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logicbuttonFMA:B 27 has been, perhaps, the most badass clip show ever conceived. I am not kidding here; the art is fantastic, the framing device focuses on characters that could always use more screen time, and one of the clips is the scene where Roy shows off his ridiculously godlike abs. It's brilliant. There are even new opening and closing sequences, which I love to itty bitty bits and am totally going to memorize the music to, like I did with Again, but UNLIKE Again, these sequences are unlikely to overshadow the episodes themselves. Not that they don't have their merits--check it out, my icon is from the new opener! :DDD
So while I'm talking about FMA, I might as well elaborate a bit on my original post about chapter 100.
That was a chapter to recover from, and I'm not just talking about the last two pages. It turns out I care more about Ling and Buccaneer than I previously thought. Oh god, Armstrong is not going to be happy when she finds out. Oh man. She should totally be the one to kill Bradley. She'd be all, "AND THIS IS FOR CAPTAIN BUCCANEER!" I bet she'll be all stoic at first, though.
Flaming wreckage never looked so cool as when Ultimate Shield Ling was standing in it.
I really hope it isn't going to be played as a super-huge suspenseful reveal when it turns out that Al's soul has reattached itself to his body. I mean, where else could it have possibly gone? I feel like if he were really just unconscious, Ed would have gotten him to wake up by the end of the chapter, so either he's just dead, which is impossible, or he's gone back to his body, for which it is about damn time. What's funny about the whole situation is that nobody really seems to think Al could possibly be in any real danger anymore, so in the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hagaren_manga posts on the subject, everybody has just been kind of glossing over it and talking about Hawkeye instead.
Which brings us to the end of the chapter. Holy crap. I actually think I sort of saw it coming. Like, when Dr. Goldtooth told Roy to open the gate, and Roy told him to piss off. I saw that the guy holding Hawkeye down had his arm around her neck, and a sword in that hand, and I thought, dude, he could just decapitate her any second now and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When he put the sword against her neck, for one wild moment, I really thought he was actually going to cut off her head onscreen and I was never going to have a good night's sleep again. So really, it was kind of a relief when he just gave her a little slit across the throat.
I think the worst thing about that was that up until then, I had really believed that Hawkeye and Roy both had total plot immunity. Everything worked out so well with Envy's death that, after that, it just didn't occur to me to think otherwise. Now, I'm still confident that Hawkeye is alive as of the last panel of this chapter. Not only was the cut low on her neck, but there is no reason whatsover for them to kill her, and plenty of reasons not to. Oh wow, can you even imagine what Roy would do? I imagine it would involve some sort of mushroom cloud. Certainly the amount of flame involved would give new meaning to the term "cold fury." And, most importantly, there's no way he would open the gate after that, because despite undoubtedly feeling the characteristic desperation that for other characters has previously led to human transmutation, Roy knows for a fact that it doesn't work, and trying it would make all that stuff he just said a few minutes ago in story time about Hughes being gone meaningless. ANYWAY, I think Hawkeye is alive at the moment, but the whole thing really shook up my ideas about plot immunity and possible outcomes. I can't believe I didn't realize this earlier, especially since I once read this one outrageously depressing animeverse fanfic about the Stang-tachi being tried and executed as war criminals post-ending (I know, I know), but seriously, how is this realistically supposed to end? They kill all the homunculi and the government, including Bradley's entire cabinet (or whoever they are), just kind of forgets about their leader and what they were working towards and says, "oh, whoops, let's just start from scratch then"? And, hey, all these people who deserted--let's make them our new leaders! Because why not?
On the other hand, I don't know if it would work narratively for them both to die, either. What about the 520 cenz promise, which was important enough to get a chapter named after it and be briefly mentioned for no reason at least a year after it happened? And I don't think we've seen the last of that tattoo. Oh, while I'm at it--this doesn't actually have any bearing either way on Roy and Hawkeye's plot immunity, but ever since Hawkeye's hair clip snapped off into the foreground while she was fighting Envy, I've been wondering whether it'll make another appearance.
I do still think it's extremely unlikely that one will live and the other won't, though, just because I'm trying to imagine that happening and it's not working. Oh, Roy and Hawkeye. Your symbiotic relationship disgusts me slightly, and yet I love you both so much that I won't be satisfied if you don't end up happy together.
