Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Please note that this page is for Headscratchers regarding the manga and 2009 anime adaptation entitled Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. For the 2003 anime adaptation see Fullmetal Alchemist (anime)/Headscratchers

  • If Father has eaten God/Truth, why when Al made the soul-arm transmutation, there's still a Gate and Truth in front of it?
    • Easy. Truth isn't the one that Father consumed.
      • This troper took it as not being God that Father consumed. Rather, he used the gate of the earth and the sun/moon to take into himself all that knowledge and power of the earth and sun/moon. While godlike compared to everybody else, it had limits, just none that could possibly be comprehensible to anybody in the actual series. To take the entirety of God/Truth into himself would require the theoretical gate of the entire universe as a whole. Which might well have been his next plan, if he hadn't been stopped where he already was. His next centuries-long plot could well have been to consume the soul of every single person on the planet, and use that energy to open a gate for the galaxy, and then take it a step or two further, until he had all of existence bound inside him...
  • If Hohenheim is Actually 400 years old, why didn't he take advantage of his immortality to learn how to fight? He admits being a crappy fighter, which was a total waste of his absurdly powerful alchemy IMO.
    • Does he routinely get into fights? Does he like fighting? Does continual heavy exertion put wear and tear on his constantly degenerating body?
  • I have quite a few things here that are more or less copy pasted from a list that I made.
    • In episode 22 (about 10mins in) Winry is about to shoot Scar with a gun that is on the ground and the Elric brother are telling her not to do it but they could have just destroyed the gun with alchemy (so why didn't they?)
      • Same reasons guns don't appear in Harry Potter. Doesn't matter how fast you can clap, a bullet is faster. Someone that distraught would panic and shoot in the case of a sudden movement probably.
      • That probably would have just upset Winry more. It's one thing if she decides not to shoot or finds herself unable to, but to have it taken away would be worse.
    • Just what are the dimensions of the transmutation circle?(I can't remember exactly what I was thinking when I wrote this but I think I was thinking some thing like does it have to be a perfect circle? How deep can it be? Stuff like that)
      • They never go into deep explanation of how they work. They don't need to be deep, the symbol just needs to be there. They just need to be somewhat touching it, seen when the gloved circles work. Alchemists practice so much drawing perfect circles probably comes naturally. We've seen sloppy circles in the first ED I believe so it does take some time and practice to get it right.
      • Actually, Izumi goes into a rough explanation of the circle in Chapter 23. The circle dictates the flow of power, and the matrices in the circle dictate the function. Circleless alchemy works by clapping hands to symbolize the circle and using the body as the matrix.
    • In episode 39 Miles (the Briggs Ishbalian guy) says that they "aren't equipped for a blizzard" but they have alchemy, so they could just created the equipment (so why didn't they?)
      • I can't actually name one alchemist that was there, honestly. They didn't equipment to survive a blizzard. They were BAMFs.
      • Alphonse Elric was there.
        • True, but a) the Brigg's didn't know Al could do fancy alchemy like that and b) they insist on doing stuff their way.
    • Armstrong's alchemy just plain confused me not only does he transmute items in mid-air without touching the items (he does this in one of the 50's episodes), he also transmutes without touching the circle and he transmutes from the circle on his glove to the ground without it touching the ground.)
      • I don't recall ever seeing him using his alchemy without striking the ground with the gauntlets...He punches chunks of rock to use his alchemy in the air and when it's not shown it's implied at least.
      • Re-watch the Sloth fight, he slams his gloves into the ground without the circle touching anything but air.
        • Well, like I said with Mustang, it doesn't need to be in direct contact it seems. Remember, this is the Armstrong alchemy that's survived for generations! The gauntlet hit the ground, so that counts. After all, Al's soul-circle doesn't connect the entire armor, but can move it. It's because the iron in the blood transmutes through the iron in the armor, so Armstrong's alchemy channels into the ground when he strikes. It's close, not contact, it seems.
    • In episode 61 it appears that "Father" is using the tunnels to flow energy but energy can easily flow through matter so the tunnels were not necessary.
      • Do you mean the cushion he uses to disable alchemy, or when he used the national circle? For the former, he doesn't use the tunnels, he basically pushes the cushion between the surface and the tectonic plates where alchemy draws its power.
      • I'm talking about the nation-wide transmutation circle.
        • The circle needs to be there in some form or another. For such a large scale alchemical reaction, a symbol needs to be there in some form or another. Because Hohenheim was so clever as to use the umbra for a circle, Scar was able to set off a sort of alkahestry anti-motion for the cushion. The circle needs to be there in some form, except for walking Philosopher's Stone's who have so much energy/knowledge they just pull apart the fabric of reality and restitch it right there.
    • Also the entire area that Father hides in could have just been destroyed with 20 seconds of circle-less alchemy.
      • One, that's why he has the alchemy cushion to disable it, and two, I'd think Father would be competent enough to make it very sturdy.
      • Still they could do a lot of damage before he could prevent it.
        • It's Father. He kept the other people who could've become Bradley around, and set up a 400 year conspiracy just to get his hands(tongue?) on God. He's bound to have a few protections up.
        • Plus it still wouldn't solve the problem that a homunculus with a HUGE philosopher's stone is around. Hohenheim's counter plan helped to start Father's Superpower Meltdown since since he couldn't contain God with less than half of Xerxian's souls powering his stone.
    • Where did Ed get the trade the gate idea?
      • Ed's always been good at coming up with stuff on the fly. When he attached Al's soul to the armor, the transmuting ammonia in the dynamite, using his soul as a Philosopher's Stone. Extrapolate a bit and it makes perfect sense. Check the Fridge page for FMA:B for a good explanation too.
      • Mustang makes no sense to me, he transmutes without touching the circle, his transmutions go far futher than the circle's area, their is no need for him to click his fingers (a spark that small would have no effect on the flammable gas surrounding him meaning that he must be converting matter to energy {E=mc^2 was known in those times {yes I did actually look up stuff like this because of how much he confused me}) making the energy from the finger clicking unnecessary, if he is transmuting the gases around the glove (which he must be for the spark stuff to work),the glove would explode and why is the secret to flame alchemy so large? I am referring to the tattoo on Hawkeye's back. Surely it would just be a fire-triangle with a circle drawn around it.
      • Alright...When Ed and Al use a lot of alchemy it expands further than where they are, even though technically they would be the circle. I'd say to a certain limit they can connect the elements and extend the range. Since Mustang not only moves the gases but also changes the gases a bit, he can create a perfect path for the spark to follow, and it doesn't matter how small it is. The cloth creates a spark when rubbed together, which necessitates the snapping. The reason for the tattoo being so large is probably because it's more than just a circle. The reason someone can't just pick up a circle and use it is because you likely need to know HOW to do it. Those big books on alchemy? They're how-to's and theories, meaning they have to explain how you move elements, convert them into similar elements, and how to change them. That's likely why the tattoo is so big; it's the secrets to changing the elements in the air. Not only for flame alchemy, being able to suddenly turn the oxygen into nitrogen or helium in an area would be dangerous.
      • It still doesn't make much sense, honestly Mustang makes more sense as an Alkrester (Alkertstist?).
        • Who? Alkahestrist? Listen, they don't go into too much detail except that it's dangerous and very very very dangerous in the wrong hands. It's likely just the tiny details about turning one gas into another. Sparks can go a long way in the presence of a volatile enough gas. How dangerous would turning all the oxygen in the world into helium? We'd all die.
    • What does the shape of the stuff inside the circle effect?I know that the Elric brother made a reference to the "transmutation recipe" when they were drawing their mother's circle but that still leaves too much unexplained.
      • They never go in depth into how the markings work. They explain their effects, like in the original anime with Mustang's alchemy. It would be very boring to see them explain every line of every circle so Arakawa went the simple route. There might be an actual graphical representation for it all but all you need to know is that they work because fantasy-science.
    • Why do people (mainly the circle-less alchemists) avoid abusing it (the possibilities are obvious) I mean they could turn the ground to lava and take down an entire army.
      • Ah...for several reasons... For that specific example, by doing that it'd tend to start where you stand/use it...meaning you'd die. Very fast. That minisun Father made should've roasted everyone inside very fast, but whatever. Second, the heat required to melt concrete/ground would have to come from somewhere, equivalent exchange and all. For why they don't abuse it, the people that would? Probably assisted the Ishbal massacre....Until the final fight, most everyone doesn't go for the kill. It's brutal, cruel, and they're not going to be so evil. Besides, like Bruce Lee stated: I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once, but the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times. One of the reasons Mustang is so feared is because he's so goddamn GREAT with his alchemy. It takes a lot more concentration to do more than just giant stone fists/etc. I imagine.
      • To add to the "why don't those with circleless alchemy abilities abuse it?" question, I'm only going off the three circleless alchemists (Ed, Al, and Izumi), but maybe, since, they have had, in some sense, all the knowledge in the universe crammed into their heads, they've gained a certain wisdom from going through the portal of truth. They understand how much more powerful they've become and what it had truly cost to gain it (hint: more than just body parts). So that might be one reason why alchemists who use circleless alchemy don't abuse it.
      • (facepalm) Of course, how did I miss that people in this anime aren't ever going for the kill? Honestly you've defeated me not only as an intellectual but as a TV Tropes user as well (you appear to have fixed my posts).However this does raise another question, why didn't Ed just encase Gluttony in nets or something not edible to defeat him?
        • They tried that once...he broke out. And not being edible? That hasn't stopped him before. By the time the finale rolls around they all try to go all out on the Homunculi since they need to die several times to die. It's a lot harder to capture someone than to kill them, especially when they can open their stomach and basically shoot negative matter everywhere. When the last remaining Homunculi were: one that could suddenly expand to several times his size, one that can control effing SHADOW MOUTHS, one that can dash faster than you can see, and...Bradley....capturing seems the stupider idea. None of them are so cruel as to create lava to kill them. Mustang's way of executing the Homunculi was considered a little too cruel...Still.
  • In Brotherhood, is the Greed from episodes 13 & 14 the same Greed from the episodes after uh, episode 28. In the end of episode 44, it seems like it was the same Greed all along but when I read through FMA stuff it refers to post-episode 28 Greed as "Second Greed". So was it always the same Greed or did the "second Greed" just get the first ones memories?.
    • It's the same Greed as the first one - a fragment of Father's soul containing his greed. However, since he shares his body with Ling, there's a need to tell them apart.
  • The only thing that really annoys me is when Riza got her throat cut, why didn't Roy just cauterize it like he did with his wounds he got fighting Lust? He already demonstrated he can do precision burning and that a second or third degree burn is a hell of a lot better than death.
    • He burned her once, he probably didn't want to do it again. And maybe he doesn't want to risk missing because it's in such a delicate place.
    • Also, he was restrained, and in such a way that he couldn't use his alchemy. By the time he broke free and got to her, he may have deemed it too late -- or, considering that he'd just been screaming to her and fighting back tears, he may have been a bit too distraught to think of it. Sometimes it's a lot easier to be calm and rational about your own injuries than about those of people you love.
    • What the above person said seems logical. Didn't one of his gloves get cut too? He may have had another one though...
    • Considering the amount of blood Riza lost in that moment, a third degree burn on top of it would have killed her faster. The body's reaction to a burn is to lose fluid to negate the heat - and she'd lost enough having nearly bled to death seconds before. Remember also that your neck has a number of major blood vessels, and if any one of them had been severed, Riza would have bled out in under a minute, whereas with your torso it's a lot more vague and you're a lot less likely to sever a vital blood vessel - your neck's considerably more delicate and a little more difficult to cauterize. There was also a higher probability of getting medical attention immediately after he defeated Lust in comparison to the Promised Day.
    • Also with the burning of her back Mustang almost certainly took his time accounting for anything that might go wrong, making sure he had emergency medical gear to hand, calculating the exact size and intensity of the flame, reading up on some simple biology to reduce the damage he inflicted etc. He wouldn't have rushed something so delicate dangerous and important. Medicinal cauterizeing in such a stressful situation on a very delicate part of the body ain't easy.
  • During 2nd Greed's death, Father plunges his fist into Ling's chest and proceeds to drain the extra souls from his body. Exactly where was Lan Fan and her bladed automail at that moment? She slices Father's arm off later on, once ordered to. To add to that, she probably doesn't have extensive knowledge on Homunculi or the likes; all she really cares about is protecting Ling. She should've moved to stop Father the second he began draining. I wonder if her acting earlier could have prevented Greed's death...?
    • Maybe she was far away and trying to get to him?
    • It couldn't have been that- earlier she attacked Father herself with Ed.
    • I don't think she COULD'VE cut off his arm at that point. She was only able to after Greed had carbonized Father's arm while leaving Ling's body.
  • What makes automail move? I can see it being controlled by the residual nerves and muscles left from the limb, but there isn't a power source. It doesn't seem to be alchemy(since mechanics aren't alchemists and they clearly aren't stone powered); and its also obvious that they don't have the technology for any type of battery power.
    • Cars don't have batteries?
    • Actually, this troper thinks it has something to do with the nerves in the body. The nervous system sends electrical impulses to the muscles in your body, sort of similar to the way a wall socket sends electricity through a lamp cord to a light bulb. All they would have to do is make wires in the automail that are replicas of the real nerves in a human arm and connect them to the real nerves and insulate them against the automail's outer shell as well as water. This is really improbable that this would ever work as a mishap could injure the automail recipient, but to be fair, the body does send electrical impulses to nerves in limbs even after they have been amputated, hence "ghost limbs" or people feeling pain in their missing legs. Hopefully, this makes sense to anyone who reads it.
    • It does make sense. It certainly explains why Ed has automail lodged in that part of his real right arm after he FINALLY gets it back.
  • The whole "Xing characters come to Amestris to seek immortality for the current Emperor so they can become Emperor later" thing. If the current Emperor becomes immortal, what would he need heirs for?
    • The Xingese Emperor wants to become immortal. Nothing is said about him wanting to be Emperor forever.
      • Seems rather strange that they would think he would ever consider giving up his throne if he can't die. Of course it also seems rather strange that the main characters would allow a small girl to go home with a very dangerous homunculus when they know it was that sort of thing that was responsible for multiple murders.
        • There are plenty of cases of people who voluntarily give up their fame or political power and want to live the rest of their lives in relative solitude.
    • I believe Ling explained that he would simply bring the possibility of immortality to the Emperor and to get himself in his favor, then the Emperor would likely pass shortly there after while waiting for supposed further research into the matter. However just stating "i has an idea fur immortatality" wouldn't be enough and he needed to have something like the Philosopher's stone which was a solid lead(Or May taking back the remains of a homunculus). Alternatively, Ling returning as an immortal himself would also make him a fitting candidate for emperor.
    • Also, i can't remember the exact moment, but i'm pretty sure that at one point Ling says that his goal isn't to become emperor, but to gain favor for his clan, and maybe become emperor. I could be wrong though
  • Why is Wrath (manga and Brotherhood) unable to regenerate from wounds? Greedling can regenerate and was made the same way. Also, doesn't Wrath prove humans can't be immortal? He got old. Actually, how the heck is Wrath even a Homunculus? It just seems like the philosopher stone just gave him a messed up eye and a strong belief he's not human. I strongly believe if Wrath had all the benefits normal homunculi seem to get, he'd have destroyed anyone (except Father).
    • Greedling was created the same way as Wrath, but he submitted to his Stone, which seems to have made the integration go smoother. Greed was expecting a fight, remember? Wrath, on the other hand, mentions that the souls in his Stone burned themselves out until there was only one left, and he doesn't know if that is his original soul or a different one. Because he only has one soul, he only has one life. Only having one soul also seems to be the reason why his body ages, although it DOES still age slower than it should; note that while he looks to be in his 40's at most now, when he died, his body immediately aged substantially, to what a 60+ year old man should reasonably look like. This next part gets into fanwank territory, but it's likely that Father never gave him any more souls after he was made, the way he could for the other homonculi, because he needed him to continue to age rather than being eternally youthful like the other homonculi. If the fuhrer suddenly became immortal, people would be asking questions about that. Wrath has to be able to age and die.
      • "Greedling was created the same way as Wrath" That's a negative. Greed was created very early in the story, when Father had just got his new body and stripped himself of his sins. Wrath was created by modern alchemy with an ordinary Philosopher's Stone. I have a theory. When Greed first betrayed Father and were molten to death, Father drank what was left of his Philosopher's Stone. We can say he "recovered" his greed sin. Ling received Father's greed sin, therefore earning Greed's set of homunculi abilities.
      • Greedling and Wrath were both originally humans who had the Philosopher's Stone injected into them is all that the previous comment meant, I believe.
  • I'm sorry for skipping the question queue, but people, the plural is homunculi. Homunculus is just the singular form.
    • The original writer probably had no idea. Still is strange when you run into fansubs that read "homunculus" for two or more of them.
  • What exactly does manga Wrath's "Ultimate Eye" do? Read minds? See the future? How did the stunt they pulled in chapter 99 trick it?
    • I've always thought it works on a similar principle to the Sharingan from Naruto. It predicts Wrath's opponent's movements before they actually make them by observing what they're doing.
      • It's been implied that Wrath can dodge bullets because he can predict when they're coming with his Eye, even if he wasn't aware of the shooter before (kinda stretching it here. It was mentioned somewhere that the Führer had survived "hailstorm after hailstorm of bullets on the battlefield during his service" or something like that). Now, I don't know what a Sharingan does ether, but mostly I'm just wondering how dodging those bullets was so different from chapter 99's conclusion.
      • My theory is that it's simply a matter of him not knowing said conclusion was coming. He could dodge bullets if he knew people were shooting, he couldn't ever be beaten in a straight-up fight because he always sees the best move to make...but that trick completely and honestly caught him by surprise. He never saw it coming, figuratively or literally.
