#FMA:B spoilers

[yourwakingnightmares]

Okay, but real talk for a second... Journey’s End is not a happy ending.

Like... We can talk about Ed realizing he doesn’t need alchemy and all that jazz, but seriously?

Let’s take this step by step, because lawdy but I have been stewing about this since I finished the show two months ago.

Firstly... Everyone else gets their happy ending. Al gets his body back, gets the girl. Winry gets the guy, and gets to keep making at least one automail limb for said guy. Roy gets his eyesight back, and (presumably) becomes Fuhrer. Hohenheim gets to die and abandon his kids again so he can be with his dead wife. Ling gets a philosopher stone, and becomes emperor. May Chang gets her knight in shining armor, and the safety of her clan.

But Ed? He got his brother back... Still has an automail leg. Lost his alchemy. Most likely either had to amputate his arm, or lose a lot of functionality, because Truth is a goddamn asshole, and just shoved that arm back on over top of the STEEL PORT.

And he was a prodigy. Not that I give a shit about how Amestris feels about losing their prodigy, but... Personal story time, when I was a kid, I was a piano ‘prodigy’. One of those kids who could just sit down and play anything. If I heard it, I could play it. And then, through a rather depressing chain of events that are irrelevant to this post, all of the fingers, and many of the smaller bones on my left hand were shattered. Even after months of rehab, I still couldn’t play like I used to. I could barely play for more than five or ten minutes before my hand began to cramp up and stop moving.

And this thing... This thing that I did better than anyone else I knew... It was gone. Just gone. This one thing that made me stand out, that made me special, that made me feel good about myself... and it was just gone. I could still pick apart any music I heard, I still knew exactly how I would play it... If I could. But I couldn’t.

And for Ed... Alchemy was who he was. It was what he did. It was an integral part of both himself, and how he viewed the world. And it’s just... gone. Boop. No more alchemy. All gone now, thanks for playing, kid. You’re no longer unique, you’re no longer special, you now have nothing that sets you apart from everyone else. You dragged yourself to the top of that pillar, and enjoyed the view, until a squiggly outline asshole Sparta kicked you off it, and then ground your face in the mud for good measure.

But, Nightmares, you say! He got his brother back! He still had Al!

Ah, but he didn’t, dear reader! That’s the thing! No Al hate here, because I love Al as much... well, nearly as much as I do Ed, but like... Al got better -and we all know who helped him through the months of recovery -and then bounced right the hell off to Xing. “Haha, yes, Brother! I shall go a thousand miles this way, you go a thousand miles that way, and we shall research this thing that you used to be able to do, that you used to be a prodigy at, that you can no longer do! Don’t forget to write, dear brother!”

...

Okay. I’m slightly less angry now. But seriously, that ending was just... ugh, utterly heart-breaking. Watching Ed trying to transmute the roof, and then just sigh, and say, “Well, at least the view’s nice.” was just... painful as hell.

#FMA:B #FMA:B spoilers #I guess #It's been out for years now #so is it really spoilers #Edward Elric #Alphonse Elric #I'm a little bitter about that ending #in case you couldn't tell

[telemna-hyelle]

when you're introducing a friend to FMA:B over a voice call and it's That Episode and you're having quiet hysterics in your room because the friend is suspicious your brother is working hard to convince the friend that everything is A-Okay and you cannot risk ruining his hard work

#fma:b #fma:b spoilers #tho i tried to be vague #we'll tag it spoilers just in case

[incomingalbatross]

It's taken me by surprise a bit, on rewatch, how very crucial it is to Fullmetal Alchemist that Ed and Al have Committed An Atrocity.

Like on one level, obviously. Trying to undo the consequences of their Atrocity is their driving motivation the whole time. The human transmutation is the only reason they got mixed up in any of this plot stuff to begin with. But it's not just the consequences—it's the way their guilt is necessary for them to function as part of this story.

When Mustang steered Ed toward the military he was (without telling them) initiating them both into the elite club of People Trying To Atone For Their Atrocities. When people keep bringing up "hey, this is no environment for innocent children to be living in!" the answer is always the same. "They're not innocents." It won't do any good to protect them from the Horrors, because they already have their OWN Horrors they went out and acquired THEMSELVES.

It's funny, in a way, how they keep spilling the story of their taboo-breaking at the drop of a hat—especially toward the beginning of the story. But they keep sharing it because they are in world that has no place for the innocent, or the unproven, and this is how they show other people that they can be trusted to navigate the Horrors. Ed tells Rose "we committed a terrible crime to try and bring back the dead, and so I KNOW you should not do what we did." They tell Marcoh "It's no good trying to preserve us from the unfathomable horrors of misused alchemy because we already WENT OUT AND FOUND THEM."

