Lions Led By Robots 28: Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood: Part 2
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Clarification:
In the beginning of this episode we talk about The Enhanced Games and a sub 2 hour marathon. This was unofficially first achieved by Eliude Kipchoge using several things that would not otherwise be allowed during a competition. However, after Kipchoge's sub 2 hour run, the record was broken by Sebastian Sawe under competition rules during the London Marathon in April of 2026. To make this story even crazier, another runner, Yomif Kejelcha also broke the sub 2 hour barrier in the same race.
correction
Under standard marathon rules pace runners cannot switch out during the run. This was one of the rules that was broken during Kipchoge's sub 2 hour exhibition run.
Joe and Tom sit down to talk about the next 4 episodes of FMAB. They discuss the concept of the HGH Alchemist, what their state alchemist names would be, and the forbidden gummy bear.
Comments (38)
God I’m begging yall to do a bonus on this where you watch the dub bloopers and do real time reactions, I need to hear yall lose it over Envy, Armstrong, and Al’s VAs being ridic I beg I beg
I think the major thing steroids help with is avoiding and recovering from injury. Ironically, I think steroids are more helpful for pitchers than probably any other athlete. What REALLY deflated hitting in major league baseball was naming banning Adderall. Improving your reaction time by a third of a second is ENORMOUS as a major league hitter.
Two small corrections, Ed’s arm fails in the fight with slicer cause Winny forgot to put a bolt in(I think it’s a after credit scene in episode 6) I don’t think the chrome thing comes up until later(if at all.) And Slicer was the nickname of a serial killer that turned out to be TWO brothers instead of just a single dude. So basically they just decided to collectively still be slicer even after being bound to armor.
I need "Succulent 6-7," on a shirt
The eating the philosopher’s stone bit reminded me of when people do the meme of mathing out how many calories a gram of uranium has.
The Strongarm podcaster, Joe Kassabian
"I bring the wolf porn." - Joe Kassabian, SECRET TURK?!
49:10 is that your Justin Roczniak impression?
It's a crazy thing to just casually drop that most of your main characters are war criminals guilty of commiting genocide.
It is, and that's fantastic.
Legit, The Boys comic is better than the show. I will fully admit, it is filled with edgy bullshit, but it's still really good.
So Hafþór Björnsson has just done to himself what Bane did.
I'm in my 30s and I'd never watched FMA (03 or brotherhood), though I'd heard plenty about it (poor Nina...) This series was the impetus to finally see the show, so I blitzed Brotherhood start to finish over about a week. And holy shit, I'd been sleeping like the dead on this show. 10/good, no notes, a masterpiece through and through. Thank you for being the kick in the pants I didn't know I needed to experience this show for the first time!
Omega verse is terrible because it makes it hard to find good gay romance fiction that isn't full of stupid alpha/Omega dynamics, and it makes it hard to find gay werewolf romance that isnt just humans with slightly sharper teeth and good hearing. It's a lose lose scenario
I have not found either of these things to be the case. There's tons of good gay romance without omegaverse and there's also a lot of werewolf stuff with actual werewolves. I mostly just see the non-werewolf omegaverse stuff in (ideally kinky) fanfics.
My favorite DBZ trivia is that Cell kept evolving because the editor kept looking at his design and going 'nah change it' without giving good directions as to how the artist should change him
It's crazy that after they arrested Tucker for murdering his family, the newspaper used a picture of him, his wife, dog, and daughter on a steam powered jet ski
Fun fact! Arakawa did a lot of research on genocide to write the Ishvalan Genocide. Though the country itself seems more based on SWANA in aesthetics, religiously there’s also basis in Indian religions iirc. But the Ishvalans and their plight was MOSTLY inspired by the Ainu people (though not without acknowledgment of this happening to many other groups). Arakawa lives on Hokkaido and she’s spoken about how her ancestors were both colonizers and Ainu people and how this helped her want to create Scar as an antagonist who is someone still empathetic and understandable.
he hasn't shown up yet & no spoilers but Sloth is my guy. i have never related to a character more. love you Sloth, keep keeping it real.
