The observations about a wide array of species (many mammals and some birds such as the crow) are about regular normal individuals, both in captivity and in the wild, not some unique über-talented wunderkind exemplars (or "wundertier" for "wonder animal" in German ).
The perpetual story is animal cognition studies is how behaviour is overlooked that in retrospect clearly indicates their internal mind states.
To use a big word, it's anthropocentrism.
For instance, the paint patch test, applied to elephants. Elephants use primary smell, sounds second hand, sight as a distant third.
So if an elephant doesn't react, it doesn't really say that much, does it.
The elephant mirror test also brings the difficulties of researching and making observations. You must a quite large mirror, if the subject is too see its whole body and more than just its eye. And making observations in the wild? What are you going to do, put a giant mirror in the the middle of the savanah? And get an elephant to go to it?
Assuming that something isn't there because it hasn't been observed has proved to be a traitorous proposition again and again over the years.
Observes chimps making termite fishing rod by carefully selecting branch and removing twigs.
"Only humans can use tools to use other tools!"
Observes black crows use mutiple tools to get a reward with a higher success rate than the average for 7-years olds.
Sensing a pattern?
The history of the field of ethology just seem be people saying "only humans can X!", only for some experiment or observation proving it false; and so a new frontier is put for the time being, with a constant retreat of the X that only humans can.
Note my examples are about tools, but there is a similar withdrawal in every possible field, interpreting body signals, emotional states, communication, etc.
Maybe dolphins are down there doing mathematical equations and philosophy with echolocation - if so, it would definitely make what we're doing to the oceans even more horrifying - but we're super unlikely to find the same thing going on with cattle or sheep or rats.
You're using very specifically human yardsticks, "mathematics equations", i.e. an expression of mathematics through a codified symbolic and semiotic representation, and "philosophy", which is the "friendship of wisdom". What is non-human wisdom? (rhetorical, I don't know).
Howard Gardner defined intelligence as consisting of multiple parts, such as logical-analytical, visual-spatial, linguistic, emotional, etc., and the one I'm interested in for the purposes of this conversation, body-kinesthetic (or proprioception).
Ballet dancing is considered by many to be at the apex of human expression. The Nut Cracker is the stereotype of canon culture.
Do you think cattle can match that elegance, that grace, that control of the physical self, that collective coordination to achieve a purposeful pattern?
The aristotelian Scalae Naturae, eternally chaining down human perception in the bonds of hierarchy.
In a way, anthropocentrism is natural, to go from yourself to understand other things.
But the Scalae Naturae is a culture bagage that it's deeply rooted in western thought, perniciously influencing fundamental assumptions without awareness of it, in the worst cases leading to scientifical (and political) abominations like the Peter Jordanson Lobster Man.
This is episode looks to be one of the ones shortly after I stopped watching MLP; it sounds like it was both deeper than I expected in parts and kind of fluffy nonsense at other points.
Overall though, you reaction makes me very confused as to what you might think of a certain season finale.
I hadn't actually seen that before, and it's great.
The whole thing seems like a parody of shoujo cliches. Clumsy girl with a squeaky voice is running late for school, has a meet cute where she bumps into some dude, he picks up something she dropped for her... except it's Izumi, so the thing she's carrying is a bear that she defeated in hand-to-hand combat. And it's an Arakawa manga, so instead of some bishounen, it's a burly muscle dude with a mustache. All played completely straight.
Never before have I seen a more perfect romance. Izumi and Sig is a relationship goal which cannot be attained, only tried for. Shoot for the moon and you might land amongst a love perhaps almost as great as theirs.
The pegasi, with their weather-manipulating powers, basically held the earth ponies hostage, demanding tribute in exchange for weather favorable to their agriculture. The unicorns exacted a toll of their own in exchange for magically regulating the day and night cycle, which is not something I remembered that they could do.
This was actually the first ep that told us they could do this -- because in "modern" Equestria, and for at least the past previous 1000 years, that was a job for the rulers (Celestia & Luna) to do, as established from the opening narration of the very first ep of the series. (a subsequent episode further explained that before Celestia's time it required a group of multiple unicorns to accomplish, and the majority of them ended up overstrained to the point that they eventually lost their magic)
In fact this was the first episode that clearly indicated there had even existed an Equestria before Celestia came along -- and until mid-to-late Season 2 there had been competing fanons about the extent of her (and Luna's) omnipotence or lack thereof, because the only seeming potential enemy to their rule had been another cosmically-powerful entity ("Discord"). So before this ep, "Hearth's Warming Eve" -- it was a plausible interpretation that Celestia and Luna had been actually deities that created not just Equestria itself but the entirety of the cosmos that contains it (there had been several such fics) -- something similar to what Aslan is for Narnia.
This ep, by showing us that Equestria was founded before Celestia was around, and that moving the sun around can be accomplished by normal unicorns, reduced severely the possibility (and the Season 2 finale killed it outright.)
I did like that they made a point of showing the intersection between classism and xenophobia, and suggested that common people of all stripes often have their better natures suppressed or corrupted by the authorities. That it did this while still having said common people accept culpability for their own actions rather than scapegoating their leaders for all of their own misdeeds is also a welcome bit of nuance that I wish I saw more often.
I think it was also the first ep of MLP that did a decent job of tackling the issue of bigotry -- earlier attempts, in Season 1, were probably well-meant but cringeworthily... problematic in (among other things) their attempted one-to-one correspondence with real-life groups (e.g. if Buffalos are stand-ins for Native Americans, and a Zebra represents an African immigrant... what does that mean for ponies themselves, they are all 'white Anglo-Americans' by default?)
In the last couple seasons, friendship between *species* becomes a major theme of the show, with griffins/hippogriffs/dragons/changelings/yaks/ponies coming together to face a threat, and the time-skip in the finale showing us an Equestria that's now populated by many species.
----
There's a few more reasons I really like this episode, and feel whole essays could be written about it.
- I really enjoyed, for once, how MLP handled the introduction of Equestria's backstory. Backstory should be about increasing the scope of the world, increasing the possible stories a world contains: but too often in other eps we see flashbacks that *reduce* the potential of the fictional universe. For example, the conflict between Celestia and Luna could have been an actual war that lasted months or years -- when we see it in a flashback, it's reduced to a single night's worth of events, seemingly, nothing interesting to talk about -- less interesting than we just imagined.
This ep doesn't do that -- both by its content itself (there existed a world with warring tribes before Equestria), but also by its format: By making the ep a theatrical play about a fable that's the founding story of Equestria, we're left free to imagine how much or how little it was watered down or even drastically changed from the "actual" events.