And it's how they connect with others, too! Because everyone they run into is carrying guilt and shame, honestly, but despite being teenage boys the Elrics can say, "Yes, we also did something irreparable. We can never go back. But we ARE trying to go forward, so maybe you and we can help each other with that."

(And of course, obviously, I would not put "tried to bring their mom back to life because they were bereaved children" in the same category as "carried out a genocide" or "performed horrific human experimentation." But! At the same time! They meddled with the forces of life and death—they attempted to meddle with their mother's soul—for an ultimately selfish cause, and they carry that very real guilt with them for three years for a reason. Discounting the ways in which their human transmutation was an Atrocity cheapens their story and their participation in the theme of Atonement, which is absolutely central to Fullmetal Alchemist.)

#fma:b #fma:b spoilers

[pocket-size-cthulhu]

Not to post Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood spoilers but we literally do NOT give Von Hoenheim enough credit for being the actual hero of the whole operation and the tipping point of the story

#fullmetal alchemist #Fullmetal alchemist brotherhood #Fullmetal alchemist... fullmetal alchemist #Edward Elric #alphonse elric #Von Hoenheim #fma: brotherhood #fma:b spoilers #if you haven't seen it idk what to tell you

[oatmealaddiction]

Okay but the weirdest thing about the whole "Brotherhood is better you should skip 03" discourse that's become commonplace now, it sort of forgets the world Brotherhood came out in and why you should watch the original Fullmetal Alchemist. When Brotherhood came out, the original Fullmetal Alchemist was one of the most beloved and most watched animes of all time. Brotherhood assumes you the audience have already seen it because of course you have, everyone has seen it, so it skips important information and speeds the story up because it doesn't want to bore you with things you already know. Have you ever wondered "hey why does the first episode of Brotherhood kind of suck, and why am I being introduced to like 50 new characters, and why are they acting like I know what the hell an alchemist is?" It's because Brotherhood thinks you've seen 03.

The first 7 or so episodes of Brotherhood constitute dozens of chapters in the manga, and the first 25 or so episodes of the original Fullmetal Alchemist. The Nina Tucker episode in Brotherhood, in FMA 03 takes up nearly three episodes. Yoki gets a backstory in 03 and it's genuinely one of the best episodes and taken directly from the manga and Brotherhood glosses over it because: duh, you've already seen it. And so if you skip the original you miss out on dozens of really great character building episodes like Ed and Al meeting Hughes for the first time and getting to spend a whole episode helping him free a train from terrorists, or Ed and Roy having a duel that expands on the relationship they have, or episodes where the brothers just help out random people in towns before the major story gets going.

The original also paces itself quite a bit better than Brotherhood and is more in line with the mangas storytelling. In the manga we don't find out about The Gate until nearly two dozen chapters in, and the same goes for the original anime. Like, that's a twist reveal in those stories, and it's weird that the most watched series is the one where they tell you all about The Gate in the first two episodes because they assume you've already seen the original show.

What's more, people don't know that Hiromu Arakawa helped write for the anime while she was still in the middle of writing the manga, and as a result was inspired to write scenes in Brotherhood that the anime did first. That scene of Edward getting impaled by a falling beam? Directly inspired by a similar scene in the original anime. There's a lot of little instances of that and they're great when you can recognize parallels and things in Brotherhood that are direct references to the original anime, but people don't notice any of that anymore. Because the original anime is just an automatic skip these days, and it's a bummer because people don't realize what a giant it was back before Brotherhood was released. They treat it as *bad,* not realizing it was one of the most beloved anime of its time and the problems people take issue with have a lot more to do with personal taste than any kind of actual flaw in the writing. Brotherhood was never meant to dethrone it, and the original anime was always supposed to be part of the viewing experience which is why those first few episodes of Brotherhood are so fast paced. So like, please stop telling people Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 is a skip, or it's bad, or you don't need it because Brotherhood is better. Regardless if you think Brotherhood is better or not, the original wrote Brotherhood's check. It was huge, it was beloved, and Brotherhood is *banking* on the knowledge you've seen all of it and loved it. And trust me when I say there is so much to love about the original series. It's still my favorite branch of the FMA franchise, and it's worth your time, I promise you.

#Fma 03 #FMA #fullmetal alchemist #Fma:b #fullmetal alchimist brotherhood #fma brotherhood #Legitimately though the original is so fucking good #The music alone makes it worth the watch #Also the art direction is better fight me #mild spoilers

[fma-character-takes]

[Spoilers for FMAB] I think one of my favorite things about FMA is the fact that Maes Hughes intentionally acts like an idiot in order to get people to lower their expectations of his capability. Hughes is one of the most intelligent characters in the series, he’s very good at noticing all the small details. He figured out a piece of information by episode ten that could have helped defeat the homunculi much quicker, and he was killed for it. He was able to piece together everything and figure out the transmutation circle, even though it was alchemy, which he doesn’t really understand at all.

