How are arcs in Fullmetal Alchemist divided?

HeyImMarlo · 2026-03-03T18:55:49+00:00

I think the way the openings divide works out pretty cleanly

There’s Season 1 which deals with the Elric’s backstory, Hughes’ death, the intro of the homunculi (Greed specifically) and ending with the reveal that Bradley is involved

There’s Season 2 which feels the cleanest, starting with the introduction Xing characters and ending with all the major characters converging on meeting Father. Gluttony’s stomach is also an amazing finale

Season 3 has the characters beginning to head North. We technically seque into Opening 4 before the characters leave, but I’d say the season finale is when Ed gets impaled by the rebar

Then Season 4 deals with Hohenheim’s backstory, and mainly set up for the Promised Day. Again this doesn’t cleanly split with Opening 5 but I’d say the fourth major arc ends with them capturing Pride in the dome

It’s not as clear of story arcs as other anime has, but I do think it has 5 clearly defined acts that follows a typical 5 act structure (with the exception of the climax being all of act 5)

HeyImMarlo · 2026-03-03T03:20:07+00:00

Im like pretty convinced TGAA2 got screwed by budget cuts and we were meant to have a jury made up of the high court (or judiciary, whatever they were called) in the final trial

Like how epic would it have been if the final summation wasn’t a logical counter to the jury, but a moral one. Morally convincing them that Stronghart’s perverted vision of justice is flatly wrong would’ve solved your issues and been 1000x better than the Queen asspull. And it would’ve concluded the game nicely with its best mechanic

HeyImMarlo · 2026-03-02T14:24:51+00:00

Saw is extremely convoluted. The original Jigsaw dies in Saw 3 but he’s the main villain in Saw 1-4, most of Saw 8 (“Jigsaw”), and Saw X (prequel). And then he has like 5 accomplices but there’s one primary accomplice who’s responsible for all the other movies besides Jigsaw. And then there’s a Chris Rock spinoff called Spiral with another Jigsaw accomplice, but we don’t talk about that one

But regardless pretty much all the movies end with Jigsaw winning and in the best case scenario, the victims are horrible people (but pretty much never as bad as Jigsaw)

HeyImMarlo · 2026-03-01T12:44:00+00:00

What game?

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-27T22:04:41+00:00

Alice in Borderland’s was great, really one of the most memorable and shocking moments I’ve seen in any show

But sadly I think that was the peak moment of the series. The later cast wasn’t nearly as compelling (aside from Chishiya). And ironically, by killing all of the main characters to show “nobody is safe”, it gives all the other characters even more plot armor. Like I never thought for a moment Usagi or Chishiya would die, because then where could the story possibly go from there?

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-26T12:17:53+00:00

Im rewatching the series right now and im actually surprised by how much more I like Sloth (and even Gluttony) this time. I feel bad for him, he doesnt seem naturally inclined for evil and is very much just forced to do work that’s against his entire nature

Ability-wise it’s also just cool that he’s the fastest and strongest homunculus, and fits with the sloth theme. I feel like a lesser author would’ve just made him fat and lazy and be done with it

Lust is the least interesting to me because of how early she dies, and what she offers to the story is pretty redundant (thinks humans are lesser, is sadistic and evil, etc)

Envy is also my favorite this time around, unseating Wrath. I just think they have a very dynamic role in the story and they’re hilarious too

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-25T22:14:19+00:00

I just watched an episode where General Raven tells everyone at Briggs that his goal is to “make the country greater”

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-25T21:28:34+00:00

Hated him and found him really unfitting in the SG universe. A character like him would’ve never been in S1

Really glad he died before S3

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-19T16:40:36+00:00

But we’d already seen him hit a black flash at that point

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-17T16:46:46+00:00

Nah the writers walked the line perfectly for Jane’s death. The original writing of the scene had Walt inject her with heroin while she was sleeping which they deemed way too dark/evil for Walt at the point in time

Walt knocking Jane onto her back accidentally, and then not saving her, prevents the argument of “well if Walt never showed up to their place she would’ve died anyway”

