Let's Watch FMA: Brotherhood

[Helanna]

But what harm could he possibly do half-dead, inside a jar, where his very last power is denied him?

See, I think it's just this sentence that makes me think it's such a bad idea. I mean logically, yeah, he wasn't that much of a threat, but they basically said "He's harmless now, what could go wrong?" Years of TV and books tell me: Everything. Absolutely everything could go wrong. The whole situation sets off major alarm bells in my head. But I guess that's not the perspective the characters are coming from.

[Calemyr]

To use D&D parlance, Envy has a pretty average intelligence and wisdom, but a phenomenal charisma. His talents completely lie in the manipulation, deception, and infiltration fields, all charisma-type skills. He can read a person like a book, but wouldn't bother wasting his time with an actual book. He can easily construct and use a massive web of lies and half truths, but can't think two steps ahead, tactically speaking. He's very cunning, but not very smart.

[bluewind95]

Well, yeah, in D&D terms, that'd be quite right. But in general terms, a lot of what D&D calls charisma falls under the broad spectrum of intelligence. I've yet to see a persuasive person that isn't quite intelligent, same with a person that can construct a massive web of lies and use it correctly. But I've seen plenty of smart people who aren't great at tactics beyond a few general things. And plenty of smart people that act utterly stupid in some areas, while being impressive in others.

Thing with Envy is that he is good at making all these lies and deceptions in a really big scale. And remember them properly. And correctly keep it up. His memory, already an aspect of intelligence, is insanely good, and he can remember most details just by looking at someone (and usually ALL the details, unless he's being careless, but that's his terrible wisdom taking over). That he can fabricate these deceptions (and quite quickly, it seems), speaks for creativity, which is also an intelligence thing. To be able to convincingly manipulate or even imitate people, Envy needs to quickly assess their personal traits and play them off convincingly. This has got to take some brains, not just "I've got a strong personality!". And anyways, even in D&D, intelligence is also the ability to learn. And obviously Envy's learned a whole bunch of people well enough to pretend being them.

About the book part, yeah. He's no intellectual. But you don't really need to be one to be intelligent anyways.

[Randomguy]

Episode 44: "Revving at Full Throttle"

Watchthrough Thoughts

• "What’s it like not being able to die?" said one immortal to another.

Hohenheim and Alphonse
Hohenheim said that The Father’s waiting for “The day of reckoning.” which is probably something similar to “the promised day”. We know that real alchemy, not the warped Amestrian alchemy, involves reading “the dragons pulse”, or the flow of energy in the universe, so “the day of reckoning” probably has to do with all the planets aligning just right, so that he can use the energy to power his giant transmutation circle.

Edward Elric
Edward’s back! He has a new look, a new car and minions. He’ll probably come to the same conclusion as Alphonse and head to Leore, but Al might have left by then.

I disagree with the two homunculi: Ed generally does have a good sense of style. I mean, the fancy read jacket, the gloves, the sword he made for Ling with a skull on the hilt. He's still a 15 year old though, and he made the kind of car that a 15 year old boy would want.

Greed and Ling
That poor lizardperson. And all he was trying to do was help his friend. I guess in a way, he succeeded. His death brought back the old Greed. Oh, and it’s good to know Ling is still hanging in there.
So Greed’s old memories resurfaced, and he became the Greed from before. But did Ling take over, or was it Greed’s idea to attack King Bradley? I think it was probably Greed, and not Ling, although it might have been both of them working together or something.

Honestly, that was probably a terrible idea on Greed’s part: Wrath has been able to defeat both Greed and Ling in combat before, and Greed doesn’t even have the ultimate shield up. He does have the advantage of surprise, but even if he got close to beating Wrath, Pride is there to step in.
I guess it’s possible that it only looks like a really stupid move, but really he did a lot of preparation, research and planning ahead of time, but Ling would know that Mustang’s working against Wrath, so he’d know to talk to Mustang, which means he’d know that Selim Bradley was a homunculus, which means he probably wouldn’t have attacked Wrath in his home.

