Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood S2E13: “Daydream”

Our fourth OP debuts here. Going by the episode count, this will either be the last, or the second to last. It's the tonal opposite of the last one, with a very optimistic (though still tense) vibe throughout. Start out with Edward and Alphonse alone in a desert, tantalized by alchemical glyphs out of their reach, bouncing off of or running through one another. Then Winry appears, and they become able to interact with one another properly. A growing crowd of other friends and allies appear around them, and it segues to a montage of fight scenes against the haemunculi, with everybody helping. Pride is the baddie featured most prominently here, while Father is conspicuous by his absence; wonder if that's of any significance?

Finally, we see Hohenheim approaching Central, with the clear implication that he's finally going to actually do something.

The longer Hohenheim's doing a thing takes, the more likely it is that it's going to be an unsatisfying deus ex machina. Hopefully not.

After this, there's just the boys standing back to back in an ornate transmutation array (similar to Father's double pentagram, but notably not quite the same), the Gates of Truth being shattered(!?!), and then Edward's badge hanging over them. Not sure I'm equipped to dissect that symbolism just yet, in light of this more hopeful tone and framing. The song is...okay? Nothing about it particularly stands out to me in a good or bad way, but considering how much the last two grew on me over time I'm hesitant to judge it just yet.

So, new intro is new. Let's see what "Daydream" brings.


Scar taunts Kimblee from the tall rooftop, and it's clearly getting to him. This is an absolute nightmare scenario for Kimblee, on so many levels. Kimblee starts to prep an area-of-effect blast to bring the whole building down, only for Edward to get in on the action.

Edward gets in his face long enough for Scar and his "captive" to disappear in a cloud of dust and rubble. Kimblee tries to shove Edward aside and give chase, but his own soldiers hold him back, telling him that that building is obviously going to start coming down after what Scar just did to it. And, fortuitously for the good guys, another snowstorm is moving in, so they can't stay out much longer.

Successful operation! I'm guessing this was Edward's idea, given his history of copying tactics that have been used against him? As I said in the last review, this is fairly close to what Mustang did to save Ross, so it seems likely.

As they return to camp, Miles whispers a compliment to Edward on his convincing performance. Edward grouchily whispers back that it wasn't really much of a performance; he really is furious at himself for putting Winry in this kind of danger, he just directed it at Kimblee. Fair enough. Flash back ten minutes or so, to where the Elrics, Winry, and Miles and his soldiers have Scar restrained. Winry asks him why he killed her parents, and Scar just looks miserable and says that "any answer I gave would just be an excuse."

Okay, Scar, I know that you've got honor and morals and shit, but right now you could really save everyone a lot of trouble by just saying "mistaken identity." It's the truth, just say it. You can say it all self-recriminatingly if you want, but still, answer the goddamned question, seriously.

In response to this, Winry is silent for a moment, and then gets a bandage and starts cleaning and dressing Scar's pigdogcupine wound. In her words, she's not forgiving Scar, but he was a patient of her parents', and letting him die of an untreated wound would be a slight to them despite the obvious. Edward says that he still wants to beat Scar up and drag him to the Rockbells' graves.

Okay, seriously, what was Edward planning to do when he and Alphonse went to follow that explosion? Was he planning to attack him at that point? What would the end goal be? Killing him? Turning him over to Kimblee, ie killing him by proxy? Not only does that go against Edward's convictions, but I don't think May would want to work with him after that, and he has to have realized this. Also, if that was what he wanted, he would have just let the chimaeras do their job. Did he just want to punch Scar a few times and then call it good? Okay, that would actually be in character for Edward, fair enough. But come on Ed, this is a delicate and possibly time-sensitive situation!

Scar next addresses Miles, and asks him why an Ishvalan (even a "one-quarter Ishvalan" as Miles claims to be, and which I'm becoming less and less certain he actually is) would be wearing an Amestrian uniform. Miles answers that he wants to be a positive example in the eyes of the Amestrian majority, and in their society being a military officer is the best way to do that.

Well...this is definitely an approach that has been tried before throughout history. It doesn't tend to end very well for the people who try it, but I guess desperation can do funny things to a person.

