Ling and Lan fans escape doesn’t make sense to me

Hey guys, I couldn’t resist a bit of critique of this memorable scene from FMAB. Sorry! Purely from a logistical standpoint – any character issues would be a separate issue. So, episode 24-25 of Brotherhood has Ed and Al decide to attack Scar in order to lure the homunculi out and Ling volunteers to help them with capturing a homunculus. It’s a fun sequence but it’s also one I have a few issues with. This is only based on the anime adaptation so if the Manga fills in these plot holes, feel free to tell me! I’m going to be more detailed than I probably really need to be.

Their plan works in that they attract the attention of Wrath and Gluttony (Not Envy for some unknown reason.) So while Ed and Al are busy with Scar, Ling and Lan Fan fight Wrath and Gluttony.

Their first exchange goes interestingly, as we briefly see more of Lan Fan’s impressive fighting tactics where she’s willing to take an injury in order to deal damage, as she breaks one of Wrath’s swords with her kunai but he strikes her and she falls down and can’t fight anymore – her left arm is badly injured.

Ling grabs her and picks her up over the shoulder, unwilling to leave her behind and… here’s where my issues start to arise. Alright, Ling has two powerful bodyguards who generally fight for him but it turns out he’s also a really impressive fighter in his own right – not too surprising but his skills in this encounter suggest he’s just as good or better than them as he fends off Wrath while holding Lan Fan over one shoulder.

This annoys me as Lan Fan is the trained professional where Ling is a prince. Granted Wrath has only one and a half swords now – (though sidenote I can’t believe one broke at all given how unbreakable they’ve been until now – they didn’t break inside first Greed’s death scene with the magma and they can cut through bones with ease.) and Gluttony doesn’t actually contribute too much, with Ling easily slashing him up. Ling isn’t winning but it’s still pretty ridiculous to me – especially when juxtaposed with how easily Lan Fan was taken out.

Either way, Ling gets punched into a nearby house and gets followed by Wrath and he looks to be cornered – Wrath taunts him a bit suggesting he could get away if he dropped Lan Fan whom he is still carrying over one shoulder. (See my Ling rant for how much the dialogue between him and Wrath irritated me). Lan Fan intervenes though by letting off a flash bomb to blind Wrath and Ling takes this chance to try and escape the room.

…But then Wrath reveals he can still see fine as he unveils his other eye beneath his eye patch and Ling’s hopes are dashed. How will he get out of this one???

…There’s another explosion and he jumps out the window. Ling has escaped the building and is running away, still carrying Lan Fan over one shoulder. We only get an outsider perspective so we don’t see the details.

Wrath just watches before giving chase. So I have to imagine what happened a bit – obviously Lan Fan let off another bomb and they really got past Wrath while cornered that easily? Oh well. And just another reminder that Wrath is extremely fast and Ling is carrying Lan Fan so he must be slowed down. And he’s literally just jumped out of a building. There are people about but Wrath was fighting them right outside a few minutes before so why would he suddenly care about appearances now? If jumping out of a building is unnatural then I’ll remind you that Ling just jumped out of the building with little problem.

He even runs into a dead end before forced to turn around with Wrath still tracking him. (and he deliberately went to a deserted part of town for some reason) Wrath isn’t exactly hurrying now though, I suppose. Anyway, so Lan Fan’s asking him to leave her so he can get away and Ling’s refusing, still running away and so Lan Fan grabs another kunai…

We get another cut away here. Next time we’re in Wrath’s perspective and he follows the blood and… it’s a decoy! Lan Fan has cut off her arm and used it as false bait allowing them both to escape.

That super cool but- you’re seriously telling me that Ling got far enough away that they had time to tie up a bloody arm to a random dog and then run away before Wrath caught them? And it all happened off-screen? (Gosh that would have been such a cool and emotional scene to see too. Far better than the reveal without the how.)

…

I cannot imagine this.

…

I’ll try though: Lan Fan cuts her arm off, and presumably Ling freezes in horror briefly and I’d imagine they might have made some noise as she slices her own arm off. And then Lan Fan is bleeding like crazy and I don’t know – would Ling rip off his shirt to use to bandage the wound first or would he pick up the freshly severed arm first and start attempting to tie it to a dog that just happens to be there? A very cooperative dog. So, he ties the arm on and convinces the dog to start running before picking up Lan Fan and heading directly into the sewer to hide.

