Setting (5/5): I continue to really love this world driven by alchemy and power. Excellent world-building in this whole series.

We get some serious history on the fall of the city of Cselkcess and some very awesome implications for what that means for the history of alchemy as a whole. I love how all these pieces are falling into place and it shows that Arakawa has been planning a lot of the story from the beginning and it is totally awesome to see it all come into play bit by bit as this story unfolds. I also really like the use of Jewish mythology, and Kabbalah, as symbols and metaphors to help explain the roots of various parts of alchemy. It ends up working out really well and giving real depth and meaning to the "science" behind the world built here. The characters all bear the weight of what alchemy is capable of. Edward and Alphonse carry the burden of abusing alchemy for selfish purposes. Their master Izumi loses her womb after attempting to resurrect her dead child. Scar takes many lives after his entire country is desecrated and gets trapped in a pointless cycle of revenge. Roy and Riza endure the regret of committing brutal war crimes for the sake of protecting their own nation. Alchemy creates and destroys in equal measure and no one is free from the consequences of tipping the balance. In book 1 I disliked Edward from the very beginning. His constant anger and aggression was a complete turn off. I kept reading, because trusted Good Reads friends raved about this series. Hohenheim reaches Rose town from book 1 and finds the tunel, so the scary eyes are Selim homunculi form called Pride. Looks like the time to act undercover is finished. Direct fights between Homunculi and Elrics and others.I like this teacher. Izumi, I think the Firelord in Legend of Korra also has that name lol. I wonder if that’s a FMA reference. Some of the scenes fell like they play out much better in the anime, but that might just be because I'd seen the anime and watched through the original and BrotherHood first before deciding to collect the manga. Some scenes just have that stronger potency when voiced and animated from my perspective. It's really fun to connect parts of an episode with the panels of the manga, though; the manga's basically the storyboard for the show, and when you're intimate with both, it's nice to make the connections with what's the same or different and sometimes can be absolutely /gleeful/ to see how well the tone transferred and stayed generally consistent between both mediums. Still loving Winry, her grandmother, and Lt. Roy Mustang. The author has a nice balance of male and female characters. I liked getting to know more about Lt. Col. Hawkeye. I think the target of her "secret" is obvious? Fullmetal Alchemist grew on me the longer I read it. When I first started reading, it seemed like it was going to be generic shounen material, but it gets deeper and darker the further it goes on. The way it handles political and religious corruption, the dangers of advanced states abusing their technology and resources at the expense of foreign nations caught in the turmoil, and the sad futility of revenge are all very well done. Dans ce dernier, ils restent trop superficiels... et c'est d'autant plus sensible que le manga va bien plus vite que l'anime dans le déroulement de l'intrigue principale.

Mais c'est comme si on nous teasait des scènes qui ne viennent pas, qu'on aurait ratées. Ou qui viendront peut-être trop tard (je ne sais pas encore, au milieu du tome 4, je les attends toujours). Writing/Drawing Style (5/5): This series continues to be beautifully drawn with amazing detail and easy to follow frames. Everything is also well written and easy to read as well as very funny and humorous at times. It's impressive the art style of Hiromu Arakawa. She can balance very well the comical and dramatic moments of the narrative and blend them very well, they never seem to clash at all. The characters are fantastic, very well rounded and developed even the ones that don't get a lot of screen time. Its also nice to see the main themes of loss, grief, hope and humanity being developed as the narrative evolves. Because that is what all the great stories have in common, the ability to answer what it means to be human. La structure narrative, bien que le fond et bien des scènes soient stricto-sensu les mêmes, est un poil différente.

Mais bon, je ne suis qu'au 4e tome sur 27. Et comme je sais que l'anime a été volontairement conçu pour différer de l'intrigue et la fin du manga, je suis hyper curieuse de découvrir tout ce qui m'attend. Series Info/Source: This is the 8th volume in the Fullmetal Alchemist 3-in-1 series and covers the original volumes 22 to 24. I bought this. Narrator: On a separate note, the Flame Alchemist Colonel Mustang’s research log is written using the names of women as a code.