FMAB - episode 4: An Alchemist's Anguish
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FMAB - episode 4: An Alchemist's Anguish
So…this episode.
Unpopular opinion time, I don’t really like this episode. Not in the sense that it’s oh so depressing and I don’t like watching it, but in the sense that I don’t think it’s that well done. And I know most people are deeply affected by this story, and there are things I do react to, but not the things I see other people broken over.
This episode has a lot of the same problems as the Liore story as far as presentation goes, the frenetic visuals and the insistent music; but I also think the drama elements are poorly paced. Admittedly they’re kind of too fast and too slow at the same time, so you would think I’d have to say it comes out about right in the end (which I kind of concluded about Liore), but I don’t think it does.
The twist is too obvious. The audience is never allowed to see Tucker as trustworthy, practically the first thing we hear about him is that he created a talking chimera only for it to beg for death. Then we hear about his wife leaving him just before he got his state license, and it’s really easy to put two and two together and guess what happened. And it’s not like we see a ton of affection between him and Nina that makes the audience think he certainly wouldn’t do anything like that to her when he already used his wife that way.
I had a thought as I was watching, that a better angle on the story would be if we did see more affection between him and Nina, and see him as more predatory towards Ed and Al’s skills. So that the suspicious air around him makes the viewer worry that he’s going to do something to them, and then pull the rug out by having him use Nina. Traces of how that idea could have worked are in the episode we get, but it’s not the story that we get. Nor is there room for it to be developed enough for that.
Which might lead me to think that this should be a longer story, but because the twist is so obvious for the whole episode it already seems to take too long for the boys to catch on to the mess they’re stepping in on. Even though it’s only a few days (which explains them not being suspicious, but then feels like we’re rushing the bond between them and Nina). I know ’03 treats this story quite differently, but I don’t remember if I liked it any more or less, or if I just had different problems with it. Guess we’ll see in a bit.
The last time I was watching the series I started working on a theory that Roy was using the boys to try and root out any funny business with Tucker. Somebody has to be suspicious about the whole chimera that begs for death thing, and/or the case of Tucker’s missing wife. Plus with assessments coming up, Roy could just want someone else who can attest to what Tucker is up to. But I also kind of decided that Roy doesn’t see Tucker as dangerous; suspicious and vaguely useless, but not dangerous. This time I’m really not sure how much if any of this theory holds water.
Another thing I think gets sort of lost in the end reveal, is Ed projecting Hohenheim onto Tucker. That moment really does work for me, and almost does enough to justify Ed’s very quick shift in priorities and sympathy with Nina (it’s still pretty quick overall, but I think the reasoning works). Being a child of parental death/loss and parental neglect/abandonment, he (and Al, although we’re less in his head) latches onto brightening up Nina’s life while they’re here.
(Because I’m me and I’d feel wrong not saying it, but there’s also the not remarked on in canon but clear to fandom parallel with the Hawkeyes’ situation.)
I also strangely have…a non-zero amount of sympathy for Tucker. It’s minimal, but since I gather most of fandom has negative empathy for him, I’m again the oddball. Most people focus on him being selfish and amoral, and I’m not really disagreeing, but it sits alongside a slightly more sympathetic reading. That he’s delusional and has been driven a bit insane by capitalism. We barely know anything about his relationship to his wife, but he certainly blames their being poor for the problems in their marriage; and it’s clearly the prospect of losing his standing and income as a state alchemist that drives him to the point where he gets this episode. I’m honestly not sure he sees what he did to them as wrong, as if he somehow thinks he was doing it *for* them, in order to be the provider he’s supposed to be.
That said, I’m not sure that very slightly sympathetic reading completely works with what he says to Ed when he’s found out. At least it doesn’t completely; although I do consider him to be driven a bit mad at that point in the story.
There certainly are elements here that in my memory make more sense in the ’03 version. Because having the military actually breathing down Tucker’s neck about getting results is a different situation from just financial worries. I don’t actually think that makes it all that much more sympathetic on my very slight sympathy meter; in some ways it makes it more clear to me that he’s choosing himself over Nina, where in this version I’m oddly inclined to think he doesn’t get that he’s going to be providing for a family that no longer exists. And I do like there being at least some implication that there’s a connection between what the military wanted with Tucker and the chimera creations we meet later; although the timeline doesn’t work out real well there either. In either case, I think Tucker ends up being well behind what we see with Greed’s gang, but some connection wouldn’t hurt.