- Rarity/Rainbow Dash/Pinkie Pie are identifiably *themselves*, even as they play nasty characters, except for one single trait they possess and their characters in the play lack: caring about others... Take away their nastiness and selfishness and Platinum/Hurricane/Pumpkinhead become Rarity/Rainbow Dash/Pinkie Pie -- and this actually ties in to the second MLP episode I commissioned, where Diamond Tiara struggles with what the core of her identity is really supposed to be like, and finally reaches the conclusion that caring about others costs her nothing of herself, and gains her everything. "We know you want friends who admire you/You want to be the star with all the power too/ But there's a better way, there's a better way". For better or worse those desires of her are not rejected by the CMC -- they're just trying to convince her that she doesn't need be nasty to attain them.
- On the negative side, "Hearth's Warming Eve" is an example (not the worst example, but an example nonetheless) of two of the standard reoccuring problems of MLP that are among the things that make it really hard to take seriously -- the extremely easy redemption of villains, and friendship-fueled magical blasts so often solve the episode's problem. ("Crusaders of the Lost Mark" is also an example of the first of these problems, and also a third one: nonsensical puns that are just references that don't have any deeper connection to what the ep is about)
Huh. That's... not what I would have expected. Waaaaaay back in season 1 when these three started on the whole cutie mark quest, it was basically a running gag that the three of them very obviously already had their own special talents (carpentry, acrobatics and singing, respectively) but were completely oblivious to the idea that the things that they actually liked doing and excelled at might be their talents and instead kept trying random shit.
Seasons 2, 3, and 4 had actually started hinting that Applebloom had a potions talent instead, as she was consistently seen frequently learning, helping or experimenting with potions, by herself or with Zecora or Twilght.
But the actual talent is not necessarily the calling nor the drive, and that's one of the things I like about the episode! Yes, Sweetie Belle is a talented singer -- but it's probably not the sort of thing that she would want for her life, at least not to the extent it overshadows the other thing she wants. (and her cutie mark does actually include a musical note, but contained in the overall Cutie Mark Crusaders emblem)
And of course I enjoy the fact that they discover their cutie marks one of the few times they have NOT been seeking their cutie marks -- but were instead reaching out to help their long-time bully, and deciding they're going to be helping other ponies from now on instead of focusing on their selves. That's again, of course, nothing particularly deep or original or surprising, but still a decent message: You don't self-actualize by navel gazing, nor by doing something for the sake of then saying "I'm now self-actualized".
That really seems a much better conclusion/apex of their arcs, than the mere joke of "haha, the audience knows in advance what their cutie marks are going to be, but they don't", which the writers started out with.
Envoy from the east, huh? Either someone coming from what used to be Ishval, or we're finally going to learn something about the world beyond Unnamistan.
Well, the teaser starts with the most bizarrely designed character I've seen in this show so far appearing in a cloud of smoke in the middle of a street.
If this is our envoy, then the east is not exactly good at presentation. He looks like the Monopoly guy with rabies.
Actually, my bad, this isn't actually our envoy. The scene intro made it look like Grandpa Joker here appeared in a puff of smoke, but that was actually just smoke from a blast that Scar just tried to him with. This is Giolio Comanche, the Silver Alchemist, who Scar seems to have picked as his next target after failing with Edward.
The battle begins. Like Edward and Izumi, Comanche seems to be a spontaneous caster who doesn't need glyphs. UNLIKE them, however, he has a bunch of incredibly intricate alchemical symbols tattooed all over his hands and arms, which I suppose is probably a more common way to get that ability than selling your body parts to Wogdat. Come to think of it, didn't Scar have an arm tattoo himself? When we saw it, I thought it was implying he's a Sin, but now I think it's more likely that it's just what lets him insta-cast his disintegrate spell. Anyway, the two repeatedly lunge passed one another, with Scar trying to disintegrate Comanche, and Comanche conjuring bladed weapons and um...turning himself into some kind of helicopter?
Yes, that's him in the upper left corner. No, not a projectile of his, or a conjured vehicle, it's literally Giolio Comanche with a sword spinning himself around fast enough to create lift.
Suddenly it's last year again and I'm still watching JJBA.
The Silver Alchemist manages to put a scratch or two on Scar, which is more than most of his previous targets could boast. However, Scar simultaneously lands a disintegrating touch on one of Comanche's automail legs, causing the bizarre creature to tumble off the wharf they're on and into the water. While his opponent is shocked and off-balance in the water, Scar dives after him and executes his customary finisher.
Fare thee well in the realm of Wogdat, Silver Alchemist. You fought well, but you also were a complete stylistic mismatch for this show, so I can't say I'll be able to mourn your passing that much. Roll intro.
...Oh. It's a new intro. Huh.
It's not that I have an unhealthy attachment to "Again" and sometimes listen to it on loop until my fiance threatens to break my computer. I mean, I do, but even if that wasn't the case I'd feel like this one was a major step down. The song, "Hologram," is both more upbeat, and less energetic. It doesn't really evoke any emotions or catch my attention in general. The imagery and composition thereof, meanwhile, seems like it was meant for a more intense theme, and falls sort of flat without one. Well, anyway. We have Edward and Alphonse in Wogdat's realm, and then in a gloomy overlook near Central. A bunch of state alchemists posing on pillar-tops, and then Mustang and his underlings in front of an Unnamistani flag. A little kung fu girl with an even littler kung fu panda. No, I have no idea who she is or why the panda is so tiny, they're just there.
I am entirely unsure of what to expect from this duo once they appear in the show. Notably, the girl isn't even trying to look pseudo-European like most stuff in FMA does, and her choice of pets and her backdrop both say Chinese. Maybe this is related to the eastern country that we're going to meet an envoy from? A not!China to go with our existing not!CentralEurope?
Some combat montage stuff that whizzes by too fast for me to distinguish much. We see the Sins doing their thing, Father looking all scary in his shadowy corner-throne, and...I think we briefly see Gluttony turn into some kind of monster, but I'm not sure. Like I said, it flies by really fast. We get a sunset shot of two figures framed against the dusk, similar to the one at the end of "Again," but this time it's in a graveyard and the camera is zoomed in enough to identify Edward and Father.
Dunno if that graveyard is supposed to be literal, or just a metaphorical representation of Father's fear of death or the people whose lives he's consumed or whatever. The next image that stands out to me, amid another collection of too-fast action shots, is Edward and Scar dueling, this time seemingly as equals. They both use the disintegration attack on each other, and end up parrying with unseen results.
The OP ends with a pretty unevocative shot of Edward and Alphonse waiting by some train tracks.
So, yeah. Some of the clips were tantalizing in their implications about the events to come, but the intro itself is pretty meh. Especially compared to its predecessor, but even just objectively it's nothing special. Ah well.
We now return to Scar, as he returns to the abandoned countryside building he's been squatting in to meet some new surprise roommates. The dumbass ex-official-turned-bounty-hunter from before, and Kung Fu Pandagirl. The latter introduces herself as May Chang, while the former cowers from the angry Scar.
