Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)/YMMV

Manga and Brotherhood
"I know, I know I've let you down
 * Alas, Poor Villain:
 * Hohenheim invokes this on in the Brotherhood adaptation, standing solemnly at the site of the battle and reflecting on
 * Alternate Character Interpretation:
 * Did last words show that he really did care about his family or that he was a Complete Monster who didn't give a shit about them at all? It's actually fairly obvious (see Alas, Poor Villain) but people love to argue.
 * And then there's Truth. God Is Evil? Good Is Not Nice? Divine distributor of ironic punishment or just does it For the Evulz? It's up for debate.
 * 4 Koma Theater. Scar. Winry’s Parents. Will never be able to look at Scar the same way again. We need a “Crowning Moment of Ridiculous” page, but “Funny” will do for now.
 * And the Fandom Rejoiced:
 * The announcement of a new anime series that would follow the manga's storyline much closer.
 * In the Latin American dub, Most (if not all) of the main cast of the first anime returned back for Brotherhood.
 * Anvilicious: The flashbacks of the extermination of Ishbal have a distinct 'war is bad' vibe to them.
 * Broken Base:
 * Is the 2003 anime adaptation a very well done Pragmatic Adaptation or a completely unnaceptable mess that perverts the original source material?
 * Is Brotherhood's animation style bold, crisp, and original, or ugly, washed out, and far too cartoony?
 * Was the manga's ending incredible or did it feel like fanfiction?
 * Envy: Lovable gender-confused palm tree with a completely acceptable excuse for his/her psychopathy or Complete Monster who doesn't deserve a bit of the fandom? Moreover,
 * Edward Elric: Obnoxious Bratty Half-Pint or total Mr. Fanservice?
 * Along the same lines, is Al a good foil for Ed, or just really, really annoying?
 * Is Brotherhood a better adaptation of the manga or not?
 * Are Roy and Riza 'obviously' in love with each other or just platonic?
 * Elricest. That is all.
 * Complete Monster: This trope has its own page.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: Has its own page.
 * Die for Our Ship:
 * I dare you to say Rose's name in an EdWin forum. C'mon. I'll pay for the funeral, promise.
 * This doesn't count for all of them, but there seems to be a tendency for RoyAi and RoyEd fans to...rub each other the wrong way.
 * On top of Rose, Winry has also been on the receiving end of anger from Yaoi Fangirls because of this trope.
 * Draco in Leather Pants: Envy, Kimblee and Lust in particular.
 * Ear Worm: Basically any of the Brotherhood openings, especially #3, Golden Time Lover.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse:
 * Though the series is full of likeable people, Lan Fan is very popular among the Brotherhood fandom, despite only being a secondary character.
 * Ditto Sheska, who many fans lament the disappearance of in the manga, where she simply goes "poof" plotwise.
 * Being an Ensemble Darkhorse has been passed down the Armstrong line for generations!! Both the Major and his sister are definite favorites of the fandom.
 * Amongst the bara fans, Scar is a big time example. Darius and Heinkle were also popular enough in fanart to get a doujinshi.
 * Evil Is Cool:
 * Envy is a bastard/bitch in every sense. S/he's just so damn awesome at it that the fans tend to find him/her amusing anyway. Kimblee also fits. Greed also seems to lampshade this trope as he alternates between Cool Evil and Cool Good at massive Face Heel Turn and Heel Face Turn speed.
 * And of course, there's Wrath. A guy who can do all those feats of implausible awesome should have been here by default.
 * Heck, most of the Homunculi, then.
 * Fan Disservice: Al's severely malnourished real body from beyond the gate.
 * Fashion Victim Villain: Envy
 * Genius Bonus: Van Hohenheim is named after Paracelsus, a.k.a. Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. In-story, the dwarf in the flask names him Van Hohenheim but initially suggests he take on the name Theophrastus Bombastus.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
 * Maes Hughes is very popular with the American fanbase, much to the surprise of the Japanese creators.
 * Why is that a surprise? He's a Bunny Ears Badass Normal Knife Nut who LOVES his family. Why wouldn't we like that?
 * Because he participated in a genocide.
 * More than half the cast did.
 * Harsher in Hindsight:
 * The scene in Brotherhood where Ed and Al see Bradley while talking with his wife and son is already quite unsettling for them because they know that, but it gets even worse if you know that.
 * In a flashback to Xerxes, the king ordered a "waterway" to be dug around the kingdom. One of the workers comments "Nothing less to be expected from the King of Xerxes, he even thinks about commoners like us!" Eeeeugh.