I wonder: Does Greed intend to win, and get revenge on Wrath for killing his friends, or is he just trying to commit suicide via Wrath in an attempt to redeem himself? Probably the first one: Both Ling and Greed have reasons to keep moving forward.

One thing’s for sure: Greed is threatening Wrath’s family, so Wrath will probably get mad.

Unrelated Thought
Way back in episode 19, remember when the animal soul in Barry’s body accidently killed Barry, and then died? And now, Edward being close to death makes Al’s soul briefly return to the Portal of Truth. So if the soul is released then the body dies, and if the body dies the soul is released.

Things to add to my List Of Stuff That Will Become Important Later:

• Part of the souls from the country wide transmutation circle are going to fuel an alchemical army, but the circle might have other purposes as well.
• May Chang might run into lieutenant Ross in Xing.

I'm going to end off this review with some bad news: Now that the school year is in full swing, I won't have time to do update the thread as often as before. Don't worry though: I'm going to keep going with the watchthrough. I'll try to post one update every week.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I love the part of the series when things like this come together, and character dynamics really pay off. Though, I thought this episode's title was a bit lazy and a tad underwhelming.

I dunno, I just expected more from an episode purporting to "rev at full throttle".

[Knaight]

Your evaluation of Ed's sense of style is much more optimistic than mine. The weirdly shaped sword, every door he makes, his spear, all of those look kind of dumb. The coat he originally found, and is pretty much it for things which are actually stylish. Then there's that car, which a) doesn't blend in at all and b) looks really, really stupid even by 15 year old standards.

Also, it was the chimeras insulting his sense of style.

[Macros]

Well, I think pretty much everyone in FMA (well, in the manga, at least) comment on Ed's terrible tastes at some point.


It's quite hit-and miss, really. The coat is nice, and I personnaly liked the spear. The rest of it? Eeeeeh, he's a bit too fond of skulls, me thinks.

[bluewind95]

I have a feeling it's the author making fun of the EDGY designs some characters and other things have.

[Randomguy]

Well, I think pretty much everyone in FMA (well, in the manga, at least) comment on Ed's terrible tastes at some point.


It's quite hit-and miss, really. The coat is nice, and I personnaly liked the spear. The rest of it? Eeeeeh, he's a bit too fond of skulls, me thinks.

I think the skull on the sword he gave Ling was appropriate. In any other situation it would have been weird, but this was a sword made out of iron extracted from blood. In my opinion it deserved to look the part.

[Dragonus45]

I always thought his stuff looked cool, but I was also about his age when the series first aired so what do I know.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I think the skull on the sword he gave Ling was appropriate. In any other situation it would have been weird, but this was a sword made out of iron extracted from blood. In my opinion it deserved to look the part.

I was about to say something like "that's so totally metal" and then got knocked unconscious by a hidden pun.

It's fullmetal.

[Dragonus45]

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Deadline]

Hey, RandomGuy! Are you done watching the series? I was enjoying your writeups!

[Randomguy]

I was about to say something like "that's so totally metal" and then got knocked unconscious by a hidden pun.

It's fullmetal.

I am in awe.

Hey, RandomGuy! Are you done watching the series? I was enjoying your writeups!

I'm kind of overwhelmed with school work at the moment, and it turns out that my original plan of "one update a week during the school year" was much too optimistic. Don't worry though: I haven't given up on the Let's Watch, and I intend to see it through to the end. Eventually. I'll probably end up finishing it during the winter break, and there won't be many updates until then.

[Randomguy]

Episode 45: "The Promised Day"

Watchthrough Thoughts

• The armstrong family is awesome. Also insane.
• Come on, Alex! You've got alchemy and she doesn't, that should give you an advantage!
• "Here, this is the nicest guy I know." Oh, Hawkeye. Never change.
• I like what they did with the title screen coming at the end of the episode. Especially since if It came at the start of the episode the built up anticipointment would be too much to handle.

May Chang and Envy:

I’m really, really, really glad that Envy convinced May Chang to turn back. Not because I think May’s help will be critical in defeating The Father (it’ll definitely be useful though) but because if the Emperor of Xing got his hands on Envy then it’d almost certainly lead to the same events that happened in Xerxes.