      • Ooooh. That actually kind of makes sense. His eye's predictive ability could very well be directly proportional to how likely he thinks a given event is.
      • Its also possible that the eye's prediction abilities are limited to what he can see, and that while it gives him 360 degree vision, it doesn't give him x-ray vision. Hence, shooting at him from behind doesn't work, but stabbing at him through a barrier, even when done directly in front of him, does.
    • I think it was explained somewhere that the Ultimate Eye takes in all possible information from his surroundings and plans out the optimal course of action. He can hear gunshots and has the reflexes to avoid them and it's sensitive enough to detect minute muscle movements that will telegraph an attack, but his Eye can't include information that Wrath hasn't detected.
  • Jordan: Something that hit me earlier today is about the relative ability of alchemists to transmit their own or other people's bodies. I was thinking of Greed's ability to turn his body as hard as a diamond by manipulating the carbon in his body and wondered why a human alchemist couldn't do the same. Similarly, why couldn't you kill someone by touching them and messing with their elemental structure?
    • As to the alchemic killing process, what do you think Scar and Kimblee do? As to why most don't, you need the knowledge of the human body, and a transmutation circle appropriate for that transformation. As to why others don't do Greed's trick of hardening their skin. Because it would kill a normal human.
    • And Ed used Greed's trick with his own automail, eventually.
    • Also, I think you missed the part where Ed outright says that Homonculi are much, much more maliable than humans, what with the general lack of need for internal organs, etc.
      • This. I suppose that Ed could make his skin into diamond, but to do so he would have to pull that carbon away from, say, his bones and his organs and his brain and stuff. But then he would be dead. And if he was dead, it would be very useless to have made himself hard in the first place.
  • Narvi: Scar kills people all the time via that method, so it's definitely possible, but remember that very few alchemists can transmute without creating a specialized transmutation circle. To kill people via alchemical destruction would require alchemists to work out an anti-human circle as well as necessitate them to close in to hand-to-hand distance to actually use said circle. It's easier for alchemists to just transmute cannons or projectiles instead. As for why alchemists don't alter their own elemental structure - it's risky, as if your calculations are incorrect you might end up exploding or creating blood clots, or turning your hand into a shattered mess; what with how complex the human body is, chemically speaking. It's different for Ed, since he knows how his metal arm works, and he's just extending the metal plating a bit. There's also the taboo of human transmutation to think of, especially considering that you'd need human test subjects to confirm theory empirically if you did't want to try it on yourself.
    • Technically, Scar is stopping at the deconstruction step of alchemy without actually reconstructing the elements into something else. For that it really doesn't matter if it's a watermelon or a human head. (Well, except for certain details that Scar actually has to think about, which is what makes his fights with Ed rather interesting. Fleshy blood sack or armful of metal?)
  • I figured that Greed has it easier than a human would when it comes to self transmutation. My take was that as human-like as the homunculi were, they were still not humans, and the rules about human transmutation didn't apply to them. I assumed that was also why Ed had no qualms about transmuting Sloth during his last fight with her.
    • You guys are overthinking this: The homunculi can't actually perform alchemy. Their powers are, for the most part, instinct. Logically speaking, if we had to think about breathing, or pumping blood, or cellular respiration, we'd probably die. But we don't, because they're subconscious processes.
    • The carbon required to create the diamond skin would have to come from somewhere a la the first rule of alchemy, most likely from the bodies proteins or cell membranes. For humans, this would be lethal, but as homunculus, they can only die after been exposed to their original body, dont think about it too hard, but they would survive.
      • Why would they use something so vital? Better idea: use your food reserves (fat and glycogen) as the source of carbon.
      • being exposed to their original body or parts of it was only in the first anime. In the manga and second anime they had a limited number of lives, and would die if they lost their last life. They could however refill the amount of lives they had left.
  • Well for one thing normal alchemists are not "medical alchemists" like Dr Marcoh. They won't understand the complicated systems that make up the human body; it may be possible to transmute the body into something indestructible, but they may not know how to reverse the process properly...thus, this is too risky a procedure for combat. As for Greed, his being a homunculus may either make his structure simpler, or his status gave him a greater knowledge of "Truth".
  • Kimblee "The Crimson Alchemist" kills people by collecting the explosive and flamable elements in the human body (probly making nitro glycerin or combusting carbon with excesive ammouts of oxygen) to turn a human into a (sort of) living bomb and then using said human bomb to blow up more people. He has a set of transmutation circles drawn onto his palms for just this purpose. Even if he screws it up and they don't explode, the process is ensures a painful death anyway. Also the so called "Iron Blood Alchemist" (forgot his name) is killed off before he gets to do anything but according to a flashback he can transmute the iron in his blood into actual metal guns and bullets. Why this dosn't cause him to suffocate I have no idea. Theoreticaly Mustang could use the transmutation circles on his gloves to dissociate water in the human body into hydrogen and oxygen, causing them to recombine and combust (just like he does with water vapor in the air to create his usual fireballs).
    • Generally he favors small physical modifications, like when he punched Ed in the episode where Shou Tucker messes up his kid. During the Ishbal Massacre when he shows off his pimp gun-making powers, he's using a Red Stone, an imperfect Philosopher's Stone. The Equivalent Exchange Rule couldn't be ignored, but it could be bent; he didn't have to give up as much iron in his blood as he generally would have. Alternatively, he eats an iron-heavy diet. Or just eats a lot of iron, just in case he had to do that kind of thing.
      • Those pretty much are his powers in the first anime. He modifies the gauntlet when he punches Ed, & in the Ishval Massacre, he just spreads the metal from the gauntlet around his body.
      • The human body has at most, five grams of iron in it, and only half of that is in the blood. Any more would be lethal to the person in question. Even with a red stone, the guy should at least have a bit of automail in order to turn himself into a walking gun platform.
        • Considering just how much stuff can be made with a single red stone, no necessarily.
        • Also, did you consider that he simply keeps a bunch of iron on him at all times? The codenames for the Alchemists aren't all literal--or even applicable to their combat skills (i.e. Silver Alchemist, who had nothing to DO with silver in his combat abilities).
          • While we're on the subject, Grand's powers in the manga make a bit more sense. He uses gauntlets with circles on them, like Armstrong does, and punches walls to create weapons from them. "Iron-Blooded" may be a reference to his character and temperament. Like how "Fullmetal" is as much a reference to Ed's stubbornness as it is to his metal limbs.
            • In the Ishbal flashbacks, he explains that "Iron" stands for the weapons he transmutes and "Blood" stands for himself, the human who wields them.
      • In the manga, he transmutes his weapons from solid objects in the environment rather than his own body. Alchemy in the manga tends to abuse laws of conservation of mass a hell of a lot less.
        • He could've extracted trace elements of metal from the ground beneath him seeing as how his cannon statue form is rooted to the ground. Ironblood doesn't have to be a literal interpretation of his powers, alchemists ARE sometimes named just out of coolness/appropriateness.
  • In the manga, there's a bit where Edward, drawing on his knowledge from the Gate & his experience using Greed's Philosopher's Stone managed to heal himself, reconstruct destroyed tissue and draw power from his own soul in the process.
    • it was a temporary procedure before he can get medical treatment. In fact he explained this specifically when a soldier asked him about this.
      • Yes, of course. After all, Edward isn't specialized in medical alchemy, so it's logical that he'd only make minor repairs. However, it does prove that human alchemists can mess with the human body and soul given the proper training.
        • I just saw the answers to my original question, but something else occured to me. Obviously, there is very much a physical soul in this universe, but I remember how when Al and Ed tried resurecting their mother, they seemed to be using merely compounds of the human body. Thus, I would still think that using corpses or if necessary (in the case of someone amoral like Tucker) a live human would be sufficient to restore Tucker's body or Ed's limbs.
        • Definitely possible, but very difficult because every little microscopic cell would have to be in the exact right place. Just the reversal of one molecule in a human's genetic sequence could create Nightmare Fuel mutants. If it's too hard for Tucker, than Ed and Al certainly couldn't have transmuted humans successfully considering that they weren't even teenagers when they tried to resurrect Trisha. Although I laugh at the anime concept that human transmutation is "impossible" because "it's unnatural and humans weren't meant to do it", I do like how both the anime and manga both treat it as a major challenge. It'd be hard to take FMA seriously if such a huge scientific discovery was made too easily.
        • I dunno - when Edward went through the portal of truth, he says that his theory of human transmutation wasn't wrong, it was just incomplete, and asks for 'just a little more' information. From the sound of this, it seems that even as a kid he was actually quite close. While he does later on learn more about human transmutation and that possibility of bringing back the dead (ie, it can't be done), it seems like he was very much on the right track.
    • Minor nitpick here, but I think you mean when Ed used Envy's stone, not Greed's, when they used the portal to escape Guttony's stomach.
  • And another thing, as I understand it, the trouble with human transmutation is that you end up with a creature with no soul. But as Al's soul was already there, why couldn't Ed make a better body for him? Or at least turn the armour into something a bit more... convenient.
    • The manga mentioned that the transmuted body was rejecting Al's soul because it wasn't really his body.
      • Besides that, there's the whole "human bodies are too complex to make from scratch" thing. In the manga, they just become a pile of organs that quickly dies.
    • Presumably he doesn't want to screw up and lose another arm.
    • You really don't want to see Ed's idea of cool
    • That reminds me of something else. Human transmutation and the bondage of souls to various objects both seem to be well known among more... Disreputable alchemists (although the, er, byproduct of human transmutation isn't,) so what would happen if you bound a soul to a homunculus (or, more horrifying yet, a human being?)
      • Not sure what would happen in the anime. In the manga, the soul would be repulsed by the existing soul, since it's not its original body.
        • That's actually a very good question. I'm guessing that the homunculus would become human, at least if the correct soul was used. As to everything else? I couldn't even give you a wild guess.
          • Greelin and Wrath anyone? Wasn't it explicitly stated that the soul would fight for dominance?
        • In the manga, Olivia is told the actual true reason for forbiding human transmutation is that it really is perfectly possible, and anyone who mastered it and had access to the required resources would be able to churn out their own army of artificial humans. Probably soul-less, but wholly functional. This revelation makes way more sense, if you ask this troper.
        • Well, as long as you do all the proper testing first. Otherwise they run around eating people.
        • Wasn't that what they were supposed to do?
          • Judging from the reactions of the people who designed them, no. Then again they probably wanted the cyclopic homunculi to eat people and remain loyal to their masters, not to eat everyone.
          • Actually they were quite loyal to their master, it just turned out to be Father only and not them.
  • And why does Al wear that silly apron?
    • There's probably an empty space in the armor there. Or maybe the artist can't draw a codpiece.
    • It makes him feel manly.
    • I always thought he felt naked without wearing something and that was the only thing that would fit...I'm probably wrong, however.
      • Because the apron was attached to the armour when Al was bound into it, so it probably contains a chunk of his soul.
        • That isn't really how it works. The soul can act through the armor (somehow) when it's attached, but when it's detached, the entire soul is still localized in that blood seal. Al never really modifies his armor, so that explains why he wears it. As to why it's there in the first place, that was probably just the style of the times. I mean, why did they have those big furry plumes on top of Roman soldiers' helmets?
    • The technical reason for it is because Al would look off without it. Look at this picture and try to imagine what he would look like without the loincloth. The wide upper body doesn't match the height of the legs. It'd look really weird without it.
    • It's presumably supposed to be a tabard. Why the tabard is underneath the breastplate is a whole 'nother matter.
    • He takes things out from under it sometimes, maybe it has pockets?
  • The Big Bad's masterplan involves having a circle dug out around amestris. The sole entity guarding this is Pride, who also happens to be the only thing fast enough to guard an object that spread out. However, Pride is completely harmless in the dark. What stops the main characters from destroying the circle and calling it a day?
    • When people go to explore dark tunnels under the earth, they bring light, and before the most recent battle no one knew about Pride's capabilities. It was likely the best option to guard such a vast area
      • After all, see what happened to the first team we see go down there?
      • Also, Sloth is actually the fastest homonculus out there when he wills himself to move faster than a slug. So if he knew that people were in the tunnel and felt motivated enough, he could quickly get to them. But with Pride taking care of it, there is no reason for him to bother.
    • We actually get to something that DOES bother me: Manga Wrath and manga Pride. Okay, manga Pride KIND OF works, but manga Wrath is a COMPLETE asspull. The only time he's really foreshadowed is when he's shaking at Hughes's funeral, and even then, it doesn't feel right that he was "just angry." He rarely ever acts angry, and while he keeps bitching about his age, he pulls atheletic feats no other homunculus in the manga or anime have ever demonstrated. In short, the anime's take on the Fuhrer just works better.
      • Uh, it was kinda apparent by the fact that Bradley was the guy in charge of the Ishbal massacre that he wasn't a good person.
      • Are you serious? Manga Wrath is the coolest and more badass thing known to man. What if he doesn't act angry? I don't think "Wrath" is supposed to represent "angry" in an "I'm pissed off" way. He embodies a way deeper (and scarier) hatred and bloodlust, what with directing a genocide of massive proportions and being an unstoppable killing machine in close quarters combat. In this troper's humble opinion, his Wrath is more of an embodiment of the merciless ire of war. And all this while looking a lot like a distant relative of Big Boss. It just doesn't get much better.
      • It was foreshadowed when they stated that the East Army commited genocide on the orders of King Bradley. Also for the plot to work King Bradley has to be evil, and working for them.
      • Also, his Backstory is much more compelling in the manga. When he told Roy about his shitty upbringing and the extremely depressing fact that he doesn't even know how much of his former human self, if any, survived his possession by Wrath, he came close to woobieness for this troper. Until logic kicked in and she remembered about the whole genocidal war thing.
      • Like said above, wrath is not necessarily anger, but complete unchecked ruthlessness, and manga Wrath has demonstrated it in spades. He utterly slaughtered all the Chimeras in the club, said that Elisha was making a 'racket' at her father's own funeral, told Ling that he should throw away his wounded comrade without a thought, and he outright mocked the leader of Ishbal as he tried to exchange his life for his people before ordering them all killed. The manga has shown over and over again just how heartless and cruel Wrath is, to the point that various characters have commented on it. He's Wrath personified, no doubt about it.
      • The word "Wrath" pretty much means "violent anger, indignation, fury, and/or rage". This just means that he doesn't have to be angry all the time. But, when he does get angry, someone's dying painfully (or, in the case of Ishbal, a whole lot of people are dying). He probably just learned to hide his wrath due to being in a high-ranking position in the government, where it's better to be loved than feared.
      • If anything, what doesn't work in the anime is him as Pride. The manga version of Pride fits the description much better; while King Bradley is simply a fuhrer that has more to do with hatred and cold heartness, "Selim Bradley" is a very old entity that takes pride in his work and is very loyal to Father, looking down on pratically everyone else except his creator and his adoptive mother on the grounds that they are inferior to him. You don't get so much "pride" from King Bradley.
        • In the first anime the names of the homunculi are not inborn like in the manga, they are given by Dante. She had a lot of pride in her ability to create an aging homunculus, calling him her "greatest masterpiece." It seems he was named in regards to that fact.
  • In chapter 3 (Sorry), how does Ed make waste from a coal mine into same amount of gold? I mean, equivalent exchange doesn't seem to be able to rearrange anything smaller than atoms.
    • Two possibilities; 1) It was carbon transmuted to look like gold, 2) Alchemists can do element-to-element transmutation assuming that the mass remains constant, and it will revert a short while later. (This fits quite well with what happened to the 'gold' later.) Anyway, alchemy should be capable of direct elemental transmutation, otherwise there'd be no point to the law that states that making gold is illegal. It might require specialized circles or a lot of time, however. Considering that all the combat alchemists we see are specialists (in say, fire, or iron) and carry around materials to use in combat, it's probably not too easy.
      • The gold didn't revert spontaneously. Ed changed it back himself. Al asks when Ed when he turned it back, and he says that he did it just before they left.
    • Except it is possible to perform elemental transmutations and they can be done fairly quickly (in the anime at least): In Ed's fight with Sloth, he converted his entire automail arm into sodium.
    • Just before he does this, Ed empties the bag of gold coins Yoki gave him onto his hand. This suggests to me that he actually only transmuted the mine tailings into bar shapes and then turned the coins into a covering, so all that he gave Yoki was gold-plated tailings.
  • In the manga, why does father waste his time trying to absorb Amestris? he clearly has a good thing going and could simply focus on accumulating more souls through the country's constant wars.
    • Its not about collecting souls, the plan is to form an alchemic circle and force open the gate.
  • In the Manga fight between Greed and Pride, why didn't Greed just fully armoured his entire body? He can't win against Pride but he can at least act as a shield for the rest of the characters involved in the fight. His nickname is the "Ultimate Shield", after all.
    • I'm not sure sacrificing himself to save his possessions is Greed's modus operandi. He obviously cared about them, just not that much.
      • That, and I don't get the impression that his powers work really well as a shield anyway. I mean, he can make his body invulnerable, but can't turn himself wide enough to protect others. Also, given that he was already killed by the other homonculi, his goal at this point is to Kill'Em All, so sacrificing himself would be the last thing he wanted to do.
      • Ah, that's exactly what Bugs Me. Greed cut off his ties with Father and the others, which meant that his stone can't be renewed anymore. Why doesn't he just go full-armoured the moment he encountered Pride, instead of just standing there, letting Pride getting free hits at the expense of his stone?
    • My impression is that it takes time for his shield to spread and Wrath was just way, way too fast for him.