Scar tells him as much, and Miles responds that he is an Ishvalan pebble thrown into the lake of the Amestrian armed forces, and that he hopes the ripples he casts will grow. Well, okay, fair enough Miles. If you and all your surviving people assimilate into Amestrian culture, reject everything that makes them Ishvalan, and join the army that destroyed their country to go help destroy others as well, you might succeed. You saved your people. Yay. He cites General Armstrong as an example of who he thinks he can appeal to. Of course, if people like General Armstrong were influential enough to really matter, the genocide never would have happened in the first place.

Scar looks down ashamedly, and says that he's glad there are people like Miles who can rise above the level of people like himself.

I, uh. I really, really hope we're not supposed to agree with Scar's assessment here. This is just him being emotionally broken down and vulnerable after recent events, right? Ed? Al? Winry? May and Marcoh, watching from the door? Especially you, Marcoh? Anyone gonna cut in here? I agreed with Scar's old abbot, who counseled him to forget revenge and just try to rebuild as best they can. That's an admirable position to take, and a good example of rising above anger and hatred even when they're totally justified. What Miles is doing is...not that.

Miles goes ahead and radios his men, telling them to inform Kimblee that they have Scar in their custody and giving him their location.

...

What...is even going on...? Is Miles already acting a part? If so, then again, why is he doing it now, when there are no enemies watching? This ends with Scar "capturing" Winry and Edward and Miles playing Kimblee like a fiddle, of course, but the events leading up to that have so far been just bizarre.

...

Miles says that whatever his circumstances, Scar must face the consequences due to him. As opposed to, you know. Everyone in the Amestrian military, who he seems to not much care about consequences for. If Miles at least couched this in terms of "for the sake of our people's survival, troublemakers like you need to die" it would at least not be insufferably self-righteous, but he didn't. And, the brothers continue to not say anything.

That's when Dr. Marcoh and May finally come in, and tell Miles that Scar is one of the very few people left alive who can read Brothar's notes. The boys seem surprised that they followed them here. Um. Really? Youi went to follow an explosion at Scar's location, and didn't come back for some time after the fireworks stopped. May, at least, is a fighter. Would you expect them to NOT come and investigate?

Anyway, they explain the situation with the notes.

Outside, Kimblee and the men are inbound. A soldier cautions Kimblee that it looks like a storm is coming in, so they should move fast. I feel like that should have been foreshadowed before it came to the rescue at the end of the last episode, but better than nothing.

Miles murmurs to himself as they explain about the notes. He then asks if May is the alkahestrist, and tells her that he has orders to bring her in (as a guest, don't worry, not a prisoner. You just don't get a choice in the matter, that's all. She doesn't seem convinced). He then decides to bring the lot of them - including Scar and Dr. Marcoh - back to Fort Briggs to hide them until they can get rid of Kimblee and the other central forces.

So, he just decided this now, after already radioing in.

Edward, for his part, is outraged at the proposal that they hide Scar. Edward, what the fuck is even wrong with you? Did you really think you could recruit May without having to tolerate Scar? Have you forgotten that time that you and he fought side by side against Father? You know, the entity that Edward knows is planning to eat the whole country with all of them in it? I was fully expecting there to be a scene of Edward being pissy at Scar before grudgingly accepting him, but actually trying to abandon him to the state? Really? After Winry has already decided to try and save him, right in front of Edward's eyes?

Well, it seems so. Edward actually says the words "just hand him over to Kimblee already." IE, he seems to find Kimblee - who actually threatened Winry's life himself, within the last twenty-four hours - over Scar. And, fucking Miles is the one who has to remind him that reading those notes is important.

Oh, yeah, apparently Armstrong filled Miles in on everything. So he also knows that Amestris is a terratocracy that masterminded all these atrocities with the (at least highly probable) eventual goal of murdering every single one of its citizens. And, he still wanted to turn Scar over to them up until it turned out that they needed him for something specific.

...

I'm sort of at a loss for words right now.

On top of all the moral and political complaints I have about this, I can't let go of the question of why Edward attacked those chimaeras if he just wanted to turn Scar over to Kimblee anyway. Like, seriously. His and Alphonse's actions last episode make absolutely no sense if they weren't planning to save Scar.

What the fuck is even going on?

...

