Latest Posts by the-strangest-thing-happened - Page 8

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN HAVOC EXPLAINED FLAME ALCHEMY FOR THE AUDIENCE WAY BACK IN CHAPTER FOUR? IT WAS BECAUSE HE ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON.

Roy can transmute no matter what, but he can only start a spark if his gloves are dry. His gloves are wet, and they look screwed. But they’re not, they’re covered in water. And Roy’s just like jeeze, I’m totally underrated here, and he says I have unlimited resources. Havoc’s mind makes the jump in a matter of seconds. Roy has all the fuel he needs. Water is nothing more than two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen, and if he splits the molecules, he’ll have hydrogen gas which is highly explosive. So he needs a contained room to do it in, or else they’ll be dealing with a hydrogen fire explosion too. 

Of course Roy can transmute water. He just needs something to light the fire, and Havoc tosses his lighter like a grenade into the room, and kaboom.

Don’t look so shocked. This is his field of alchemy. The only reason Roy doesn’t set fire to the rain is because doing so in a wide open space would set off a chain reaction of gas explosions and hydrogen fires that could potentially concussively kill/incinerate everyone in a nearby radius. 

Roy is always holding back.

As much as I loved Brotherhood’s version of this scene, there is this wonderful detail in the manga:

He took off his glove.

Roy and Riza vs defeated idealism.

Roy and Riza's journey in Fullmetal Alchemist is the struggle of the naive idealism of youth against the cynical realism of adulthood. At the core of their characters there is a tenet: that Alchemy — or rather power — should be used for the benefit of the people. Like many things in FMA there is an irony in this. This belief that's so crucial to their characters is something they inherited from someone who, in a way, represents the antithesis of this idea.

Berthold Hawkeye.

The Manga goes out of its way to tell us this is something Behold believed in and passed on to them. First when Roy uses it to justify why he joined the military, and then when Riza admits that she believed in her father's words.

The thing is that there is a dissonance between Berthold's teachings and his character's actions. Berthold is a recluse living away from the people his hoarded knowledge is supposed to help. Roy and Riza know this, and they call him out on it.

They both fervently believe in Berthold's teaching, and they don't understand why he's so adamantly against putting it to practice. When they join the military they don't do so to spite him, they do so because they believe in what he preaches, so much so that they want to prove his cynicism wrong.

The problem is that Berthold is right.

He's sooo freaking right.

Their government is corrupt. All that talk about protecting their people is pure propaganda. His cynicism is the pain of someone who was burned too much by the world's cruelty. Berthold is an idealist that has given up, much like Hohenheim before Trisha. He is someone that once wished to help people, and probably came to the same painful realization that Roy and Riza eventually had in Ishval. The path to hell can be paved with good intentions, and sometimes you're completely powerless to do anything about it.

Now, what makes Riza and Roy such great characters, is the fact that instead of falling into despair and secluding themselves like Berthold did, they decide to fight back and continue clawing at the world with their own — no longer so naive — idealism. They have seen where defeat leads to, and they refuse to walk that path.

My favorite example of Roy's acceptance of both Berthold's teaching, as well as his rejection of Berthold's character, is his conversation with Hughes in Ishval.

This conversation is such a beautiful call back to Berthold telling Roy that alchemists die when they cease to think. This is Roy doubling down, acknowledging that yes he was naive — the world is a much more complicated and painful place than he realized — but still he refuses to give up on the face of reality like Berthold did. Where Berthold accepted his fate, as a man who was already dead inside, Roy and Riza continue to struggle to survive.

Berthold might have taught Roy and Riza that power should be used for good, but his biggest lesson to them was perhaps serving as an example of what happens when you allow your dreams and hope to die.

Ps. This thematic of children following on their parent/mentor footsteps and surpassing them is constant on FMA. Winry being a mechanic like her grandma and deciding to be like her parents by forgiving Scar. Ed and Al becoming alchemist like Hohenheim, but also embracing their familiar bonds and continue to help people despite their trauma. Ling Yao becoming emperor and dismantling the infighting his father had promoted. Scar embracing his brother's alchemy and dream. It is then fitting that Roy and Riza also inherited something from Berthold and then surpassed him.

Roy Mustang snaps his fingers accidentally (while wearing his gloves)

What people think will happen: fire, death, destruction

What will actually happen: a small spark

Why people are wrong: they think Roy’s Flame Alchemy actually creates flame, whereas what he’s alchemizing is the oxygen concentration of the air. Alchemy takes concentration and intelligence so he can’t accidentally move air particles around to make the air so oxygenated as to be flammable. The finger-snap just ignites the oxygen. If the air is normal, it’s not going to ignite.

Extra fun fact: you can probably tell if Roy Mustang is about to set you on fire. The air will feel intoxicatingly easy to breathe because it’s pure oxygen. During the war, Ishvalans probably learned to GTFO if they felt heady and energized.

Extra extra fun fact: Roy Mustang doesn’t need to set you on fire to kill you. He can probably just remove all the oxygen from the air around you, and you’ll suffocate.

The point of this post: flame alchemy is both really cool and really simple.

The kicker: to use flame alchemy effectively, you probably have to visualize the shape of the oxygen cloud that’s going to form. This probably requires a lot of focus.

I am: a nerd.

I think it’s worth pointing out that after Riza, Ed and Scar manage to talk Roy down from his rampage, his eyes look exactly the same as they do in the Ishval chapters. Even after he’s decided NOT to kill Envy, even after he’s backed away from the line between monster and human, he has the eyes of a killer. It’s not until he’s realized how far he almost went that Arakawa draws his eyes like this, btw. Here and in volume 15 there is a sorrow and a weariness in his eyes that only comes with the guilt and self-disgust that he feels when he realizes he almost crossed that line between human and monster.

Plus, he looks like this for the rest of the scene. Realizing he almost let himself become “a beast hiding in the skin of a person” (in Scar’s words) affected him more deeply and lingered with him a little longer than I originally thought.