Frankly, I bet they could have hid in the sewer without Lan fan needing to cut off her arm – Wrath was following their blood trail which will still be visible and lead straight to their sewer entrance if he backtracks just a little. (And she just cut off her arm and Ling tied it in a hurry – I think she’d still be dripping blood – see how much blood she dripped when it was a more minor injury… actually why didn’t they just tie that injury better in the first place if all they really need to do to hide is stop dripping blood. The false trail wastes way more time -and blood- than just hiding better!)

All the while Wrath is giving chase but was apparently far enough away that they had time to do this. It’s just I can’t imagine this would be that fast – they shouldn’t be more than a minute ahead of Wrath and even that’s a stretch – it’s a stretch that they escaped from his immediate vicinity in the first place. At the start of this sequence Ling was literally in viewing range of him and was burdened by carrying Lan Fan.

After this, Ling leaves Lan Fan in the sewers and jumps out to help Ed and Al capture Gluttony. At this point, Ling’s feats seem OP to me but anyway we get to see him obliterate Gluttony while shirtless. (And, wow, he can jump high.)

Wrath chuckles about how he’s been outsmarted by this clever girl, having taken great enjoyment in this fight. And it’s thankfully over so I don’t have to think about it any more.

If I’ve missed anything or got it wrong, please tell me! This is a very important sequence both for plot and character and if there’s something I’m missing, I’d love to know. I love Lan Fan in this part and think she’s great but basically everything else annoys me.

My feelings on BH Hohenheim

This is my response to an ask I got asking me to compare Bh Hohenheim with 03 Hohenheim. It’s a fairly brief reply.

BH Hohenheim really grates on me for some reason, I just can’t stand his character. It’s hard to explain why. Maybe its because I feel like I’m expected to sympathise with him but I just don’t really. Maybe because it’s how he basically solves the plot? Seriously, he spent the last 10 years spreading souls around so that when Father pulled off his plan, Hohenheim could just undo it with a self-activating array. (So it would have gone off even if he died.) That means by the start of canon, Father’s plan is probably already doomed. I’ve talked about it before I think, but I’m not all that fond of Brotherhood’s ending and Hohenheim being the one who solves everything is part of it.

Some people absolutely adore Hohenheim and find him very sympathetic and have explained why but I just can’t feel it. This is my opinion, if I was attempting to be more objective then I couldn’t call him bad. But I personally just don’t much like him. Perhaps its because I’m so fond of Ed and feel that his reasons for feeling angry or disinterested in a relationship with him are justified and I’m not so fond of how its painted as immature stubborness. (I can forgive a character for making mistakes though!) That’s also a biased perspective and I’m sure if I could look at it from Hohenheim’s point of view instead I’d be more reasonable. But, Ed’s my favourite and I like viewing FMA from his perspective and focusing on his character. I did really like Hohenheim’s backstory as a young slave though! That was really interesting and nice.

BH rewatch episode 22

Table of Contents

Episode 22: Backs in the Distance.

In this episode, we get some of Scar’s backstory revealed plus some great character exploration. This whole episode is pretty striking. Though gosh is the title super-boring. What it means is that Winry is remembering people leaving her (she sees their retreating backs) and never seeing them again (because they died).

Unfortunately, its first couple scenes are a little annoying. It opens with a recap because the last episode ended in the middle of the fight. It quickly picks up with the Wrath and Gluttony versus Ling and Lan Fan battle. Ugh, this battle.

Like, Lan Fan sustains an attack on her arm in order to take the chance to cut Wrath’s sword in half with a kunai. She’s hurt so Ling jumps in to save her. Despite her legs not taking any injuries from what I could tell, Ling finds in necessary to hold her over one of his shoulders. (Okay she did fall from a height but she’s still concious and the only bleeding spot is her arm. Ling immediately jumps down to her without any trouble.)