Even not taking that into account I still think it’s a net win. Sure, Envy’s going to try to escape, but May being back in action should mitigate that.

I expect that Envy will probably manage to get his hands on a philosopher’s stone: He can’t get out of the glass jar, but if that thing breaks (or if someone does something stupid like open it up to poke him) then he can escape and latch on to someone’s body and make a break for it.

The Armstrong Family:

Major Armstrong got less sparkle-diamonds than his father did. Will he grow more as he ages, or does it depend on beard and moustache quality?

I love how the rest of the family reacted as though this was a regular occurrence. Alex must have had a rough childhood.

It was clever of Olivier to get her family out of danger this way. And it’s got the side-benefit of increasing her own wealth, too. Well played.

GreeLing:

It turns out Greed was still in control, not Ling, and attacking King Bradley wasn’t part of some clever plan but just a result of Greed’s wrath.

I didn’t really notice this during the episode, but in retrospect Greed using the ultimate armour to block Wrath’s sword seemed unnecessary played up. He’s a homunculus, he’d have survived even if he couldn’t get the shield up fast enough.

Ling’s advice to Edward about jumping through the portal of truth when it opens sounds kind of terrible to me: For one thing, it means that they have to let the portal open, which probably involves the death of everyone in Amestris. For another, my best guess is that the special sacrifices are going to be forced through the Portal of Truth, so jumping in would just make things easier for the antagonists. I could be wrong, though.


I can’t believe Edward decided to work for Greed. I think it’s a good idea, but I wouldn’t be too shocked if Greed tried another power grab at the end: If he got the ritual going in his favour, and used that to create an army of immortal soldiers, then he might be able to reach his goal of ruling the world. It’s probably not the best way to achieve world domination, though.

Edward teaming up with Greed shows that he’d probably be able to look past his own issues and work together with Hohenheim if he needed to. Hooray! Character growth!
Speaking of which: Hopefully Ed won’t freak out and call Hohenheim a monster when he finds out about Hohenheim’s backstory. That would just be psychologically terrible for Hohenheim, and the guy’s messed up enough as it is.

For the record, I really hope that the GreeLing nickname doesn’t stick around.

The Promised Day:

“Be prepared for the coming spring, when the promised day arrives. The North and East will make their move.”

In-story new year’s is coming up (this part I heard from the “next episode” thing before I turned it off), so assuming that the Amestrian calendar and new-year are the same as ours, then they’ve got a couple of months to plan and get organized before the promised day happens.

I guess the protagonists are doing the “Thwart the bad guy right in the nick of time thing”, which, while very dramatic, is a bit risky. They probably just want to have as much time as possible to plan and organize before they attack. After all, they only have one shot at this: If they attack early and screw up then they probably won’t live long enough to try again.

I guess they’re justified in waiting: After all, they’re up against The Father, the world’s most powerful alchemist, and he’s immortal on top of that.

…

Wait a moment. The Father is a philosopher’s stone in human form. Two episodes ago, Dr. Marco had researched a transmutation that can drain a philosopher’s stone. If they can get that transmutation off before The Father shuts down alchemy then they might have a chance of actually winning this!

Aaargh I just realized something else that I missed: Kimbley knows that Briggs soldiers are working with Edward against Central, because of the failed assassination attempt.

But… maybe he didn’t report this to Pride? The Fuhrer seemed fooled by Olivier’s charade. After all, he ordered one of the Generals to show her the alchemical army, and if he just wanted Olivier to think that he bought it then he had no reason to do that.

Maybe he hasn’t linked the assassination attempt back to Olivier, and thinks that Briggs soldiers have just gone rogue? That’d still make the plan harder to pull off because the Briggs soldiers won’t be trusted. This sounds like a flimsy excuse.

First there was the conversation between Ed and Olivier and the tunnels, then the failed asassination attempt and more recently Edward’s been declared Public Enemy #1, which means that: 1. Wrath knows about the assassination attempt (so Kimbley did report to Pride) and 2. They have no reason to believe that Edward withheld information from Olivier after she captured him, like they earlier thought, which makes it likely that Olivier knew the stuff she knew because Edward told her and not because Raven did.