I feel like I should have something to say about this setup episode for Scar, but I don’t think it’s done very well either. The opening combat with Grand is not staged well to give time for so much to happen. And I feel more for the killed MPs outside than I do about his killing of Tucker and Nina. In fact, I think him passing judgement in that situation casts a shadow back to say that Grand probably deserved it too.
Hmm, I may be having a bit of a Jaime Lannister situation here. Where I’m clearly supposed to see a character as a villain, we see them do villainous things, and yet there isn’t a moment when I ever assumed they weren’t the hero of their own story. I just don’t end up liking Scar as much as Jaime.
I actually had several mental notes about the translation differences, and these are just the ones I thought were interesting enough to commit to memory. It looks like the title could also be translated as “An Alchemist’s Distress,” and I already had thoughts on the matter. For one, it lacks the alliteration we get with Anguish, which immediately makes it worse as a title; but Anguish is also a much stronger word. In a differently paced and focused story, the slow building distress might have been a decent fit for a title, but given the episode and especially the end I think Anguish is the better choice.
Given that the subtitles don’t even translate what the dub puts in as ‘big brother Ed’ for what gets Ed to put the pieces together, I have a suspicion that in the actual Japanese it tracks a bit better as being obviously something Nina would say. In almost works in the dub, but I’ve always thought it was a bit forced for that to be what gets Ed caught up with things. On the other hand, the dub gives Ninalex a bit more variety in what she says than the sub does. She’s very limited in both, but I think it actually works as more tragic if we see that bit more humanity still in her.
Seeing as Tucker laughs like there was a joke, I assume the dub’s ‘dog tired’ pun belongs there, as there is nothing like a joke in the sub. The dub is a little forced at working in Armstrong reciting the alchemists’ creed, but on the whole I think it’s better to have it there than the absence in the sub. But there is one point I give the sub, for having Ed comment that they’re ‘puny, powerless humans.’ The dub has him say they’re only human, which in the moment is more or less the same meaning, but in the long run I like the echo of Envy’s insults.
FMAB - episode 4: An Alchemist's Anguish
So…this episode.
Unpopular opinion time, I don’t really like this episode. Not in the sense that it’s oh so depressing and I don’t like watching it, but in the sense that I don’t think it’s that well done. And I know most people are deeply affected by this story, and there are things I do react to, but not the things I see other people broken over.
This episode has a lot of the same problems as the Liore story as far as presentation goes, the frenetic visuals and the insistent music; but I also think the drama elements are poorly paced. Admittedly they’re kind of too fast and too slow at the same time, so you would think I’d have to say it comes out about right in the end (which I kind of concluded about Liore), but I don’t think it does.
The twist is too obvious. The audience is never allowed to see Tucker as trustworthy, practically the first thing we hear about him is that he created a talking chimera only for it to beg for death. Then we hear about his wife leaving him just before he got his state license, and it’s really easy to put two and two together and guess what happened. And it’s not like we see a ton of affection between him and Nina that makes the audience think he certainly wouldn’t do anything like that to her when he already used his wife that way.
I had a thought as I was watching, that a better angle on the story would be if we did see more affection between him and Nina, and see him as more predatory towards Ed and Al’s skills. So that the suspicious air around him makes the viewer worry that he’s going to do something to them, and then pull the rug out by having him use Nina. Traces of how that idea could have worked are in the episode we get, but it’s not the story that we get. Nor is there room for it to be developed enough for that.
Which might lead me to think that this should be a longer story, but because the twist is so obvious for the whole episode it already seems to take too long for the boys to catch on to the mess they’re stepping in on. Even though it’s only a few days (which explains them not being suspicious, but then feels like we’re rushing the bond between them and Nina). I know ’03 treats this story quite differently, but I don’t remember if I liked it any more or less, or if I just had different problems with it. Guess we’ll see in a bit.
The last time I was watching the series I started working on a theory that Roy was using the boys to try and root out any funny business with Tucker. Somebody has to be suspicious about the whole chimera that begs for death thing, and/or the case of Tucker’s missing wife. Plus with assessments coming up, Roy could just want someone else who can attest to what Tucker is up to. But I also kind of decided that Roy doesn’t see Tucker as dangerous; suspicious and vaguely useless, but not dangerous. This time I’m really not sure how much if any of this theory holds water.