Anyway, it's Miles, rather than Edward, who suggests using a ploy to disgrace Kimblee and hopefully get him and his Central goons recalled. So much for Edward using his acquired skills and proven knack for learning by imitation to advance the plot as I predicted. Miles tells Scar that if he works with them, he'll postpone Scar's judgement until a little later. When Scar accepts, Miles apologizes to Winry for having to make her wait a little longer to see Scar punished. Winry just kind of looks at him funny and mumbles "okay."

Kill Miles. Somebody, please, just kill Miles.

Just then, Beebop and Rocksteady tied up over in the corner wake up. Miles instructs his men to kill them, but Alphonse implores them not to. Thank god there's still somebody who remembers that whole "killing is bad" principle that was supposed to be near the heart of Edward's character, but it would be great if that somebody could have been, you know, Edward. The chimaeras interject themselves at this point, explaining that they know they have no future ahead of them in their current forms anyway, so please just kill them and get them over with.

Wait. Is this implying that. Oh what the...

Yep.

Alphonse asks them if they have families or loved ones, and they say that they do, and would dearly like to return to them, but they could never do that in their current conditions.

It is quickly clarified that no, they aren't talking about their families being held hostage as the haemunculi seem to be fond of doing, and no, they aren't being controlled with an addictive drug or a need for periodic medical treatments to keep their chimaera bodies alive or anything. It's just because they've been turned into monsters that could never get by in normal society, and their families who were told they'd been killed in battle have probably finished mourning them by now.

...

Riddle me this, dear readers. Which of these two things seems more stupid to you:

1. The haemonculi sending slave-soldiers with absolutely no leverage over them out on highly sensitive covert missions, when said slaves could royally fuck up their plans at any moment just by revealing themselves to the public.

or

2. A pair of shapeshifters bemoaning their inability to return to their families and society because of how they look. Even if we generously assume that their monstrous forms are their resting state, they can clearly maintain their human appearances for long periods and shift back and forth at will.

The answer is....I have no idea, that's why I'm asking you. Whenever I start to conclude that one of these premises is dumber than the other, the other one just starts grating at me more until I change my mind.

...

Alphonse reveals his golem nature to the chimaeras, and tells them that he and his brother have made significant theoretical progress toward getting him restored to his human state, which means there's probably a way to fix them too. And, they start seeming to think about switching sides.

On one hand, this is the kind of protagonism that I like to see from Alphonse. On the other, the situation he got to apply it to was so fundamentally stupid and illogical that I can barely find any satisfaction in it.

Moving on to more practical matters, that blizzard that's on the way will hinder pursuers, but it will also hinder them, so escaping these coordinates and hiding elsewhere in the town is not going to be an option. It would be nice if they hadn't radio'd the base camp and gotten Kimblee and Co already on the way, wouldn't it have. And, this is where Yoki finally justifies his existence! This is a mining town, and he spent many years running a mine. He explains that with the town having been this built up, and then abandoned due to the goodies being tapped out, the mines must have been quite extensive by the end, which means there's bound to be other entrances.

It still would have been much better if they'd included Yoki's first meeting with the Elrics onscreen back at the beginning, though. Surely there was another early episode that could have been cut to make room? Maybe one whose entirety could have been summed up in two very brief scenes of Winry getting off a train and then the Elrics getting a letter from her saying that she got a new job? I get it, this was made with the expectation of an audience that had already seen the first FMA anime, but still. If they were going to keep Yoki (as opposed to just having one of Miles' soldiers come from a mining background or whatever. That wouldn't even be such a coincidence; they knew they were going to be searching a mining town, so Miles would have probably chosen men with relevant skills and experience), then they really should have kept it.

So, they decide to send Scar, Yoki, Dr. Marcoh, and May through the tunnels to wait out the storm and then come out somewhere closer to Fort Briggs. Miles has maps of the old mines along, sensibly enough, so Yoki will have something to navigate for them with. The only problem is what to do about Winry; they don't want her back in Kimblee and his men's line of sight, but it'll also be pretty damned suspicious if she disappears as well. It turns out that Winry herself is the one to suggest Scar capturing her.