So even if the Homunculi don’t know that Eastern Command is working against them, they do know that Fort Briggs is. So then why the hell are they giving away critical information to Olivier?

Maybe they want Olivier to attack so that they can curbstomp her (since they'd be expecting it) and then use the souls of her troops for the puppet-soldiers? That doesn’t make sense, since then they wouldn’t have told her about the puppet army.
Maybe they haven’t actually put the pieces together and connected Olivier to Ed and the Briggs soldiers being treasonous? That doesn't make sense either.

So either they don't actually know (which is unlikely) or they have something planned that I can't think of right now.

Things to add to my List Of Stuff That Will Become Important Later:

• Whatever Briggs and Eastern command are planning it’ll happen during spring, right before the promised day.
• Dr. Marco and the other protagonists might use the same transmutation that they used against Envy on The Father.
• The people at Central almost certainly know that Olivier's not actually on their side.

[Gettles]

I just want to say that the end of this episode is one of my favorite parts in the entire show. I just loved watching how word of the attack was spread through all the people who mattered and how they used the end credits as a prep-time montage.

[Ramza00]

I didn’t really notice this during the episode, but in retrospect Greed using the ultimate armour to block Wrath’s sword seemed unnecessary played up. He’s a homunculus, he’d have survived even if he couldn’t get the shield up fast enough.

You never ever want to give wrath an opportunity if you do you lose.

Greed would have died there and thus have to regenerate. It will take several seconds to recover, there is so many things wrath can do to incapacite you in 5 seconds. Remember greed can not regenerate and defend with the shield at the so if you kill him you force him to regenerate and then you can incapaciate or kill him again prior to him finishing regenerating. It would be far worse than Roy Mustang vs Lust. Wrath is just that fast and that good.

[Ravian]

You never ever want to give wrath an opportunity if you do you lose.

Greed would have died there and thus have to regenerate. It will take several seconds to recover, there is so many things wrath can do to incapacite you in 5 seconds. Remember greed can not regenerate and defend with the shield at the so if you kill him you force him to regenerate and then you can incapaciate or kill him again prior to him finishing regenerating. It would be far worse than Roy Mustang vs Lust. Wrath is just that fast and that good.

Very true, realize that as of yet no one has even been able to land a hit on Wrath yet, not even a scratch, the most they've managed was to blind him in one eye which only delayed him.

It's why Wrath is so dangerous even without the regeneration, he doesn't need more lives when he just can't be hit, meanwhile he only needs one hit of his own on a homunculus to begin taking them down. Just remember how easily he took down the first Greed.

[Suichimo]

Spoiler

Show

May Chang and Envy:

I’m really, really, really glad that Envy convinced May Chang to turn back. Not because I think May’s help will be critical in defeating The Father (it’ll definitely be useful though) but because if the Emperor of Xing got his hands on Envy then it’d almost certainly lead to the same events that happened in Xerxes.

May was more help than anyone could have possibly imagined. I think it's safe to say that, without her ability to transmute at range, Father would have won.

Spoiler

Show

I guess the protagonists are doing the “Thwart the bad guy right in the nick of time thing”, which, while very dramatic, is a bit risky. They probably just want to have as much time as possible to plan and organize before they attack. After all, they only have one shot at this: If they attack early and screw up then they probably won’t live long enough to try again.

More like they have to wait until then. Anything they did now just wouldn't work.

Greedling isn't used much. Originally it was the fan nickname for Greed/Ling, obviously, but Arakawa picked up on it and started using it in the manga.

I don't think this is a spoiler, but Olivier is basically being held hostage by the higher ups. Separate the head from the body and all that. I don't believe they know of what happened between her and the Elrics.

Also, only 5 more episodes until my favorite moment in the series:

Spoiler

Show

Serving the community for 80 years, this is Havoc Sundries. From underpants to armored cars, we're your one-stop shop for anything and everything! AND we deliver!