Title card. Guess our envoy is a very young one, unless she's here with her parents or the like.
Apparently, Scar and the other guy (Yoki) were in hiding here together, and Yoki found Chang collapsed by the side of the road, and has just nursed her back to health. Yoki also told her that he was Scar's "master," which does not amuse the Ishvalan. Why are Scar and Yoki on the lamb together, now? Hadn't Yoki stalked and/or betrayed him and the other Ishvalans during their last meeting? The hell is going on?
...
Yeah, I really need to just buy the damned manga already. I've already been told that Yoki's last scene was badly mangled by the adaptation, and I feel like this is just more of the same.
...
Scar tells the foreign girl to leave now that she's healthy enough to. However, his mind is changed when she sees the cut that Comanche left him, and quickly creates a pentacle glyph using chalk and some knives and heals him with it.
Healing is something that we've never seen alchemy do before (with the exception of Dr. Marcoh, who needed protostone to pull it off), and Yoki and Scar are both appropriately shocked. According to Chang, this is just a normal application of "alkahestry," an art practiced in her homeland of Xing. A homeland that she claims to have come from on foot across the great eastern desert, accompanied only by her pet micropanda Shao May. Which is much more believable now that they've seen she's a skilled alkahestrist.
...
So, alchemical healing. Not only have we never seen anyone do it before, but we've seen significant evidence that the Unnamistanis can't do it without rules-breaking amplifiers like protostone. Battle wounds have always required prolonged hospital stays to recover from, without any sign of medical alchemists being involved. The existence of automail prosthetics also implies that functioning, living flesh is not something that they can just transmute. So, how come the Xingese can do it?
I suspect that this relates to the human transmutation taboo, and my earlier theory that it was created as a "wall around the commandments" to avoid angering Wogdat. Their interpretation of "no human transmutation" might include no transmuting sick or injured body parts into healthy versions of themselves, and no transmuting other materials into human flesh. In other words, they CAN heal people, but have avoided doing so because of their very restrictive interpretation of the divine taboo. In Xing, meanwhile, the early alkahestrists may have been less paranoid and risk averse in response to the early mishaps. They've learned exactly what does and doesn't provoke divine consequences, and outlawed only the specific things that do without seeing the need for a wide berth.
Alternatively, maybe they also have a broad and highly restrictive taboo...but they just expanded it in a different direction than the alchemists did. For instance, if Wogdat's rule is "don't use transmutation to create humans," and the alchemists expanded it to "don't transmute human biomatter at all," the alkahestrists might have broadened it to "don't use transmutation to create anything." In which case, a Xingese visitor might be similarly amazed to see an Unnamistani alchemist turning iron filings into machinery.
Of course, if that is the case, then I wonder how much contact these two cultures have had. I suppose alkahestric healing must have its limitations, or Edward and Alphonse would have just traveled to Xing to have their bodies restored (in part if not completely). In modern times, Unnamistan might well have closed borders and an information blackout that would make this harder, but that by itself isn't enough; people would still remember that Xing exists, and Edward at least wouldn't be deterred by a closed border. So yeah, regenerating full limbs must be beyond their ability as well (either due to their own version of the taboo, or because that actually does cross the line that gets Wogdat's attention).
Well, let's see if I'm right.
...
After healing Scar, Chang notices the tattoos on his arm, and recognizes some of the symbols as alkahestric. Scar explains that the tattoo was given to him by his brother; a scholar who studied both alchemy and alkahestry, and synthesized both traditions in his work. Interesting! Given Ishval's position on Unnamistan's far eastern border, it makes sense that they'd be situated along a Silk Road equivalent, and their wizards would get the most opportunity to study and mix techniques from both ends of it.
Of course, this also means that the religious terrorist character is from Fantasy Afghanistan. No further comment needed.
It seems that Chang and the two men are both planning to head to Central, for different reasons. Scar has probably chosen his next target, and Yoki is...helping him? I guess? IDFK. Chang, meanwhile, journeyed to Unnamistan in search of immortality, which none of Xing's native arts were able to give her. I begin to suspect that May Chang is actually much, much older than she appears. Anyway, she heard that there's a man in Central who can help her learn what she seeks; a mighty alchemist with long, flowing golden hair, a man who seeks immortality while also performing daring heroic deeds for the people's safety. Edward Elric.
Yeah, um. I'm pretty sure she got father and son mixed up here. Edward doesn't spend all that much time in Central, and he's not looking for immortality. Hohenheim's last publically known whereabouts WERE in Central, and according to Izumi he was going on and on about the philosopher's stone before he vanished, but he doesn't go around being heroic and action hero-y. Both of them are mighty alchemists with long, blonde hair, and they're both named Elric. By the time rumors about them got to Xing, they very easily could have gotten mixed together.
Well, Scar isn't super happy about Chang wanting to travel with them, but he doesn't bother forbidding it either. I suspect he's torn between his desire to not involve an innocent foreign child (as far as he knows) in his dangerous work, and the benefits of having a healer in the party.
Cut to Central. A woman is walking home with some groceries when she's accosted by Barry the Chopper. Having survived Lab 5's destruction, there's nothing preventing him from going back to his old hobby, and being stuck in a golem body makes it hard for him to indulge in many hobbies besides this one.
Playing with fire there, Barry. More murders with your familiar MO are going to bring Lust and Envy down on you like a sack of artificially intelligent bricks. Then again, he wasn't the sanest individual to begin with, and however many years of deathless imprisonment and slavery surely haven't done any benefits for his ability to think clearly.
His luck is even worse than that, though, because it turns out that the woman he tried to serial murder is actually Riza Hawkeye with her hair down.
Her pistol can't do any serious damage to the golem, but her accurate shots do a number on his limb joints and slow him down to the point where he can't outrun her. Next, he tries to frighten her into panicking by pulling off his helmet, only for her to just express surprise while keeping her pistol steady. When Barry aggrievedly asks why she isn't scared, she explains that she's already encountered one of his kind.
Alphonse is trolling him remotely, retroactively, and completely unknowingly. Barry literally cannot ever get to scare anyone - probably the one prospect of his transhuman state he's been consoling himself with - because of Alphonse.
Beauty.
Barry tries to talk his way out of this, but it's kind of too late to play that card once you've identified yourself as a notorious serial killer and tried to attack. Hawkeye finishes immobilizing him, and calls Mustang and Co over to interrogate him in a warehouse somewhere off the record.
Barry has no reason not to cooperate, so he spills everything he knows. He names the two individuals in charge of running the facility as Lust and Envy, and gives their descriptions (not that that actually means anything in Envy's case, but in Lust's it does), as well as his impression that they in turn were answering to someone else. He tells them all about the protostone experiments, and the previous human transmutation ones that he was a victim of himself. Unfortunately, there's no use in him naming the researchers who developed these techniques; as soon as the protostone formula was perfected, Lust and Envy used it on its own inventors, and had been running Lab 5 on their own with just Barry and Slicer's assistance ever since.