On one hand, cool, Winry has some real cunning to her as well as the book smarts. On the other, well...I still feel like this particular detail should have been Edward's contribution to the plan, for reasons I've already given. Winry already got an opportunity to be clever when she twisted Kimblee's arm into letting her come along, and this feels like a very Edward sort of trick both because of his prior exposure to such by Mustang, and because of our (very recent) reminder of his penchant for deception with Yoki's backstory. But, back on the first hand again, this is also a really powerful sign of Winry having made peace with the reality of Scar and what he did, putting her life in his hands like this. So...yeah, there are positives and negatives to this.

Edward and Alphonse protest at Winry's suggestion of entrusting her physical safety to Scar, but Winry shuts them down pretty succinctly.

It's time for her to take risks for them rather than just the reverse. Especially since her life is already at risk anyway, so she might as well try to have a little agency in the hows.

Hmm. Now that I write this out, I can understand better why it had to be Winry who came up with the "abducted by Scar" idea. Still, well...I'll get back to this in my wrapup for the episode.

The soldier at the window reports that he sees Kimblee and the others headed up the street toward them, so if they're going to do this they'd better do it fast. Edward makes constipated faces for a while, but reluctantly agrees. What were they going to do if he didn't agree? Just give up on the whole plan? Would they have had to fight him? I don't know, and - I'm very sorry to say - I'm beginning to not care either.

Edward releases Scar (the first thing he's actually done all episode besides make inane suggestions and/or angryfaces) and they get moving. Miles gives Dr. Marcoh some written orders to give to the Briggs soldiers. The two chimaeras also say that they'd like to join them if there's any chance that it could mean restoring themselves.

Just to remind us of that particular piece of stupidity.

Also, it occurs to me that they could have escaped those restraints at any point after waking back up by shifting into their human forms and letting the ropes fall slack around them (they're human-looking again in the very next shot, so they definitely CAN still do that). I guess we can take their not having done that as proof of their sincerity. Or maybe I'm applying too much logic for this.

Before they part ways, Miles tells Scar to "keep his oath, on his Ishvalan blood." Fuck you Miles. Seriously, just...catch on fire, or fall of a building, or get your brain sucked out by Pride, or whatever.

...

Something jumps out at me here. Scar is one of the only remaining people who can read ancient Ishvalan. Miles seems to have seen little value in that aside from its application in decoding the notes. But from the perspective of a nearly wiped-out culture trying to put itself back together, think about what Scar's knowledge represents.

"Swear on your Ishvalan blood." Seriously, Miles, just get eaten by spiders or something already.

...

The soldiers instruct Winry to take out her metal earrings before she spends any time out in the blizzard. She hands them to Edward for safekeeping, and the camera lingers on them for a while. I'm trying to remember if there's anything special about Winry's earrings. Are they from her parents or something? Maybe that was it.

So, we catch back up to the end of the last episode, with Kimblee being humiliated almost as badly as Edward was by this episode. Cut ahead to the abandoned building they've been using as their field headquarters, where Kimblee is looking miserable and Miles is looking out the window. The other men that Kimblee brought from Central are starting to whisper rumors about what might have happened to the two who just went missing; they clearly fear and dislike their commander. Also, the comradery they have with those two is a strong indication that they're all chimaeras as well.

After a little while, Miles gets a call from Fort Briggs that surprises and dismays him. I'm guessing something to do with those guys who came to ask after General Raven. Then we cut to the mines, where Dr. Marcoh is telling Winry that he knew of her parents. He didn't know them personally, but he knew of them. Scar, walking along behind them, just looks miserable. He remembers some choice words of Brothar's from before his death, and of the abbot's back in the shantytown. The former, about the value of creating rather than merely destroying. The latter, about how no one expects him to forgive the Amestrians, but they are expecting him to abandon revenge when it isn't going to help make up for anything.

At least, that's how I took it at the time. In light of that scene with Miles though, I may have been much too charitable in my interpretation of what the abbot was saying. And in my interpretation of Fullmetal Alchemist as a work, and Hiromu Arakawa as a writer. More on that in the wrapup. For now, he seems to just be watching Winry's ability to tolerate and even work with him despite not forgiving him, and thinking on it.

Eventually, their map takes them to a foreman's hut in the mine tunnels, where - as Yoki had hoped - they find much more detailed maps of the mines from their time of closure. He plots a course to an exit that's more or less on the Fort Briggs-facing side of the mountain.

