We're letting go of something we never had

FMA Best Songfile - “Ano Yume no Mukou e (Orchestral Version)” by Kugimiya Rie (Alphonse Elric)

03 ed post-anime-pre-shamballa is really living in hell. knowing he lost all contact with everyone he's ever known, likely forever. he has no idea how they are, how al is - did his self sacrifice even work? is al alive? he's taunted by familiar faces sewn on people who don't recognize him, and who won't believe anything he'd say about his past life. he wouldn't believe himself either. all he's ever worked for is suddenly gone. the people. his goals. alchemy. thrown into a foreign world, there will come a time he has to relearn to live, after all his attempts to go back yield no results. he pushes the thought away, forcing his focus onto another useless page with useless information which, he desperately tries to hope, contains the key needed in this useless situation he'd trapped himself in

we live in a society where people think scar was wrong 🤨

Making all of cos into a gif

                     (Accepting FMA!03 Gif Requests)

I am once again thinking about Russell's "Just come back alive!" bit to Edward in episode 49 and how he never saw Ed again

as dark as fma 03 can get, and as much as there's a theme of characters actions coming back to bite them in the ass, I don't think it ever feels... mean spirited? like, sometimes you get narratives that are out to trap the protagonists and punish them and make it clear they were idiots for believing or doing the wrong thing or having this and that fatal flaw.

but I feel like generally 03, while making it very clear that even good intentions can wreak terrible consequences and it's still your responsibility, feels like it has compassion for the characters? their beliefs and worldviews get challenged (ie ed meeting the veteran, Dante criticising equivalent exchange, ed telling al in COS opening the gate was his fault) but it feels less like a lecture from the author browbeating the characters and by extension audience for being wrong, as it sometimes does, and just like, new information being offered that challenges simplistic world views? idk if this makes sense

I've been watching FMA 03 videos recently because October I guess, and one thing I think a lot about is the Gate and how the way it was presented in 03 disturbs me to this day. It doesn't have a voice, it doesn't talk or give the audience any exposition, we just see Ed talking and responding to it in complete silence. Ed is desperately banging on the doors, asking to show him the knowledge one more time, then he pauses like the Gate tells him something and asks, "Payment for entrance?", and in the very next scene he's screaming and bleeding out. The silence of the Gate is really indifferent and oppressive and its nature is incomprehensible, which really adds to the horror of the situation, and you don't need to be told that it's "God" or "The Truth" after seeing what just happened.

The Truth meanwhile is some funky little exposition dude and it's not even a horrifying scene, it talks to Ed and its bizarre behaviour played for laughs to juxtapose the same limb tearing scene I guess. The "God" having a form of whoever enters the Gate and talking to them directly really doesn't do anything to show its nature, it explains itself to the audience and has too much of a defined personality instead of a presence. I'm not sure what tone this sequence was supposed to have in the manga, but in Brotherhood with its over-exaggerated presentation of the entire sequence the Truth is kinda jarring.

#The gate in 03 truly gives the impression that the alchemists are actually playing around with something#they can’t possibly hope to understand or realize when committing human transmutation#whereas in bh it feels like it’s more of just an arbitrary rule#03 had a lot of cosmic horror going for it#Fma

I Will - Sowelu

Fullmetal Alchemist Ending 4

it annoys me when people say that ed didn’t age dynamically in fma03. like??

the difference between 12 year old ed and 15 year old ed is clear as day. then compare that to 18 year old ed in cos and it’s even MORE obvious that he’s grown up……

just because a character doesn’t grow ten inches and become incredibly buff doesn’t mean they don’t age. 03!ed grows up and changes completely differently than bh!ed but people just don’t pay attention and accuse 03!ed of not aging at all

Time and time again imperial occupations will target the healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, and hospitals of the occupied, including aid workers from other nations (even if said humanitarians are citizens of the occupier nation itself). This has been true for decades, and the current genocides in Darfur and Palestine highlight these strategies.

So forgive me for vastly preferring the far more realistic and better-explored use of Mustang as the Rockbells' murderer in fma 03 instead of the shoddy, both sides-ism of mangahood casting Scar as the "scary bad colonized man who used reverse racism to kill the good white allies".

Rewatching fma 03, and my god the decision to have the Amestris military, Mustang, and Marcoh as responsible for the Rockbell's assassination is not only grounded in real world war and the tactics of imperial occupiers, but it also serves as the lynchpin in Ed (and subsequently Al) beginning to distrust and question the state itself.

This, with the increasing emphasis that military states are aggressors who instigate numerous massacres for their own stability and gain that the show continues to explore past this point in the story, really highlights why fma 03 is a mature, thought-provoking and challenging anime. It's an adaptation the likes of which the far more naive, juvenile, pseudo-pacifism of fmab's approach could never replicate.