I guess it might have been more than just guilt that made Dr. Marcoh run away, then. He may have realized what the haemonculi were planning to do once he and his colleagues were no longer needed.
Mustang's final question is about the death of Maes Hughes. However, as this took place after Barry's escape from the ruins of Lab 5, he knows nothing about it. Mustang believes him; as Barry himself points out, if he were to assassinate someone he would use his butchers' knives, whereas Hughes was killed by a gunshot.
Meanwhile, the Elric brothers stop by Rush Valley to visit Winry again after leaving Dublith. Winry is glad to see them, and then pissed off when Edward shows her where his arm was damaged in the Greed duel before she can even show them into the shop.
Okay. Show. I will freely admit that this is as good a reason to be pissed off at Edward as Winry has ever had to date, but...covering the wrench in blood? Seriously? That's...YOU DON'T SHOW BLOOD DURING SLAPSTICK COMEDY SCENES!! YOU JUST DON'T!!!
Sigh...I swear, whenever I start again along the road to appreciating Winry, the show does something like this.
Anyway, while touching up Edward's arm she tells them that Paninya is no longer stealing now, and has begun to work in roofing. Amazing. I care. She inquires in turn about what the Elrics managed to learn in Dublith, and Alphonse tells her that...well, it's complicated.
Jump ahead to the brothers meandering through the streets of Rush Valley, and Alphonse finding a ragged, half-unconscious man laying in an alley. When they help him get washed up and fed, he thanks them warmly, and claims to be a traveler from Xing.
...
Hmmmmmmm.
The Benjamin Franklin Effect is a cognitive trick for quickly ingratiating yourself to strangers. Basically, by asking them for a favor, you both a) put yourself in an indebted situation to them, which puts them at ease and makes them feel in charge, and more insidiously b) cause them to retroactively feel like you must be their friend because they did a friendly thing for you.
I wonder if this is just A Thing in Xingese culture. When you're in a new place, you just over somewhere public and look pathetic, and it's understood that that means you've come in friendship.
If it's not a Xingese social norm, then it's at least a tactic that these (almost certainly connected) visitors to Unnamistan are employing. I kinda hope it's the former, though. It would certainly make Xing a lot more culturally distinctive than most fantasy countries.
...
When he tells them where he's from, we see a map that shows the countries in relation to each other, and FINALLY AFTER FIFTEEN DAMNED EPISODES WE HAVE THE NAME!
Amestris. I'm told that the name of the country actually did appear once before, very briefly, on the map in P Diddy's office in the pilot, but it must have been pretty damned small and quick. Well, better late than never I suppose.
So, looking at this map now. We've been told that Amestris is an expanding empire, but it looks to still be smaller than its neighbors. Of course, its possible that Aerugo and the other two lands whose names are partly offscreen aren't actually countries, but disunified regions that just share a language or geographic boundary a la pre-unification Italy or Germany. If so, it makes sense that Amestris might have been gradually snapping up one little city state at a time as it pushes outward. The central desert seems to be a no-man's-land, with the enormous Xing being straight across it to the east. There's also a brief mention of the traveler having visited the ruins of Xerxes in the middle of the desert. I guess Fantasy Iran is a thing of the past, then?
Also, Xing is lot closer than I was expecting. You'd think their unique form of alchemy would be better known in Amestris, if they were that nearby? I suppose Amestris having closed borders would explain part of this, but not all. On the other hand though...how easy is it to cross the desert? The technological level of this world overall is close to Earth's 1920's, but come to think of it I don't think we've ever seen an airplane or even a blimp. If they don't have aircraft, and no one's built a railroad across the desert yet, and given that Amestris is landlocked...yeah, I suppose they could still be pretty hard to reach from each other. Telecommunications tech exists, but it might only be a few decades old, and not everyone might have it yet, so Amestris and Xing might not be hearing each other's radiobroadcasts yet either.
Something else that calls my attention in the map is that Amestris has a very unnatural shape for a country. Almost perfectly circular. That's weird. Very weird. Circles have a particular significance in the world of FMA. We know that Hughs figured something out by looking at a map of the country and making some sort of connection between recent events. And, I earlier suspected that Father is plotting to sacrifice the entire country for a true Philosopher's Stone.
Could Father and his minions have been guiding Amestris' expansion in order to create a giant alchemical glyph?
Back to the conversation though, the newcomer says he came to Amestris to study western alchemy. Yeah, he and May Chang are def part of the same party or mission. For some reason, they've chosen to spread out and poke around Amestris individually. Maybe they think this will attract less attention from the junta? Anyway, he tells the brothers that in his homeland, alkahestry is used mainly for medical purposes. Edward confirms my earlier assessment that most Amestrian alchemy is reserved for military uses, although from the sound of things this is only partly down to Fiddy Cent's policies. Even before the codification of "state alchemists" and the strong-arming of most practitioners into becoming such, this was a warlike part of the world, so local alchemical research has usually been military-driven. Edward allows that the militarism has ramped up significantly since Li'l John took office, but it's not clear if he blames him for this, or if he sees him as having risen to the occasion in trying times. The party line is almost certainly the latter, but I wonder how many Amestrians honestly believe it, and whether Edward is one of them.
Edward gives a little more geopolitical background as well. In addition to its recent civil war following its annexation of Ishval, Amestris has for some time been in a state of constant skirmishing along its borders with Aerugo to the south and Creta to the west. The large country to the north, Drachma, is another centralized nation state, and Amestris' historic rival. The two are currently at peace, but it's a cold peace, owing largely to the two nations' current borders meeting at an impassable mountain range. Looking at the map, there's a little chunk of that mountain range that Amestris will have to claim if Father actually is trying to make a perfect circle. If so, I imagine he'll be saving that step for the very end, since provoking Drachma could have very serious repercussions.
The Xingite asks if Edward is an alchemist, since he knows so much about Amestrian state alchemy policies, and the brothers introduce themselves by name and position. The foreigner identifies himself in turn as Ling Yao. Edward and Alphonse are predictably curious about Xingese healing techniques, but unfortunately Yao isn't able to tell them much about it, because he isn't an alkahestrist himself. Surprising, given that he claims to have come here to learn about alchemy. Apparently, he's not here to learn any practice. He's just here looking for a philosopher's stone.
Okay, I think I get what's going on here. Recent events have caused word about the protostone to get out, despite Snoop Dawg's best efforts, and foreign interests are beginning to hear about it. Chang, Yao, and possibly others either came to Amestris independently as they claim in order to find out about the stone for themselves after the rumors reached Xing, or they're agents of a larger Xingese organization on a fact finding mission. This would also further explain why Chang is associating Edward in particular with the stone; he was involved in the events that caused the protostone secret to get out.