Now they just need to head there and wait out the storm.

As they stop to rest, conversation turns back to the notes that they plan to get back to work on with Scar's translation help. Beebop and Rocksteady ask if there's a chance Brothar's research might help them as well, and Dr. Marcoh says that with alkahestry's biological focus and the implications of a "universal re-integrator" like Brothar was supposedly working on, it's certainly possible. The two chimaeras start going on eagerly about how they can't wait to see their families again, and good-naturedly ribbing each other about their pre-transformation familial woes. If there was any threat of their families being killed as punishment for their disobediance, as I'd have expected (AT THE VERY LEAST) for slave soldiers, it isn't being acknowledged.

...

I really, really thought that these were willing volunteers, with the ones that Greed rescued having been test subjects that they used to perfect the process before using it on loyalists who thought being well-paid supersoldiers was worth the part-time ugliness. But no.

This is more stupid than I can readily comprehend coming from a show of FMA's usual quality.

...

The talk of family is now making May think about things. She, too, has a family to return to. But she's afraid to go home without the philosopher's stone or the knowledge of how to create one, and with what she's now seen and learned in Amestris she doesn't want philosopher's stone research proliferating at all. She finally tells the others that if the Xingese emperor got his hands on the formula, he'd happily sacrifice however many millions it takes to do it.

Hmm. Ling said he wanted to give the stone to the emperor to gain his favor, and then - later - either changed his mind, or just started openly admitting his real agenda, and wanted the stone for himself. May wanted it for the emperor, and is now saying that he's a monster. Also, the Changs and the Yaos are rivals, and the Changs are the weakest of the fifty Xingese tribes. That means that the Yaos have got to be one of the next weakests, for the Changs to be "rivals" of theirs.

It's starting to sound like there was a recent upheaval that left the more minor tribes in a very precarious situation, and the emperor has told them "do something to convince me not to kill you all." In which case, it's pretty obvious what he'd do if you gave him the philosopher's stone recipe.

Back on the surface, Miles gets a minute alone with Edward and shares what he just learned. General Armstrong has been summoned back to Central under what sounds a lot like a surreptitious arrest, and a new officer from Wrath's evil council of evil has been sent to take her place, and the fortress currently contains a large number of Central troops.

The people they just sent into the tunnels are going to have a hard time at Briggs. Getting a warning to them about this change in the situation will be difficult, as the storm that aided them before is now a hindrance. Edward says he'll brave the blizzard and try to get either into the mines or to Fort Briggs to intercept them, before Alphonse reminds him that they have exactly one party member who is immune to exhaustion and hypothermia.

So, Alphonse sets out into the blizzard. He can't be exhausted or frozen, but the snow is slowing him considerably just through drag, and he's marching against the wind. Being hollow kinda sucks sometimes.

As the whirling snow and flying white haze surrounds him, the snow suddenly transitions into the glowing white void before the Gates of Truth. He sees his emaciated body, long-haired and nailed, reaching out toward him, and then the Gates themselves behind it.

Vision? Soul malfunction?

For a moment, Alphonse seems to lose consciousness, the eyelights in his visor flickering out. He recovers a fraction of a second later, but it scares him a lot. He fears that his golem body is finally rejecting his soul, and he's about to be reunited with the human body that his Wogdat has been keeping warm for him.

Possible. Worst timing ever, but that's how things often shake out. On the other hand, it may not be a coincidence that this is happening while he's surrounded in a directionless white snowstorm. Having blood splashed on his glyph back in the first Greed arc gave him a flashback of some kind. Maybe the stimulus of being alone in an environment that reminds him of the Antechamber of Wog is causing something similar.

It could also be a combination of both these things, of course.

Alphonse panics and falls to his knees, but finally gets ahold of himself and resolves to hurry onward. If he's about to die, then the last thing he does is going to be warning Winry and the others. Admirable, and very Alphonse.

Cut to the Sin Inc executive suite. Father is arranging a bunch of pieces on a diagram of his macroglyph. Listing off Edward, Alphonse, possibly Izumi, and...Van Hohenheim. Huh. He actually has an interest and use for him in the plan? How is he intending to make sure he stays in Amestris, given what he knows himself? When Edward and Alphonse said Hohenheim was their father, it seemed like Father hadn't even thought about Hohenheim in quite a while. Something must have happened offscreen.