      • Greed thinks this to himself, and states that it's too fast for him to even regenerate mid-battle. Then again, by the time Ling becomes the new Greed, he seems to get better at this, armoring a small part around his neck to stop a "fatal" blow.
      • Greed also underestimated Wrath because he thought he was a normal human.
  • In the manga and the new anime, Edward seems just as adamant against killing as his first-anime counterpart, but much less disturbed by death in general. It just seems kind of...inconsistent, characterization-wise. Why doesn't he even blink an eye when he sees frozen corpses, or when random soldiers are dying around him?
    • Because he's already seen far worse then what Isaac does?
      • So bloody corpes littered at his feet don't even deserve a passing glance because he's seen worse? I could understand that if he didn't give a shit in general, but it still seems really odd to me.
    • Well, this is how I see it: Just because Manga/second anime!Ed sometimes doesn't react as strongly to death as one might think he would doesn't mean he's unaffected by it. I think it's just that by now Ed has accepted that he can't afford to dwell on unchangeable things like death and instead does what he can to prevent more people from being killed. Like taking Isaac down instead of mourning the dead soldiers.
      • But taking Isaac down isn't mutually exclusive from showing even a hint of concern for dead people. In a visual medium where you're not privy to a character's thoughts, you can only guage their feelings from subtle cues like a change in facial expression, or even just a flick of the eyes to said dead people and some kind of frown. But we get shown nothing of the sort, so it's much more logical to assume that he just doesn't care all that much if he isn't doing the killing himself.
      • I can see where you're coming from, but that doesn't really mean Ed didn't care. More likely, the writers just didn't consider the fact that running by a bunch of dead bodies without any kind of reaction was odd. Red Shirts are expendable and stopping the action to notice them would have been inconvenient. So, sloppy writing, sure, but I still don't think it's fair to say he doesn't care. Also, you say that in the manga Ed also seems less disturbed by death than you think he ought to be, but can you give an example? Because I can't remember anything to really indicate that (But my memories bad, so that doesn't mean much).
  • Here's one thing from the manga that's starting to bug me. It's with Envy's seeming Joker Immunity. I was a bit bugged when he/she/it is able to trick May into taking him to be "healed" after he/she/it is destroyed to the point of being in the "evil fetus" looking true form. Most recently, Roy does this again, and the presentation seems to be If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him, especially in having Scar talk about Roy's desire for revenge as consuming like his own. It just bugs me because Envy is a Complete Monster and unless their is some kind of good twist coming, there isn't any benefit for the heroes to keep he/she/it alive.
    • May did that mainly because Roy had unfinished business with Envy, and they needed a way to bring him back after Marcoh had finished HIS unfinished business with Envy.
    • Two choices 1) Ed or another character will destroy Envy OR b) They are going to use Envy to bring them to Father.
    • Remember way back when Ed and Envy escaped from Gluttony's stomach and Envy promised to tell Ed what their plan is? He probably kept Envy alive to get that information from him.
    • Good point. I had forgotten about that scene a while back. Still, the If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him falls flat because it's simply not true.
    • There wasn't much emphasis on the act of killing itself so much as acting with the motivation of revenge. "Kill him because he's dangerous, not because you hate him" or something like that. While you may disagree with the idea that revenge is inherently harmful to the person seeking revenge, it's a slightly different trope than If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him.
      • Hawkeye offers to finish Envy off herself, and notes that the problem is that Roy isn't doing it to save the country or a comrade, but sheerly for revenge.
        • Not to mention that Roy was nearly out of his mind at the time. It's not that he'll be just like Envy if he finishes it, it's that if he finishes it by himself, he might snap completely and not come back. It's not Envy they're trying to save, it's Roy.
  • Speaking of Envy, in the next chapter Envy commits suicide because he admits to his envy of humans because they stick together and they don't give up. Except ... through the entire series Envy has had nothing but immense contempt of humans and he relishes how easily he can manipulate them. He thought posing himself as Hughes' wife so he'd freeze up was hilarious. So how in the hell can he turn around and say he always envied humans for the very feelings he enjoyed manipulating while being a Complete Monster? Why would he envy that? Yeah, Envy is obviously the embodiment of envy, but why the hell does it manifest in THAT way when it goes against his entire view of humans thus far?
    • It was kind of an Asspull, but think of it: when you envy someone and hang out with people who consider said someone as much as a bug, you are likley to be the one to show more hartred for them. If you see, none of the other Homunculi treat humans as badly as Envy did.
    • Envy is so eager to inflict loss on humans because he is envious of them having something to begin with, something which he does not. He destroys lives because he can't have one himself.
    • Wow, if you think this is an Ass Pull, I'd like you to meet a little friend of mine named SATAN. To borrow from Yoda, "envy leads to jelousy; jelousy leads to hatred; hatred leads to suffering." His hatred makes perfect sense, and his reaction to his ultimate shame makes sense, too. He did what he did in the end because it was his only way to inflict any more suffering on the being he hated/envied; plus, he was filled with complete despair in his predicament. Consider that the author is Buddhist - desire being the root of all suffering in that philosophy, and which ultimately leads to personal suffering. Frankly, Envy's circumstances make perfect sense when you consider this philosophy.
    • There's also the part in which he, after losing to Marcoh's group in Chapter 79, screams about his enemies looking down on him. Ed just happened to identify that weakness and take full advantage of it; the "friendship speech" part was somewhat incidental, as he happened to mention it as one of humanity's sources of support in addition to their personal resolve.
    • I thought Envy's namesake was kinda left-field at first too, but after considering what other people have said about the subject, I realize that his actions and mentality make perfect sense to the point I myself can relate to him. There's a girl who I refusse to acknowledge as a friend despite the fact that several of my friends get along fine with her. I hate her guts, attitude, fashion sense, the works, but I know deep down that I'm actually jealous of her for many of those same things. However, because I don't want to acknowledge that, I focus on and amplify all her bad traits (like her utter lack of common sense) to justify me not liking her. And you know what? There will be a day where an Ed will come along and point this out to me, and I won't be able to deny it. Ironic as this statement will be, I think Envy's reasons for his actions are very human and relatable.
    • I actually think Envy's loathing of humans is very fitting as well as his will to cause them pain and kill them. When you are envy of something you don't have and can't have, you want to destroy this thing so you won't feel like that anymore. After all, the first killing in the Bible was done out of Cain jealousy of his brother Abel.
      • Cain wasn't jealous of Abel, as he had nothing to be jelous about. Abel had good looks, a sports car, a harem, real estate, money, and powerful connections. Abel had on the other hand a broken nose, a horse-drawn cart, his hand, a box, a monopoly set, and no friends. Cain suffered from envy. Jelousy would be if Abel bought a shotgun because he thought Cain wanted a stake in his stuff, one way or another.
        • Wait...what?
  • Izumi is made of awesome, but the whole missing-organs thing Just Bugs Me. Why the hell does it give her an Incurable Cough of Death?
    • The blood isn't coming from her lungs, maybe from the place her stomach was. But it doesn't make it any less ridiculous how the rest of her organs "adapted" to make up for the missing ones that quickly.
      • I thought she just lost her Uterus and most of her Large Intestines, neither organ is critical for survival. For the latter, the Small Intestines actually can compensate to some extent. The Kidneys, Lungs, and Livers could all have taken considerable damage without killing her.
        • This Troper liked trying to figure out which organs she was missing. I would say that the Uterus was left intact - remember that Wrath's Shadow Archetype is her dead baby. My guess was that one of the Intestines, and portions of the Liver, Spleen, Pancreas, and (significantly) Lungs were missing.
        • No, it's perfectly possible and quite probable that her uterus was taken. She had a miscarriage or stillbirth (forget which) and then tried to ressurect the kid, making Wrath (in the anime). She had her uterus taken for seeing Truth, supported by her saying she could no longer have children. She probably also had some other organs mostly takne or mostly damaged, but if the liver, it's grown back by now, cuz livers do that.
        • It's also possible Truth made her still capable of living by adapting her body to be able to survive.
  • Why (in all the versions) did Shou Tucker experiment on his daughter: with his wife, you could say that he was desesperate to obtain results like the Mad Scientist he is, but later he was a State Alchemist: he could certainly have pulled enough strings to have homeless, prisonners, Ishvalians as guinea pigs. That would not have made him a nicer character, but experimenting on his own daughter always seemed to be a very big Idiot Ball.
    • My impression is that in either version, he's not really that competent (compare the humanoid chimeras in the series with his efforts) nor that ambitious. The only reason he wants to be a State Alchemist is for the pay, so it's not like he really thinks ahead about future discovery.
    • It's also entirely possible that he didn't realize that he could use those people. He didn't seem particularly well connected enough in either version (at least pre-chimerification in the first anime) to realize what the Amestrian government was really like.
      • First anime!Al indicates at one point that Tucker knew that it wouldn't completely work, yet did it anyway, prompting him to suggest that he did it becuse he could. In the manga, Tucker suggests that he did it because working with humans was more effective than with animals.
        • In the manga and Brotherhood it is said the Tucker's research was far behind theirs, further evidenced by their perfected versions. Tucker probably was only a public "introduction" to chimera's being possible.
    • It's possible that he'd first used his wife, possibly accidentally and was suprised that the experiment worked. When he later used his daughter, he was at the end of the line and might not have had access to anyone else, plus he states that it was the age factor that he was testing, so maybe none of the possible candidates were young enough to meet his requirements.
    • Actually it makes perfect sense if you step back a bit. Chimerae aren't unknown to alchemists generally, as proved by Greed's Pals. But they all were humans that were "improved" by splicing them with some animals. Tucker was made famous for making an intelligent chimerae without using a human for it. Which he didn't. He had to drag Nina because he couldn't go to the higher ups and say "Hey, I want to make another non-human-based chimera. Also, can I take some war prisioners? No, these aren't related". Though now that I wrote that I have to say, using Nina for that was pretty stupid of him. He should've grabbed some homeless guy off the street or something.
  • Barry doesn't make any sense to me. OK, so they put his soul in a suit of armor and made him guard Lab 5. I get that, but then it later turns out that his body is still "alive", with the soul of a lab animal in it. So what did they need Barry for anyway? I thought he was supposed to be one of the prisoners sacrificed for Lab 5's Philosopher's Stones?
    • Most supposedly hanged prisoners were actually sacrificed for Philosopher's Stones, but some of them (the most Badass famous serial killers, apparently) were used to guard the lab instead - and obviously they could not be used as guards if they were sacrificed for Stones, so they weren't. All the Animated Armors have their bodies alive somewhere and their souls are connected to their bodies, because otherwise they could not think or remember anything - they need a brain for that, even if it's not in the same place with their soul.
    • Wellll... that didn't really need a functioning brain for thinking feeling etc. Not every sentient in the series has one, the Father and Pride for example, are more squidgey massess than anything elese and the souls in a philosophers stone or maniken 'homunculi' demonstrate emotion and thought. Hoeheneims souls have clear personalitys, thoughts, memories etc even when seperated from his body, and logically their bodies would have long since of decayed. Soul's seem to be more than just life energy here.
    • What really doesn't make sense is, if the prisoner's body needed the soul of some animal put into it, then what happens to the now-soulless animal body? The story emphasizes that neither body nor soul can survive if the other ceases to exist, so wouldn't the animal need someone else's soul placed into it, and wouldn't that someone else need some other replacement soul still? Doesn't this whole concept imply an unending chain, a game of musical chairs where there are not enough souls to go around for all the soul containers?
      • Barry's body didn't need the animal soul in it to stay alive, that was just useful for getting it to run around and lure out Armour-Barry. Al's body is still alive at the Gate and doesn't have anyone else's soul in it.
      • And even if it did need the animal's soul to move around, and staying alive without a soul present is a function of the gate and Al's body's connection to Edward (like some sort of supernatural life support), the bodies could be left on IV support when they don't have a spare soul to put in them to enable movement (including the animal's body), and possibly but not necessarily assisted breathing and circulation.
      • They probably kept the animal in a cage and knocked a soul into it or made the animal itself into a chimera.
  • In the manga, during the part where Hawkeye is telling Ed about Ishbal, it's really unclear what she's telling Ed and what is just being presented to the audience. This is particularly noticeable, as the flashback includes things she couldn't possibly know about (like about Scar and his brother). Also, this is somewhat unrelated, but in that section, they mention that they'd asked Roy first and he'd refused to tell them anything. You'd think they'd ask Hawkeye or Hughes before asking Roy.
    • If I recall correctly, 3 pairs of characters were discussing the Ishbal war at the same time, Riza and Edward, Knox and Alphonse, Scar and Marcoh respectively.
  • Why are some Homunculi able to regenerate their clothes? Lust regenerates an entire dress after being exploded multiple times, but I'm pretty sure she was wearing a different outfit when she was talking to Havoc as "Solaris," so I doubt it's a part of her body. (Unless she was just wearing her dress under that outfit, but that would be pretty impractical.) Also, Wrath doesn't seem to have any specific Homunculus outfit, considering we can see his collarbones in the most recent chapters (and his wife would have noticed), so... are the regenerateable outfits just for Father-created Homunculi only?
    • Lust was wearing a coat when she saw Havoc so the rest is probably her skin. I'm pretty sure that with the exceptions of Wrath, Pride and maybe Evny,it's either like this for the rest of the Homunculi or a personal fashion choice.
      • Actually it looks a bit more like some sort of kimono-esque dress, but the result is the same. It covers her homunculus skin-dress. You can actually tell it's still there by her hands- the dots on the backs of her hands and the lines connected to them are shown (not that Havoc would be able to recognize such a trait).
      • Could be for modesty reasons, but also considering that Lust's clothes could be also be regenerated by their innate Stones. Clothes should be no problem for them, but their bodies are another matter.
  • Why isn't Ed in any of the trope pantheons? And don't give me the atheist-can't-be-a-god excuse. He should BE THERE!
    • I second this! And I would also like to point out the Alex and/or Olivier would also be prime candidates. Perhaps the three of them could form a House of Badassery?
  • Why was Winry not allowed to shoot the serial killing terrorist that not only murdered her parents but intends to kill her possible love interest, his brother and a large proportion of the people she cares about? Seriously, WTF?
    • They needed him alive for their plans, since he's the only one of the anti-homunculus conspirators who can read his brother's research notes. Also, Major Miles probably wanted him to face military justice instead.
    • Not only that, but allowing Winry to shoot him would make her a murderer. Out of revenge, no less, which wouldn't make her any better than Scar. Ed stopped her before because he didn't want her to live with that sort of guilt, and Winry said later that she's glad he stopped him.
    • Ed also stressed to her that she was the daughter of doctors, and an automail mechanic herself. In his eyes, Winry was a healer and a creator; someone who fixed he and Al when they were injured and invented new things, not someone who took lives. Killing Scar would have been a perversion of what Winry stood for, at least for Ed, and arguably of her parents' legacy. In fact, when Winry encounters Scar later in the manga she forgives him exactly for that reason; because she knows it's what her parents would want her to do.
      • Ah, actually no. The whole point of the scene was that she didn't forgive him. She learned to live with it and that was why she helped him with his injuries. Like it was said earlier in the manga, it's a cycle of violence/vengeance that goes on and on until someone breaks it, and that's exactly what Winry did.
    • Erm, excuse me, but who said she had to hit her mark...? She is not Riza Hawkeye, people.
      • If she missed her mark, but still hit Scar, she's still causing bloodshed, which is in perfect agreement with the rest of the arguments, and even if she missed him, she could accidentally hit someone else, possibly still staining her hands with blood.
      • Also, given that she's used to manipulating small objects for her business of automain mechanic, the range she was at probably would not make much difference. She was pretty much point-blank.
      • Does anyone besides me get the impression that if Winry had fired at Scar, Scar would have just stood there because he thought she had a legitimate reason?
        • No, he told her that while she had the right to try to shoot him, if she did try it he would treat her as an enemy... which in Scar's case is the same as a death warrant.
        • But still, that would only be after that first shot.
  • Am I the only one who thinks Fuu's performance in this newest chapter was an anticlimax?. I mean he shows up looking like he's about to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and then proceeds to get in the way and curb stomped to death. Granted he was old and Bradley was going all out,but you'd think he'd have more tricks up his sleeve than a failed suicide attempt.
    • I thought that entire sequence was made of awesome.
      • Not the thing with Bucaneer, that was awesome. I'm talking about the parts leading up to it. I mean honestly what happen to all those smoke bombs and explosives he had a chapter ago?, and you'd think Fuu would try harder to kill the guy who cut off his granduaghters arm. well hopefully Ling and Ran Fan will avenge his loss.
        • I thought that was probably deliberate, more in the way of a Hope Spot- like you thought/hoped he would do Taking You with Me, but instead, he got killed without managing to land a single blow. That being said, it seems likely that Wrath will meet his end in the next chapter (if there's any justice anyway).
        • As far as I could tell, it was meant to demonstrate Bradley's awesomeness more than Fuu's. It has been repeatedly established that Bradley is flat-out unbeatable in regular combat - Fuu never really had a chance to begin with. As for why he wasn't tossing around smoke bombs and grenades, it seems like Fuu simply didn't have the time for combat tricks - it was taking everything he had just to stay alive. Remember that while Ling successfully used grenades against Bradley, they were used to escape, not as part of an actual fight.
    • Plus, Fû didn't get in the way, Greed did. The moment Fû got in the fray, Wrath saw that he was in trouble now that he faced a skilled opponent, and ridiculed Greed even more by throwing him at Fû and nailing him on the floor through his Badass Longcoat, just so that he could focus on the old man.