Edward finds this coincidence awfully suspicious, and tells him that he and Alphonse know nothing about the philosopher's stone before bidding him good day. Which provokes Yao to summon his hiding soldiers to abduct them for interrogation. So yeah. This guy's either a crime lord, or a Xingese intelligence agent, and he came here with the intention of stealing state secrets.
That said, I don't think he made the best call in accosting them openly. Even if we're meant to assume that there's no one out on the street to see this and call the local garrison and/or the Rush Valley automail techbro militia, he knows that Edward is an Amestrian state alchemist, and that those are basically living weapons.
Well, it seems that Yao isn't actually that overconfident. His ninjas quickly prove themselves to be among Xing's finest, using their agility and acrobatic skill to avoid Edward and Alphonse's initial counterattacks and briefly gaining the advantage. I suppose it might actually have been reasonable for Yao to wager a couple of his own country's elite special forces against the foreign ones. Also, Edward is a kid, so he might have reasonably assumed that he'd be among the least dangerous of the state alchemists.
But, of course, this just forces Ed to take the kid gloves off and demonstrate that there are state alchemists, and then there's Edward fucking Elric.
From the roof she was working on across the town, Panina looks up and gasps. I care.
The battle continues for a bit, though, with Edward and Alphonse being separated in the explosion and each squaring off against one of the ninjas. It turns out that they aren't actually pure mundanes. They have the ability to sense their opponents' ki, which boosts their already phenomenal reaction time in combat to superhuman levels, so landing a hit is extremely difficult. Their ki-sense may be intro level alkahestry; if Xingese alkahestry is primarily medical focused, then the combat magic they DO have would probably involve stuff like bio-sensing and the like. It could also just be an unrelated mystical art with nothing to do with alchemy at all, though. Anyway, Alphonse has it easier here, both because his ninja seems less skilled, and because ki-sensing is useless against his golem body. Furthermore, he's helped by the arrival of Panina, who...okay, I'll be fair, she and Alphonse actually DID do some bonding in the later half of "Miracle at Rush Valley," so this feels plausible.
Together, she and Al easily overpower their ninja, who is revealed to be an older man.
Edward does surprisingly poorly against his opponent, at least at first, though I suppose he's still recovering from his Greed wounds. He's facing the stronger of the two, and gradually losing to her superior evasion and mobility, until he realizes that insulting her master causes her to become enraged and lose her focus. He uses this to pin her down, and then disentegrates her mask to reveal a woman about his own age. Unfortunately, having her face reveals makes her panic, and she attaches a bomb to the automail arm that's gripping her before she realizes what she's even doing. Holy fuck ninjagirl.
When the smoke clears, she sees his damaged arm poking out of a pile of the rubble she just created, and stares at it in self-castigating horror as she realizes how badly she fucked up the mission. Which leaves her a sitting duck for Edward, who detatched that arm the instant he saw what she was doing, protected himself from the blast, and now conjures up some steel bars and cables to trap her.
I guess her distracted state - first from anger, then from shock - also interfered with her ki-sensing. That makes sense; ki abilities in fiction typically require a great deal of concentration, and Edward was doing everything he could to break hers.
The Elrics and Panina regroup, and a minute later Yao shows himself again. He tries to deescalate now that he's lost by congratulating the brothers on their victory and offering to pay them more than Vanilla Ice does if they switch sides, but he's already made way too bad of a first impression for them to be tempted. Fortunately for them, the Techbro Militia shows up just then to figure out who's responsible for all the damage, and Yao and his ninjas escape in the confusion. Somehow? I'm not sure how the girl got away, since she was bound and suspended just a minute ago. :/
Also...the people of Rush Valley seem to think weirdly little of State Alchemists, not immediately taking Edward's word that the Xingese started the altercation. I'm starting to get the impression that Rush Valley is some kind of autonomous techno-libertarian city state in the middle of Amestris. I wonder if they negotiated some kind of federalization deal in lieu of being conquered by leveraging their automail services? That would make sense. But whatever the case, Rush Valley seems to think little of Amestrian law, and its own flavor of fucked upness is very different from the rest of the country's, which aren't the sort of things I'd expect R Kelly to tolerate unless he was forced to.
Well, since Edward's freshly-repaired arm is all fucked up again, Alphonse fixes the damage using glyphless alchemy, which he can now perform nearly on a par wth Edward thanks to having recovered his Wogdat memories. Cool, I was wondering if that would happen. Edward tries to be happy for him, but being the alchemical powerhouse of the duo was an important part of his self esteem, and now that Alphonse can do that as well...well, Edward's kind of a prick, we already know, but at least he tries to keep it to himself for now.
Eh, he'll get over it when it comes time to fight the Sins and the brothers need every ounce of firepower both of them can muster.
Some time later, the Elrics are approached by Yao once again. This time, he introduces himself properly, and while he's established himself as a liar the story that he tells this time seems very likely to be true. Earlier, I guessed that he was either a Xingese agent, or some sort of crimelord, and it turns out that he's...well...sort of both. Xing is a feudal kingdom, and Yao is one of two dozen princes currently competing for the coming succession. These dynastic conflicts are a real shitshow, thanks to the Emperor traditionally marrying a daughter of EACH of Xing's noble houses, so every house that he's produced an heir with has a vested interest in their boy becoming the successor. So, Yao is here in secret to see if he can get his hands on the rumored Amestrian philosopher's stone and use it to secure the throne for himself. His bodyguards, of course, are elite soldiers sworn to his mother's house.
Interesting setup. Xing's politics seems to be sort of a "what if" scenario for Warring States era China, with the various factions having agreed to an extremely clumsy and inefficient compromise instead of just being conquered by the strongest among them like IRL. I guess sometimes the brute force solution really can be the least bad, if this jaw-droppingly unstable dynastic clusterfuck is the alternative.
Granted, maybe I should be looking for Japanese parallels as well as Chinese ones. They do have the ninja thing going on, after all, so there's clearly Japanese influence here as well. I guess Xing might be a mix of various East Asian societies, just like the Amestrian heartland seems to be a mix of several European ones. As a possible third influence, one of my patrons has informed me that the Ottoman Sultanate had a harem system somewhat like Xing's, though I don't know Turkish history well enough to comment on that.
Also, I'm pretty sure Chang is going to turn out to be one of Yao's half-sisters, here to do pretty much the same thing as him with her own house's backing. Still not placing any bets on whether she's actually as young as she looks; with the Xingese aptitude for medical alkahestry, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a skilled practitioner could temporarily warp herself into something that looks like a child in order to better play the locals. I'm also not placing any bets on whether she had her own stealthy bodyguards watching from hiding while she insinuated herself into Scar and Yoki's little group.
Anyway. The brothers seem to feel the same way about the Xingese political system that I do.