Yeah. Ling is fighting Wrath and Gluttony with Lan Fan over one shoulder and he’s fending them off. Lan Fan should really be a superior fighter as we’ve never even seen Ling fight before and she’s his bodyguard. Wrath is meanwhile one of the toughest in the show but Ling is successfully jumping around and holding him off! While carrying Lan Fan.

Ling even has the chance to lecture Wrath about what it means to be a true leader – it means taking care of your subjects according to Ling and so Wrath is no true leader compared to him. Ouch. Don’t pretend to be responsible now Ling, all we’ve seen of you ’til now is you running around and losing your bodyguards whenever you feel like it. And it was your idea to go and fight the Homunculi. You volunteered your friends. Lan Fan was just following your orders and that’s why she’s in trouble. What you’re doing isn’t noble and true, it’s closer to basic decency. (It is nice that he doesn’t drop Lan Fan and leave her for dead in order to escape, yes. It doesn’t demonstrate good leadership qualities though. I might as well say Lan Fan is showing good leadership qualities by risking her life for you.)

Sadly, Wrath doesn’t know him well enough to call him out. He merely says there’s no such thing as true leaders (and have I mentioned that Wrath hasn’t done anything in this scene that shows him to be a bad leader? He’s fighting himself, not sending his minions to die for him or something. I know he doesn’t value human’s lives but he’s not exactly done anything in this episode to justify such an accusation from a random guy whose life he’s never affected.)

Oh well, Ling nearly escapes when Lan Fan sets off a flash bomb but doesn’t because Wrath had one eye covered. And we switch scenes and this fight will continue into a third episode…

Next we get Winry and she’s thinking about her parents and Hughes, thinking of their backs as they left her for the last time. Then she remembers watching Ed walk away as she hears he’s gotten into a fight. (Oh and she also has a talk with Gracia by Hughes’ grave.) Fine stuff, but we ended in the middle of action last time, it’s kind of odd to have a slow scene from a different character. It makes the pacing weird as action is generally fast-paced and even a long fight shouldn’t really last more than minutes.

Oh well, finally we’re on to the good stuff. We have Ed and Al fighting Scar. Al, seeing his brother is getting tired from dragging on the fighting decides to engage Scar in conversation instead and he’s okay with that. So the three of them just stand around talking for basically the rest of the episode.

Al confronts Scar on his revenge and about Nina and the Elrics seem to realise that Scar’s actions against Nina weren’t wholly evil as they could do nothing for her but let her get dragged to a lab. It’s a real moral dilemma. So, then Ed confronts Scar about Winry’s parents.

We get a long flashback showing his brother studying alchemy and certain Ishvalans wanting to use alchemy to kill, like the state alchemists are doing so. This convinces Scar that alchemy is an evil art and that learning it is going to lead to more evil.

His brother seems unaware of his feelings and gives his alchemy notebook to Scar. Then Kimblee attacks and his brother sacrifices himself for Scar, giving him his right arm (of destruction). Scar awakens half-delirious in a makeshift hospital and is extremely confused and in pain. He focusses on Winry’s parents – he sees their Amestrian features and thinks they are the enemy. He kills them.

All this makes a great scene. I have a minor issue with showing all Amestrians as blue-eyed. The only characters we even know are the armstrongs and the Rockbells. (I don’t even think Kimblee has blue eyes). Also, it’s kind of ridiculous how Scar can take out like four guys at one point while unarmed. He doesn’t even have a knife while they have guns! (Okay, it’s kind of funny.)

So Winry has wandered into the alley they’re all fighting (standing around talking) in which is kind of convenient but anyway. She overhears Ed and basically collapses to the floor in shock and anger. There’s a gun on the floor which she goes to grab, ignoring Ed’s protests. She points it at Scar. She actually says she wants him to bring her parents back, (which is a little much given that she has probably come to terms with their deaths somewhat in the last few years.)

He says it is right for her to shoot him because of the cycle of revenge. (Does everyone really believe that Winry would become revenge obsessed if she shoots him? Or that people would want revenge if she killed Scar? The revenge stuff is kind of preachy.)

As she hesitates, Scar approaches her, apparently intending to kill her and Ed jumps in to protect her. Scar gets a brief flashback, reminded of his brother protecting him. Scar decides to cut his losses and runs away.

