Just a FMAB fan

FMAB reblog blog. Hyperfixaters rejoice.

[platonbatonn]

hes so pumpkin spice……

[platonbatonn]

blind mustang brainrot

[litera1lywhat3ver]

welcome back

[snow124-art]

Guys, I was joking with the previous art. It's not my drawing, it's a screenshot from the full-length anime "Fullmetal Alchemist: The Battle for the Last Cookie."

[t-rexseesyoursins]

Still never gonna be over the fact that it took Maes Hughes one night to figure out the truth about Amestris when it took the rest of the cast half the series

[honeymilkart]

"We're the same, Fullmetal"

Click for higher res :)

[phantomrose96]

Honestly. Honestly Ed vs Scar in episode 5 is striking me fresh, right now. Like by this point we've obviously established we're in a battle shonen by now. We know Ed gets into fights. He's scuffled with Cornello. He's a boy who knows how to hold a sharp object and use it.

But I think FMA does also does an excellent job choosing when to not let Ed come out on top. We just had the Nina episode and now Ed is in the middle of processing his first "catastrophic failure to save someone" type of failure since attempting to bring his mom back. He's dealing with a low that's absolutely hampering his abilities and the tonal shift hits for me in the way that 1) he doesn't notice Scar's initial attack against him (Al has to pull him away) and 2) Ed absolutely freezes up just thinking "This is bad."

This is, perhaps, baby's first "someone is coming at you with the full, concentrated, explicit intention of killing you" and Ed is so genuinely out of his depth with it. He really does try. He gets immediately bested. He's staring at a situation where Al is directly in harm's way. And Ed just lies down to die like a dog...

He does better later. He learns from this, later. But he's so young in this. It just hits.

[phantomrose96]

“The Shonen Protagonist joins The Organization” is such a cheap and easy hack for framing a narrative because the author never has to come up with a reason why the protagonist gets involved in each arc. It’s just that The Organization has a new Mission for the protagonist every time and the protagonist gets to say, “Righteo, thanks plot for telling me what to go do.”

Which makes Fullmetal Alchemist so much funnier because Edward Elric very very much does join The Organization. He’s in fact quite famous for joining The Organization. Where The Organization is a hostile fascist dictatorship with immense military power which is good at both giving orders and punishing defectors.

And yet over the course of the series Edward is so allergic to ever being told what to do that he in fact never ever goes on an Organization-Ordered Mission. And the exactly one time The Organization DID try to tell him what to do Edward hated it so much he fucked off and impaled himself at the bottom of a mineshaft about it.

[phantomrose96]

When you meet Edward Elric he gives off the impression that he's the short-tempered hot-headed "violence is the answer to all life's questions" kind of protagonist, and it's in fact incredible character craft that he's actually the character who ends the series with a negative-3 kill count.

[phantomrose96]

people killed: 0

direct orders of "you really really need to kill this guy" ignored: 1

ongoing murders being committed by Ed's own friends/colleagues that Ed got in the way of to specifically stop that murder from happening: 2

[phantomrose96]

God's worst soldier Edward Elric. Showed up as the youngest member of the Amestrian army, took millions of dollars from them, never followed a single order, helped dismantle their fascist regime, left with a lower kill count than he arrived with, then fucked off to go be a house-husband. Character of all time.

[the-phantom-peach]

My Blood; My Brother’s Halo

➰➰➰➰

completed a very old 5 min concept from a year ago

[xinyarui]

I love Fullmetal Alchemist so much "they'd need a tank to breach the main gate" *immediate cut to a tank at the main gate*

[shantechni]

You walk into a bar and the bartender asks if you want a "manga/BH Ed becomes so viscerally nauseous at the mere idea of digging up what he believes to be his mom's corpse that he throws up multiple times" or an "03 Ed fights his tears and apologizes over and over as he forces himself to desecrate his mom's grave and retrieve a piece of her body"