 * Hell Is That Noise: . If that first scream from was from a character in any series being tortured by Satan in Hell, it would've been among the more terrifying examples. Which, considering their very state of existence as well as the Big Bad of the series, well…
 * Hilarious in Hindsight:
 * Ed mentions that if he ever went to see God, he'd probably get sent right back to earth.  And that's without accounting for the very start of the story in the first place, meaning he's secretly speaking from experience.
 * Travis Willingham and Laura Bailey, who are the dub voices of Roy Mustang and Lust respectively, are now married. With that knowledge, just try to watch episode 19 without laughing at some point.
 * Years ago, Vic and Cait did a funny/adorable marriage proposal skit at a con.
 * Ho Yay Shipping: There are some subtle events here and there that might be suggestive, such as.
 * Iron Woobie:
 * Alphonse, Edward, Izumi, Lan Fan, Alex Armstrong, Hawkeye, Mustang... oh, hell, almost every good guy.
 * The trope might as well be called "Fullmetal Woobie".
 * from the first Play Station 2 video game.
 * Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Lust
 * Level Breaker: The final fight pretty much had every character being as hammy and taking as much screentime as possible.
 * Magnificent Bastard: Kimblee and Father straddle the line between this and Complete Monster.
 * Roy Mustang always has a plan when he is involved. He is also considered a favourite character by many fans of the manga.
 * Memetic Mutation:
 * Regarding everything that happens once :
 * Regarding everything that happens once :

I've been a fool to myself..."

"Hiromu Arakawa: MOE, MOE, MOE! Everything's coming up MOE! Enough already!"
 * Roy Mustang loves dogs.
 * Roy Mustang has a dream once he becomes Fuhrer. It involves female officers and tiny miniskirts..
 * Moe:
 * May Chang. Small and cute. Also badass, but that's another story...
 * Also Nina, Elysia, and any cat that finds its way into Alphonse's armor...
 * Also complained about in one volume's opening pages.


 * Moral Event Horizon:
 * They might be on the heroes side, but it's hard to ignore the fact that several of Ed's allies in the military participated in the genocide of the Ishvalan people. You can't really atone for something like that.
 * Heck, throughout the series Mustang talks about wanting to become the Fuhrer specifically so something like that never happens again.
 * Bradley not only headed Amestris during the rebellion, but rejected Loug Lowe's proposal to sacrifice his own life to end the violence, saying one life is only equivalent to one life (and presumably intending to kill all the Ishvalans).
 * Also, Shou Tucker turning his daughter and the family dog into a chimera. Some even believe him to have already been past the MEH back when we first met him, as he had already done the same thing to his wife.
 * Envy, and starting the Ishval rebellion by killing a child and framing an innocent soldier for it (who got court-martialed and presumably executed).
 * Arguably Pride crosses one when he . Given the reactions of everyone else involved in the incident.
 * Homunculus Father crossed his.
 * Narm Charm:
 * also qualifies. How ridiculous it looks only makes the shit that much crazier.
 * The aforementioned eyecatches actually manage to come off as pretty badass in episode 44, where they're played just after
 * The ham-tastic delivery Father's dub voice actor does as he would normally induce huge spiels of laughter in any other scenario. In this one, it induces that nervous, Oh-my-god-I-feel-my-brain-breaking-MAKE-IT-STOP sort of laughter.
 * Nightmare Retardant: If something terrified you in a volume, chances are the omake will make fun of it in a such a way you'll never be able to take it seriously again.
 * Off-Model:
 * In the Manga, Riza's pupils ocasionally tend to change from completely black to with an iris from scene to scene (sometimes even from panel to panel). They became brown in the Anime however. Done intentionally with Al's armor though (Going from detailed to a blob), a trait carried over to the Anime.
 * In Brotherhood, Alphonse is a very frequent victim of this trope. It borders on They Just Didn't Care at times.
 * Portmanteau Couple Name: Royai for Roy Mustang/Riza Hawkeye, Edwin for Edward/Winry, LingFan for Ling/Lan Fan and AruMei or AluMei for Alphonse/May Chang.
 * The Scrappy:
 * , for
 * The gold-toothed doctor is also not well liked, often being referred to as a "bastard"
 * Both happen to be Complete Monsters, but unlike Father and Kimblee, lack the charm and badass appearances.