  • So in the new anime, they kept in the scene where Riza gives Ed the pistol... but didn't keep the scene of Ed firing it in Gluttony's stomach to see how big it is. What was the point of dedicating so much screentime to it if it wasn't going to do anything?
    • The scene later, when Ling is about to be injected with a Philosopher's Stone and Ed tries to stop that from happening, and points the gun at monster!Envy, but can't shoot at the Xerxese soul people, will most likely be kept in the anime.
      • It is.
    • They're also almost certainly keeping the scene where Ed admits that scene to Riza. Shooting it in Gluttony's stomach was a clever move, but it wasn't necessary for plot or characterization and they had to cut corners; failing to shoot Envy was.
  • Okay, that's frankly stupid but.... am I wrong, or in the latest episode of Brotherhood Winry's breasts were larger than usual? She now look to have nearly a D
    • She's growing. It was rather more sudden in the manga where that didn't really happen until after the winter timeskip.
    • Hell, compare Bunny's chest in Brotherhood, and Winry's chest in the episodes where they talk to each other. Then look at that one closing credit animation where it shows Winry working in Garfiel's shop. Her breasts are now reaching beyond D cup... Not that I would complain about that... * Stares at Bunny some more*
  • How does Alphonse do anything? For a series where equivalent exchange is emphasized over and over, they never explain what energy source allows Alphonse to move a bulky suit of armor without any bones and muscles, see without eyes, hear without ears and yet not smell, taste or touch. Ed is already paying the energy bills both for himself and his brother's body on the other side of the gate, it seems doubtful that he'd be able to afford the energy bills for the armor as well. If it ran of Alphonse's soul, he would've run out of soul a long time ago, given how fast characters can go through philosopher's stones. What gives?
    • Hmmm. The body is always alive in every case where souls were bound to armour, and in each case the body was attracted to the soul. Perhaps this tension provides the power source.
    • I don't remember in which series (First Anime, Manga, etc.) it was mentioned but apparently the blood seal affects Iron because of trace amounts of iron in the blood. Now, do note that whenever Al, Barry the Chopper, and Slicer Bro's lose limbs, they can't move those separated limbs. They have to be connected to the main armor where the blood seal is on for it to be moved by the bound soul.
  • Where does Mei keep her apparently infinite amount of those little arrowhead knife things? She seems to have a constant supply even after she's been throwing them all over the place and doing long distance transmutations when she obviously doesn't have time to go and pick them all up afterwards...
    • She's an ALCHEMIST. She makes more out of available materials.
      • But she needs them to perform her transmutations.... I guess she just makes a whole bunch at once whenever she feels the need to.
      • Two theories. One - she only needs them for long distance transmutations, so she could just make more. Two - she has one set to make new ones and she makes sure she doesn't throw them away.
      • She's also a proto-ninja type. She wouldn't be a quasi-ninja without near-infinite kunai throwing knives, would she?
  • Does anyone have the slightest clue what happened at the end of 101? We have Mustang and Scar in the transmutation circle, Gold-Teeth over it, and Pride around/forming it. The philosopher's stone is in the circle as well. Mustang's hands have been pinned to the ground either to hinder mobility or to make him forcibly touch the circle. WTF happened? Who/what is transmuting what/who with who/what? There are two alchemists, plus a homunculus who ate an alchemist earlier.
    • Pride gained the knowledge of how to do a human transmutation from Kimbley, so he was able to accurately make the circle, and killed Gold Toothy so he could be used as raw material. Wrath forced Mustang into the Circle and used his blood to activate it, effectively meaning that Mustang was forced to do human transmutation along with Pride.
  • How exactly can Pride attack with his shadow? I know, it's just fiction, but it breaks my Willing Suspension of Disbelief because shadows, by definition, have no physical presence. How can he touch, break and cut things with them? Is it some kind of energy that just superficially resembles a shadow? That would make more sense, in my opinion.
    • Perhaps he somehow physically transmutes matter into a dark mass from his shadow and somehow bends the light so that it doesn't affect the actual shadows.
    • This may also have something to do with whatever both he and Father are made of. According to the evidence built up so far, Father was made out of Hoheinheim's blood. By consequence, Pride was able to "possess" Alphonse's body via the blood seal, as they are techincally genetically related. I personally think that Pride's "shadows" are mostly a very thin organic matter layer that can concentrate to cut things, and that can absorb other living things, as Gluttony and Kimberlee learned the hard way
    • I got the impression that it was less that he actually controlled the shadow (as that makes no sense at all) and more that he can only manifest his power where there's a shadow. Otherwise you'd expect "bigger" shadows to make him more powerful, which has all sorts of weird implications.
  • Why exactly do most major characters tend to wear 21st (or at least late 20th century) clothing? Their universe is apparently behind in terms of technology, but both at time and ahead when it comes to clothing.
    • Possibly as a stylistic choice, but do note that some uniforms really resemble 1914-WWI era garb. Considering how easy in the FMA-verse it is to make custom stuff, it's not a stretch to say that clothing and fashion is fairly more developed at that point than our world's counterpart at that time period.
  • What exactly is up with Roy's eyes as of chapter 102? It looks like he doesn't have pupils, but that's stupid because the pupil is simply an opening, not an actual organ. Speaking of that, assuming it isn't all a bluff, what part of his visual apparatus did he actually lose?
    • It's just a visual effect to indicate blindness.
    • I suppose that the exact apparatus he lost was the optic nerves, which in theory would render him blind
      • I thought that if someone lost their optic nerves their eyeballs would bulge out? Or maybe my source was wrong.
    • There's a condition called cataracts that clouds up the cornea, make it white and impossible to see out of. I haven't gotten to that chapter yet, so I'm not entirely sure if my suggestion is plausible; but like the first person said it's a very common way to represent blindness, cataracts or not.
  • Where did Father's soul come from? All the artificial sentients in the series have their souls accounted for--the "cyclops army" are inhabited by sacrificed humans, the shell created by Ed and Al was briefly inhabited by Al's soul, and the Homunculi are all fractions of Father's soul. But where did Father come from in the first place?
    • He's probably a piece of the shadow-things within the Gate, summoned by some ancient Xerxesian alchemy.
      • Given that as he is being dragged into the gate in Chapter 108, he screams "I don't want to go back", I'd say this is correct.
    • It is stated he was created from Hohenheim's blood, though it could very well had just been used to serve as an "exchange" for what would become Father.
    • It was almost definitely there from the successful creation of the distillation sphere homunculus. Whether the homunculus got a sort of makeshift soul from, say, a Truth being cut-and-pasted into it (sounds likely, if it didn't just get a solid view of The Truth when it was first made), or if it was an actual soul pulled from a dead person (the alchemist that made it? Considering Al has been confirmed to have been in Trisha-goldfish's body, and that it has firsthand knowledge of The Truth, this will be my personal belief until such time as it is Jossed, if ever) or somehow made the same way a human soul is (even if they are broken off of the mother's and probably father's soul[s], it could have been a piece taken from the alchemist's soul), it would have needed at least one to live, even without a physical body.
  • Not a big one, but in the OVA, the Blind Alchemist lost his eyes rather graphically (blood streaming out of them and a huge scar over them too). So how come when Roy loses his sight when forced to open the gate, he's just blind? Just loses his eyesight without all the blood and stuff?
    • It's Fridge Brilliance when you think about it. When Pride was going through how everyone's punishments fitted them personally, he mentioned that Roy had a 'grand vision' for his country. Thus, Truth didn't take his eyes - he took his vision. It's an almost sadistic kind of pun.
  • Considering how it's established that you can force someone to open the gate, why didn't Father just get a bunch of loyal or submissive alchemists to do what he wants rather than basing his plan around people harder to keep in check and track? Father's lucky Hoho was hanging around in the neighborhood and fathered Ed.
    • The generals' conversation in ch. 52 indicates that a person has to have a certain level of 'nerve' to attempt to open the Gate in the first place, not to mention the level of alchemical knowledge and skill necessary to put together a theory of human transmutation and the strength of mind to not go crackers from what you see going through the Gate. Valor, resilience and academic rigour are probably not the easiest things to find among the kind of people who are shown to willingly go along with Father's plans.
    • Explained in chapters 102/103: While pride was able to force the gate open for Mustang, it apparently came at a great price: he seems to be slowly disintegrating. Ed even asks the question himself, and figures out pretty much instantly that it makes no sense. Mustang then suggests that it has a huge side-effect for the homunculi
  • Why is this manga set in the early 1900s exactly? It seems like a random choice since it nothing from that time period applies to this manga except maybe some of the clothing.
    • Because it's a good fantasy setting if you want something somewhat magical, but not too much so. Moving too far into modern times kinda ruins the fantasy element and adds complications of technology. Moving too far into the past will ruin the scientific part and adds too much mysticism. Thus the 1900s is a great comprimise between these two.
      • They could have kept it age ambiguous or left most technology out with a Freudian Excuse.
    • Nobody uses a phonebooth nowadays, that's why. I'm going to Hell, I know.
  • OK, I just need a clarification on something. It's a pretty well-known fact by now that Amestrian alchemy is powered by soul-energy provided by Father. However, I'm a bit confused as to how exactly this works. Does Father have some sort of container full of souls somewhere in his little hideaway? Or does the energy come directly from the souls he took when he got his body on that day in Xerxes? More to the point, does the energy come directly from Father, using him as a Philosopher's Stone, or is there another mass of souls down there?
    • Amestrian alchemy is actually powered by the energy generated from plate tectonics.
      • This, pretty much. Father's network of Philosopher's Stones just lets him control and, if necessary, cut off the flow of energy to Amestris.
    • Father's throne has a bunch of cables and whatnot, and he's usually connected to it while not doing anything. I'd wager it's option A.
    • The explanation that this troper has read goes something like this: Amestrian alchemy is powered by geothermal energy and tectonic shifts and whatnot. But Father has those tubes hooked up to his throne so he can pump souls from his Philosopher's Stone into the ground beneath Amestris. That layer of souls then acts as a buffer that can weaken Amestrian alchemy or, if Father deems it necessary, cut it off from its energy source entirely.
  • Bothers me the ever changing fan opinions on The Truth. First everyone is like "he's not actually evil, its Ed and Al's fault!", then after the "Roy incident" everyone is denying he is God. I mean, seriously, I understand people don't like the God Is Evil trope, but do you have to apply what you believe the RL universe to be into FICTIONAL universe!? I mean, no Berserk fan ever suggested that The Idea Of Evil, clearly a far more malevolent god, isn't "God", while the FMA fandom is suddenly suggesting a His Dark Materials like scenario?
    • Attack a fan favorite and that's what happens! Also, differently from the others, Roy DIDN'T want to do a human transmutation, but was still punished. Everyone tends to forget that immediately after, he (possibly) showed an appreciation to Al and that the one who is being severly punished is Pride, who is undergoing a massive literal Villain Decay.
      • I don't have a problem accepting that he is the god of that universe, although I'd like to think that the presumably more benevolent Ishvallan god also exists- it's pretty clear that they worship a god more in line with monotheism- so part of me would like to think that Truth isn't actually the supreme being.
      • I actually think Truth is Good.... just that his way of acting is so morally ambiguous he looks evil... and now with Father we'll surely have God Is Evil at full force! Thruth-kun will look like a pushover compared to him.
    • Anyway, Word of God revealed the true nature of the Truth recently: Arakawa said the Truth was somewhat a 'hollow' version of oneself (as a sort of 'internal God', or conscience), a sort of 'negative' of that alchemist, which completed itself with the tolls taken by the alchemist upon seeing the Truth.
  • Why is Homunculus AKA Father making the same error. I mean, the reason he nearly lost to Hoho was because half a milion of souls turned against him and threw him out of his body.... and now what did he do? He absorbed and even biger number of people and even a GOD... Doesn't he fear they may get pissed off for having their souls ripped out of their body?. Not to say that Bishie Father does not seem terrifying as it was his true form... I think he will undergo another One-Winged Angel.
    • Hoho was only able to do that little trick because he had spent 400 years individually separating each soul from the collective inside him. Without putting in the effort to separate them, there's no chance of that sort of thing happening; as evidenced by the fact that Father and the Homunculus have been fine for 400 years.
  • Quite a few chapters ago, the main characters found an alchemist's circle that would effectively destroy philosopher stones. Why oh why has nobody used it since that one battle with Envy?! They're going into a major battle against all the surviving homunculi, which are POWERED by philosopher's stones, and not ONE of them thought to whip it out?
    • It was only Tim Marcoh who could use it, and it was because he knew how to make a Philosopher (ie. he had made more than one), and he's never run into another homunculus (with Pride's exception, but I doubt he would have ever got to touch him) apart from Envy.
      • Actually Alphonse also considered trying to destroy Gluttony's stone once when he was attacked, but it's not completely clear whether he would have succeeded, had he had the chance to try that before blacking out at the most unfortunate imaginable moment. And he could have theoretically tried destroying Pride's stone when they were trapped inside that dome, but on the other hand, the alchemy reaction would have caused light, which would have kind of negated the whole idea of shutting Pride into complete darkness so that he couldn't use his shadow powers, so maybe Al didn't want to risk it.
    • Look closely at Marcoh's palm before he blows Envy apart. It's not the reversal circle found in Scar's brother's notes. It looks a lot like the normal Philosopher's Stone circle, actually. That doesn't answer your question about why nobody else has tried the method, but I felt it would do to mention the diference in the circles.
  • Wait. If Hohenheim has half the souls from Xerxes, and Father has the other half, then who the heck is in Envy?
    • A part of Father's souls, obviously, since Envy is derived from his body
  • When King Bradley became a Homonculus, the souls in the Philosopher's Stone went nuts until there was only one soul left, the one currently in him. However, when Ling became Greed, there's still a crapton of souls there. Why is that? Is it because Ling accepted Greed so quickly?
    • That is one possibility, other is that the Philosopher's Stone injected into Ling just had more souls in it in the first place, so they weren't all used up.
  • It bugs me that so many people are saying that all those people died in chapter 104. Obviously they had their souls sucked out, but that's not the same thing as being dead, since their souls still exist. Bringing back the dead is impossible in this manga because the souls of the dead do not exist anymore, but joining together existing souls and bodies, which have been previously separated, should be possible.
  • How come the militaries looking for Ed after he is MIA and "wanted" due to his fight with Kimbley didn't have a photo of him (while Hugues has a private photograph of his family)? The only reason why the black dude doesn't recognize him is because Ed is accidentally Clark Kenting. It logically should have been a national register of the State Alchemists, with official photographs. Furthermore, why the only way for State Alchimists to prove their status is their silver watch? They're not nominative if I recall correctly. For a dictactorship, Amestris is kinda careless with identity proofs.
    • The watches do actually have the alchemist's name engraved on them: observe. And while the military do have State Alchemists' photos on file, this isn't a digitised world so even if there are copies made it's probably only one or two for an area HQ or something. The soldiers dispatched in ch. 81 come very quickly after Darius makes the withdrawal from the bank, so were probably nearby and decided to go for 'written description and known associate' over rooting around through a filing cabinet after a doubtless out of date photograph. Plus there's no way of knowing if the soldier at the door would have recognised Ed after a moment or so or not, since Ed went Berserk Button on him right away.
    • Rule of Funny. If Ed's appearance was widely known, then you couldn't have the jokes where people think Al is the Fullmetal Alchemist, causing Ed to go berserk.
  • Just how old is Mei? This has been bugging me for a while. Is she older than she looks, or is really as young as she looks? I have yet to find a reliable source to tell me.
    • It seems she states she's 10 years old when she stays at Youswell with Envy's Sleep Mode Size.
      • Looked into it, and either the subber/scanlator I consulted is different from yours or the line doesn't exist, because I checked both that particular Brotherhood episode and the manga chapter (as well as the one she's introduced) and didn't see any mention of how old she was.
      • I would guess she's around the same age as Ed/Al, it's just that she's a bigger (or smaller?) beansprout than Ed.
  • Bothers me that everything is going to hell for Father right now. I mean, we all know he has to be defeated, but seems like his time as a god ended a bit too quickly. I mean, not even a full chapter passed since his plan worked.
    • Actually, he is still possessing God/Truth. It's not neccessarily over yet.
  • The one thing that bugs me the most about FMA is Al's armour. People are usually surprised to find out that there's no one in Al's suit of armour, but no one is surpised to see a suit or armour walking around among civilians. I mean; is it normal to wear armour outside of battle? And why would Hohenheim require a suit of armour? (we know it's his because he refers to it as his vintage armour). He was immortal post Xerxes' destruction and pre; he was a slave who was most likely not also a soldier. Rule of Funny? Mystery Science Theater 3000 mantra? Better explanation?
    • He probably got it when it was already vintage armor, the same reason he has a Pinochet statuette. Hohenheim having worn the armor into battle wouldn't be WMG-worthy if it was stated canon that the armor was used by him, rather than simply owned by him. However, it could have been the uniform of a battle he fought in, and he either didn't want to reveal his blatant immortality or simply didn't mind wearing the armor just to fit in/keep for later. As to the surprise at Al, some people are surprised to see someone walking around in a suit of armor, some people think he wears it all the time because he's the Full Metal Alchemist (rather than his looks-like-a-fourteen-year-old-at-the-oldest brother, the Fullmetal Alchemist), and some people it's just another impractical outfit worn as a mark of some status or another or because the person in the armor is Crazy Prepared.
    • Or for tl;dr (brought down to conform to the chronological queue and not confuse anyone, with intro added): What kind of question is this? Hoenheim probably just kept some armour suits in his house for decorative reasons. He probably collected them for a hobby as well.
    • It's a bit more clear in the Japanese version of the manga, where he specifically says it's part of his armor collection. So yeah, it's a hobby.