Ed comforts Winry in one of the best scenes. He tells her that she shouldn’t wield a gun because her hands are meant for healing, meant to give life rather than take it. Her inability to shoot is not weakness but her strength. Ed hold her hand with his metal arm, implying that his hands are ones made for destruction.

It’s just nice to see Ed holding her and comforting her even as Winry is crying, obviously wrecked by the memory of her parents.

…

Wow this post turned out longer than expected. I really liked this episode and thought that there wouldn’t be too much to say. (Explaining that I like something is usually incredibly short.) If this seems like a lot of really minor stuff, it is. It just took a lot of words to say. Like, I mention that they’re just standing around, it’s kind of silly but that’s all. It’s not in any way a problem. It’s funny if anything.

Plot Contrivances in Brotherhood

So, one thing that’s becoming very obvious in my Brotherhood rewatch is that Brotherhood has an awful lot of convenient coincidences to drive the plot forward.

Many say that Brotherhood’s plot is excellent because it’s a tight story that leads into its end very well and has basically no plot holes. I generally agree. It’s very good for a serial story. However, it does have a lot of plot contrivances.

What I mean by contrivances is convenient coincidences that happen to be important to driving the plot forward. These can take on a few different forms but the most common one in Brotherhood is characters conveniently running into each other.

This is basically the opposite of where the characters are driving the plot forward through their own actions. Sometimes characters find the plot. Other times the plot finds the character through what would appear to be sheer luck.

Doctor Marcoh randomly walking through the train station while Ed and Armstrong are on their way to Risembool

How about an example? In FMA 03, the Elric brothers are seeking out the Philosopher’s stone. In their searching, Edward meets an alchemist who uses her skills for thievery and after dealing with her she offers a useful tip – rumours of a Philosopher’s stone in a town called Xenotime. They go there and meet a pair of brothers who have been experimenting but haven’t managed to successfully make a real stone. They did see a minor miracle from a doctor though and offer them the name Marcoh. Edward goes to Central and convinces Mustang to reveal his location to the brothers and then the two of them go and track him down.

In Brotherhood, the two are travelling on a train and Armstrong randomly notices him at a train station and points him out to them.

One story had them looking for him, the other had him appear to them at random. It feels very convenient. Now it’s not a problem to have coincidences sometimes and I don’t think Brotherhood needed to have Marcoh be someone the brothers needed to seek out (though I wouldn’t be against it). Sometimes, you need things to help drive the plot forward. 03 is hardly immune to plenty of contrived coincidences.

That said, Brotherhood’s reliance on them has started to grate on me.

Ling’s meeting with the Brothers was a huge coincidence. Literally they find him collapsed in a random street in Rush Valley. Why is he even in Rush valley? (When it’s in the South and he came from the North-East through the Xerxes ruins presumably with the intention of going to Central as that where he is heading.)
Sheska just happened to have memorised the book they needed to read. (Yes, it’s in 03 too. It’s bad there as well.)
Mei just happens upon Scar and Yoki. She is conveniently ignorant of the fact that he is a serial killer. I seriously dislike how she remains ignorant of his actions for so long – rather than choosing to stay with him in spite of what’s done.
Ling randomly gets arrested and then just as easily breaks out with Maria and Barry the Chopper – perhaps contrived isn’t the word for this one but Ling is so lucky he justs faces no consequences for anything that happens to him.
Ed just happens upon Maria Ross while she’s breaking out with Barry the Chopper. He is then just in time to see the burned corpse.
Riza gets attacked by Gluttony in episode 18. Somehow, Mustang gets there in time to save her even though Gluttony is not the type for a fight to be anywhere near drawn-out. He was explicitly on the phone to her sitting at his desk when she’s attacked! She was attacked out on the streets.
Barry the chopper randomly decides to help out the heroes even though they forbid him from killing (His whole reason for existence with the whole “I kill therefore I am!” thing.)
Ed goes to the Xerxes ruins and randomly happens upon a group of Ishvalans there. They just randomly start talking about the Rockbells and tell Ed that Scar killed them. Then they disappear after this random encounter, having imparted this information.
Winry just happens on Ed confronting Scar in an alley about her parent’s deaths.
Ling somehow having the time to tie Lan Fan’s severed arm to a dog and escape into the sewers while being chased by Bradley. How was he able to run away while carrying her? Bradley literally confronted him in a room at the end of the previous episode. (elaborated more on that here)
Mei and Scar happening to see Alphonse and Gluttony walking into Father’s lair so they could follow them.