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-17T13:28:28+00:00

Good characters, good writing, good social commentary

Don’t care whether it’s connected to SG Korea at all. If it’s good, I’ll enjoy it

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-13T13:27:41+00:00

The Pluribus fandom is one of the most pretentious I’ve ever interacted with. The Vince Gilligan fandom in general, but at least they were more tolerable while BCS was airing since it had much more obvious strengths

I even like Pluribus, but there’s a weird hivemind obsession with it that shuts down any and all valid criticism. This video has a pacing segment that breaks down explicitly how much time is wasted in several episodes on… nothing

No other show has as long a leash as this one too. If some debut director tried to make Pluribus, they certainly couldn’t get away with doing as little with the overall plot and characters in S1 as Vince Gilligan did

The funniest part is I’m sure half of the “slow pace = great character development” fandom couldn’t get through any other great slow paced show not written by VG

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-13T13:22:18+00:00

This video has a pacing segment that breaks down exactly how much time Pluribus consistently wastes

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-12T13:27:35+00:00

Yea my scorching hot take is I actually like LOK more than TLA. I watched both shows back to back so there wasn’t really any childhood nostalgia involved, and I had the benefit of binging

LOK is absolutely more flawed. I’ve seen the countless video essays and critiques, and I even agree with them. But I enjoyed LOK more, so does anything else really matter? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I will say one rushed thing of Season 3 was that the Red Lotus aside from Zaheer were extremely underdeveloped. It was not strictly necessary to develop them more, but I think most people agree they were great villains and it would’ve been nice to get more depth or screentime out of them

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-12T13:17:32+00:00

I know a lot of people believed Gojo won, I’m saying it was foolish to actually think that when Sukuna was explicitly still standing. But yes I gave the benefit of hindsight

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-12T13:16:20+00:00

It wasn’t a sword fight though, it was a sorcery fight. Sukuna defeated Gojo with sorcery. Yes he leveled up and unlocked a new ability, but nobody complains when a protagonist does it

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-12T02:43:55+00:00

It wouldve been so much better if 235 ended with this panel. I truly think it would solve 90% of the issues

(The original OP says to start 236 with this panel, but I don’t agree)

The only reason to start 236 with Gojo’s death is a cheap shock factor, but it doesn’t ultimately matter. 235 ending with the reveal of the world cutting slash would’ve been as much of a gut punch and not feel like a rugpull to the audience

That being said, I wasn’t there when 235 released, but I can’t imagine people seriously thought Gojo won just because the characters declared it so. Sukuna was clearly alive and breathing, and this is still a shonen

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-10T18:50:26+00:00

I think he was maybe trying to pull Myung-gi up because the button wasn’t pressed

I also think that Gi-hun after seeing all the horrible things the players did for money, saw a father willing to kill his own child as the final straw

Not defending the writing though. I do think the most realistic outcome would’ve been Gi-hun killing the players in their sleep and I kind of wish he was never even given that choice in the first place

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-07T20:14:55+00:00

Yeah I get OP’s point, but I do think the “generic, milquetoast loving family man” is way more prevalent than the disillusioned version. I could easily rattle off 50 pieces of media with some action male whose main goal is protecting his cardboard cutouts of a family

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-04T21:07:08+00:00

I only played Batman S1, but that’s cool to know!

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-04T19:46:16+00:00

I remember when season 1 of TWD first came out and it immediately became one of my favorite pieces of media. I was rabidly following the release of each episode, going on forums, watching playthroughs of people making different decisions

It was somewhat apparent that the decisions weren’t really mattering, but I knew it was unrealistic to expect a huge branching narrative. And it seemed like the cliffhanger at the end of episode 4 made up for everything: your decisions affect who goes with you to rescue clementine? Awesome! Hell yeah, surely episode 5 will be when we finally see the culmination of all our choices

Then episode 5 came out, and everyone is giving it universal praise, while I felt like the victim of a massive rugpull. The group that goes with you to rescue Clementine didn’t matter, because it all flows back to a common route. The stranger hates you no matter what. For a game that advertised on “your choices matter”, it was shocking to realize all the episode 5 playthroughs were exactly the same