He does love his wife and daughter more than anything in the world, but he’s completely aware of the fact that everyone thinks he’s just an idiot obsessed with his family and he uses it to his advantage.

#fma spoilers #fmab spoilers #fullmetal alchemist spoilers #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood spoilers #fma #fmab #fma03 #fullmetal alchemist 2003 #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood #fma 2003 #fma:b #fma brotherhood #fma manga #fullmetal alchemist #maes hughes #lieutenant colonel maes hughes #fma hughes

[zeb-z]

mfw I sacrifice my vision for knowledge of power. surely this isn’t a metaphor for anything

#watercolors I’ve somehow figured them out. I don’t know how I did the hair #but man I’ve been thinking about Shilo and what he gave up to the midnight circle after his convo with Arthur #they’re both so good because they both ultimately want peace. but peace means different things to them. and Shilo is so hopeful and young #and naive. so yeah after a whole talk about how he plans to take down Edward and have him and Emizel running things in place of the queen #he proceeds to give up his eye to know how to become a leader like his mother? sacrificing vision for power? hmmm #ever since fma:b and roy mustang I think about eye symbolism constantly. something something blind ambition #Shilo is not immune to this #jrwi #jrwi spoilers #jrwi the suckening #the suckening #the suckening episode 10 #shilo bathory #jrwi shilo #jrwi fanart #my art

[eziocauthon89]

Me, seeing that art of Hoid holding the energy stone, and also currently rewatching Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood: Oh, No, this world uses Philosopher's Stones as power sources! lol

Me, three chapters later:

#The Sunlit Man #The Sunlit Man Spoilers #Brandon Sanderson #Cosmere #Cosmere Spoilers #my post #I was legit not expecting that #FMA:B #Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

[circusislife]

Micheal Micheal Micheal Micheal

The spiral, the twisting deceit, it is not what it is

The fear of madness, your mind is lying to you, false friendships

Often depicted as spirals, patterns, insomnia, hallucinations, mazes, doors

Known avatars include the distortion (Micheal and Helen), the men who wasn’t there, the Lichtenberg figure, and others

Given powers include imposter syndrome, unending hallways, doors, lies, long knife fingers

Helen is believed to be the only remaining avatar of the spiral and while her hallways are canonically described as hotel hallways, fans often give her a mirror mace as a fun alternative

yeah, fair....

this one goes hand in hand with The Stranger, doesn't it? :,)

#ask #robyn! #godling robyn! #faery robyn! #tma spoilers #(flashback to Lust from fma:b) #:) #:')

[brobiwan-kenobi-412]

I was sayin goodnight to my friend, yknow, as one does, and then these were made.

I might be going to hell for these, but I’m crying with laughter and maybe you will too 🫶

#i think im funny #but im not #these are actually so horrible #im an awful person #but ive been laughing so hard i think i hurt myself #fma #fullmetal alchemist #edward elric #fmab #fma edward #ed elric #fma:b #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood #fullmetal alchimist brotherhood #fma: brotherhood #i love him so much #i do feel bad #fmab spoilers #??? maybe #fma spoilers #god im going insane #tw blo0d #J text

[introvertedwolf]

it’s a hard adjustment

#somehow not a reblog #alphonse #al with a cat #cat #alphonse elric #fma #fma:b #spoiler #kind of

[hazmatmaid]

hey what’s the owl house

#i ask as i start watching #legit the only things i know about it are that it’s gay and has wendie malick #so if anyone gets excited please no spoilers #i wanna experience it for myself #haz asks a thing #haz says a thing #they took FMA:B off of netflix 😔 #that’s what i was originally going to binge

[heylookgiraffes]

Fma/locked tomb fusion!!! Eating a planet to become god!!! Royai as a perfect cavalier/adept pair!!! Revenant Alphonse 👀👀👀??? Greed eats ling’s soul!!! Hohenheim???

#fma:b #fullmetal alchemist #nona the ninth spoilers

[sattarehi]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

i have finished fma: brotherhood (again)

i was surprised at how much more i liked the epilogue this go around. there is one detail that bothers me, though:

i... get why it was done like this, kinda, but the fact that

(a) hohenheim made it clear ed could use the remaining power in his stone to retrieve al's body, and we are led to believe this due to the fact he is the most knowledgeable alchemist ever,

(b) ed chose to sacrifice his gate instead. this is a fucking phenomenal choice and it really drives home the pandora's box element of alchemy and what it symbolizes in the modern world, however

(c) hohenheim still dies immediately anyway?

i don't mind him dying! i don't mind ed losing his alchemy! both of those were extremely good for the story! but it was the fact both of those were predicated by (a) that makes it so deeply not satisfying.

and, yes, i already realize that you can logic it by saying a stone can only open the gateway, and a true sacrifice must be made to get something back (this was, after all, already implied when hohenheim re-arranged izumi's internal organs, and he said he couldn't bring the missing ones back). BUT THAT WASN'T WHAT WAS IMPLIED IN THE FINAL EPISODES.

to be clear, i am whining about this because every other aspect of the ending makes me happy. so this little detail, which is easily explained away and is important to the over story and was just poor execution of the storytelling, sticks out like a sore thumb for me.

still. amazing, unparalleled story. i can forgive this one tiny thing.