  • The origin of the ouroboros brand on manga!Wrath's eye has always bugged me. He was injected with philosopher's stone, struggled with the soulnado, and managed to survive with just one soul and enhanced abilities as a kickass non-regenerating homunculus-human hybrid. Gotcha. He then opens his eye and... reveals an ourobors tatoo. What, did it just... form out of the blue? With no direction? That seems pretty arbitrary as a natural consequence of absorbing a dosage of philosopher's stone. Since Father was apparently there during the experiments, wouldn't it have made more sense to examine #12, analyze the apparent consequent enhancement of his eye, and then brand him there and then with a single alchemical snap of the fingers?
    • Magic A Is Magic A for the design naturally forming, but my understanding is that that isn't his real eye. That fell out during the process. Instead, the eye with the tattoo is Wrath's Philosopher's Stone.
      • The eye didn't fall out; it MELTED. Other than that, yes. The new eye formed as one of the changes to his body when the Stone was accepted into it.
  • The clothing. How do they have both modern and era correct clothing? In the first anime it makes sense since they're an alternate universe from ours, in the early 1900s. However that doesn't apply to the other medias.
    • They also have artificial limbs more advanced than we have today, but not even the simplest aircraft. It's a fantasy world, so it doesn't need to develop the same things in the same order.
    • I already explained the answer a little above, but here's my take again: Some clothing, like uniforms, do resemble 1914-WWI era outfits. Considering how easy it is in the FMA-verse to make things from materials, clothing and fashion developed at a faster pace in the FMA-world that our early 1900's counterpart.
  • The law of equivalent exchange. How exactly do they define "equal value?" If it just means that everything has to obey the laws of conservation of mass and energy shouldn't their technology be vastly superior to where it is?
    • This one is tougher to answer do to the nature of of the law and alchemy. Alchemists must have just about enough material to transmute the object they want to create or modify. It's probably them making guess estimates at how much material elements they have to work with. Now, their technology is fairly consistent with early 1900's Earth, but their clothing, prosthetics, and anything else that I have missed may improve into full on robotics by the time they catch up to our present day Earth. WMG, of course.
  • One thing that just bugs me is that, in Brotherhood/the manga, Madam Christmas gathered several reports on Selim, showing that his appearance never changed through the years. If he's been with the Bradleys for several years, haven't the people around him (e.g. Mrs. Bradley, his bodyguards) ever grown suspicious of how he never grows older? I've tried to rationalize this by thinking that King Bradley hand-waved this by saying that Selim has some kind of disease.
    • She actually says that his apparent age seems to vary five years or so one way or the other. Presumably Pride can vary his appearance a bit to give the illusion of aging.
    • According, to Perfect guide book vol.3, he can "make body height elasticized". I think that means he simply stretches his container to look taller.
  • It's stated in both the anima and the manga/Brotherhood that alchemists can only reconstruct matter into things made up of the same elements. But it's also implied in both canons that gold can be transmuted from other elements. It seems like an inconsistency. So alchemy can change one element into another?
    • It's stated that the reconstructed matter has to be similar, not the same element. You can't change water into gold, for example, but apparently you can change coal scrap.
  • I can't be the only one who's noticed how many times in the manga that Winry is complimented for something or gets what she wants because she's cute. Ed literally forgives her for forgetting the screw because he notices how attractive she is, upon meeting Hughes, Hawkeye, Captain Buccaneer and his mechanic, Ling, and Mustang all call her pretty or beautiful in front of Ed, and in Ling's case, ask her to marry him multiple times. I was so bored one day I counted how many times that happens: 28. Most of the instances of Winry being complimented are so unnecessary they're cut out of the 2nd anime. Examples:
    • In the manga, when Ed and Al take Winry back to central to see Hughes (unaware that he's dead) they run into Riza, who upon realizing that Winry is the girl she met years ago, exclaims "You've grown to be so pretty!" Minutes later Roy walks in, notices Winry, and his speech bubble goes like this: "My you're a pretty young lady oh my you were the cute girl from back then gosh you've grown so pretty boys must be all over you let me know if you need anything while I torture the fullmetal shrimp here, 'kay?" In Brotherhood, Winry isn't even with Ed and Al when they run into Roy and Riza so that exchange never happened.
    • When Winry meets Ling in the anime, the part about him calling her pretty and asking her to marry him is cut out.
    • In the Briggs arc, when Winry wants to accompany Ed and Al while they and the soldiers search for Scar, she gets into the car with them, but Captain Buccaneer refuses to let her go. She fakes crying to get them to take her, and of course this works on the Captain who earlier in the chapter clocked Ed out of jealousy for being lucky enough to have Winry work on him. And that is immediately followed by a parade of soldiers mourning Winry leaving the base and calling her "precious" and "elegant". Mercifully, this was also cut from Brotherhood.
      • To their defense, their general is not a woman, so there was no girl to look at!
        • This Troper always assumed it was a running gag used to make Ed jealous.
      • Actually, Ed didn't know Winry forgot a screw. The circumstances that involved her realizing this coincided with the invasion of Labratory 5, and Ed has a habit of not taking care of his automail anyway so he just assumed it was his fault. So when Winry got upset about her automail breaking down and saying it was her fault (which, technically, it was), Ed freaked out and explained that it was his fault (which, also technically it was, because it probably would have held out longer under normal circumstances) and it malfunctioning actually saved his life (I think). Upon realizing that Ed didn't know that she'd missed an important component, Winry allowed him to think it was indeed his fault (though Ed did note that her sudden reversal was somewhat suspicious). This isn't terribly good behaviour either, but it shows that Ed has faith in her craftsmanship. But yes, to add to the above point, in most instances where Winry is complimented, Ed is present and gets noticably irritated, so it's more of a minor running gag than anything else. If you would notice, a lot of other minor humour moments get left out in Brotherhood.
  • WHAT THE HELL, FMA. When Marcoh offered Roy a Philosopher's Stone to heal his eyes, Roy's very first thought should have been to heal Havoc first. His entire characterization is about how he always puts his subordinates above himself - he was chasing after a stone to heal Havoc for a good chunk of the earlier issues! But now when he's offered one, he doesn't even think about Havoc, or his other subordinates that have been hurt in the fighting? I love you Arakawa, but you dropped the ball here.
    • But we don't know that he did or didn't, because he doesn't think ANYTHING ( that we see ) about being offered the stone. He didn't necessarily accept the stone either, just agreed to change the rules on Ishval, and allow Marco to live there. It's entirely possible that he took the stone and went to Havoc, but was refused, since we see Havoc himself learning to walk again. And given Havoc's character, he probably would have / did refuse it because he would want to learn to walk again on his own. The fact is, because we see none of his thoughts in the time, we can't say he did or did not consider that first.
      • Well, that's true. But when he was told about Marcoh or when they captured Gluttony, Roy's immediate reaction was "OMG HAVOC!" And considering his reactions to Hughes's death, the loss of his subordinates, Riza being injured, he always reacts quite strongly and immediately. It just seemed out of character for him to not even mention/think it.
    • Havoc's spine was irreparably damaged by Lust, and it was repeatedly stated that he'd never walk again. In the epilogue... he's apparently learning to walk again, which implies that his spine was somehow fixed despite Amestris having pre-modern medicine, but he still needs to recover because he hadn't been able to walk for so long. The reason for Havoc's recovery isn't stated, but I think the reason is pretty obvious if you think about Roy's character. Besides, it's not unreasonable to assume that even a beat-up Philosopher's Stone could heal both someone's eyesight and someone's spine, and even if it isn't, we only see one of Roy's eyes in the epilogue so it's possible he only restored sight to one of his eyes because he wanted to use the rest to heal Havoc. We know Roy's subordinates are important to him, so it's possible Arakawa felt she didn't need to spell it out. Also Roy only got the stone at all if he offered to help Ishbal, and he needed his eyesight for that, so even if it was just one or the other...
      • The final episode of the Brotherhood anime averts this particular problem. Roy says "someone else needs it more. I'll use it after him.", and the scene cuts to Havoc's shop... A Father to His Men to the end, Fuhrer Mustang.
    • One must remember the reason Marcoh gave Roy the stone in the first place. Without his vision, Roy would be forced to retire and would not be able to become Füher. Marcoh decided to gave back his vision so he could have a guarantee the new leader would reform Ishbal. So, it would be pointless if the stone wore out before restoring Roy. Marcoh probably couldn't effort that risk and Roy did know that. I agree the manga failed to made explicit Roy would heal Havoc lather if he could, though.
  • This might also just be me, but ... I know FMA really pushes what people can survive/deal with when it comes to physical injuries. But Alphonse walking and recovering so quickly after years of horrible malnutrition breaks my suspension of disbelief. Just do a bit of research of the lifelong problems caused by malnutrition and eating disorders and you'll see Alphonse should still be weak even two years later. And before anyone says it's a shounen manga, Arakawa has done a lot of research before about the human body (the transmutation, burning, etc), so I would've expected the same realism here.
    • There was no lack of exercise, you see the ability to stand earlier in the series. Presumably, Alphonse has exactly the same ability as his Truth.
      • True that he could stand, but walking home soon after the Promised Day? Travelling across a merciless desert two years later? Just minor research into the effects of malnutrition, plus the fact they have pre-modern medicine, makes me unable to swallow this.
    • Alphonse did have leg braces when he was walking to Winry's house. They were kind of hard to see, but they were there, and Ed gave the impression that Al was having trouble getting there even with the braces. As for two years later... well, we don't see how he copes with the travelling, other than that he presumably survives, but he's Alphonse motherfucking Elric. He can make it across the desert through the sheer force of his immense badassery.
    • It's not shown, but it wouldn't be too surprising if Xingese healing alchemy was used in this case and the Havoc one above. It's not too hard to imagine Mei doing this for Al or leaving notes behind so it can be done for Havoc.
    • Maybe he still is and it doesn't show. Remember, Alphonse is extraordinarily motivated, just like his brother. Recall the scene where it would take 3 years for Edward to adapt to his automail limbs and he said he'll take one year to recover and adapt? Same idea. Not to mention having trained under Izumi Curtis really does give him STRENGTH! So, yeah. Entirely possible that he's determined to experience the world that he would recover at an advanced pace.
    • There's also the possibility of other Stones out there, that could help with his recovery. Self-determination, plenty of training, motivation from his friends and family and a little achemical help, Al has them all and would probably be enough for a good portion of his ability to recover.
  • Just what was Scar's name? Arakawa has said that she knows his name and promised us she'd tell. She promised!
    • Bob
    • Arakawa probably just said it to tease the fans. Or maybe she's planning a few side stories?
    • He doesn't have one. The Ishvalan man who became Scar had a name, but in becoming Scar, he forfeited his right to it. That's the whole point of it never being revealed; the man the name belonged to was the first victim of Scar. Now, there is nothing to reveal.
    • In an omake, it turns out that Bradley and Scar have the same name. And boy it's a mouthful.
  • So, wait...Ed has his arm back, but it looks like it was regenerated right over his automail port. How does that work? And even if the majority of the port got destroyed, he obviously has some remnants of his automail still in his body since you can see the scars and bolts in some panels. Do we assume that Ed gets surgery to remove these parts, or what?
    • Tell me about it.....
    • Sure, why not? We can assume that the major flesh, bones, and muscles the transmutation gave back pushed the bigger pieces right out, while the smaller ones were left there until some reconstructive surgery removes the pieces.
  • Okay, here's something that has bugged me since Chapter 1. Why the hell don't they just create a new body for Al? Ed has said that human bodies can be made easily. It's creating the soul that's the hard part, hence why homunculi are not human due to the fact that they lack souls. Okay then, I can buy that. But if that's the case, then why don't they just form a new body and bind Al's soul to it? It's outright stated that you can manipulate living tissue with alchemy, medical alchemy proves this. Even if they needed a blood seal, it would still be better than a suit of armor. Hell, why didn't Ed just use the incomplete homunculus they created as material? And even if they couldn't do it with Al, why don't Ed and Izumi use alchemy to regenerate their lost body parts?
    • They don't create a new body for Al because no one has the skill to pull it off. Recall that when they tried to resurrect their mother, the ... thing ... they ended up with barely resembled a human, and died moments later. What makes you think they would have fared any better trying to make a body for Al? There's a reason they were looking for a philosopher's stone you know, it's because they realized that they would never succeed at making Al a new body without one.
    • Oh, and there's also that small problem of human transmutation being illegal. Becoming skilled enough to make him a new body without a Philosopher's stone would have required years if not decades of illegal and expensive research. They probably decided that joining the military and using their vast new resources to find a Philosopher's Stone would help them achieve their goal far sooner than the alternative.
    • Also, creating a new body and binding Al's soul to it wouldn't work. Blood seals eventually wear off, only lasting a few years before the soul is rejected. Al likely would have died before they ever became skilled enough to create a new functional human body for him. Also, Ed would have to open the Gate of Truth and sacrifice another body part to transfer Al's soul over to his new body, something Al would never let him do again. In the end, their only real option was to find a philosopher's stone so they could use it to bypass all those pesky equivalent exchange issues.
  • Okay, so transmuting a human soul requires you to open the gate of truth and see enough of "truth" to gain the knowledge of circle-less alchemy, right? And having done that is the only requirement for becoming one of the human sacrifices that Father needs for his evil master plan, right? Wouldn't that mean that all the alchemists that bound the souls of prisoners (like Barry) to suits of armor in Lab 5 must have done that? So why where they all killed? You'd think that Father would want to keep them around for backup in case he ended up short a few human sacrifices.
    • It seems to be implied that ripping out a soul in itself doesn't require transmutation, nor does necessarily putting that soul in another body/an armor. Ed had to sacrifice a limb because Al's whole body had already been taken. So, the people who did this might not be as powerful as the potential sacrifices. Also, it's been shown many times that when given the choice between having extra sacrifices and killing humans, Father and the hommunculi tend to go for the latter.
      • This, basically. To transmute, say, Barry the Chopper, they had all the components they needed right there. A soul in a body and a suit of armor to move it to. They just need to take the soul out and move it. Al, conversely, was taken wholesale into the Gateway. To get his soul, Ed had to pull it out of the Gate, and you don't do that without Truth taking his fee out of your hide (unless you have a Philosopher's Stone to pay with).
        • What I think people are forgetting here is that Al was a part of the human transmutation to bring back their mother. Plus the soul binding could just be considering attaching the "materials" of the transmutation to something else. If Hohenheim is somehow used as a counterexample, the reason he saw the gate was because he was altered in the process.
  • Okay, am I the only one who is seriously pissed that the Roy/Hawkeye and Ling/Lanfan pairings that had been alluded to for so damn long never get a payoff? And the Ed/Winry scene at the end seems kinda weak, too, but at least we get a vision of the future with the photograph at the end.
    • Royai: Now reporting from different boards, it's safe to say that the Japanese fans mostly accepted such kind of open ending and the possibility that Roy/Hawkeye was platonic from the start; English speaking fans are trying to reason that there was enough fuel for the pairing in all the previous chapters...and the Chinese fandom went totally berserk. And extra ouch since this is the pairing that lasted through the manga + 2 different anime adaptations only to suffer two different let-down after/at the end.
    • No. No you are not. And geez, couldn't she at least draw them cracking a smile? Ling's way to serious and Roy looked morbidly depressed.
    • Yeah, that was one of the few bad things about the epilogue. One fan theory I heard does give an interesting theory on why Roy looks so glum- they posited that he's at Grumann's funeral, which means he probably will become the new leader of Amestris soon after that. As for Ling, it does kind of bug me that it implies Ran Fan stays as just being his bodyguard, and if they have any relationship, it's not publicly displayed.
      • To add insult to injury on Lanfan's part, the Fridge Logic of the situation dictates that unless Ling makes serious reforms, she's going to have to see him with 20 different women. Ouch. Also, that thing with Grumman's funeral makes sense, though I suspect the author left the photos so deliberately ambiguous so all the fans could make up their own reasons/endings. Holy shit, did that backfire.
    • Reforms don't immediately change everything for the better just like that, people. Read up the history of the Chinese imperial dynasties and witness all of the backstabbing and political maneuvering which happened behind the scenes. Just because Ling wants to get rid of old hatreds doesn't mean all the other clans will just suddenly see the light, especially not after their entire Imperial culture up to that point was built on encouraged competition and backstabbing. He's gonna need to keep a firm grip on them now that he's unleased them from their enforced stratification, and the less cooperative will take any deviation from Ling as a weakness to exploit. Marrying a commoner sounds nice, and Ling himself seems to have no qualms about the class difference, but the rest of the clans will. In real life, nobles and rulers have been forced off their positions by their own families for doing things like marrying someone below their station. So, Lan Fan choosing to remain as a mere body guard is not only justified, she'd probably keep it that way herself just to make sure her beloved Ling doesn't lose all he fought to gain. Realpolitik, people. It's nasty, unforgiving, and yes it is disappointing. But it is still justified given the portrayal of Xing as essentially Imperial China.
        • Realpolitik does not mean what you think it means. Realpolitik is a "realistic" approach to politics rather than an idealistic, theoretical one. Had Ling married Lan Fan, it would not have been for a theoretical, idealistic political principle, so the politics involved are not realpolitik.
      • Addendum to above. Of course, he could always make her an unofficial lover. Real life royalty and nobility got away with a lot of that as that was something which was considered a given, a privilege. The clans will probably overlook that as nothing special. But if he makes her an official wife, then Ling better be prepared to act the brutal despot to get his way because the clans will force him to abdicate for something like that. And acting like a despot and killing all his opponents is something he wanted to prevent, something Lan Fan begged him not to do. I'd doubt they'd be willing to throw all that away and throw the Empire into turmoil just for the sake of their own relationship. A lot of nobility was nasty, petty, and hung up on things like position and personal station. Any impartial look at history will reveal that. The nobler, more sensible ones were the exception, not the rule.