Another thing I think gets sort of lost in the end reveal, is Ed projecting Hohenheim onto Tucker. That moment really does work for me, and almost does enough to justify Ed’s very quick shift in priorities and sympathy with Nina (it’s still pretty quick overall, but I think the reasoning works). Being a child of parental death/loss and parental neglect/abandonment, he (and Al, although we’re less in his head) latches onto brightening up Nina’s life while they’re here.
(Because I’m me and I’d feel wrong not saying it, but there’s also the not remarked on in canon but clear to fandom parallel with the Hawkeyes’ situation.)
I also strangely have…a non-zero amount of sympathy for Tucker. It’s minimal, but since I gather most of fandom has negative empathy for him, I’m again the oddball. Most people focus on him being selfish and amoral, and I’m not really disagreeing, but it sits alongside a slightly more sympathetic reading. That he’s delusional and has been driven a bit insane by capitalism. We barely know anything about his relationship to his wife, but he certainly blames their being poor for the problems in their marriage; and it’s clearly the prospect of losing his standing and income as a state alchemist that drives him to the point where he gets this episode. I’m honestly not sure he sees what he did to them as wrong, as if he somehow thinks he was doing it *for* them, in order to be the provider he’s supposed to be.
That said, I’m not sure that very slightly sympathetic reading completely works with what he says to Ed when he’s found out. At least it doesn’t completely; although I do consider him to be driven a bit mad at that point in the story.
There certainly are elements here that in my memory make more sense in the ’03 version. Because having the military actually breathing down Tucker’s neck about getting results is a different situation from just financial worries. I don’t actually think that makes it all that much more sympathetic on my very slight sympathy meter; in some ways it makes it more clear to me that he’s choosing himself over Nina, where in this version I’m oddly inclined to think he doesn’t get that he’s going to be providing for a family that no longer exists. And I do like there being at least some implication that there’s a connection between what the military wanted with Tucker and the chimera creations we meet later; although the timeline doesn’t work out real well there either. In either case, I think Tucker ends up being well behind what we see with Greed’s gang, but some connection wouldn’t hurt.
I feel like I should have something to say about this setup episode for Scar, but I don’t think it’s done very well either. The opening combat with Grand is not staged well to give time for so much to happen. And I feel more for the killed MPs outside than I do about his killing of Tucker and Nina. In fact, I think him passing judgement in that situation casts a shadow back to say that Grand probably deserved it too.
Hmm, I may be having a bit of a Jaime Lannister situation here. Where I’m clearly supposed to see a character as a villain, we see them do villainous things, and yet there isn’t a moment when I ever assumed they weren’t the hero of their own story. I just don’t end up liking Scar as much as Jaime.
I actually had several mental notes about the translation differences, and these are just the ones I thought were interesting enough to commit to memory. It looks like the title could also be translated as “An Alchemist’s Distress,” and I already had thoughts on the matter. For one, it lacks the alliteration we get with Anguish, which immediately makes it worse as a title; but Anguish is also a much stronger word. In a differently paced and focused story, the slow building distress might have been a decent fit for a title, but given the episode and especially the end I think Anguish is the better choice.
Given that the subtitles don’t even translate what the dub puts in as ‘big brother Ed’ for what gets Ed to put the pieces together, I have a suspicion that in the actual Japanese it tracks a bit better as being obviously something Nina would say. In almost works in the dub, but I’ve always thought it was a bit forced for that to be what gets Ed caught up with things. On the other hand, the dub gives Ninalex a bit more variety in what she says than the sub does. She’s very limited in both, but I think it actually works as more tragic if we see that bit more humanity still in her.
Seeing as Tucker laughs like there was a joke, I assume the dub’s ‘dog tired’ pun belongs there, as there is nothing like a joke in the sub. The dub is a little forced at working in Armstrong reciting the alchemists’ creed, but on the whole I think it’s better to have it there than the absence in the sub. But there is one point I give the sub, for having Ed comment that they’re ‘puny, powerless humans.’ The dub has him say they’re only human, which in the moment is more or less the same meaning, but in the long run I like the echo of Envy’s insults.