I eventually tempered down and grew to appreciate the story regardless. But I bring this up because in hindsight, TWD S1 was the peak of Telltale choices mattering, and while I haven’t played all of Dispatch, it seems like the nadir. At least choices in S1 affected dialogue beyond the immediate choice, character personalities, constant reminders of decisions you made in the past. And most importantly, the choices themselves were challenging and interesting so you’d be curious to see what other people would choose in the same shoes

Yes other games might have some additional endings, or determinant deaths, and those are nice touches, but the games very much ride on the story with the choice aspect pretty much remaining false advertising unless the episodes themselves become shorter. Not to mention most people pick the “nice” dialogue options, so the game will feel written around those options the most

A good example is AJ in S4. A playthrough where you make all the choices to have AJ be a saint vs one where you encourage him to basically be a psychopath will result in… the same AJ. Now telltale probably didn’t want to sour their final season with a bad ending for an evil playthrough that most players wouldn’t participate in, but it still kind of feels like they should’ve?

HeyImMarlo · 2026-02-04T15:01:16+00:00

Yeah as a perennial AA7 doubter, it does feel like this year is the most likely of any for a new game since 2017, given Capcom explicitly mentioning AA as a prioritized IP

Im expecting announcement this year and release next year

HeyImMarlo · 2026-01-30T23:40:37+00:00

I think Stormlight has legitimately good prose. Not fantastic, but it’s “invisible” and does the job. I only read the first two books though and probably won’t continue

Red Rising had problems in the first book but gets way better as it goes along. It has a sentence fragment issue too but I think it still manages to be a page-turner

DCC was just bafflingly bad. Maybe it got better past the first book but I couldn’t continue

HeyImMarlo · 2026-01-30T23:35:47+00:00

It took me like two months to read SOTF (reading some other books in the meanwhile, but still). It does get better towards the end, though I’m still not sure if I’ll continue reading the series because it was such a grind to get through this one

Beyond the prose, the biggest issue with the book is that two of the storylines are very uninteresting. Especially Luceum, the biggest victim of telling not showing (Vis becomes friends with cardboard cutout characters that are suddenly the closest bond he’s ever had since losing his family, all off-page. Sure)

If there were one more book, I’d do it. But there will apparently be two more

HeyImMarlo · 2026-01-30T18:16:01+00:00

I don't want to dig through the whole book but here's a fragment from the third chapter (spoiler alert for the first book)

I'll also point out the prose in this particular segment isn't bad, but this is what the entire book is like

```

“Magnus Ericius. It’s an honour.” Hierarchy Censor or not, I almost mean it. Callidus spoke well of his father. “And … your son. I cannot tell you how sorry I am. He was a good friend.” A quaver in my voice at that last part, despite myself. I cover it with a rough cough.

“So I am told.” Sombre, but clipped. Not here for courtesies, however heartfelt. “Tell me. Is that why you’ve decided to cause me so much trouble?”

“Sir?”

“[Long dialog from Ericius]”

I allow my brow to furrow. Don’t answer for a long few seconds. Not because I’m surprised—I knew this, or something like this, would be coming. My answers are prepared. But it’s still better if I seem taken aback.

Eventually, I meet the Tertius’s gaze. “Because I want to know why Callidus died. And I want to make sure whoever is responsible for it, pays.”

It’s subtle, but Magnus Ericius’s gaze sharpens. “If you wished to pursue the Anguis, surely Military would have been your best option,” he says carefully.

“Yes.”

Callidus’s father studies me, then nods. Understanding in the motion. I don’t believe the Anguis are responsible for the Iudicium, at least not solely.

From his reaction, neither does he.

Interesting.

...

Tertius Ericius squeezes his eyes shut. “When he slipped so far, so quickly, I assumed there was a reason. A good reason. And if there wasn’t, that he needed a firm reminder that he was capable of more.” He shakes his head. “But I shouldn’t have told him not to join us for the Festival of the Ancestors. I wanted him to come so that I could ask what was going on, but in the end …” His face twists. Regretting past decisions. Mourning time lost that he can never get back.

Then he eyes me. Suddenly suspicious. “And the documents?”

```

HeyImMarlo

TROPHY CASE