That’s what’s come to light so far in my rewatch. I haven’t gotten past season 2 yet so there is bound to be plenty more. Or maybe it gets better? I can only hope.

I mention these not to say 03 doesn’t also have some seriously annoying plot contrivances and plot holes. I wouldn’t complain about these at all – it’s practically nitpicking – if people didn’t claim that Brotherhood’s plot was a masterpiece.

BH Winry’s dependent character

This is a part of a reply I wrote in response to drrockbell on Tumblr. I ended up talking about Winry’s dependence on Ed a bit and figured I’d post it here.

Regarding Winry’s role as a character dependent on Ed versus her being her own independent character, it’s true that the villains attempt to use her in order to get Edward to be compliant. That does not in any way reflect poorly on her character in itself though, certainly not when she manages to free herself from their schemes rather than being saved. I think it’d be weird to call her dependent on Ed in that regard.

There are some criticisms that can be levelled at Winry’s character though. She is largely linked to events in the wider story through her association with Edward (and she’s also his Love interest).

She finds out about Scar because its Ed confronting him about her parents.
The reason she’s in Central at all is to be with Ed.
She goes to Briggs purely to help Ed.
She waits in Risembool for Ed and Al to come home after the events of Promised Day. When they appear, she cries tears of joy just as Ed said she should.

The only place she really goes independent of Ed is Rush Valley and that’s pretty far removed from the main narrative. Basically, the majority of her character interactions come about due to her being close to Ed and so it feels like she revolves around Ed. Her getting used as a hostage to motivate Ed is another symptom of that.

Contrast this with, say, Mei who can be viewed as Alphonse’s love interest. She gets involved with the events of the story largely through her own actions.

Allow me to clarify that I like Winry’s character in Brotherhood fine – she actually has does have of moments of narrative weight that aren’t solely driven by her devotion to Edward. Her interactions with Scar may have been initiated by association with Ed but the way she approaches the situation and interacts with him is her own.

Still, it is hard to argue that she isn’t connected to the main narrative almost entirely through Ed in Brotherhood.

I appreciate 03′s handling of Winry’s character, in this regard. She heads to Central with Riza purely for her own reasons, not in any way motivated by Ed. Her friendship with Sheska is something that came about fairly naturally and her actions were motivated by her own feelings about Hughes. (In Brotherhood she mourned Hughes too but it happened to always be with Ed.) Though, I’m not saying 03 handled Winry that great either as many of her scenes were meant as comic relief from the darker plot that Ed and Al were involved in.

While neither show was terrible about Winry, let me say that Brotherhood could have given her a little more independence. Her character revolving around Ed is not inevitable. Winry could have been pushed in a different direction where she’s more independent of Ed by having her, for instance, deliberately seek out Ishvalans still angry from the Massacre and help them to see not all Amestrians are bad or something, (building off her parents legacy and her interactions with Scar) helping to further justify their key role in Promised day.

That’s just one possibility anyway.

This was only part of our discussion. I posted this part here because I feel like my thoughts were the most ordered in this section. If you like to read the whole thing (with some of her replies) then feel free to read it here! We kind of meandered about quite a bit in our discussion though…

My six issues with Brotherhood’s ending

I have spoken about the FMA 03 ending but I also have issues with Brotherhood’s ending. This has probably also been done to death but, eh, I like writing my opinions out. Note: I do overall like it, as much as I like complaining about it!