Something to do with the chosen special sacrifices, I guess? He needs them in certain places at the time of the ritual?

Also, he's representing them with chess pieces with little skulls over the tops. God, Father is such a dork sometimes. He'd be in some high school getting bullied if he wasn't so powerful. End episode.


When I finished watching this episode, I strongly considered giving up on Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

This honest to god felt like a RWBY episode. Seriously, let's look at the checklist. Character motivations changing on a dime? Check. Fucked up political messaging that has more sympathy for the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing than for the victims? Check. Fight scenes that exist just for the purpose of having fight scenes with no in-story justification? Check, retroactively. Passive "protagonist" who stands around being useless while literally everyone in the room besides them contributes to the story? Check. New character backstories that bring the entire plot and setting crashing down? Check. All we're missing is Edward clipping through Alphonse's arm and Winry turning into a hideous chibi at the sight of offscreen automail.

In retrospect, nearly all of the problems were just in that one scene, inside of the building where they found Scar. The rest of the episode was fine. But that scene took up more than a third of the runtime, and it felt like it took up nine tenths of it.

A few months ago, I started watching blind Let's Watches of FMA episodes I'd already reviewed on YouTube. I was kind of flabbergasted by how many of the watchers were trying to justify the Amestrian status quo to themselves and musing aloud about "wait, IS the Fuhrer a bad guy?" (actual, literal quote) up until episode 14, and some of them dragging their feet about the implications long afterward. This episode's handling of Scar and Miles made me wonder if perhaps this show was actually for people like them all along.

And Edward. Edward's interaction with Scar gets even more WTF when you remember that he didn't drag his feet this much over working with Envy. The entity that deliberately caused all of the aforementioned atrocities and gleefully bragged about it. And also caused more physical pain and bodily harm to Edward than Scar did (half the fighty characters in the show have broken Ed's automail. Far fewer have broken his bones).

...

Actually, a little tangent about Edward here.

An episode where the main character is acting at his worst and needs everyone else to step up to the plate for him, even despite him, can be powerful. The problems with this execution, though, are manifold.

For one, these kinds of heroic breakdowns work best when said hero is at their lowest point, or when they're faced with some big temptation. The lowest point for Edward would have probably been right after the one-sided battle with Father, when Ling was seemingly lost, Winry became collateral, and Mustang's cell was dispersed, all in the wake of being eaten by two Sins and a battle lost to a being that looks just like the father he resents. The point of temptation for Edward would have been when Kimblee offered him the protostone.

For the last couple of episodes, things have more or less been going Edward's way. He found May, he made a powerful ally in General Armstrong, and - with her own and Alphonse's help - he got Winry out of Kimblee's clutches. Jail cell related indignities notwithstanding, he and Alphonse have been on a winning streak since the Sloth fight. And not a dramatic enough winning streak to lead to power-madness or the like either, not nearly. So, why is this happening now of all times?

Honestly, even the relevant OP's work the other way around for this. "Golden Time Lover" has Edward giving in to frustration and despair under a rainy sky and spitefully smashing a flower, and then stopping himself a moment before he can smash another one at the very end. Being pushed to the moral brink, very nearly being lost to hatred and frustration, but then stopping before just before destroying something because of it. The new one, "Period," does show other people rising to the occasion alongside the Elrics, but it's more of a hopeful, rallying type of imagery, with Edward and Alphonse leading the charge.

Also: even for a lowest-point fall to darkness, Edward stopping the chimaeras from turning Scar over to Kimblee so that he could turn Scar over to Kimblee would have been fucking idiotic.

...

I was expecting Edward, Winry, and Scar to have issues working together and for them to have at least scene or two devoted primarily to that. I didn't expect seven full minutes of handwringing over whether or not to hand Scar over to the enemy.