Needless to say, they don't give a single shit about the feudal bickering of a country they've never been to, and even if they were Edward is NOT about to let yet another machiavellian twat learn how to melt people down by the hundreds to increase his personal power. Before Yao can promise or beg or wheedle any more, Winry shows up, and Edward stops paying any attention to Yao at all in order to deal with her rage at what happened to her brand new automail work.
Having been brushed off, Yao goes off to sulk a bit and consider his next move. His bodyguards are distraught at seeing him reduced to bargaining and begging so humbly from a mere foreign peasant boy-soldier, but we've already seen that he's far more pragmatic and less dignified than his bannermen.
There's also an amusing irony in the ninjas' complaint, now that I think about it. The prince shouldn't be humbling himself before common-born boys. But, if Hohenheim is the secret ruler of Amestris, wouldn't that actually make Edward and Alphonse princes of a sort themselves?
Edward and Alphonse decide to head back to Central to use what they've learned about the haemonculi to continue their investigation, despite Armstrong's warning. Winry decides to follow them, for some reason.
Didn't she only JUST start her apprenticeship in Rush Valley? I don't think the brothers were in Dublith for more than a week or two, at most. Her boss says she could use a break and bids her farewell for now, but...I'm not buying it. The timeline for this doesn't make any damned sense.
She says she wants to go visit the Hugheses again, which...yeah, I don't think Ed and Al have gotten the memo about that yet, have they? But still, why the hell does she need them in order to travel?
Well, I guess Winry is back for now, and already giving me headaches again. Great. They set out for Central, with Yao tagging along behind them at arm's length because there's not much they can do about it. Well...I guess they could arrest him for attacking a state Alchemist once they leave Rush Valley, but he seems canny enough to stay out of reach once they're back under Amestrian martial jurisdiction. If that is how Rush Valley works. This really needs some clear explanation.
Meanwhile, Scar and Yoki also head to Central, with Chang asleep in the back of their vehicle. Yoki asks Scar what his actual name is. Scar explains that among his people, names are considered sacred, and that he chose to renounce his own when he undertook this ungodly path of revenge he walks. Damn, this guy is hardcore. End episode.
Woooo boy was this one a mixed bag. In this case, I found the end balance to be strongly positive. The things that this episode did right - the worldbuilding, intrigue, and character development - are all stuff I weigh pretty heavily. The things it did poorly - the tonal flubs, the questionable choreography at some points, and the lack of explanation for some things that really, really beg for it - are all serious annoyances, but not enough to bring down those successes.
First off, worldbuilding! As I mentioned in my second Yona review, I tend to be wary when stories with a personal focus start expanding into the geopolitical scope. In this case, however, I honestly feel like the show has been depriving us up to this point by keeping the world beyond Amestris offscreen (to the point where the country didn't even need a name to distinguish it until now). Edward told us just enough about the conflicts between Amestris and the other not!European polities to give us the sense of a long, murky, and fairly convincing history, which does a lot to explain how the people might have been quick to embrace a strongman dictator.
Xing in particular was a pleasant surprise. Depictions of China or Chinese fantasy counterparts in anime tend to be...well...let's just say that Japanese media has some unfortunate baggage on that front. When anime depicts Japan analogues juxtaposed against others, meanwhile, you tend to get jingoistic cringe. Arakowa's mostly-chinese-but-also-sort-of-japanese creation averts both of these common failings. Xing's political system is awful, but not in an unbelievable or caricaturist way, and the fact that we learn about it alongside the western countries' own violent status quo makes them all seem equally fucked up in their own regards rather than putting anyone down (if I had to choose between Xing's feudal chaos and Amestris' militarized society, even before adding the latter's secret diabolical lich king into the equation, well...). The fact that Xing also has some just plain fantastical cultural quirks - the playing pathetic when you want to make friends thing, etc - that don't come from any real world country that I know of also helps it stand on its own rather than making me view it as just "fantasy China" or even "fantasy East Asia."
That said, one downside of the worldbuilding - and this has been an ongoing flaw of FMA's - is the overreliance on real world historical parallels to begin with. Xing is BETTER than some examples, on account of not just being China with a different name, but I still generally prefer it when fantasy cultures don't correspond too closely to any one real life one. Mixing things from multiple, very different real life societies and adding some of your own weird twists until it's really its own thing can give you something much more unique than just Greece/China/England/whatever-plus-magic. The material this episode introduces is obviously worlds better than Edward telling the story of Icarus and Daedalus rather than an original FMA-verse myth back in "City of Heresy," or the iconography in Wogdat's realm being literally Hebrew text with Kabbalistic symbols, but there's still plenty of room for improvement.
Plotwise, while I wish we'd learned more about the broader setting before now, this all follows pretty logically. We had Amestris' greatest alchemist bragging to his friends in Central about a philosopher's stone related discovery before vanishing, then a couple decades later a cult leader in Leore displays impossible powers before being cracked down on by the state, and then there's whatever details of the lab 5 incident that might have gotten out. This IS about the time that foreign spies should be starting to investigate, and a neighboring kingdom facing a succession crisis would certainly be among the firsts to show interest.
On the other hand...I kind of feel like there should have been another adventure or two between the last episode and this one. The Dublith arc had a smarmy jerk with a bunch of minions try to abduct the Elric brothers to learn a secret from them. This arc had ANOTHER smarmy jerk with a bunch of minions try to abduct the Elric brothers to learn a secret from them. Way too repetitive. This really should have come a few episodes after Greed rather than immediately. Another fix might have been to have the brothers meet Chang instead of Yao. An adoring fangirl is something we HAVEN'T seen Edward deal with before, and giving them a friendlier character to drive the brothers' current arc would be a nice contrast to the action packed Lab 5 and Dublith sequences.
Then again, if the Elrics met Chang, then that would mean the other party would have to meet Yao. And I doubt Yao's presence in the story would exceed two minutes if he tried to pull his shit on Scar. So, maybe it's a plot necessity.
On the character front, there wasn't a lot going on with Edward and Alphonse, but the little that did happen was quality. When Alphonse recovered his memories last episode, I actually wondered if Edward was going to be jealous or resentful at no longer being *the* hyperalchemist. Seeing it happen, and the beginnings of the tensions that it'll cause between the brothers, makes me hopeful. Once again, we'll probably be seeing friction between the two, and this time it won't just be over a misunderstanding like in "Created Feelings." Edward is going to have to confront one of his own major character flaws. Alphonse, hopefully, will finally get the development of his own that he's been almost-but-not-quite receiving for a long time now. Seeing their reactions to Hughes' death when they return to Central is also going to change things a lot. Now, they'll have to figure out how to work through their personal issues while knowing that a very powerful external enemy is actively gunning for them and their associates.
