A few reasons it can be fun to pay attention to small details in the FMA manga…
1. There’s a liquor brand, Stray Dog, that recurs throughout the series. You’ll see the logo in Liore…
…in Youswell (multiple times!)…
…in the apartment Falman keeps Barry… held by a man walking past Hawkeye outside her apartment door… it’s even in Mustang’s office (during the side story made for the live action’s release). It’s really everywhere.
Does the label appear in Brotherhood? You bet it does! Here it is in “The Oath in the Tunnel” at Madame Christmas’ bar!
2. You’ll notice posters in the background detailing Yoki’s shenanigans (way before you hear him recount his adventures in the north to Ed and company). Have a visual advertising “Yoki Circus” that you see in Central when Havoc goes to visit Falman and Barry.
3. Arakawa repeatedly draws the same front cover for one edition of the Central Times paper (the issue which details Maria Ross’ “crime”) throughout multiple chapters.
The reason why this is cool is because it shows a photo of a factory on fire. Later, chapters later, when Roy’s in the hospital for Lust’s stab wounds, he mentions this fire to Doctor Knox.
It was this fire that led Mustang to believe he could expect Knox would be the one doing Ross’ autopsy. Because of the newspaper photo, we know when Roy got this information and decided he could use that in the escape plan: when Breda brought the paper with the headline of Ross’ conviction.
4. Speaking of news headings, there’s an important one we see during Ed and Al’s long childhood flashback (back when they’re preparing to do human transmutation). “The Conclusion of a Civil War.”
5. There’s some amusing signage here and there. Looks like Rush Valley has some issues with proper waste disposal.
There’s even a sign that’s a just drawing of a dog one place in Rush Valley. Aptly, there’s a dog near that sign.
6. We see English writing for names including Youswell, Xing, Aerugo, Creta, Drachma, Amestris, Ishval, Maria Ross, Maes Hughes, and Ling Yao in the background, so we know how Arakawa wanted the names spelled.
Not only that, but we can see other details like matching numbers between Ling’s prison bracelet and the tag on his confiscated sword. W1582.
Though… you DO have to lovingly laugh at the letter Hughes gets, sent from a certain “Glacier Joyous Coeaofijea;ogi”……
It’s as amusing as one FMA manga illustration of a newspaper that mentions… Britain.
7. We can read a LOT of the Latin, etc. text in alchemy-related designs. Riza’s tattoo, the different Gates of Truth, Alex’s gauntlets, you name it.
8. We see small background manifestations of Ishvalan cultural elements. Notice the intentional removal of footwear in this panel.
9. More sobering detail here, but… between Kimblee’s hand tattoos and one oft-drawn wooden crate… ever notice the six pointed star that recurs throughout Scar’s brother’s Ishvalan War flashbacks?
10. There’s dates in the Rockbell photo album! A memorable October ’11, of course, in which Ed holds up his new pocket watch…
…but also things like Pinako with her baby, meaning we can pin down when Yuriy Rockbell was born. That baby’s pretty little in May ’73. And does that top picture of May ’72 signify the year Pinako moved to that house in Resembool?
The photo of Pinako as a young woman with Hohenheim was taken in 1866.
11. Characters like Raven sneak in before they’re officially introduced and named. Here he is at the end of Chapter 44.
12. There’s a rich couple that appears multiple times throughout the story in Rush Valley and Central.
13. And there’s Mobuo Mobuta, too. If you haven’t heard of him before, he’s a man with a thin mustache and white suit who recurs throughout the background, in essentially a manga form of Where’s Waldo.
(And yes, he’s in the anime, too, have fun hunting).
Like… there’s some fun stuff in the details, even beyond the glorious artwork.
that bit in the manga where greed and the chimera gang think ed is dead because al says his brother is ‘gone’ is SO funny. greed’s like ‘was that rude of me?’ and they try to awkwardly comfort al dskjhdhf
I mean Diesel jeans? a solid River Island black tshirt? a cute cream Gucci hoodie? It’s nice????
where did ed get this?? It’s nicer than anything he wears at any point in the show
is this his backup outfit? he dresses like a blind goth for years and suddenly busts out this look?
What I take from this is that the only way to get Ed to wear cute clothes is to physically destroy all clothes he owns in battle and then have him give up his science magic door so he can’t make more
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is a sixty four episode series about finding a way to take away Edward Elric’s ability to make his own awful clothes
Actually, thinking about Scar and how he showed pretty consistent values throughout his entire arc despite how radically he changed makes me hit on part of what makes a character having a heel face turn believable.
Scar is shown, in flashback, to have always been someone who is wholly and deeply devoted to his community, deeply disciplined and devoutly religious- serious, passionate and a little unable to chill, to the point his brother makes fun of him for it. His understanding of his religion means he’s against violence and distrustful of alchemy.
Then boom, he loses his community. What he’s devoted his whole life to is gone. So, as a passionate, devoted person his thought process is that he has nothing left to live for, except wholly throwing himself into avenging his community. He decides he will set aside his religion to do this, by turning to violence and alchemy, but thinks he’s damning himself by doing this and decides he’s a worthless being not even worthy of a name. He wants to die, and he wants to suffer, so he does what’s most likely to cause the most pain for him.
Thus, we see that Scar’s relationship with his religion is tied deeply to his community- once the community is gone, he can’t bring himself to worship. He still believes, and can’t help invoking God a lot, but ultimately he becomes disconnected.
It’s only when he sees there’s hope for rebuilding his community, that there are other Ishvalans out there trying to enact change in different ways, that his direction changes once again. It’s also because the definition of his community expands a bit- he starts to care about and empathize with a couple of people who aren’t Ishvalan too, most prominently May, He also comes to feel he owes a debt to other people outside his Ishvalan community, namely the Rockbells.
Ishval is part of the country, so he needs to protect the country, so he needs to ally with people he doesn’t necessarily like, and hey, a couple of non-Ishvalans he cares about exist and (like May) may be struggling in ways he can relate to, so. He has a community, or hope for one, again, so he does what he sees as the most effective way to protect it. Suffering and dying actually wont do that. So now his connection to his religion strengthens again, and he reconciles alchemy with his religion because alchemy is pretty essential to rebuilding that community…
Basically, with Scar, it’s not someone who flips a switch from “good” to “evil” (he was never wholly either of those), but someone who always had sympathetic desires and values and his perspective shifted on how best to act on those values as various things impacted him.
It’s similar with Zuko- at the core of his actions is always his desire to be loved by his family and to help the Fire Nation- but his definition of his family, and his view on how best to help his people, shifted and expanded as experience changed him.
I think that’s really important for a transformative/redemption arc- that the antagonist HAS sympathetic values and desires from the start, but maybe expresses them in a harmful way, only for that to change as their perspective changes. It feels a lot more consistent and natural than a complete personality overhaul. You need that hook.
Coloured and fixed up versions of my previous FMA:B sketches that I’ll be having as miniprints for Sydney’s Smashcon 2018! (Table A18 with Bok and Lia)
Plot Designing 