By the way, this is about when I came into the manga. From here on out everything just keeps getting better and better. Fullmetal Alchemist easily ties Rurouni Kenshin as my favorite manga and is the platinum standard of Shonen, imo.

Edit: I was wrong on how many episodes we had until the episode. Are episode names spoilers? Regardless episode 52 also has a fantastic exchange in it.

[Xondoure]

I would argue that for different reasons (although some similarities) FMA shares the shonen standard belt with HunterxHunter. But this is of course the murky waters of subjective opinion.

The big similarity between them is despite the target audience, they treat difficult subjects in an adult manner, and ask larger questions on the nature of morality. Good stuff.

[Randomguy]

Episode 46: "Looming Shadows"

Watchthrough Thoughts

• Wait, what? A timeskip?
• Ahahaha! I didn’t see that coming. Somehow I don't think that this is what either Edward or Winry envisioned when imagining their eventual reunion.
• Time for the "shenanigans happening now" theme music. I've always liked this music.
• Hanging around with Greed certainly hasn’t improved Ed’s manners.
• Wait, Edward! You were supposed to give back the earrings!
• Marco and Scar went off earlier on some mission to save the country. I guess they were recruiting Ishvalans?
• Whelp, General Exposition just ruined everything. Or did he? Was he Major Miles’ plan to get rid of King Bradley?

Episode Notes

Edward looks a bit older and more muscular now. I guess life on the lam will do that to you?
He left in the middle of the night, and the day after that was the day before the promised day, so... I guess he's got a day to walk all the way to central, which is normally a trip one would make by train... and then arrive just in time for the homunculi to capture him and use him as a sacrifice? They've already got Alphonse, and Hohenheim's on his way to Central, too. Izumi was last seen in the brig in Briggs, but she's had plenty of time to get herself to central to participate in the attack, or to get captured. And hey, if she hasn't then Dr. Marco's on his way there now, and Mustang's always in Central. I guess the protagonists are doing a good job at giving the antagonists as much access to the potential sacrifices as possible.

Both Edward and Greed make good points in their brief exchange. Avarice isn't always bad, and ambition is vital, but there's a reason engineers put failsafes on everything, even though they never plan for anything to fail. I don't blame Edward at all for wanting Winry out of the country.

There has to be a playlist or something on youtube of every time the "shenanigans" music played. I've got to look that up sometime after I'm done the series.

Alphonse looks like he's in really bad shape. He's hopefully learned alcahestry from Hohenheim by now, but even if he did, in his condition it doesn't look like he'll be able to make much use of it.

I love watching the interactions between Oliver and Mustang. He's got to be subtle, so instead of using his "serious" tone he uses his "womanizing" tone of voice, which she must just absolutely despise. I'm also pretty sure that Mustang thinks that King Bradley expects him to be plotting, so he puts less subtle messages into the conversation, for the Fuhrer to catch, like the line about the mansion being big enough for an entire battalion, which lets him pass on more important information unnoticed, like the note in the flowers.

The last time we saw Scar and Dr. Marco was in the credits of the last episode, where they were wandering through the desert. Before that, they were in the north, off to change Amestris somehow. It turns out they were off recruiting the Ishvalans, but they probably did some other things, too. Hopefully Dr. Marco managed to adapt the trick he came up with to drain a philosopher's stone so that it works off of alcahestry instead of alchemy, (otherwise it wouldn't be much use against The Father) but I'm not optimistic.

The trick they pulled on Wrath was pretty clever. They leaked some information on to General Exposition to get Bradley away from the training session, and then blew up his train on his way to Central. Bradley will regenerate, of course, but it's still (as far as I remember) the first time he's been seriously hurt in the entire series. The explosion also stranded him in a chasm somewhere, so it should take him long enough to get back that it won't matter too much that they needed give away part of their plan to do it. Somehow I expect him to make it back just in time to be relevant next episode, though.

With Wrath out of commission The Father has decided to come out of hiding and take charge directly. He doesn't seem to trust Olivier very much.

