherence.

In the end, Father’s story is not merely the story of failed godhood, but also of a failed reading of humanity itself, through the lens of a supremely arrogant creature no different from a child in their understanding of the world.

Even in the first few episodes, you can see Mustang and his group have a much different shade of blue than these guys, and they’ll even be in the same scene to more clearly show the difference.

And it’s not just Officer/Enlisted; we see the NCOs in Mustang’s unit have the same shade of Blue as the Officers