FMA: Brotherhood

The Core The Anime Forum
#101

Good catch there, Killmore, I didn’t consider that. Though I’m a bit disappointed we missed out on the Xing/Homunculus Brawl #1, there were some funny moments. But, they’re going to have to reveal Pride’s voice eventually, he has a few more bits of dialogue before his identity is revealed, unless they’re going to cut them ALL.

Anyway, Episode 20! [SPOILER]I was actually kind of disappointed with how they handled Hohenhiem so far. In the manga there was always a touch of humor about him which was absolutely lost in this episode. Heck, when he and Ed first meet, in this episode he just blandly comments that Ed has gotten taller. But in the manga the exchange goes like,

Hohenhiem: Ed… you’ve gotten taller?
Ed: DON’T PHRASE IT LIKE A QUESTION!
Hohenhiem: I hear you’re the smallest state alchemist in Central.
Ed: THE YOUNGEST!!

Here, there was really no humor at all with him, it was kind of a let-down. I hope we’ll see light-hearted side later on, I’d hate for the anime to drain all the charm from Hohenhiem’s character. Maybe they just want to keep Hohenhiem mysterious until a certain revelation later on.

Anyway, other than that it was a pretty good episode. The scene where Ed was digging up the remains of the transmuted human was powerfully done, and you could feel Ed’s anxiety and disgust the entire time.[/SPOILER]

Funnily enough, aside from some stuff moved to future episodes The sutff between Mustang and Havoc, as well as the bit with Envy and Marcoh, and even a bit that was used in earlier episodes Yoki finding Mei Chan, and Scar vs the Silver Alchemist happened right here in the manga, but was used a few episodes ago in the anime, Episode 20 used over half of Volume 11. The pacing still seems kind of quick, but I guess we’ll see how it works out.

#102

[SPOILER]Actually, I didn’t really mind the lack of Hohenheim acting goofy here. That one part seemed really all about making him look creepy since everyone at that time thought he was Father, hence the dog being scared of him and the “don’t say I didn’t warn you”.

It’s really not possible to sap out the sillyness once he starts showing up more, everything he’s ever done that doesn’t include shit-talking Pride or Father, he did it while looking high on elephant tranquilizer.[/SPOILER]

#103

Anyone know why Ed was vomiting in the digging scene in Episode 20? I couldn’t figure that out.

Anyway, a lot of cool stuff coming out now. I’m finally getting interested in the story.

#104

He was digging up the material form of every fucking nightmare he had since he was a little kid, which also may or may not have been his mother, which he thought he forced into an inhuman monstruosity of a corpse and allowed to die a second time.

Some people might be a tad bit bothered by that sort of stuff.

#105

On the other hand, he’s had five or so years to deal with it, and if anything at that point he had hope that the thing he’d killed wasn’t his mother. It’s also really rare for anyone to throw up multiple times when dealing with something strictly psychological. I thought it had something to do with his wounds, or some other physical/alchemical explanation.

#106

Heh.

Try having your mother die, futilely attempt to revive her through means of what’s considered an extreme taboo, only to find that you’ve just lost you’re fucking leg, your brother is nowhere in sight, and what is in sight is an abomination that was probably begging to be killed (who you happen to think is your revived mother), putting your brother’s soul onto a suit of armor costing you you’re arm (more ouchies), then having to live with the fact that you just fucked up your life further (along with your younger brother’s) all at a young age.

Yeah, you’re right. Makes no sense that he’s still psychologically bothered by such a thing to physical illness. What a pussy.

Amirite?

#107

Again: That was five years previously, and he’d been thinking about it practically nonstop since then. People have a tendency to get used to things.

#108

But he had not been thinking about having to dig up that corpse, though. That was something that had literally just been dumped on him less than 24 hours before then.

He may have had five years to try and put it past him, but that was only because he never thought he’d ever have to face it like that again.

#109

shrug I dunno. It seems a little extreme to me, is all.

#110

I figured it was his injuries. He mentioned his joints ache when it rains and he was digging during a storm.