      • Addendum the Second: Also, history has shown that reforms have always been met with hostility by an insular nobility. In fact, Ling's desegregation of the clans very likely threw the political situation in Xing into an uproar. Look at the history of Imperial China prior to the invasion of the Eight-nation Alliance. The Emperor wanted to modernize the Empire, and be less hostile to the Western powers. His own mother used her court influence among the conservative isolationists to veto everything and, long story short, Imperial China took on an aggresive stance, became actively hostile to Western powers and Japan, and got its ass kicked by the combined militaries of eight world powers. Ling already made one HUGE reform by abolishing the clan-competition system, he keeps belting out reform after reform the more conservative, insular elements of Xingese nobility will balk and would be competitors will use that as an impetus to form a power bloc to knock him off the throne. He's gonna have to do things in moderation and try to sneak in reforms bit by bit over the course of decades.
      • At the same time, there's not as much stopping him from taking her as an official wife as the above might make one think. Given that Xing is based primarily on Imperial China, it seems more prudent to compare Ling and Lan Fan's relationship possibilities to the taking of consorts and wives of the Chinese Emperors than to European sensibilities about it. The Chinese, though frowning on non-noble girls being elevated to Empresses, were not nearly as antagonistic towards it as Western cultures; there's a precedent for this for various emperors, like Emperor Wu of Han's second wife, Empress Wei Zifu. In short, the Emperor's royal heritage was of the utmost importance, but the Empress derived her nobility and royalty from marriage, not from her own birth. Furthermore, in the Chinese tradition, Lan Fan could not have become a retainer without some status of her own; "commoner" would simply indicate that she was not high nobility, but does not necessarily mean that she has a truly common, peasant status. Given her status as a retainer, though perhaps looked down on, marrying Lan Fan would not have raised too many eyebrows.
However, so far, this hasn't considered what Lan Fan might think of marrying Ling. In this troper's opinion, it is just as likely that Lan Fan refused to marry Ling as it is that Ling could not marry Lan Fan for political reasons, if Xing's imperial court was like that of China's. The crown Empress (and yes, there was usually only one at a time in Imperial China - the rest were consorts and concubines of varying favor; I'm not sure where everyone is getting this multiple wives idea from) was a powerful, highly influential position in its own right, and the Empress could not possibly devote her time to protecting the life of her husband. It was also rather perilous; poisonings and backstabbings were not uncommon. Thus, becoming Empress would mean being thrust into a whirlwind of politics and peril on her own life, and should she want to be devoted to Ling's protection, even if asked, she would have reason to turn down marriage. Ling would also have these same reasons for not asking, if he wants her to remain relatively safe and look after him.
TL;DR - Ling and Lan Fan may not have married because they're too in love/devoted to want the political mess to get in the way or imperil the other, rather than not being able to marry because of it, if Xing's royal court is like that of Imperial China.
      • And then there's Roy/Riza, while we're talking politics and stations. There is one very major stumbling block to the Roy/Riza pairing; Roy is Riza's superior officer. Not just a higher ranking officer, but her direct report. This is deeply frowned upon in the military, and can be grounds for anything up to and including both of them getting court-martialed, putting a swift end to Mustang's political career and any hope of ever reforming the nation. Riza WOULD be able to pursue a romance with Roy if, and only if, she was willing to transfer to the command of a different officer. So that's a choice she has to make. They can flirt and they can glare obvious, meaningful subtext at each other all they want, but when it comes down to brass tacks, she can either be Mustang's shield or his lover. Not both.
      • Well, I do agree that linking it to our reality offers the most plausible theory, but...* points at Gundam/Legend of Galactic Heroes and all the anime/manga/games military officers who had affairs with/or even married their direct subordinates* . Unless Arakawa directly addresses the fraternization issues I am more prepared to accept that she is going to launch the Platonic Life Partners torpedo at Roy/Riza.
      • Most of those franchises you mentioned are Mildly Military at best. Arakawa may have put in some eccentrics and idiosyncratic characters in the Amestris military, but on the whole they conduct themselves pretty professionally. Especially when compared to those aforementioned franchises. Most professional militaries do have that no-fraternization rule because officer-subordinate romances can and will interfere with officer impartiality and professionalism. Roy and Riza, especially the latter, are canonically quite formal and professional with each other. Breaking those standards for personal reasons would be out-of-character for them.
  • Why did Ed's family have a suit of armor lying around anyway?
    • Ed's 400 year old father had a suit of antique armor. People do collect random things -- and Hohenheim might have actually used the thing in his past, it's big enough.
      • Actually actually, he had several armors. The scene of Trish's failed ressurrection shows at least 3 different ones, as far as I recall. Also, the part when they meet again in the manga has Hohhenheim saying something like "isn't that armor part of my collection?". I always assumed he had them for purely aesthetical reasons, though.
  • The climax seems to skimp on the alchemy. Vs. the mannequins, Edward resorts to melee, despite the power of his combat alchemy. Mustang adheres to form, nuking the room. But when they advance to the Fuhrer-candidates, it's melee time for both, with Mustang not flaming the candidates or the gold-toothed alchemist. I call plot hole.
    • The area was smaller and the candidates were faster than the mannequins, who could barely stand up!
      • He'd just shown off being able to target eyeballs, though! And there's Ed, too, who's great at flexible combat alchemy. I also forgot to mention Al not using alchemy to help rescue the stuck car, despite being a clapping alchemist now and earth-moving being the standard maneuver...
        • Sure, he was able to target Envy's eyes, but there was still a lot of collateral damage from even that. It's not that Roy wouldn't be able to hit the former candidates, but in a room that small, doing so could easily take Riza, or Ed or any of the others with him. Ed's not using his alchemy may have had something to do with being under constant attack from multiple targets and just not considering it an option.
    • I believe that Roy specifically said that they were moving to fast for him to target effectively. Presumably, Ed didn't have time to perform his own set of alchemy either, during his fight with the brothers in lab 5 he was already moving too fast to have time to perform a complete alchemical reaction.
  • At the end of the manga/brotherhood anime, Father is outnumbered and getting desperate because he's burning up all his philosopher's stones defending himself with his fancy unbreakable alchemy shield. So why doesn't he even try using normal alchemy to defend himself? You know, the kind of alchemy that's (somehow) fueled by the movements of tectonic plates deep in the earth, and also the kind that he taught to everyone in the country because he can turn it off and on at will (until scar fixed that)? I mean, yeah, it wouldn't have been nearly as powerful as philosopher's stone powered alchemy and it would have required him to actually move around, but that would have been far preferable to running out of the souls he needed to contain Truth. Even if he got injured using the inferior form of alchemy and had to regenerate a few times, he would have been burning through souls slower than using that shield was.
    • Kinda hard to run around and use only the physical medium used in most normal alchemy to block attacks when you're being constantly bombarded by bullets, mortars, and RPG fire from the Briggs troopers.
    • My impression was that the tectonic plate stuff was BS, to cover up that Amestrian alchemy is powered by his circulating souls. As for the not moving bit, I'm not sure that burns souls. Hohenheim is solicitous of his souls, yet does lots of "no motion" alchemy, under Liore and when imprisoning Pride. Ok, under Liore he was walking or running away, but it's not the arm-circle of the clapping alchemists, and for Pride's dome he just stood there and made it happen. There's two axes, power or substance for exchange, and knowledge, and both Hohenheim and Father are maxed out in both axes. They've got lots of Philosopher's Stone, but they're also A Better Alchemist Than you. And I thought the motions were secondary to circles: ordinary alchemists and alkahestrists(?) have to use explicit circles they touch, clapping alchemists make a circle of their bodies and run stuff in their minds and direct energy that way (but still need circles for really complex stuff); H&F can do almost everything mentally (but still need circles for really big stuff); people with philosopher's stones can also skip lots of steps.
  • Considering how often Roy has had his gloves destroyed, wouldn't it make more sense to make something like Basque Grand's gauntlets, engrave the symbol into those, and then cover them in the ignitable cloth? Alternatively, he could also just carry a few spare sets of gloves, or take Kimblee's path and tatoo the symbol into his hands, carrying a lighter or two to ignite the oxygen.
    • You realize how thick and heavy gauntlets actually are? There's no way you can snap gauntleted fingers fast enough for them to spark. The point on the spare gloves makes sense, though.
    • And on the point of tattoos, this is complete speculation but my guess is that he didn't want tattoos on his hands after he's already burned off Hawkeye's tattoo. It'd be kind of like a total betrayal of their trust, after knowing how and why Hawkeye got it.
  • Anyone else really annoyed at the last brotherhood episode. They cut Lan Fan convincing Ling to spare the other clans and saying goodbye to her grandfather, they totally altered some of the ending pictures (especially the one of Havoc. Was that supposed to be Ross in the middle? Cause she looked like a hooker. Not to mention that we have no damn idea what's going on in the photo), and they changed the Roy scene so much that it's barely recognisable. Instead of getting a Roy who's worried about his blindness and only gets his sight back after Dr. Knox and Marco make him swear to help the Ishbalans, we get a happy Roy. Who's already planning to fix Ishbal. And has no concerns about his blindness. And gives no explanation for why Grumman and not him is going to be Fuhrer. It's like they totally altered a the scene because they wanted it to be happier or something. If they really wanted to make him happier they could have hooked him up with Hawkeye. Or had shown him becoming Fuhrer instead of those lousy photos (which were great in the manga, but don't work quite as well in a live animation ending). Or not saddled him with that hideous moustache. And would it have killed them to show us the story behind each photo? I was really hoping that they would. God. After 63 high-quality episodes we get this. What The Hell Brotherhood?
    • Not gonna answer any of the other points since I pretty much agree with them. However, as for the photo with Havoc and Breda, the woman looked a lot like Rebecca. I thought that that pic implied that they opened up a bar, or something along the lines of what Roy's foster mother used to run.
      • I agree with what you have mentioned but really bugs me is the ending Elric family photo. I mean the manga had the nice picture of Ed and Winry and their two children and Al and May implying that they got together and Xao May. And then the anime throws in Garfiel and Paninya acting like trolls and ruining the photo. I want to know why they would do that when in the manga they had their own seperate picture. It better be along the lines that their godparents of Ed and Winry kids none of this friend bullshit cause it looked like in the manga that Arakawa made the picture to represent the new Elric family photo not a friend photo. Wtf Brotherhood anime writers and artists wait to ruin a nice family picture!
    • While I agree with what is being discussed, I think the reason behind the changes is that Arakawa had to hand in a rough storyboard to the animation studio to get the last episode finished on time. She then could have changed some of the chapter's elements in the final draft, such as the ending family photo. Maybe she had originally included Paninya and Garfiel in the photo, but took them out in the chapter's final version, leading to them still being included in the photo for the animated version. Same for Mustang's ridiculous moustache.
  • Why is Hohenheim a sacrifice? We never actually know of him performing human transmutation. True, the real thing is having seen one's gate, but we don't know that he'd done that. Relatedly, it's kind of inverted: the five "sacrifices" aren't, they're more like catalysts, who enable the circle but aren't consumed by it. It's everyone * else* who's a human sacrifice.
    • Interesting point, I think it might be just a testament to Father's disdain for humans- the only ones he's even close to being interested in are the ones he calls sacrifices, but the "actual sacrifices" mean so little to him that they aren't even acknowledged. I'd guess Hohenheim was a sacrifice because in a sense, he was created with transmutation, and he's so powerful, so he provides a lot of energy.
    • In Hohenheim's backstory episode (Brotherhood) it was shown that he went through Truth during the immortality transmutation scene, if this troper remembers correctly.
  • This happens a lot in media but..Isn't a bit creepy how Winry and Ed's children look exactly like them? I can understand him cutting his hair like his dads but it's a bit odd.
  • Why are the Elric brothers hair glowing in Brotherhood? They look like regular blond in the manga and first anime but in Brotherhood they're..Bright.
    • Alchemic shampoo. Seriously, though, that's obvious. Different production and art team for Brotherhood than the first anime. And the relatively quick coloring jobs in manga, which are usually traditional rather than digital, will never look as bright and shiny as digitally colored and manipulated animation.
    • Their hair looks brighter because the lineart is also colored and not black like, say, in Winry's hair. And Hohenheim also has this, as does everyone else who's from Xerxes, so it's probably meant to be a shared feature among their people.
  • I have a question to the fangirls of Fullmetal Alchemist why do many of you have such a huge problem with May?
    • I sometimes wonder if certain fangirls hate her because she's an apt parody of the kind of Mary Sue that's so common in the fullmetal world. Seriously, she's the half-sister of another important character (Ling), she's a child prodigy in both alchemy and martial arts, and she's in initially love with Edward and ends up with Al. BUT she has all the realistic immaturity of a child prodigy, her love for Edward is based entirely on a sue-fied version of him that exists only in her mind, and her entire character arc is her becoming self-sacrificing and putting others needs before her own desires (exactly the opposite of what usually happens in Mary sue fic.) She's both a mockery and a clever deconstruction, and it all probably hits too close to home.
    • Thank you for the above post it make sense when you refer to May as a Mary Sue I mean her name is one letter off being Mary. I'm a guy and never read fma fanfics that have out of characters because many of them are alchemist mary sues. That might be why I never thought of that possibility. It now makes sense to me why so many fangirls hate with a passion. Also I have heard many fangirls that hate Winry for being also a Mary Sue as many of them put it and the same can be used as you what said with May since she is a close family friend of the Elrics and a child prodigy and has a similar personality to May.
      • I wouldn't really call Winry a child prodigy; just well trained. Her automail is good, about what could be expected from someone who's been studying it all her life and lives in an automail shop with her automail-mechanic grandmother, but it's never been shown to be truly EXCEPTIONAL save for that one encounter early on with Bald. Winry still has room to grow and is still learning. She's very good at what she does, but I wouldn't say any moreso than someone of her age and history could be expected to be.
      • Quick question how in the world did she have a REAL encounter with Bald, the same Bald who only appeared in one FMA chapter and no mention in Brotherhood unless your talking about the first anime which I have forgot most of the early parts if so your mention of him is irrevelant since were talking about May you know who doesn't appear in the first anime. Also a child prodigy by defintion is an individual who is a master of one or more skills or arts at an early age hell Winry was already an expert on automail at age of 11. She mentions she read medical books at an early age and understood them and even remembers what was in them even a decade later. How is she not a prodigy?
        • SHE didn't encounter Bald. Ed encountered Bald, and was able to trash his automail, citing that his own automail, which Winry is the mechanic for, is just better. That's the encounter I'm referring to. Don't be so dismissive of people just because your memory lacks, and don't assume an anime fan just because you don't recall a manga reference. Also, Winry is not an expert. She's highly proficient, but she still has much to learn. That's why she stayed in Rush Valley. That's why she wanted to study northern automail. A prodigy is an UNUSUALLY gifted person; Winry's talents appropriately reflect her history as a person growing up in an automail shop, learning to build automail with a good automail mechanic, and then going out into the world to learn more about automail and build better automail. Just being good at something doesn't make her a prodigy, and not being a prodigy doesn't mean she's not good at it; it simply means that her skills come from experience, education, and years of hard work, and not just an innate understanding of all things automail.
    • I can't answer in the name of everyone who dislike or hate May, but I can answer for myself: Personally, I have a bit of a problem with her character - I feel that she is too much talented for a merely little girl. She is what - eight years old? - yet she is exceptionally great at matirial art and alchemy (alkemy?), exceptionally wise and educated, very much mature for her age, crossed a deadly desert all by herself and in addition everybody take her very seriously (Ed never got that much respect, and he is 15 years old). Come on, it's too much, princess or not. Her naivety is the only thing that really define her as a child. The manga is fairly realisic in the subject of age-maturity-abilities suitability, and May is quite an exception. That's the only thing that bothers me about her, but with so many believable characters, this is a huge minus.
      • Eight?! This troper always thought May was 14, just amusingly tiny.
      • How great is she at alkahestry? She's the only akahestrist in the entire series; as far as we know, her skills could be the most basic of the basic you learn in Xing. As far as her martial skills go, it has been a while since I've read the manga; does she ever win a straight-up martial fight with another martial artist without using her alkahestry?
        • I don't know about the manga, but in Brotherhood she quite impressively managed to pass though the zombie-army and fight (martial fight) against Envy. Granted, Envy is a bad fighter, but still. There was more of it, I just can't remember it right now. As for her alkahestry, it didn't seem so basic to me. I believe alkahestry is about equal to alchemy in sense of abilities, just different, and May managed to both fight and heal people with her alkahestry, while at her age all Edward could do are things like build a snowman with alchemy. People label her as a "child prodigy", but in reality real prodigy children are usually very good at something while very poor at something else. For example, they could have the mind of a genius, but very poor social abilities. May has all. Plus, she crossed a desert all by herself. Desert is a deadly thing for a man, so all the more for a litte girl alone, since I didn't get the impression she had any company with her (if there were, why don't we see them? Why is she alone?) - even Ling had people accompany him. Her maturity is way off too, in my opinion. Overall, I just feel an active role in war isn't fit for young children and the auther shouldn't place a child in a role such as this. I could buy it if she was in her early teen at least much better. Don't get me wrong, I still adore her, but it bugs me to no end.
        • She wasn't alone when she crossed the desert. She had Xiao Mei.
