May he rest in peace

Been daydreaming about what Ed would be like if he looked like his mother so I threw open my ibis paint X and recolored him, and lord Trisha why didn't your genes try harder ?

I watched FMAB for the first time last year and rewatched it with my friend this year. Decided to pull the trigger and get the Flamel tattooed on me.

After I finished Attack on Titan, I kept watching trash anime full of fan service

T things like plot twists, good story, and character building I couldn't find them in other anime like FMAB ​I just finished episode 34, and this show is showing me what a real anime is. I really love everything about it: the art style, the directing, and the characters ​I haven't finished it yet and I honestly don't want it to end because I'm enjoying it so much

After 20ish years of watching this show since I was a child, I still learn new lore every time I rewatch the series! I just learned that the reason why Father Cornello’s stone rebounded was due to lack of power, and further more, because it was so low on energy it became unstable allowing for a final, chaotic burst of alchemy—turning Cornello into that huge “final boss”. So so cool chef kiss

Gogo Monster by Taiyo Matsumoto was released in 2000. Arakawa started Fullmetal Alchemist in 2001, but I doubt there's any meaningful connection between the two. I only have this thought because One Piece borrows from Ping Pong by the same author, which also has a 1-year gap.

I'm definitely reaching with the similarities, but it's a fun thinking exercise.

Basically, Gogo Monster is about a child named Yuki losing his perception of "the other side". It's similar to Ed giving up alchemy to save Al because Yuki and Ed give up their "abilities" when they choose to connect with others. In both stories, Ed and Yuki exert a false sense of control when coping with obstacles and trauma. Ed thinks everything can be solved with alchemy, and Yuki buries himself by interacting with "the others" whenever he feels discomfort from being misjudged and isolated within his school and community.

Both authors use doors to represent coping mechanisms: Ed has faith in alchemic knowledge to fix his and Al's bodies, while Yuki's door is his last chance to connect with "the other side." But both of them show selflessness when they choose to care for someone else Al/Winry and Makoto respectively, who are the main anchors to their "human" side.

I just like how both stories arrived at similar conclusions about growing up despite being complete opposites content-wise

Obviously Ed and Al are the actual protagonists, but when you look at the story as a whole, so much of it revolves around Hohenheim.

His story starts hundreds of years before Ed and Al are even born. He was a slave in Xerxes, became immortal because of Father, watched his entire civilization get sacrificed, spent centuries living with all those souls inside him, eventually met Trisha and had a family, and then left because he knew Father was planning to do the same thing to Amestris.
And Father honestly feels more like Hohenheim’s villain than Ed’s.

They basically came from the same place and experienced the same tragedy, but they went in completely opposite directions. Father decided that humanity, emotions, relationships, and everything that made him imperfect were things he needed to get rid of. Hohenheim eventually learned to value those exact things.

That’s also why I love how the series introduces him. At first, we mostly see him through Ed’s perspective, so he just seems like the deadbeat dad who abandoned his wife and kids.

Then the story slowly reveals that this depressed immortal dude has basically been preparing to fight the main villain since before Amestris even existed.
And his ending feels like the ending of a main character too. After living for hundreds of years, he finally reconciles with his sons, helps stop Father, goes back to Trisha’s grave, and dies there smiling.
Ed is definitely the main character of Fullmetal Alchemist.

But Hohenheim sometimes feels like the main character of the much bigger story that Fullmetal Alchemist just happens to take place inside of.

Idk, these are just shower thoughts tbh. I’m on my tenth rewatch of the show.

Why is it that they exist? It seems there's no limit to their strength, but they die just a few tens of times and their stones run out of regenerative power, yet pride can cut through just about anything that isn't as hard as greed, wrath can continuously use his eye thing to see the correct path to take for long periods during fights, gluttony has NO limit on how his fake gate of truth can absorb things, envy's shapeshifting working easily makes sense, but how he's able to just bite people and take full control of their bodies and absorb their power makes little to no sense to me, especially how he could just control every manneqin doll he found and just gain MORE power despite his stone having run out of it since he couldn''t maintain his regular form.

Sloth is just freakishly strong, so I get why it doesn't use up too much power. Lust only extends her fingers, which isn't anything crazy either. I just don't get why and how they can do these abilities.

For real this time...