Speaking of very powerful external enemies, Scar occupied the second ring of this episode's circus, and he put on quite a good show. We now know that one of the people he's trying to avenge in particular is his alchemist/alkahestrist brother, and we have a better sense of what the world really lost with the razing of Ishval. Given that Arakawa started writing this in 2001, its quite possible that she was thinking of Scar as the mujahadin to Amestris' more-successful-than-IRL Soviet Union rather than (or in addition to) a zealot to its Roman Empire. His mixed merciful and pragmatic impulses with regards to Chang were interesting, and seem to be representative of the man (monk? priest? something along those lines, it appears) he used to be before the genocide, and the merciless "Scar." The fact that Scar, after having received that talking-to from his former master back in the shantytown and largely agreed with it, is still continuing along his path of revenge regardless is...well...disturbing. He knows he's just going to make things worse by doing this. He doesn't care. He actually considers himself evil at this point, to such an extent that he no longer thinks he's worthy of having a name like a godly human. He doesn't care. I still have some sympathy for the guy, but less so than I did before. At this point, he comes across as almost more pathetic than anything else.
I do wonder how his next meeting with Edward will go. The new OP hinted that they'll be fighting again, this time on much more even footing. And, if he's headed to Central, there's a good chance he'll make another attempt at assassinating Edward once he finds out he's also in town. Just like with Greed, we have the personal failings of Father's victims preventing them from realizing their common enemy and working together. In Greed's case, it was obviously his greed compelling him to use rather than ally. For Scar, of course, it's being blinded by wrath. Meanwhile...Edward is about to have to deal with his own pride, isn't he?
Pride also being, as I noted earlier, his father's greatest sin. And quite possibly the name and theme of his upcoming and most powerful haemonculus creation.
Yeah, the show's definitely doing something with this deadly sin motif after all. It took a little while to get there, but I'm starting to see it.
I'm still not enjoying Winry. And a lot of the "and then this other thing happens" events of the story make it feel less like Edward and Alphonse are investigating a mystery and more like a mystery is relentlessly throwing itself at them. And there's the missing explanations, but cutting/choreography, etc. But overall, FMA:B is still picking up steam. The highs are getting higher, and the lows, while still present, are being more and more heavily outweighed.
Alphonse is trolling him remotely, retroactively, and completely unknowingly. Barry literally cannot ever get to scare anyone - probably the one prospect of his transhuman state he's been consoling himself with - because of Alphonse.
On the other hand...I kind of feel like there should have been another adventure or two between the last episode and this one. The Dublith arc had a smarmy jerk with a bunch of minions try to abduct the Elric brothers to learn a secret from them. This arc had ANOTHER smarmy jerk with a bunch of minions try to abduct the Elric brothers to learn a secret from them. Way too repetitive. This really should have come a few episodes after Greed rather than immediately. Another fix might have been to have the brothers meet Chang instead of Yao. An adoring fangirl is something we HAVEN'T seen Edward deal with before, and giving them a friendlier character to drive the brothers' current arc would be a nice contrast to the action packed Lab 5 and Dublith sequences.
There are rather strong parallels, now that you mention it. I... don't recall if I noticed them at the time, but while I remembered this guy I certainly wasn't struck by the paralllels when you first got to Greed.
Something else that calls my attention in the map is that Amestris has a very unnatural shape for a country. Almost perfectly circular. That's weird. Very weird. Circles have a particular significance in the world of FMA. We know that Hughs figured something out by looking at a map of the country and making some sort of connection between recent events. And, I earlier suspected that Father is plotting to sacrifice the entire country for a true Philosopher's Stone.
Could Father and his minions have been guiding Amestris' expansion in order to create a giant alchemical glyph?
You might recall poor misguided Isaac asking his former compatriots whether they knew who they served or what shape their country was in back during the pilot.
You might recall poor misguided Isaac asking his former compatriots whether they knew who they served or what shape their country was in back during the pilot.
1: In the manga, May Chang ends up half-dead in the same mining town Yoki was terrorizing in the early manga chapter that was, helps them out after a mine collapse in return for helping her. She then finds about Ed, develops a spontaneous crush on her, then heads on her way before the mining town residents could explain that Ed is short and short-tempered. She eventually ends up half-dead from traveling again, is 'rescued' by Yoki in pretty much the same way Dio's dad rescued Jojo's dad, who upon finding out that she's looking for Ed is only too happy to secretly nudge Scar in Ed's direction. Scar took Yoki along because he can be browbeat into being his gofer. Doylistically though he's probably really there to be the Watson that has things explained to him and provides moments of comic relief.
The anime clearly decided that the mining town was filler and should be cut… but things like this highlight the limitations of that choice. While the other cut chapter really was filler and is never referenced again in any capacity, it means both of Scar's erstwhile adventuring party members lost their intros.
2: The Silver Alchemist scene wasn't supposed to happen for a bit, but moving it to be the start of 'season 2' works nicely. Him being a throwaway character that dies the scene he's introduced meant the author was free to give him whatever bizarre appearance or abilities she felt like and not have to worry about people thinking about it too hard.
3: The anime butchered that joke with Paninya. In the manga, the sequence goes:
*Alphonse falls through the ceiling of the building she was repairing. She asks what he's doing.
*Grumpy grandpa ninja dramatically crashes through as well, glowering at them.
*The next panel, they're outside the building running away, with Paninya saying "never mind I think I get it now".
Honestly though that particular joke really only works because of the panel to panel nature of comics.
And a lot of the "and then this other thing happens" events of the story make it feel less like Edward and Alphonse are investigating a mystery and more like a mystery is relentlessly throwing itself at them
FMA isn't just about Edward, other characters are allowed to have agency. Note that we're up to around four adventuring parties now, led by Edward, Roy, Scar, and Ling, each pursuing their own independent goals in addition to Greed's dearly departed team and Team Evil, as well as any others that may show up later this season or future seasons. Quite a change from a work like Jojo, where agency is so threadbare that the protagonists have to take turns passing it around.
Some other thoughts:
A: Ling is a slippery one. He leads with the Benjamin Franklin Effect to schmooze his way in, when that fails he shifts to force, then bribery, then begging, then just kind of pulls a Winry and insists on tagging along whether Ed likes it or not.
B: In the discussion between the brothers and Ling, it is mentioned that a sea route is possible, probably more roundabout given the borders but less difficult than the desert. However Ling wanted to go through the desert so he could stop at the ruins of Xerxes.
But overall, FMA:B is still picking up steam. The highs are getting higher, and the lows, while still present, are being more and more heavily outweighed
You have probably been told this already but this is where the anime diverges from the 2003 version of the anime. It caught up and things will get better going forward.