 * They Just Didn't Care: A criticism frequently leveled at Brotherhood, mostly on account of the rushed early episodes.
 * Ugly Cute:
 * Envy's chibi true form is guaranteed to make you giggle or want to huggle him/her . Perhaps even more in that case. Also, Gluttony.
 * Slicer could count, when he's reduced to just a helmet.
 * Uncanny Valley:
 * The cyclops army.
 * Then there's the . Even the characters got a bad vibe when they showed up.
 * Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: 'The Military Festival' gaiden.
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Political?: The Ishvalan genocide has been noted by many people to be essentially the 2003 invasion of Iraq taken Up to Eleven. Word of God, however, says it's really based on the plight of the Japan-native Ainu people.
 * The Woobie: Basically half of the sympathetic portion of the cast need hugs.
 * Woolseyism: Xing's answer to alchemy (renkinjutsu) is rentanjutsu. This word refers to Chinese alchemy, but actually using something like "Oriental alchemy" or "Xingese alchemy" would get pretty stale and unwieldy after a while. The rentan refers to the goal of Chinese alchemy, the elixir of life. Drawing off of this, Funimation renamed it "alkahestry", after alkahest. As a universal solvent, alkahest was another hypothetical goal of alchemy and would have had valuable medicinal applications; if you understand the reference, "alkahestry" manages to convey Chinese alchemy's greater concern with medicine than with gold and sounds exotic next to "alchemy". Not to mention, the substance was supposedly invented by Paracelsus, whose birth name was Von Hohenheim, and the fictional Von Hohenheim was the inventor of Xingese alchemy.
 * Woolseyism: Xing's answer to alchemy (renkinjutsu) is rentanjutsu. This word refers to Chinese alchemy, but actually using something like "Oriental alchemy" or "Xingese alchemy" would get pretty stale and unwieldy after a while. The rentan refers to the goal of Chinese alchemy, the elixir of life. Drawing off of this, Funimation renamed it "alkahestry", after alkahest. As a universal solvent, alkahest was another hypothetical goal of alchemy and would have had valuable medicinal applications; if you understand the reference, "alkahestry" manages to convey Chinese alchemy's greater concern with medicine than with gold and sounds exotic next to "alchemy". Not to mention, the substance was supposedly invented by Paracelsus, whose birth name was Von Hohenheim, and the fictional Von Hohenheim was the inventor of Xingese alchemy.

2003 Anime

 * Adaptation Displacement:
 * Before the Brotherhood adaptation, this was probably what many western fans immediately thought of when someone mentioned "Fullmetal Alchemist" rather than the original manga.
 * And for many, it still is.
 * Alas, Poor Villain:
 * Angst? What Angst?: Being  would traumatize most people for life, but   seems to bounce back pretty quickly.
 * Alternate Character Interpretation: Hohenheim gets a lot more of it here than he did in Brotherhood, where he's seen as more unambiguously benevolent: is he a wise atoner who feels bad for or a suicidal Jerkass whose excuse to abandon his children and wife Trisha doesn't cut the test and who.
 * Base Breaker: Envy and Wrath are two of the most polarizing characters.
 * Complete Monster:
 * Mugear wanted to use an extremely toxic chemical on pregnant women to produce an alchemic amplifier, after trying to produce it at the expense of the villagers' health and lives didn't bring the results and murdering the inventor of the chemical, after he tried to stop him from producing it by such horrible means.
 * : A 400 year old bitch with a penchant for Body Surfing, she's stayed alive this long by jacking innocent people's bodies, ditching them when they start to rot, and repeating the process infinite. When her own Philosopher's Stone runs out, she sets in motion a plan to cause so much misery in Amestris that someone will be desperate enough to recreate the Stone, allowing her to steal it with no risk to herself. She's abusive towards her Homunculi "children", arranges for Ed to, jacks her own assistant's body, and finally, attempts to steal the body of one of heroes Love Interests, who had been severely traumatized, solely so that she can screw him. Said hero is a teenager, and her ex-boyfriend's son. She's never shown in a sympathetic light, and doesn't even have the excuse of not being human to protect her.
 * Envy. His manga counterpart was pitiful enough in the end to avert this trope. This version on the other hand, is not, and takes the former's evil and Jerkassery Up to Eleven. He's a malevolent sadist who gets his kicks out of ruining people's lives, crosses the Moral Event Horizon with and then follows it up with a string of murders and mind games that end with  . He's got a Freudian Excuse, but it doesn't come close to justifying his homicidal mania, and  . Must be In the Blood.