Brb gonna write some LLBR ABW slash fic on this black notebook here that some ganglyass opossum dropped when it was stealing my apples
Dewdew Gear
Marcoh in the manga does get a bit more time, & he gives the boys the hint because he comprehends what happened to them. & Al passes a speech check
It might be pretty quick, but I do think it "made sense". Also, I assume he got a read of the brothers as "the kind of people who would be dissuaded from making one knowing they're made of people." HOWEVER, maybe we just be upfront with telling them they're made of people next time, yeah?
In the original FMA anime, Barry the Chopper was basically a Buffalo Bill copy whole cloth, and I'm really really glad they cut all that in Brotherhood.
I think that 03's handling of Barry the Chopper vs the way he is in the manga/Brotherhood kind of exemplifies the tonal differences between the series. In the canon versions, Barry is allowed to be kind of silly and pompous; Al doesn't know who he is because the guy was famous in Central, not as far out as Resembool , and that hurts his pride. By comparison, in the 03 anime, he literally kidnaps Ed and the whole scene feels more harrowing than Ed vesus Scar. I think the 03 episode is pretty effective horror, but FMA is not, at the end of the day, a horror manga. Arakawa didn't WRITE Barry as a scary, clever serial killer, she wrote him as a guy who loved killing people but isn't actually all THAT smart. Definitely more mean than clever, and the kind of person she feels can be taken down a peg with comedy.
Anyone who thinks the 2003 anime has better character development is just WRONG. People can like it better, but the characters are absolutely not more developed in that series. I'd recommend checking the manga for some things cut out of Brotherhood, but not the 2003 series unless you really want "FMA Depressing Version".
This show is unrealistic in that the fascist death squad didn't immediately try to racially profile the guy they were fighting, instead it took until the glasses came off.
Actually, the central library is intentionally burned down, not destroyed in the fight with Scar. Not that that matters a whole lot, admittedly. 😅
The brothers are a nosy duo, stirring up ghosts that the powers that be would rather be left aground.
Miscellaneous Uncs is going to be the name of my new band
Even though it's majority light-skinned people, there are plenty of people with dark skin in Amestris that we see throughout the series. They aren't MAJOR, but there are named Black characters. HOWEVER, I still agree that everyone seems stupid in this moment, because another (weirdly unmentioned) ethnic trait of Ishvalans is having grey/white hair regardless of age. It makes me wonder if Arakawa initially designed the hair colour JUST for Scar and then decided to make it an ethnic signifier some time later, perhaps because red eyes don't read very well in monotone.
Lol at Joe thinking Maes Hughes was an alchemist. I think that even in the first anime he only ever fought with throwing knives, so I don't know where that came from. It seems like alchemy works in a way where anyone has the POTENTIAL to be an alchemist, but it requires a lot of study, so a lot of people just... don't become one for one reason or another, in the same way that most people aren't physicists or chemists.
Ok....the pacing on this is wayyyyyy different, i watched the 2003 FMA in fan subs a long ass time ago...watching brotherhood for the first time with you guys, and holy fuck its easier to follow..so much less filler. Barry the chopper got his own full episode before he got bound to the armour.
The 03 series definitely killed some time early-on by adding some totally original stuff and some stuff that was just like... questionably canon manga bonus chapters (see when Ed fights Mustang as basically a contest). Presumably they did it that early in the series because otherwise the plot wouldn't really allow for it, and it would be fun for the fans, because they knew they'd have to make up their story instead of filling for time to not catch up with the manga, which would've been impossible at that point.
Joe, you could be the giant shirtless man hugging teenagers in grief.
Hey Joe, this is your lawyer, maybe rethink this.
Also a big agree on the arcs thing. I really do love how interconnected the story of FMA is and how most things either build on what has happened before or comes back later
Small correction: there are other people with dark skin who aren't Ishvalan in FMA! We see several black minor characters later on. However they all have dark hair unlike Ishvalans so.... Also some of the reiteration of stuff in early episodes is actually due to the first 2 eps of FMAB not being that way in the manga. Ep 1 is anime only while ep 2 is full of flashbacks that don't show up til vol 6 of the manga (when they go see their teacher around ep 13). So originally some things were actually the first time they showrd up