Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood 40 The Dwarf in the Flask Early Reaction!
Added 2020-04-21 12:01:02 +0000 UTCCommentary begins at 12:19
Comments
The OVAs should be interesting to watch once we're all done! I guess the question is, if they come across a stone that has already been made... the lives used to create it have already been lost. So they technically wouldn't be doing any further damage? I don't know if they'll see it that way though
Eric Reacts
2020-04-21 18:30:22 +0000 UTCUnironically love it when works of fiction always have SOMETHING yet to be revealed :)
Eric Reacts
2020-04-21 18:28:07 +0000 UTCWith most reactors I've seen, this is one of the pivotal episodes that everyone waits for. We finally get Hoenheim's backstory, and in almost every case, this is the episode that turns people around on Hoenheim. He's a very tragic character - a slave who just wanted the chance to have a family, and then he got suckered in by the Dwarf. I find it interesting that with the knowledge the Dwarf gave him, he didn't figure out what the Dwarf was planning, but at the same time, the Dwarf could have kept that much from him. But it made him an unwitting conspirator in the deaths of an entire country. Although in a way, the Dwarf did give Hoenheim what he wanted - thanks to his immortality, he was able to live long enough to meet Tricia and have Ed and Al. Armstrong is brilliant. She has proven herself to be an excellent choice for an ally for Ed and Al, however she has also put herself in a very dangerous position. It's a good thing that she is as much of a badass as she is. Technically, Armstrong has a point about favoritism for Mustang - he's a State Alchemist, which means that he jumped very high in the ranks very quickly. There's an OVA that goes into some of his training at the military academy, and based on the timeline, it seems that he took the exam to become a State Alchemist almost immediately after graduating. There seems to have been a small gap in between those times, since that's when he returned to Master Hawkeye and asked to learn fire alchemy, and he would have needed time to decipher the notes on Hawkeye's back and master the skill enough to use it to pass the exam, since other than Master Hawkeye, he's the only person in Amestris to know flame alchemy. But after passing that test, he would have been jumped up to Major almost immediately. I don't know if it's ever stated in the manga or not, but after graduating as an officer, it's probably fair to assume that he may at least have been a 2nd Lieutenant, which means he would have automatically bypassed 1st Lieutenant and Captain to become a Major. He earned his rank of Lieutenant Colonel during the Ishval War, and has since been promoted to a full Colonel - so unlike General Armstrong, who is NOT an alchemist, he didn't really work his way through the ranks like she did. I do think Ed's line in the end credit scene to Miles, "Maybe it's possible, but I'd never want to see it", is supremely ironic, since Ed's own father is a living Philosopher's Stone. Although keep in mind that Ed and Al's goal in the early part of the series was to find a Philosopher's Stone to restore their bodies - the only reason they're not pursuing it any more is because now they know what it takes to make one. That doesn't discount the possibility that a Stone could be used to restore them.
Megan Saunders
2020-04-21 16:36:20 +0000 UTCBeen looking forward to this one. It's a hell of an episode. So many questions are answered, but there's just as many more left to puzzle out.
cosmotron
2020-04-21 14:34:29 +0000 UTC