    • I loathe Winry and May both. Why? Because the only reason I ever noticed and got into FMA was the fact that it was incredibly unique. It was not the stereotypical sex-centered Feudal-era Japanese crap that the public sees anime and manga as. It had no lustful scenes. It had no giant-sparkly-eyed girls in short skirts just waiting to get groped. It was awesome and on its own completely different level. Then along came Winry and May. The two people who had to shoot it all down. Squeaky voices, constantly in trouble. May sorta qualifies as Badass Adorable, but Winry is always just in the way.
      • This troper completely disagrees with your statement... You have it ass-backwards. Winry fits perfectly into the story, being a young woman from the early 1900s that goes against /everything/ sexist. For god's sake, she's a Wrench Wench! How many female mechanics do you see in anime/manga? She is one of the reasons why Full Metal Alchemist is so unique. Winry plays a significant role in the series; if it wasn't for her, Ed wouldn't have an arm or leg to stand up on. If it wasn't for her, Ed would've bled to death in the beginning, henceforth, Al would eventually wither away once his seal died out. She is practically their inspiration for moving forward. So how is Winry in the way, again?
      • Disagreement here as well. Notice WHAT she gets sparkle-eyed over. It isn't BOYS it's GADGETRY and automail. In any other anime with a mechanic this would be the boy tagalong's field. Also far less UST than the normal female. Most of her beatings of Ed are for Ed insulting her craft, especially in the first anime.
  • Can someone fix the analysis page on Fullmetal Alchemist it states incorrectly the homunculus ages. The Perfect Guide 2 has given the chronogical creation of the homunculus with Pride being the oldest Lust the second, mention by Greed and Envy who call her an old hag, Greed the third, Envy the fourth, Sloth the fifth and Gluttony the sixth, meaning not the oldest by a long shot. Just ranting so yeah.
    • I added that analysis based on speculation. I've never heard of that book- what is it?
    • Its quiet alright and good speculation on your part. Oh and also the Perfect Guide 2, which I misspelled and apologize for, is a book that Hiromu Arakawa wrote about some extra info on the characters up to chapter 70. It gives like ages for the homunculus which it says in one example that Pride is 400 years old meaning he was most likely created right after the destruction of Xerxes. Check the official FMA website forums and someone will most likely give you a link to a scanalation of it.
  • Why do so many people seem to hate Rose from the first anime and the EdRose pairing? I don’t see anything wrong with her or it.
    • I think part of it has to do with people just generally hating the first anime as a whole. Rose barely had any screentime outside of Liore in the manga and second anime, while Winry was a much better character, resulting in a staunch division of manga/Brotherhood fans who like Edwin, first anime fans who like Edwin, and first anime fans who like EdRose. Personally, this troper shipped Edrose from the very first episode of the first anime, having never read the manga before then, and was surprised and disappointed when she didn't go with Ed and Al on their journey at the end of the second. Having read the manga and seen Brotherhood now, this troper's fondness for Edrose has...waned. Not because Rose is any less likeable of a character, but simply because she's less relevant of one.
    • I haven't delved deeply into the 1st anime, but here's my take on its lack of popularity in Brotherhood. Both of them handle their emotions in highly different ways, with Ed's being the more "mature". Because some fans have gotten so used to emotions being handled silently or even outright ignored, Rose's reaction to losing her fake religion seems overblown and dramatic. Some people simply feel like Ed is just too good for her just because of this. His way of advising her is also pretty harsh, too.
    • This troper is Edwin shipper but never had a problem with EdRose, maybe on the account of the fact I don't consider the first anime canon to the FMA series so I don't think it ever had a chance since Rose was a minor character in the manga/Brotherhood. Also Rose is a Edwin shipper herself in the manga. I think it has to go mainly for Ship-to-Ship Combat and Die for Our Ship and all that jazz.
  • Why did Envy bring precious human sacrifice Ed back to the military after the Fifth Laboratory incident? Why not just keep Ed, who had demonstrated circle-less alchemy when fighting the Armor Brothers, locked up until the eclipse? After all, Envy would outright incarcerate Marco later on, who was merely a candidate for sacrifice. Envy could have easily just ripped off all of Ed's limbs after he fainted and Father could have subsequently kept him sedated.
    • Marcoh wasn't JUST a candidate for sacrifice. He was a candidate for sacrifice who studied the Philosopher's Stone extensively. He had knowledge that was potentially dangerous and couldn't be allowed to go unchecked. As for why not lock up Ed...did Envy know Ed was a confirmed candidate yet? He demonstrated circle-less alchemy when fighting the Armor Brothers, but Envy wasn't present for most of that fight. I got the feeling Lust, Envy, and Gluttony had just arrived when Lust pierced Slicer's helmet; otherwise, they most certainly would have intervened to keep him from killing a sacrifice. In any case, even if they were aware, they don't need to lock him up. There's no reason for it. He doesn't know anything dangerous and he's already a State Alchemist. The quest for the Philosopher's Stone can hold his interest and he knows nothing about any of them. He is not, in any way, shape, or form, a threat to the plan at this point. Locking him up would create an enemy where one does not need to exist, not just in him, but also in his brother Al, and possibly in Mustang, who they were trying VERY HARD to avoid making an enemy of because, as one of the homonculi, I forget which, later notes...of all the alchemists in Amestris, they fear him the most. You can't just make people disappear without repurcussions. And that's not even going into the fact that, as part of the military, they basically own him anyway.
      • TL;DR: The search for the Philosopher's Stone and the perks of a State Alchemist are a better cage than any they could build.
      • But there would be a reason to incur all the risks of disappearing Ed--to make assurance double sure. Remember, Kimbley nearly killed the poor kid, and Al's soul was a flight risk too. Besides, Father could easily crush Mustang under his heel. Hell, Bradley could. As for whether or not they knew he was prime sacrifice material:

Envy: Edward Elric, isn't he that alchemist everyone's talking about? Youngest ever? Hero of the people?
Lust: Let's look up his file. An amputee, huh? You remember he did have automail. And he seemed to use a circle-less deconstruction technique on Slicer. Mighty suspicious. Probably saw the gate. Let's look into that brother of his as well.
Envy: Looks like it's Elric hunting time! (Mustang will be a problem though...)

    • Though I will grant that both Lust and Bradley didn't seem all that keen on the sacrifice thing. Lust tried to outright kill Alphonse later on, and Bradley was probably smart enough to put two and two together when Ed circle-lessly transmuted that spear right in front of him yet seemed to say nothing to Father about it. I guess neither was as beholden to Father as Pride was.
    • Doubt that since Lust seem just as loyal to Father as much as Pride was, its just she is a pretty much of a loose canon when she wants to kill, even ignoring not to kill a confirmed sacrifice and a candiate for it. Also both her and Wrath both tried to stop people from entering Father's lair, I think this proves they were pretty loyal to Father.
  • When Envy transforms into a human, do his "clothes" actually turn into clothes, or is it merely an extension of his skin?
    • Envy only has "clothes" so far as he has "hair" or "eyes"; he's a shapeshifter. Everything he shifts is part of him; presumably subconsciously transmuted by his Philosopher's Stone.
    • Actually those clothes are part of the homunculi except Wrath, Pride, and the 2nd Greed(they have been shown in different outfits). When Lust and Sloth died their clothes disappeared with them and that means the clothes were a part of them. They wouldn't disappeared with them when they died if they didn't belong to them. But since they did and everything that belongs to the homunculus' body disappears when it is cut of from the body that means the clothes are part of his body. This true for Envy because when he loses to both Marcoh and Roy, his "cute form" and everything including his clothes disaggregate except his "fetus form". So the clothes are part of him.
  • Having one incomplete circle on each palm enables Kimblee to simulate "hand-clapping" alchemy. But why doesn't he - or don't any of the alchemists for that matter - simply tattoo complete arrays on their hands? Instant alchemy, no clapping required. Yes, it would be limited to whichever circle you put there, but it would still be a whole lot more effective. Scar does it that way.
    • They do use complete arrays, for example Roy and Alex. I don't remember anyone, apart from Elrics and Izumi, who had to clap their hands, even Kimblee, because he used the Philosopher's Stone most of the time.
    • Kimblee simulates the clapping alchemy because that's his 'trigger'. Mustang has a full circle since his actual alchemy is manipulating the flammable gases in the air. He then needs a spark to have anything happen. Similarly with Armstrong he needs to punch the object he wants to transmute with his gauntlets. Kimblee has no such trigger. If he had the full circle tattooed on his hands then he would blow things up by just touching them.
  • Why do state Alchemists enter the military with the rank of major? It seems like a pretty high rank for people who are valued for their personal abilities in combat and research rather than their leadership skills and experience.
    • It's made clear that the rank is more like a brevet rank, and that their orders to regular military personnel are more like suggestions. Of course, Alchemist who've beein in the military for a long time or are veterans of combat would have their orders taken as actual military orders.
    • Don't forget, the entire State Alchemist program (at least in the mangahood canon) is just a ploy to find worthy candidates for the Sacrifice on the Promised Day. You certainly don't want potential subjects to be lowly ranked and risk them being accidentally shipped off to war by those who aren't in on the Evil conspiracy.
    • Mustang went through the military academy (it's where he met Huges). Presumably State Alchemists wishing to actively serve in the military have to go to school like everybody else.
    • There appears to be something of a division between the 'military' State Alchemists and the ones who run around semi-independantly. On the one hand you have Roy Mustang working his way up through the ranks in the normal fashion (kinda) as well as Armstrong and Ironblood, and on the other hand you have Ed, Shou Tucker and (formerly) Marcho. The first group are activly involved in military acitvites day to day as their job, while the latter group conduct state research and can be called upon to fufill state interests but generally are given a vast amount of indepence. Probably the State Alchemist exist off to the side of the regular chain of command, they don't have to conform to the proffesional standereds of the rank and file military, but equally they probably can't order around those lower without having a good enough reason to justify to their supperiors. On top of all this is the nature of the Amestrian military which is full of people, such as Sheazcka or the poilce who are arguablly in the mitiltary but aren't really soliders.
  • What exactly counts as "human transmutation"? The sole fact of transmuting human body isn't enough, because otherwise medical alchemy wouldn't exist. At one point Ed transmutes nothing, he only uses Envy's Philosopher's Stone to open the Gate. He still calls it human transmutation, though.
    Also, when Roy is forced through the Gate, he supposedly transmutes the gold-toothed doctor into a messy pile of flesh. But Shou Tucker didn't seem to have had any contact with the Gate when he merged his daugther with his dog. Somehow, that was not a human transmuation?
    • Just to clarify, Ed didn't transmute "nothing"; he transmuted his entire body into his entire body. The purpose is similar, nothing actually changed, but it was still sufficient enough to constitute human transmutation. As to why Tucker didn't open the Gate creating the Nina chimera, maybe he just had sufficient enough spare parts that it accepted them in exchange? After all, if the transmutation had been equivalent, there would have been big chunks of dog and little girl lying around everywhere, ESPECIALLY Nina; the rest of her body had to go somewhere.
    • Human transmutation seems to be the attempt to create/ressurect a soul and/or open the Gate. Messing around with human bodys is not human transmutation wether you're creating a chimera, fixing up a booboo and making heads blow up.
  • How come they use alchemy so rarely? They can make stuff quickly and at practically no cost. The only time this is used to anywhere near its potential is when Ed is trying to get Scar's attention. Why aren't all alchemists like that all the time? Also, how come so few people seem to go into alchemy?
    • Alchemy takes an incredible amount of studying and hard work. It's not something most people can just easily get into. It's the same reason most people in the real world don't pursue careers as physicists.
  • Having to deal with the Fan Dumb regarding Roy's ending; HE IS NOT THE FUHRER at the end! He's a Brigadier General, people. Thank you.
    • He's a full General in the end (of the manga). There are three stars on his epaulets.
  • Roy's Pedostache. What. The. Hell.
    • Don't get them started.
    • Being bedridden for weeks would preclude someone from shaving…
  • Why don't we see more alchemists carrying a transmutation circle to draw transmutation circles? It would be so versatile.
    • Hmm? Most alchemists we see aside from those who have seen the Gate carry their transmutation circle on their person at all times.
      • That's for their specific hat, though. Roy's gloves can only ignite fire, Mustang's gauntlets can only make boulder spears, Scar's tattoos can only unmake things, etc. What I think the above poster meant was, why don't they carry a circle that draws on the ground, so when they need to do something, they just trigger their circle, which brings another circle into existence, which carries the desired effect. It would be easier than pulling out chalk and drawing, no? As for why don't they do it, my guess is that it wouldn't work. A circle for drawing a circle would draw that specific circle, so you'd have to carry one circle for every circle you might ever want to draw. Though that does raise the question of why don't they carry a notebook with the most commonly used circles. Hmm.
  • How come nobody in Fort Briggs seems to wear a hood or hat? Wouldn't their ears freeze off?
    • They're too badass for that. In all seriousness though, if I remember right, several (not all of them though...?) of the soldiers wear those hats with flaps on them when they're out in the cold. And later, they've all secretly moved to Central where it's warmer so it's assumed they don't need to bundle up so much.
  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but the second anime's ending Aesop seems to be "Alchemy is bad". If not stated explicitly, but there is a profound lack of unhappiness Ed losing the ability to use it. That bugs me - it's useful in so many ways, and there isn't any evidence in this continuity that it requires souls to work. See the YMMV entry for Completely Missing The Point. Sure it's not a tool to let kids play with, but just because you don't let kids mess with nitroglycerin doesn't mean it doesn't have it's uses. At the very least I'm bugged by that entry, and at most by half the fandom and the writing staff. (And yes, I do realize most of the series has been about (preventing) various crimes against humanity preformed with the use of alchemy, but the alchemists who did that are guilty, not alchemy itself).
    • I've seen no reason to see the same point. If anything the closest Aesop we got concerning alchemy is more that "Power should be respected", in other words, the power itself isn't evil, but it should be used carefully. Edward, Izumi, Alphonse and Father all abuse alchemy and pay the price.
  • Is it just me, or is the lesson Truth is trying to teach by claiming that giving up your own gate is the right price to pay when performing human alchemy, is that the most appropriate answer to playing god and facing punishment is saying "I'm sorry God, I won't do it again!" Or is it implying instead that alchemy is a privelage of some sort and that when abused you'll get that privelage taken away forever.
    • Hard to say. This troper had always assumed that it either meant that most Alchemists prized alchemy too much or that Ed made a good exchange by choosing to sacrifice his internal Gate instead of choosing to sacrifice a life like most of the others would.
    • This troper thought it was more along the lines of "Alchemy can't do everything; just because you can transmute things doesn't make you superior to anyone else." Ed had always believed in the power of alchemy. Through most of the series he was looking for a way to restore Al's body through alchemy. He had to give up alchemy to show that he understood that it wasn't the solution: he had learned what was truly important in his life (his relationships), and that was what gave him strength. Another way to look at it is that Truth considers the act of attempting human transmutation to be arrogant in the extreme: to even think you have the power to (re)create life is tantamount to equating yourself with God. He had to humble himself to demonstrate he'd learned his lesson: give up the thing he was considered a genius for to demonstrate that he recognized, and accepted, himself as a simple human being.
  • How did they get "Riza" out of a nickname for "Elizabeth"? "Liza" seems like the name. Was it just Engrish that stuck, like how Winry was supposed to be "Wendy"?
    • ...Riza and Winry were never supposed to be short for or a variation of any names. They're exactly what they are. Elizabeth is only Hawkeye's codename when on a mission for Roy. "Liza" was most likely the result of the whole "r" and "l" similar sounds in Japanese and translators just picked one.
      • fun fact: Winry was supposed to be named Wendy, but there was a translations mistake somewhere down the line.
        • Is there a source for this? All the evidence I've ever seen never had the implication that "Winry" was supposed to be "Wendy".
        • Her name in Winry and has always been Winry. That's how it's pronounced in Japanese, so the "translations mistake" story you heard is either a myth or was inverted.
  • what where Ed and Al's groups doing during the time skip between chapters 83 and 84
  • Ed and Al living alone as little kids Just Bugs Me. Seriously, why are they allowed to stay in that house alone, especially when there was someone nearby (Pinako) who was perfectly willing to take care of them? Pinako's a tough old woman, she could've made them live with her! Talk about being irresponsible...
    • I thought she did...?
    • It's pretty much implied she did care for them, but likely they wondered off to it from time to time before eventually going into secrecy when they started to prepare for their transmutation attempt.
    • I'd gotten the clear impression that their 'official' house was the Rockbells and they made trips out to their mother's old house during the day to study alchemy. Which makes the implication that they burned down their house so that they wouldn't have anywhere to turn back to even more of a headscratcher, since it was almost clearly stated that they saw the Rockbells' house as their second home even possibly when their mother was alive.
    • Probably they burnt it down because that was where their mother died and where they tried (and failed) to bring her back. It was symbolic with cutting their ties with the past and destryoing their first home. Plus, you know, they couldn't exactly burn down the Rockbell's house.
  • The implications of Pride eating Gluttony have me curious. What are the limitations on the effects here? Did Pride get the pseudo-Gate out of that deal? What would happen if he ate one of the other Homunculi? What would transfer? Is this something exclusive to Pride or can the other Homunculi theoretically do it? Do these abilities transfer to the shadow or Selim Bradley's body? Could Envy's shapeshifting combine with Wrath's Ultimate Eye to overcome the limitation of having only one? The possibilities seem endless.
    • I like to think yes. Because it'd be awesome.
    • Suppose Pride "ate" all of the other six Homunculi. Would that produce a being with Father's original personality, since it would essentially be recombining all of Father's cast-off emotions?
    • Well Pride basically does the same thing by eating Gluttony that Envy does by eating the manikens or that Ling has done by absorbing Greed (and a buch of human souls). Rather than eating them as such it seems what they're doing is more adding their souls to their Philospher's Stone and gaing access to their memories and powers that way (like when Father absorbs Greed).