I’ll start with this guy… a completely mad and insane alchemist who runs a group of loyal soldiers who were potential Fuhrer candidates. Why does he do anything? Because he’s insane. They even give him insane looking eyes. He just comes out of nowhere and is insanely loyal to Father’s plans and he’s just so obviously evil. And he’s pretty critical to the plot given that he did that transmutation to teleport the sacrifices to Father’s lair so I can’t just ignore him. His knowledge is used by Pride to force Mustang to commit human transmutation. He is, in essence, a villain extremely important to the plot. And he’s just crazy! I hate how his entire character is crazy evil and everything he does is to make a contrived plot happen.

Pride. Everything he does towards the ending raises a million questions! So he, like, assimilated the mad doctor, and used his knowledge to force Mustang to perform human transmutation and the both of them magically reappeared in Father’s basement and this weakened Pride for whatever reason. Why anything happens is vague and unclear. Then Ed’s suddenly certain he can defeat Pride (who has previously been incredibly dangerous even he isn’t fighting at full strength) and everyone just lets him like they also suddenly know he can deal with the dangerous Homunculus alone. Pride’s body is crumbling so he decides to take over Ed’s but that is somehow lowering himself (Because Ed is human and humans are inferior) so Kimblee wakes up from inside a vortex of souls just to stop Pride (but like Pride was literally crumbling is it really lowering yourself to steal a new form? How’d he even get his initial form? It looks pretty human.) Ed defeats Pride by turning himself into a philosopher’s stone to punch Pride inside his mind which turns him into a tiny foetus. (Cause that’s not killing…) Then Mrs. Bradley just raises the foetus who grows up apparently good. Fine, whatever. I’ll pretend it all made sense.

So the entire plot of BH is that Father is going take the souls of the entire country. And despite everything, his plan goes off. Everyone’s soul is taken. Oh no.

And then Hohenheim immediately reverses it in a minute with a self-activating circle using the circle of the moon’s shadow. The circle of the moon’s shadow! So basically, everything in the series was pointless because Hohenheim had probably already planted most of the souls to activate before the series even began. He’d already defeated Father before the series began! He states that it would activate even if Hohenheim was dead so Father plan was utterly doomed to fail. Absolutely no chance of the villain’s plan working.

Everything else is just fancy decoration. The series is called Fullmetal Alchemist but it should be called the Fullmetal Alchemist’s Deadbeat Dad because he is the actual hero apparently. He basically tanks all of Father’s big blasts too. Oh and he doesn’t ever mention the fact that Father’s plan is doomed to failure to anyone.

Oh no, Ed is trapped! Al sacrificing himself to save him is a great idea! Except, you do realise that these two are not alone but completely encircled by good guys? Father is ambling towards Ed at a leisurely pace and where did Greed go? He was right next to them. Is Ed even that trapped? He’s not trying to move his arm at all. How about Al uses alchemy to move the ground or anything other than sacrifice himself? (Or ask Mei to do something?) If he has enough time to convince Mei to transmute his body for Ed’s arm then he has enough time to slow down Father in any other way. That’s what Ed does the second he gets his arm back (Including pulling the metal out of his arm dramatically. If you could rip it out with two arms then how about with one?) Great idea, awful execution, everything about the circumstances makes what should be a tense and heartwarming moment stupid.

And why does Greed’s (much better) sacrifice come right after this? Don’t put two huge sacrifices in a row like that! It’s kind of exhausting, you know? Alphonse acts completely certain he’ll be saved just in case there was any tension. This should be the greatest, tensest moment in the series and instead I have to avoid thinking about it. (Speaking of sacrifices, I find it amusing that the five ‘sacrifices’ were practically the only people not sacrificed in the country-wide transmutation, but I digress).

Mustang going blind added an interesting obstacle for him to overcome, one he was determined not to let it stop him from achieving his goals. But let’s just cure it, you’d think the toll of human transmutation wouldn’t be so easily healed. I get that he was forced into it but, hey, Riza lived despite her life being threatened for refusing. Isn’t that a great enough reward for doing the right thing? Not only that, but it’s explicitly the stone created from Ishvalans Mustang helped to massacre. Scar and the Ishvalans were all so nice to forgive that in the ending, weren’t they?

Cute proposal! Ed’s resemblance to Hohenheim is especially striking here. It’s appropriate because he’s about to board a train and leave for an indefinite period of time. What’s better for a new relationship than lots of distance? Is he a coward or something who was so afraid of her rejecting him that he decided to leave and then tell her how he feels?