Instead you ask for the "03 Ed passes out from seeing a corpse because it reminds him so much of the mutilated body he and Al created just a few months ago" special because that drink is unironically light by comparison

Realistically, you should walk tf out and call the health inspector to have that bar shut down for offering you such a lethal amount of angst—

[temsiik]

One of my favorite details in FMA is Edward learning from techniques used against him, and adapting them for himself. Big examples I can think of off the top of my head are: deducing how Scar's deconstruction alchemy worked, which would then become one of his go-to moves; failing to deconstruct Buccaneer's arm because of northern automail's different material, then when he gets northern automail of his own using that against Scar; and imitating Greed's ultimate shield on his automail when fighting against Pride. I think it's a satisfying callback/setup-payoff every time, effectively shows Ed as really intelligent in a cool and interesting way, and if one considers these "power-ups", then it's doing so in a much more novel and compelling way than "he can punch gooder". Also not even specific to FMA I just think it's an incredibly cool thing for a character to do.

[aflamboyanceofflamingos-deact]

FMA is great because every antagonist always says something like "We're the same" to Ed, and everytime Ed's like "No??? I wanted to see my mom's smile again. You are trying to commit genocide."

[electroniccollectiondonut]

something about fmab that I love love love is that characters Ask For Help. like, ed and roy, who are both character archetypes who could easily be played off as stoic and self sufficient to the extreme, and in a lot of media would be, are capable of and do ask for help without shame when they are faced with a task that's beyond their limits. even olivier, who is the most resistant to relying on others to do things she thinks she should be capable of alone and the most determined to be on the front lines in any fight where she feels like she's needed, sits out the final battle with sig and jerso and scar because she's too hurt to be at her peak and she can Admit It. and I love that because willingness to be seek support makes the outcome, positive or negative, so much more satisfying.

[tobiasdrake]

One thing I will always appreciate Fullmetal Alchemist for is the fact that they let Roy Mustang be complicit in genocide.

Mustang is an Atoner figure. Something that plagues Atoner figures is when writers are too precious about the characters we're meant to like to actually let them be guilty of something serious.

The Atoner might be trying to make amends for their involvement in the Great '87 Hotel Massacre, and then three seasons in you find out what happened. And it's like, "I drove a taxi to the hotel, and the KILLER was in it! I ferried the killer to the hotel! That makes me responsible, and now I must atone for being nearby while the killings took place! And also vanquish the real killer who is the villain for this season."

Or maybe the Atoner did do the killings but they were under mind control the whole time and would never, ever have done it in their right mind.

But FMA said no. Mustang, Hawkeye, Hughes, even Armstrong to an extent though he suffered a breakdown and fled during it. They did that shit. They followed their orders and they did that shit. And it haunts them.

Roy did that shit. And his atonement, his grand ambition, is to see everyone responsible for that shit brought to justice for their crimes. Including himself.

That is how you write an atonement plot.

[vivilanlu]

Most of the mischaracterization Riza suffers from wouldn’t be nearly as popular if people actually understood why she follows Roy and it isn’t just love and loyalty.

One of the main reasons she stays by his side is because she sees herself as the guardian of flame alchemy. She’s trying to make sure of two things: 1. no one ever gets their hands on it again. and 2. the only person who can use it never misuses it again. That’s why she follows him. She has to. She’s watching the weapon she helped create.

And she has to keep him alive not only because he’s the one with the political power (meaning he’s her only real way to make sure the trials happen), but because he has to live long enough to atone for what he did with flame alchemy. The power SHE gave him.

From Riza’s point of view, every crime Mustang commits is hers too. Every time flame alchemy is used to kill that blood is on her hands too. Every person he killed is someone she killed by proxy.

She’s not just guarding him. She’s sharing his guilt. It’s like she’s trying to atone for her own sins, but he has to atone too so she can atone through him.

I think this Hannibal quote fits them really well: “You and I have begun to blur. Every crime of yours feels like one I’m guilty of.” Like yeah she obviously loves him. But reducing their relationship to just that completely flattens what’s actually going on.