  • This doesn't really bug me, but . . . does Arakawa have a thing with being injured on the left rib cage? First Scar gets his ribs broken there by Gluttony, then Mustang gets stabbed there, then Kimblee and Ed get impaled there. And Scar's brother was bleeding from his left side before he died.
    • There are major organs on the right side of the body in the same position. So if you're an author wanting to inflict a painful but not necessarily fatal injury on a character, it almost certainly has to be on the left side.
  • I'm bothered by Ed's ponytail. Sometimes he has it braided, but other times it's just a small tail of hair (like in the third Brotherhood opening). It takes more hair to have it the first way, so how is he able to adjust his hair length? Unless he transmutes some of his body hair into head hair to make a longer ponytail...
    • Ed's hair was supposed to grow throughout the series to show he was getting older. As for why it looks shorter sometimes, that might just be a mistake?
    • I agree that it would take a LOT more (thicker, not necesssarily longer) hair to make the braid than what is shown in the ponytail. Artistic license.
  • When Ed & Envy are swallowed by Gluttony, Al's hand and Ling's upper half get sucked in as well. Ling's lower half then vanishes and re-appears inside Gluttony's stomach attached to the upper half. Why did this happen, when everything else (like Al's hand) stays split? If it's because Ling is a living person, then why did his clothes reform as well?
    • Are you sure he was the one that got halved? I thought it was Envy in disguise that got cut in half. And if so, then that could easily be explained by his regenerative powers.
      • It was definitely Envy; the lower half disintegrates after everyone gets sucked in, and Envy naturally just regenerated inside.
        • OP: Well, I feel derpy now.
  • I forget. How much time is supposed to have passed since the boys tried to resurrect their mother and the main events? I wanna say around ten years, but I don't recall. The reason I ask is because in episode 27 Pinnako looks very young while what? Ten years later? she's short and grey haired. Can people change that drastically in only ten years?
    • My impression/understanding is that the episode isn't meant to reflect actual chronology, since it's Hohenheim's dream. He probably met young Pinnako 50 years or so before the series starts and while he might have met Tricia as a child at some point, Pinnako was a lot older by then.
  • Why does BONES tend to not fix the (mostly minor) art and animation errors for their DVD/Blu-ray releases? Minor things like the number of buttons on a character's suit changing in different shots, or the wrong pattern on Lan Fan's mask. I know the anime industry deals with lots of rushing to meet insane deadlines, but if they have the time to make minor touch-ups that weren't exactly necessary, why didn't they have time to fix actual errors? Then again, it also bugs me that I'm enough of a nerd to even notice these things. :(
  • How exactly was Mustang's blindness supposed to be considered a just punishment for human transmutation? He was literally forced to do it.
    • Truth doesn't care. No matter what justification someone has, they get punished.
    • I always saw it as more of an opportunity to grow, rather than a mere punishment. And, in fact, the pyschlogical definition of punishment, and, thus, the one that the Truth will more likely tend towards is "any aversive stimulus administered to an organism as part of training". Truth is a Trickster Mentor. He wants them to grow, but isn't going to be nice about it, and needs a strong enough reason for them not to go about willy-nilly and get themselves into that much trouble.
    • I saw it more as Mustang judging himself -- the way Truth takes on the characteristics of the person being judged has always suggested some degree of self-judgement, and Mustang considers himself an unpunished war criminal ever since Ishval.
    • Personally, I saw it as being rather lenient considering what Truth did to Ed, Al and Izumi in the past. It may be possible that anyone who performs human transmutation, whether willingly or not, absolutely has to give something up as toll. Truth would have known that Roy hadn't performed human transmutation willingly, so instead of taking some limbs, internal organs or his whole body, all of which would have put Roy in immediate danger of dying, he blinded him instead, something Roy could eventually overcome and learn to live with.
      • I saw it as somewhat of an ironic punishment being that Mustang who has the vision of a peaceful Amestris won't be able to see what becomes of his nation. Similar to Izumi's loss of her organs because of her want of a child, Al who wanted to feel his mother's touch again having his body taken and Ed being shown without a doubt that you can't bring someone back from the dead and losing a leg to stand on.
  • A major bug moment for me is constantly seeing people state that Ed gave up his being able to do alchemy period for Al's body at the end of Brotherhood. As far as I can remember, we don't see Ed performing standard alchemy at any time after he learns that he's able to do clap-alchemy, and the Truth seems to be connected to that, rather than the ability to do it period. Isn't it possible that he simply doesn't have the knowledge of what circle to use/doesn't want to take the time to research it rather than wait for his brother to simply clap alchemy (I think he's still implied to be able to use it) and perform the task he needed it for? There are a lot of alchemists who've never seen their door, but still practice alchemy and supposedly spend a lot of time researching the correct circles, so why does everyone assume that Edward hasn't been downgraded to one of those level alchemists, rather than jumping straight to the conclusion that he can't do alchemy period anymore?
    • There are several reasons. We don't see Ed use alchemy after he brings Al back. Ed's sacrificing his Gate rather than giving up knowledge of it. Ed states just before giving it up that this is "The Fullmetal Alchemist's final transmutation". But the biggest hint is probably the fact that Truth itself outright states "Once you lose your Gate of Truth, you won't be able to practice Alchemy ever again". It's pretty much Word of God from the closest thing the series has to a god.
  • Why the hell did Father bothered or allowed Amestris to have a Parliament ? Since there is one, even fi it's hollow, as Riza mentions it. The track of events would be weird. Has Amestris always been a Republic ? How Father could have ever been aware of this concept ? And given his contempt of humanity, using monatchy or autocracy would have seem more accurate. Furthermore, why did he bothered to conceal himself while he could have ruled as a living God (like a Goa'uld) and thus maybe achieving his goal faster ? So the point is, why Amestris is a dictatorship to begin with ?
    • He gave up Pride early on so he didn't feel any need to be praised and pretending to be a god would be counterproductive. It would make other nations aware of his existence and with Hohenheim helping them they would be able to interfere (since we do know Hohenheim taught them alchemy). In addition a system like that wouldn't be conducive to producing the intelligent alchemists Father needs to pull off his plan. I'm not sure what Amestris' history prior to Bradley was like, but given Father's easy association with the generals and the neatly aligned battles it seems evident that from a very early point Father was influencing events[1]. As for the parliament, maybe there was a point when Amestris was more democratic and Father started making major changes as his planned neared success. They don't seem to have installed a Wrath as ruler until perhaps sixty years and there don't seem to have been as many alchemists in the military until the fighting in Ishbal.
  • Does Roy have Black Eyes or Blue Eyes? Both anime and most official art have him with the former, though quite a few later manga artwork have him with the latter (like chapter 95 and 102). Is it symbolic? Also, is anyone else creeped out by Winry's eyes in the manga and Brotherhood?
    • Roy's eyes are black. I don't know why they switch to blue, but it might have to do with being able to portray a wider rang of emotions.
    • Roy's eyes are shown as VERY dark (as in midnight) blue in the "I love dogs!" segment in the 2003 anime series. I think this was to differentiate between the iris and the pupil in the extreme close-up. Just rewatched Brotherhood, and they're black throughout in that.
    • And speaking of eye color, just what color are Al's eyes, exactly? They appear to be gray in the 2003 series and some variant of Xerxian gold in Brotherhood.
  • Wait I'm confused about Envy. He's jealous of humans for their ability to move on from the past and work together. ... Wait, what? So homunculi can't do that for some reason? I mean, they all seem to work together pretty fine except for Greed going rogue. And they certainly managed to pull some fast ones on the good side even without Lust around, when Gluttony was being reborn, and when Envy was in a jar for a few months. How is he jealous of that facet of humanity again?
    • The Homunculi work together, sure, but I think that part of what Envy was really jealous of was the human ability to bond and form friendships, which I didn't really see much of among the homunculi. There wasn't exactly a lot of familial love going around with them.
    • Original poster here, and that still doesn't really jive with me. Gluttony and Lust seemed to have a friendship, and Wrath and Pride seem to have a good thing going as King and Selim, as Pride decided not to tell Father something Wrath said that could've been harmful to Father. Plus, though this might only be in Brotherhood, Envy got along fine with Lust and Gluttony during Envy's first appearance after posing as Cornello in episode five. If you ask me, he should be more jealous of his brethren.
      • That's whats so pathetic about Envy. Both the character and the emotion itself. He's so busy being jealous of the people who have what he wants, that he never realizes that he could probably get the same thing if he just made a little bit of effort.
        • And he's also a complete psychopath. That probably hurts his ability to get friends.
  • Is it 'Ishval' or 'Ishbal'? I've heard both around the same amount of times online.
    • In Japan, the sound made by the letter 'V' doesn't exist, but briefly shared the same character as 'B'. The two spellings are just a translation debate.
  • What, exactly, is the point of Number 48 from the fifth laboratory having two blood seals located four inches apart? Such a thing would only be useful against the exact attack Ed used. If he had lost his legs, or been hit by a vertical cut he'd be knocked out of the fight easily. And for that matter, is the soul bonded to his head fighting at all? Or does he just exist to trash-talk intruders while his brother kicks ass?
    • Well if you remember they were only there to kill intruders to protect the Lab. Most people aren't aware there are such oddities in the world. They go for a head blow stabs through the opening or attacks the head and the helmet flies off. When they don't fall over or you see a headless armor you're likely to stop for a second, and since the body and helmet are separated, then the helmet can talk while the armor attacks and kills the intruder. They did say it's been far too long since they had a good challenge, I would expect the reason for this is because that gambit probably always worked. Ed was the first one ever to come in with preexisting knowledge of soul-bound armors.
  • What was the significance in Brotherhood about the "shocking discovery" that Ed and Izumi didn't transmute the remains of his mother and her child, respectively? Who arranged that and why? And did it accomplish anything?
    • It demonstrated that their attempts to bring back their family could never have worked. Human transmutation on someone who dies is impossible, plain and simple. The reason Al could be brought back was because he didn't technically die, his body was alive and aging on the other side of the Gate. Nobody arranged it, that's just how it is, and it accomplished knowing why it's taboo: it is literally impossible to bring someone back from the dead with alchemy.
      • Plus it had been kinda been the question of did the transmutation fail because I did it wrong? Finding out it was impossible to bring back the dead gave them closure.
      • On top of that, the scene implies that Izumi and Ed had been feeling as though they made their respective family members suffer horrible death a second time. Now that they know they didn't actually transmute their family, it's a major relief.
  • How did no one in Amestris ever look at a map of their country and realize that it was in the shape of a transmutation circle?
  • The height differences between Ed and Winry. We have the first anime where he's shorter then her by a long-shot, and if I recall in The Movie he's still shorter. In the manga they're essentially the same height for most of the story, and in Brotherhood Winry is a tad bit taller then Ed.. Why so many changes?
    • They grew.
  • In chapter 50 of the manga there was a fight scene where Ling cut off one of Envy's arms with a blade Envy transmuted from his own Philosopher's stone. If he was able to create something like that, and it actually worked, shouldn't he be able to copy Greed's and/or Lust's technique(s)?
    • Probably. That being said, any one of them could have trained and/or been trained to become a skilled warrior like Wrath yet they didn't. After all there's probably no one good enough to kill a near immortal right? If there's one thing that the first Greed's fight with Wrath clearly demonstrated, (as well as some other homunculus fights)it is that the homunculi aside from Wrath relied too strongly on their regeneration and supernatural powers to get almost anything done. Wrath who didn't have the ability to heal and only had a special eye which he couldn't reveal to just anyone needed that skill and physical prowass in order to survive and was trained after birth.
  • When Hughes figured out The Conspiracy, Lust and Envy are practically waiting to take him out. How did they know he figured it out so fast? He never told anyone, and he was only looking through the records for the one night.
    • It's possible that Wrath told them. He knew that Hughes knew something, considering Wrath is King Bradley.
      • That makes sense. And on second thought it would also make sense if Pride had been watching him.
  • Why wasn't Jude from "The Blind Alchemist" chosen as a Human Sacrifice by the homunculi?
    • They probably didn't even know about him.
  • So...if Greed has the Ultimate Shield (which cannot be penetrated) and Lust has the Ultimate Spear (which can penetrate anything), who would win if the two were to fight?
    • Depends on who can activate their abilities the quickest, probably. Greed's shield probably can withstand Lust's "spear", but since he can't heal and put his shield up at the same time, if Lust can stab him in fatal places quickly enough, she would probably win.
  • The two reasons human transmutation never works in the series are (1) The Truth doesn't let souls come back once they go to the other side of the Gate, and (2) biology is so complex that alchemists will just create a twisted, inhuman being that will die within seconds of coming to life. There's nothing they can do about the first problem, but for the second . . . how about if, instead of using raw ingredients like Ed and Al tried to do, you start with a fairly fresh human corpse? Then all you'd have to do is undo the wound that killed them, reverse the effects of decay, and set their organs/muscles/nerves in motion again; since medical alchemy exists, that should be possible. The Truth might not let the person's soul come back, but if their brain is undamaged, then all their thoughts, feelings, and memories should still be intact, which as far as ordinary human concerns go is as good as a soul.
    • Getting into a metaphysical discussion goes waaaaaay above my head. But as i understand it, the body and mind need the soul to function, and it's what allows the person to live in the first place. It's basically like a battery, it doesn't matter if all the individual parts still work, without the battery, it can't turn on.
      • This is demonstrated by what happened to all the people in Amestris when Father's plan came to fruition and all their souls were sucked out. They weren't dead, as evidenced by the fact that they were all still alive after Scar activated his brother's countermeasure. But without their souls, they were effectively catatonic.
  • Why is the Roy Mustang/Riza Hawkeye ship known as Roy Ai? It gets confusing, because Ai isn't in either Hawkeye's first or last name. Although it sounds like the last syllable in Hawkeye, but that would be Roy Eye. I think Roy Hawk sounds really cool.
    • The word Roy Ai comes from the Japanese characters of 'Roy' and 'Hawkeye' being combined, and the resulting sound is 'royai'. The correct spelling of this sound would normally be roiai, which is why occasionally you will see Roy Ai refered to as Roi Ai; however, most fans agree that Roy Ai is a pun of Roy+Ai (the Japanese word for love).
  • Exactly how does being blind stop you from being Fuhrer? Is this some kind of obscure clause in the Amestris Constitution or something? You don't need to be able to see to be a ruler, its not exactly a front lines position.
    • Being Fuhrer is not just about fighting. It's kind of important to see any paper work you have to do as Fuhrer, you know, among other things.
      • There were a few blind kings (Jan of Bohemia for one) in Europe's history. Yes, not an elected/ascended post, but basically there wasn't anything concrete stopping Roy, he had more than enough respect among his men to keep him there if he wished. He probably just felt he couldn't lead as he should without his vision, and so turned it down, if reluctantly.
  • So Wrath didn't believe in the idea of gods. Okay. But wait, is he aware that Father's goal was to consume God? If so, was he thinking that Father was on a wild goose chase and didn't have the heart to tell him?
    • He was essentially raised specifically to follow Father's orders. Maybe he thought Father was being a delusional fool, but he wasn't willing to disobey Father. Hell, he probably wasn't even capable of disobeying Father.
    • Perhaps he just doesn't regard Truth as a god. Most of the other characters refer to Truth as 'the so called God' in the final episodes of the sub of Brotherhood and Ed who has actually spent more time with Truth than almost anyone else alive is still an agnostic.
  • Why exactly do Ed's stumps hurt when it begins to rain in 'Father Before The Grave'? And why does that cause him to vomit?
    • People vomit from pain. Also, he's reliving some pretty traumatic stuff at the time, which could make anyone a bit sick.
  • Olivier's treatment of Alex. Sure the majority of it the aloof big sister routine, but how is suffer a mental breakdown and PTSD considered running away from the battlefield, particularly when the majority of your collateral targets are women and children? Granted Alex considers it this way as well, but she seems to hold him in such contempt for it.
    • Olivier has extremely high standards of courage and duty. Alex fled from battle, that makes him contemptible. The circumstances don't matter to her. Also do note that she began treating him with more respect after he helped her fight Sloth: he refused to run away despite his terrible injuries, which showed her that he did indeed have the courage she thought he lacked.
  • Did Izumi get fixed in the end and can she have children now?
    • No, Hohenheim simply rearranged her innards to a more suitable position so that she won't be coughing up blood every ten minutes.
  • When Hohenheim helps Izumi with Philosopher's Stone he states, that he can't bring back her organs taken by Truth, even with a power of Stone. Then why Marcoh can cure Mustang's blindness?
    • The manga makes it clear that Marcoh can't cure Mustang's blindness. What he did was give Mustang the Philosopher's Stone so that Mustang could get his sight back the same way Ed got Al back: give up his alchemy, using the Stone to pay the toll.
    • Wait if he's using the stone as a toll, why would he need to give up his alchemy?
    • My mistake: yes he wouldn't have to give up his alchemy, just trade the stone for his eyesight.
  • Why does Ed need Winry to repair his automail when it gets broken? Couldn't he just use alchemy to fix it himself?
    • Presumably because it's a complex piece of machinery, designed to simulate and interface with the human body. It's for the same reason he doesn't use medical alchemy: he simply doesn't know how to do so without screwing it up. Alchemy isn't magic, strictly speaking; you need to know how to reconstruct matter properly. Ed might be able to repair damaged or shattered components of his automail, but he doesn't know how to rebuild it.
      • So does that mean Al knows how to build a radio, since he repaired one using alchemy?
  1. ↑ but not ruling them directly
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