(Also they made Ed tall. WHY???)

——————-

So those were my main issues with the ending. Yes, I was thoroughly aware of all of these as I was watching Brotherhood and, yes, on my first watch. These are legitimate grievances I have with the story. I still like Brotherhood overall but not for any of this.

And that’s my list. Another small thing might be Ling just taking the philosopher’s stone and becoming emperor at the end. I was thinking he’d learn to become emperor the hard way without seeking the evils of the stone but no he just takes it. Ed doesn’t care either, even though he considers using the stone to be morally reprehensible. (Ling’s kindness to Mei was nice though). I’ll be honest, this series ending really did manage to be aggravating. I guess I like it, but it also frustrates me.

My nine issues with FMA 03’s ending

Hey there, it’s been done to death but I like writing things out in my own words so here’s a little rant about everything annoying (for me) about FMA 03′s ending. I’m not going to talk about Conqueror of Shamballa here, that would be it’s own separate rant. Allow me to clarify that I do like the overall, I just have a couple issues. (And enjoy making fun of the series.)

After Sloth is defeated, Envy appears (disguised as Winry), Ed quickly recognises that’s they’re a fake. Then Envy just grabs Alphonse, picks him up and walks away with him with barely any trouble. Ed just watches helplessly until he’s distracted by a distraught Wrath. Envy gets away. (Wrath actually slows Envy down more than Ed!) The encounter is far too quick and Al is kidnapped far too easily. I’d have liked to see Envy succeed after maybe a little more struggle at the least.

This guy. Yeah, this was just a little too ridiculous for me. Automail to this extent strains credulity. Especially when it includes a gun inside his moth and a robotic voice.

It’s nice to see these guys again! It’s nice that they come to just help out. But it’s also super convenient that they appear just to lead Ed to this church just when he needs to from an old letter. Couldn’t Lust or Sloth given him the hint instead? These two can still wave him goodbye, but this felt too convenient. (Dante actually wants Ed to find her at this point so it’s not like a way to the underground city couldn’t appear more organically.

I love Pride’s defeat at the hands of Mustang and I appreciate the irony of him keeping his weakness like a treasured possession only to be undone by his own son. But Selim was only introduced an episode ago and he just idiotically brings Pride his weakness just before Mustang is killed. Pride keeping his weakness itself is idiotic but Selim just delivering right at the crucial moment is a bit too infuriating.

What is up with Rose in these final episodes? It’s like she’s in some sort of weird trance and it’s not explained. At all. She just kind of floats around, detached. Come on! Dante’s going to steal her body so she can seduce Ed with it. That might be the most awful thing in the entirety of FMA. Could we get some emotion?

I can’t believe Ed got killed by a blimp of all things!

That other world being on the other side of the gate came out of nowhere. I understand that there are little bits of foreshadowing but, like, not nearly enough. It’s an interesting concept to explore sure, but you’d need like an entire extra series to do it justice or something. Otherwise it just feels weird. Tacked on at the end.

The Philosopher’s stone was this ultimate goal and it was made out of thousands of lives. Dante and Hohenheim lived for hundreds of years using the Philosopher’s stone. We have seen how much work was put into creating this stone in first Ishval and then Liore.

Alphonse uses the entire thing up at once to save Ed. It feels like it cost way too much. And it’s not just the stone either, as Al is lost as well, meaning Ed has to sacrifice himself to bring Al back. Okay, I know the theme of the series is that equivalent exchange isn’t always true and that human life is expensive but it just feels so frustrating. The whole quest feels almost pointless?

Al is restored without his memories! How could you do this to me, show? The close relationship between the brothers, all the memories, all the growth and struggle, it’s all gone. He’s not even got Ed there with him to share all the stories. Al’s entire character is basically gone, replaced with this younger version who will group up differently. I can accept the brother’s being separate at the end, tragic though it is. I can accept Al being a kid again in body. But missing memories is too much tragedy and angst for me. How did he even narrate the series if he doesn’t remember?

WHY? Why does Envy randomly turn into a dragon when he goes through the gate?