The technological level of this world overall is close to Earth's 1920's, but come to think of it I don't think we've ever seen an airplane or even a blimp. If they don't have aircraft, and no one's built a railroad across the desert yet, and given that Amestris is landlocked...yeah, I suppose they could still be pretty hard to reach from each other. Telecommunications tech exists, but it might only be a few decades old, and not everyone might have it yet, so Amestris and Xing might not be hearing each other's radiobroadcasts yet either.
So, looking at this map now. We've been told that Amestris is an expanding empire, but it looks to still be smaller than its neighbors. Of course, its possible that Aerugo and the other two lands whose names are partly offscreen aren't actually countries, but disunified regions that just share a language or geographic boundary a la pre-unification Italy or Germany. If so, it makes sense that Amestris might have been gradually snapping up one little city state at a time as it pushes outward. The central desert seems to be a no-man's-land, with the enormous Xing being straight across it to the east. There's also a brief mention of the traveler having visited the ruins of Xerxes in the middle of the desert. I guess Fantasy Iran is a thing of the past, then?
Ooh, info dump time! This is all from supplementary materials.
So, Creta, the nation to the west, is officially unified as a Federal Monarchy of formerly disunified states, but in practice it's nearly completely dis-unified with the various states hating each other, and the "Central Government" taking draconian measures to keep them in line. It honestly seems like the only reason it has not broken apart/collapsed is because they hate Drachma and Amestris more, and so work together to fight them.
Aerugo is indeed based on Italy, but it's also unified under a Principality(aka the ruler has the title of Prince/Princess rather the King/Queen/Emperor/Empress). It's mentioned to be primarily a trading nation, and has managed to stalemate Amestris by throwing money at the problem. However, their economy has begun to breakdown from the strain of so much money and manpower lost, while Amestris, which has better equipment, training, more experience and a far larger population, is actually increasing in strength, so things are currently looking kinda bad for them.
On far more dubious grounds, I think I remember there being something about the nation of Aerugo uniting because of the threat Amestris posed to them, but I can't find anything backing that up, so I think that might have been a fanfiction I read. Or a dream I had.
Also, Xing is lot closer than I was expecting. You'd think their unique form of alchemy would be better known in Amestris, if they were that nearby? I suppose Amestris having closed borders would explain part of this, but not all. On the other hand though...how easy is it to cross the desert? The technological level of this world overall is close to Earth's 1920's, but come to think of it I don't think we've ever seen an airplane or even a blimp. If they don't have aircraft, and no one's built a railroad across the desert yet, and given that Amestris is landlocked...yeah, I suppose they could still be pretty hard to reach from each other. Telecommunications tech exists, but it might only be a few decades old, and not everyone might have it yet, so Amestris and Xing might not be hearing each other's radiobroadcasts yet either.
Something else that calls my attention in the map is that Amestris has a very unnatural shape for a country. Almost perfectly circular. That's weird. Very weird. Circles have a particular significance in the world of FMA. We know that Hughs figured something out by looking at a map of the country and making some sort of connection between recent events. And, I earlier suspected that Father is plotting to sacrifice the entire country for a true Philosopher's Stone.
Could Father and his minions have been guiding Amestris' expansion in order to create a giant alchemical glyph?
Edward gives a little more geopolitical background as well. In addition to its recent civil war following its annexation of Ishval, Amestris has for some time been in a state of constant skirmishing along its borders with Aerugo to the south and Creta to the west. The large country to the north, Drachma, is another centralized nation state, and Amestris' historic rival. The two are currently at peace, but it's a cold peace, owing largely to the two nations' current borders meeting at an impassable mountain range. Looking at the map, there's a little chunk of that mountain range that Amestris will have to claim if Father actually is trying to make a perfect circle. If so, I imagine he'll be saving that step for the very end, since provoking Drachma could have very serious repercussions.
Xing in particular was a pleasant surprise. Depictions of China or Chinese fantasy counterparts in anime tend to be...well...let's just say that Japanese media has some unfortunate baggage on that front. When anime depicts Japan analogues juxtaposed against others, meanwhile, you tend to get jingoistic cringe. Arakowa's mostly-chinese-but-also-sort-of-japanese creation averts both of these common failings. Xing's political system is awful, but not in an unbelievable or caricaturist way, and the fact that we learn about it alongside the western countries' own violent status quo makes them all seem equally fucked up in their own regards rather than putting anyone down (if I had to choose between Xing's feudal chaos and Amestris' militarized society, even before adding the latter's secret diabolical lich king into the equation, well...). The fact that Xing also has some just plain fantastical cultural quirks - the playing pathetic when you want to make friends thing, etc - that don't come from any real world country that I know of also helps it stand on its own rather than making me view it as just "fantasy China" or even "fantasy East Asia."
It helps that Amnestris isn't pretending to any virtue, because its a blatant knockoff of Nazi Germany, except the Fuhrer's obsession with the occult actually has tangible powers and supersoldiers coming out of it.
A: Ling is a slippery little bugger. He leads with the Benjamin Franklin Effect to schmooze his way in, when that fails he shifts to force, then bribery, then begging, then just kind of pulls a Winry and insists on tagging along whether Ed likes it or not.
It also helps that this particular strategy is IIRC, very hard to deal with in a Japanese culture context, because all the strategy does constantly puts the onus on the other party looking like an antisocial asshole, and theres pressure to well...stop making a scene in public at least.
This flops on Edward because he IS actually an antisocial asshole and thus could not give a flying fuck about the pressure to not make a scene.
Sorry about that!
If it helps, I tend to not put anything actually (too) spoiler-y inside the spoiler thingy. I just cover it with the spoiler for double safety. No worries though, won't do it again!
Now that it's pointed out that there are no oceans on any maps of the world we see and that Amestris is completely landlocked, I can't unsee it. It's just not something I thought about before. Maybe there's one bordering one of the countries whose borders are only partially seen, but that's still Schrodinger's Ocean in the end.
For one thing, you confirmed a suspicion of mine that hadn't yet been proven by the show., about the aircraft
For another, you posted a big block of text that you don't remember the origins of very well, which means you very easily could be mixing it up with stuff from future episodes. Also, repeatedly in the past, conversations like that one - even if they're not spoilery - have led to discussions that inevitably end in someone slipping up.
It's not as bad as what the other poster did, but still.
Now that it's pointed out that there are no oceans on any maps of the world we see and that Amestris is completely landlocked, I can't unsee it. It's just not something I thought about before. Maybe there's one bordering one of the countries whose borders are only partially seen, but that's still Schrodinger's Ocean in the end.
Well, the maps we've been shown have only had Amestris and its next door neighbors. Xing and Aerugo could easily have a coastline further south, and Aerugo sounds like a not too difficult place to cross overland.
Comanche seems to be a spontaneous caster who doesn't need glyphs. UNLIKE them, however, he has a bunch of incredibly intricate alchemical symbols tattooed all over his hands and arms, which I suppose is probably a more common way to get that ability than selling your body parts to Wogdat.
).