Then the way Miles' uncle tom speech actually made Scar ashamed of himself rather than Miles just...fuck, I know what it reminds me of. There was one book Tom Kratman wrote that had a Jewish character joining a nazi-themed German military group and wearing an SS uniform with a star of David on it instead of a Swastika. Apparently, Kratman thought that this was a good way of encouraging the healing of old wounds and reconciliation of historic victim and victimizer. This isn't as bad as that, obviously, since Amestris and Ishval aren't real, but it's basically the same philosophical position. And considering that Arakawa says that the Ishval genocide was inspired by what her own ancestors did to the Ainu, well...it's not a good look, to put it mildly.

Granted, Miles wasn't portrayed as any sort of paragon in this episode, what with his callous willingness to execute the chimaeras when they could be turned with laughable ease. Maybe we're not supposed to agree with his position about Ishvalan survival after all. But during that scene with Scar, Scar seemed to reluctantly agree that he was right and his own position was inferior, and no one else stepped up to contribute a dissenting opinion. The framing, music, etc all painted Miles as being the one serving words of wisdom and Scar as the sinner in need of redemption.

It makes what Scar's old master from his monastery said before look much worse in retrospect. "The fight is lost, stop fighting it and just try and preserve what we have left" is a message I can get behind in a situation like theirs. "We need to be a model minority and also help the people who genocided us kill other people as well, and then they'll generously give us rights" is fucking Blake Belladonna giving her cringey "this is what white liberals actually believe the civil rights movement looked like" speech in RWBY season 5.

In light of this, it's almost a good thing that that scene suffered from so much other, much more apolitical, stupidity as well. This way I have room to be sanguine and write this whole episode off as some combination of deadline scrambling, executive meddling, and adaptational clumsiness. But part of me is afraid that this (the stupidity and hackishness as well as the bad politics) might be what Fullmetal Alchemist has always been under the hood.


With the future of this project being uncertain, I gave FMA:B the same last chance that I did with JJBA:SDC and RWBY, and watched a few episodes ahead. Unlike with those two, what I saw this time was encouraging.

For one thing, two episodes from now there's another pair of chimaera soldiers who switch sides. This time though, their defection comes after Kimblee uncaringly catches them in one of his area attacks and then leaves them for dead, followed by an act of mercy from Edward. That's a much more believable defection that doesn't require the villains to have been impossibly stupid and their slaves impossibly compliant for no reason for years. After I watched "Daydream," someone on Discord told me that the first pair's defection might have been forced on the author due to fans liking them, and her scrambling to justify keeping them around. After seeing how much better that later scene with two other chimaeras went, I'd be surprised if that wasn't what happened here.

For another, the Ishval stuff gets much more nuanced and empathetic again, and everyone's distrust of Scar falls back to reasonable levels given the story so far. Also, Edward does things, and uses his brain, and behaves according to the principles and motivations he's had throughout the series up until "Daydream."

Also, the episode "The Dwarf in the Flask" happened. That makes up for a lot. Sorry you're not going to get to see my blind reactions to that one, but it contributed greatly to my decision to continue this watchthrough, so law of equivalent exchange I guess.

Hiromi Arakawa wrote and illustrated an average of forty pages a month while working on Fullmetal Alchemist, and at around this point in the series she was also having her first two children, which she did not take maternity leave for. Given those conditions, I can forgive flubs. Even ones that threaten your entire established continuity and accidentally send rancid political messages across. Granted, if that WAS the cause of this then maybe that just means that shonen manga as it's been published for decades is fundamentally incapable of persistent quality. It's also possible that Bones made this all look a lot worse than it was originally in their adaptation, just like what happened in "Miracle at Rush Valley."

...

Heh. Speaking of Rush Valley, it occurs to me that the problem scene in this episode was almost as unnecessary. We saw the brothers starting to confront Scar, and then we saw the ploy with him helping them rescue Winry. Everything that happened between those two points honestly could have been left to inference with little being lost.

Well, except Winry's not-quite-forgiveness scene. It was important to show that. But everything besides that could have easily been cut, since Yoki's dialogue in the mines later on makes it clear what they'd cooked up on that front. Other than that, there's just the issue of why Beebop and Rocksteady are with the good guys now, which...seriously, just fuck that whole thing.

...

It could also be that I'm making excuses for a story that doesn't actually deserve them, despite the reassuring next few episodes. But, while the show has lost a lot of credibility with me in "Daydream," it's built up enough goodwill that I can keep extending it the benefit of the doubt for now.