 * : You know he's not going to be a nice guy right off the bat, what with the whole  thing. It gets worse when you realise that he's the one who ordered the   and worse still when he has those actions repeated in Liore. Then he crosses the Moral Event Horizon with his murder of  and throttles his own son, who had served as his Morality Pet, to death in the finale, thus establishing himself firmly as a totally irredeemable bastard.
 * Kimblee. A Psycho for Hire, Nietzsche Wannabe, and Misanthrope Supreme par excellence, he Loves the Sound of Screaming and isn't afraid to share it with you. He comitted genocide in Ishbal, blew up his fellow prisoners in order to escape from prison, betrayed Greed to Archer, tries to murder Al soon after his reinstatement, reenacts the Ishbal genocide in Liore, and finally . A truly appalling mix of rage, hatred, and pure nihilism.
 * Contested Sequel:
 * Some fans view The Movie as a touching send off to the characters that ties together most of the loose ends left over from the series. Others see it as a kick in the junk that resolves nothing and simply screws everyone over worse than they were screwed in the series.
 * Mention the Brotherhood adaptation on any anime forum and you'll get a combination of wholehearted praise and brutal scorn, the latter coming mostly from fans of the first adaptation who think that Brotherhood is a disgrace to the original anime series.
 * The reverse is true as well. Hardcore fans of the manga have a tendency to treat this anime very harshly because of the alternative storyline that it presents.
 * Crowning Soundtrack Of Awesome:
 * Michiru Oshima's score is considered to be a masterpiece. The openings and endings aren't anything to sneeze at either.
 * Several tracks stand out in particular, such as Bratja and Dante's various themes.
 * the Kelas
 * "Regret", the song played entirely on the harmonica that plays during Mustang's flashback of the Ishval war in Episode 13.
 * "YOU'RE IN GERMANY, HAVE SOME BEETHOVEN".
 * Cult Classic: For many of its fans.
 * Deader Than Disco: Has sadly become this among most anime circles, though somewhat averted given how Brotherhood hasn't sparkled the amount of ratings or gateways here in America.
 * Die for Our Ship: Rose gets it a lot here, too, from some Edwin shippers and Yaoi Fangirls. Even with all the horrible things that happened to her, getting an expanded role in this version did not help her with shippers. Winry also gets this from the latter group.
 * Draco in Leather Pants: Envy and Kimblee, in particular, have a large fanbase.
 * Evil Is Sexy: Lust, so much that she's the picture of the trope article.
 * Fashion Victim Villain: Envy and Wrath.
 * Foe Yay:
 * Gateway Series: Love it or hate it, this series was one of the driving forces behind the big Anime boom of the early-mid 2000's.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Maes Hughes is very popular with the American fanbase, much to the surprise of the Japanese creators.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight:
 * In the manga and the second anime,
 * In one of the flashbacks, a young Ling Yao can be seen, wearing sunglasses similar to Greed; while he has no important role in this anime,.
 * At the end of the (non-canonical) OVA "Kids", there is a prominently displayed photograph of an elderly Ed shaking hands with an important-looking, formally dressed man who bears a moderate resemblance to Barack Obama. (The OVA was made more than three years before he was elected President of the United States.)
 * Iron Woobie: Ed, Al, Izumi, Mustang, Hawkeye, honestly, most of the good guys.
 * Jerkass Woobie: Wrath and Scar
 * Memetic Sex God: Everyone wants Lust, no exceptions. Sloth also fares well in this department.
 * Moral Event Horizon: Crossed by both Scar and the Homunculi. Envy crosses it with enjoys dancing over it again and again. Depending on who you ask,  's came with either.
 * No Yay:
 * hitting on Ed. It gets even worse when you consider that she's mainly doing it to "be loved by the son of Hohenheim."
 * There's also a bit of ...which wouldn't have been that bad, were it not for the fact that
 * And then there's the fangirls who ship Kimblee with Archer. As if the fact that they're both psychopaths wasn't bad enough, one of them is a half-mechanical Cyborg!
 * Stoic Woobie: Lust.
 * Values Dissonance: Izumi's domestic violence against the Elric brothers; Ed and Al basically abusing each other.
 * Viewer Gender Confusion: Envy.
 * What an Idiot!:
 * The Woobie: The Elric brothers, many times. Wrath, Winry, Rose, Izumi, even Jerkass Woobie Scar and Stoic Woobie Lust.