Oh, and my recovery from the chapter seems to be going well, since I've regained enough of a sense of humor to start considering whether I could add a neckerchief to my default icon without it looking completely stupid or obviously spoilery.
So while I'm talking about FMA, I might as well elaborate a bit on my original post about chapter 100.
That was a chapter to recover from, and I'm not just talking about the last two pages. It turns out I care more about Ling and Buccaneer than I previously thought. Oh god, Armstrong is not going to be happy when she finds out. Oh man. She should totally be the one to kill Bradley. She'd be all, "AND THIS IS FOR CAPTAIN BUCCANEER!" I bet she'll be all stoic at first, though.
Flaming wreckage never looked so cool as when Ultimate Shield Ling was standing in it.
I really hope it isn't going to be played as a super-huge suspenseful reveal when it turns out that Al's soul has reattached itself to his body. I mean, where else could it have possibly gone? I feel like if he were really just unconscious, Ed would have gotten him to wake up by the end of the chapter, so either he's just dead, which is impossible, or he's gone back to his body, for which it is about damn time. What's funny about the whole situation is that nobody really seems to think Al could possibly be in any real danger anymore, so in the
hagaren_manga posts on the subject, everybody has just been kind of glossing over it and talking about Hawkeye instead.Which brings us to the end of the chapter. Holy crap. I actually think I sort of saw it coming. Like, when Dr. Goldtooth told Roy to open the gate, and Roy told him to piss off. I saw that the guy holding Hawkeye down had his arm around her neck, and a sword in that hand, and I thought, dude, he could just decapitate her any second now and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When he put the sword against her neck, for one wild moment, I really thought he was actually going to cut off her head onscreen and I was never going to have a good night's sleep again. So really, it was kind of a relief when he just gave her a little slit across the throat.
I think the worst thing about that was that up until then, I had really believed that Hawkeye and Roy both had total plot immunity. Everything worked out so well with Envy's death that, after that, it just didn't occur to me to think otherwise. Now, I'm still confident that Hawkeye is alive as of the last panel of this chapter. Not only was the cut low on her neck, but there is no reason whatsover for them to kill her, and plenty of reasons not to. Oh wow, can you even imagine what Roy would do? I imagine it would involve some sort of mushroom cloud. Certainly the amount of flame involved would give new meaning to the term "cold fury." And, most importantly, there's no way he would open the gate after that, because despite undoubtedly feeling the characteristic desperation that for other characters has previously led to human transmutation, Roy knows for a fact that it doesn't work, and trying it would make all that stuff he just said a few minutes ago in story time about Hughes being gone meaningless. ANYWAY, I think Hawkeye is alive at the moment, but the whole thing really shook up my ideas about plot immunity and possible outcomes. I can't believe I didn't realize this earlier, especially since I once read this one outrageously depressing animeverse fanfic about the Stang-tachi being tried and executed as war criminals post-ending (I know, I know), but seriously, how is this realistically supposed to end? They kill all the homunculi and the government, including Bradley's entire cabinet (or whoever they are), just kind of forgets about their leader and what they were working towards and says, "oh, whoops, let's just start from scratch then"? And, hey, all these people who deserted--let's make them our new leaders! Because why not?
On the other hand, I don't know if it would work narratively for them both to die, either. What about the 520 cenz promise, which was important enough to get a chapter named after it and be briefly mentioned for no reason at least a year after it happened? And I don't think we've seen the last of that tattoo. Oh, while I'm at it--this doesn't actually have any bearing either way on Roy and Hawkeye's plot immunity, but ever since Hawkeye's hair clip snapped off into the foreground while she was fighting Envy, I've been wondering whether it'll make another appearance.
I do still think it's extremely unlikely that one will live and the other won't, though, just because I'm trying to imagine that happening and it's not working. Oh, Roy and Hawkeye. Your symbiotic relationship disgusts me slightly, and yet I love you both so much that I won't be satisfied if you don't end up happy together.
Oh, and my recovery from the chapter seems to be going well, since I've regained enough of a sense of humor to start considering whether I could add a neckerchief to my default icon without it looking completely stupid or obviously spoilery.