I can't believe the promised day is happening tomorrow in story! I expected it to be near the very end of the series, like the arrival of Sozin's comet in The Last Airbender, but there are still almost 20 episodes left, so I don't really know what to expect past the promised day.

Things to add to my List Of Stuff That Will Become Important Later:

• Hohenheim's in Central now.
• Winry had something important to tell Edward before she got cut off.

[Ravian]

Spoiler

Show

Hasn't it already been reveled that Wrath only has one Soul? I'm pretty sure he already gave that talk to Mustang about his origin as a human-based homunculus.

[Gettles]

Spoiler

Show

Hasn't it already been reveled that Wrath only has one Soul? I'm pretty sure he already gave that talk to Mustang about his origin as a human-based homunculus.

Spoiler

Show

Yeah, Random must have missed either that Bradly said he has only one soul or he missed the meaning of it, but I figure its best not to correct him until after it becomes clear in the show.

I really do like this episode, it does a good job of getting everyone caught up with the change in seasons, the Ed Greed scene is cool, I like the little detail that Ed is now taller than Winry, and that it sets the stakes for what is going to go down the next day very well.

[Dragonus45]

Spoiler

Show

Yeah, Random must have missed either that Bradly said he has only one soul or he missed the meaning of it, but I figure its best not to correct him until after it becomes clear in the show.

I really do like this episode, it does a good job of getting everyone caught up with the change in seasons, the Ed Greed scene is cool, I like the little detail that Ed is now taller than Winry, and that it sets the stakes for what is going to go down the next day very well.

Spoiler

Show

Should we let him know, or let him figure it out as the fights go?

[lord_khaine]

Randomguy, you have missed a minor but rather meaningful piece of information that has been directly stated in a previous episode.
Its up to you if you want to read it now or not, but there is no information in this spoiler about things that have not already been explained in the serie so far.

Spoiler

Show

Bradley has a normal human body besides his eye, he cant regenerate like a normal humonculos.

[Randomguy]

Randomguy, you have missed a minor but rather meaningful piece of information that has been directly stated in a previous episode.
Its up to you if you want to read it now or not, but there is no information in this spoiler about things that have not already been explained in the serie so far.

Spoiler

Show

Bradley has a normal human body besides his eye, he cant regenerate like a normal humonculos.

Wait, what? In which episode was this revealed?

If Bradley can't regenerate, then that would mean there's a good chance he died in that explosion. I mean, I know that no one's dead until you see the corpse (and sometimes not even then), but still! Did they just make a plan in which step 1 was "Assassinate the Fuhrer"?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Spoiler: Actually a spoiler, do not open

Show

Hmmm let's see if Randomguy remembers what Bradley's ability is, and makes the connection.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I did some digging; you find it out in Episode 26. I found a transcript here. Wrath reveals it to Mustang. Heh. I actually missed that on my watchthrough. No wonder Mustang put that in his plan!

(Time-wise, it comes in right after the mid-episode commercial break.)

EDIT: I hope you're happy. I rewatched the episode and I now have the burning desire to rewatch the entire series.

[Ravian]

Wait, what? In which episode was this revealed?

If Bradley can't regenerate, then that would mean there's a good chance he died in that explosion. I mean, I know that no one's dead until you see the corpse (and sometimes not even then), but still! Did they just make a plan in which step 1 was "Assassinate the Fuhrer"?

I believe it was revealed when Bradley told Mustang about his origin. Remember he was a human-based homunculus (Like Greed-Ling), the difference though is that he went through all but one of the souls in his philosopher's stone. That's why he ages like a human (he became a homunculus when he was still a young man after all) You probably haven't noticed because he hasn't been wounded for you to notice whether he could regenerate or not.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Yeah; the specific reason given was that, well, because he's Wrath, the wrathful souls in his body fought one another over and over, until only one was left. He's the only homunculus whose souls turned on one another, because wrath is the most directly destructive of human impulses. (The end result was that the energy of all those souls permanently enhanced his body and gave him his homunculus eye.)

Ironically, it also makes him the homunculus who is closest to humanity.