A friend of mine sprained her ankle really bad once and said that was the only time she felt like throwing up because of the pain.

So now that they’ve mentioned the bodies brought back by human transmutation are not the bodies of the people the intended to transmute, is there going to be a connection to the Homunculus? Pinako mentioned the corpse in Ed’s house is a man’s and the overall skeleton looked like it belonged to a giant (thinking Sloth because of the outline of his body shown when Greed was killed).

#111

Btw, I remembered why it bugged me so much: in the original anime, Ed also digs up his mother, although in this case it was her grave. It made no fuss about it whatsoever.

#112

Lex: No, the human transmutations have nothing to do with the Homunculus in the original story. At all.

Cid: Whatever happened in the original anime past Hughes’ death is pretty irrelevant to this series. It was all essentially filler created by the animation team, it’s like saying Kubo Tite’s writing sucks because the Bount arc in Bleach was dull. (That’s not to say his writing might not suck, but not for THAT reason anyway) If you prefer the pacing of the original anime or whatever that’s fine, but you can’t use something from the first anime to contradict something from Brotherhood because they’re not the same story anymore.

#113

However, the characters are still the same, and at this point there isn’t much difference in terms of what happened to them. Perhaps their interpretations are different, fair enough, I’m just saying that that’s why it bugged me so much. In any case, I think the way the first anime did it simply makes more sense than the violent reaction we saw in Brotherhood.

#114

In the first anime it was revealed that Homunculus come from human transmutations and they are weak to their original bodies. So, Ed had to dig up the grave to get a part of his mother in order to kill the Homunculus he created.

#115

Not reallly… no. Ed in particular is fundamentally different in some important aspects: He is nowhere even near as unexplicably godlike when it comes to alchemy, so no “Readying entire facilities in the hopes that he’ll stumble on them and solve the stuff teams upon teams of our alchemists could not, and in mere seconds too” and in particular, there’s a lot more emphasis on the fact that he’s still a goddman kid, and despite being very sturdy and enough of a jackass to not get bothered much by everything, he’s still not jaded enough to bear through some things or so much as consider the most efficient methods when they are morally apalling.

There’s also subtle differences in guys like Mustang and Kimblee, and then there’s one guy that’s essentially a 180 turn from the anime persona, but that’s a heavy spoiler.

#116

Well, I guess that’ll be more evident as time goes on. As of episode 20 the personalities haven’t been differentiated enough for me to make those deductions.

#117

Episode 21 is up.

I’m a little disappointed that they cut out the dialog between Mustang and Havoc while they’re in the hospital and the scene where Marco is abducted by Envy in disguise as Breda. That said I’m so glad that they kept the whole of Edward’s showboating performance since that would’ve been an annoying omission for a couple of reasons that I’m not going to go into.

Anyways episode 22 can’t come soon enough.

#118

Saw it myself.

While Edward’s showboating was nice to leave in, I think it’s another example of the new anime following the occasional bits of ‘super deformity’ a bit TOO closely. For some reason these parts just don’t… look right.

But yes, next week… it should be awesome. Plus everything that follows from there. Volume 12 of the manga, here we come. (And 13, 14, etc…)

That said…Man, they are REALLY milking the 'HOHENHIEM IS REALLY FATHER JUST WATCH LOLOLOLOL thing, aren’t they? I wonder if the coming episodes will leave in the start of volume 12 where he calls himself a monster? They might, it fits with how they’re trying to portray him right now.

#119

No discussion in the past week? Oh well, 22 is up on FUNi’s site.

Good episode all around, though there was one thing that stood out.We got pretty much all of Scar’s past in this episode, where this is not revealed until later in the Manga. I guess they figured it was a good place to throw it in the anime, since it tied in with Winry, but it did wind up taking most of the episode and we were thus left hanging on what happened with Lin and Lan Fan. So we’ll see all that next week.

#120

I liked how they changed the tattoo trasmutation circles. It’s more realistic that they would only be drawn on the arms and not the entire body. Plus it makes Scar a little less of a hypocrite.