#incoherent ranting #fma:b #spoilers

[waitineedaname]

Finally, after months of work, I have completed it: the collection of all* character appearances in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood!

edit: if you want a more detailed spreadsheet on the homunculi in particular, @vuullets has a collection of all homunculi appearances in the manga! you can find it here

Some notes on this spreadsheet:

there are spoilers. obviously. proceed with caution

timestamps indicate when a character first appears in a scene, not every time they appear. if the scene changes to one without that character, and then we return to that character in another scene, that's another timestamp for a new appearance

all timestamps are approximate, give or take a few seconds based on how quickly I could pause the show

only unique flashbacks count as an appearance. if the flashback is to something we've seen in a previous episode, that is not counted as a unique appearance, but if it provides something new that we haven't seen before, it counts!

I didn't include background easter egg appearances, like when you can see Mei in the background at a train station before she's introduced

I didn't actually do all characters. there are a lot of characters, and I am just one person. sorry if you're a big fan of minor members of the military, i just couldn't do it

since Greed is kind of a special case, he deserves a specific explanation: OG Greed and Greedling are not counted as separate characters, they're both just Greed. when Greed is in control of Ling's body, that counts as an appearance for Greed, and it's not an appearance for Ling unless he's in control. if they're both in a scene together (talking in the mindscape, for example, or switching control back and forth) they each get a timestamp for when they first appear/speak in a scene

feel free to use this as a reference! I made this as a useful tool for myself, and because I'm a nerd about data. if you are also a nerd about data, I tallied up some stats, which I'll put under the cut:

only six characters broke 30 episodes. the characters with the most appearances are Edward (60), Alphonse (58), Mustang (45), Hawkeye (42), Scar (40), and Winry (31).

next highest on the list are Alex Armstrong and Mei (tied for 29), King Bradley (28), Hohenheim (26), and Ling (25).

the homunculus in the most episodes is Wrath (28), and the one in the least is Lust (11)

as previously mentioned, Alex Armstrong and Mei are in the same number of episodes (29), as are Olivier Armstrong and Marcoh (24), and Buccaneer and Ross (18)

Hughes is in only 10 episodes, the same number as Grumman and Fu

Yoki is in a whopping 23 episodes. what the fuck

the chimera in the most episodes is Zampano (21), closely followed by Darius and Jerso (20), with Heinkel falling behind at 16. The Devil's Nest chimeras are only in 2 episodes, with the exception of Bido, who is in 3

#fma #fmab #fullmetal alchemist #I feel like I should make a specific tag for when I do. stuff like this. #I love. spreadsheets. I love data collection #anyway please enjoy! I've been working on this for six months! #sol collects data #<- I've decided that will be my tag #tallying up appearances made me mad. which is not a surprise to me #scar is in 40 episodes and yet the fandom bias completely sidelines him. I'm not mad. I feel normal about this. <- seething #I guess I'm also guilty of paying more attention to characters in fewer episodes considering greed is in only 18 episodes #BUT STILL. justice for my guy scar. he's an extremely prominent character and should be treated as such

[purplemochi20055]

@the-ravenclaw-werewolf

Sometimes friendships can be strong enough to surpass the multiverse…

Spoilers for the finale of FMA:B!!!!!! Scroll ahead if you don’t wanna read!!!

For the scene I drew, it came in my mind how, in his final transmutation, Edward would look back on the friends he’s made with The 40 when he gives up his alchemy, with how important they are to him and how he knows that they’d support him no matter what, as he would for them.

Whew! this took a while to draw, it’s amazing how mandala can get chapters done within a week, much less an hour! I would’ve drawn the rest of The 40 but I wanted to limit it to one page, so I didn’t have enough room (plus I only have so much energy to draw)

It’s been a while since I last drew anything really, so I’m sorry a lot of the characters look bad, so I labeled them in case anyone would struggle to recognize any of them. Don’t worry, I’m aware at how off model and misshapen they are, but I hope to improve and make more fanart for this fanfic verse later down the line, of my inspiration were to hit me as strong as it did today.

#the 40s #the 40 #fullmetal alchemist #fullmetal alchimist brotherhood #edward elric #levi ackerman #ishigami senku #senku #dr stone #attack on titan #haruhi fujioka #ouran high school host club #ouran host club