Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 OP2 Ready Steady Go !!!

growth

DRIVE LINK HERE to the official mob psycho 100 fanbook!

as far as i can find, there's not been any comprehensive scans of the fanbook put up online, at least on the english-speaking internet. soooo since there's all sorts of fun stuff in it (character birthdays! character & creator q&a's! who would be most likely to survive on a desert island! guest art by other manga authors (the one in the upper left there is by the creator of FMA)!) i wanted to make sure everybody who wants to could see it!

more info under the cut. enjoy!

5x7", scanned at 300dpi in jpg format. exact pixel dimensions differ slightly due to how my scanner's auto-crop works.

the images uploaded are exactly as they were scanned, no image editing save for cropping. they could use some editing to be more presentable (levels adjustment to bring the darks down, more saturation on the color pages, & a teensy bit of rotation/adjustment) but i wanted to upload the untouched files. i might create a new drive with cleaned-up versions at some point.

i claim no ownership over these images, please feel free to do whatever you like with them, share em, edit em, and so on, no attribution necessary.

i bought my copy from hiro_shop_japan on ebay, if anybody wants to get their own.

these are obviously untranslated- some awesome folks have scanned & translated parts of the book (particularly the qnas). you can find those here! there's also a twitter thread of translated bits from 4chan, but i can't seem to find that one at the moment.

Thinking about how the kids use their powers. these are the vibes i get from them

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.

to say the same thing that i've been saying for YEARS once again, mob and reigen's relationship is so bonkers crazy insane, like... here's mob, 14 years old, and reigen's been lying to him since he was 11. to reigen, it was a white lie, even a kindness. to mob, it was not so inconsequential -- it was proof that he was not alone in the world and that he could be okay as an adult. and of course mob believed him fully at first. why wouldn't he? but over the years, the cracks started to form. if things didn't quite add up, mob tried not to think about them. and reigen kept digging the hole deeper; he never thought it would go this far. now mob's 14 and the truth is seeping in around the edges of his consciousness but he refuses to speak it, even after the press conference, when reigen all but begs him to. reigen wants him to say it. i know you've been lying to me. just say it. but mob won't and reigen can't, and they settle back into this weird holding pattern for a while longer. when things finally bubble over for mob, this is at the heart of it. the repression, insecurity, anger, doubt -- mob learned a lot from his master, including: we don't talk about it. so reigen, finally, SHOUTING the truth at him -- it doesn't matter that mob already knew. there's power in the confession, reigen's humility to finally admit it, the vulnerability of saying it out loud instead of leaving it unspoken. it takes all the air out of the conflict, the tension almost immediately evaporates... mob just needed to hear it. to be shown that it was okay to be honest, vulnerable... then when he returns from his long-built-up confession to tsubomi, mob breaks down in tears but it doesn't destroy the city. he just cries and reigen awkwardly pats his back and it's okay.

anyway SCREAMS at the top of my lungs, i love mob psycho 100

Train ride.

Bonus:

I’m glad Maes Hughes died.

He’s a fan favorite character and I enjoy him a lot too, but I think fundamentally he’s a character who has to die. His role in the narrative is to haunt it.

I might be even more of a weirdo because I enjoy his manga characterization over his Brotherhood or ‘03 portrayal, but I love the idea of Hughes being someone the Elric brothers barely know - someone we, the audience, barely see.

Until he dies.

Because suddenly he’s everywhere. He was Roy’s friend and Armstrong’s superior officer and Winry’s acquaintance and Elicia’s father - and he was the soldier both Ed and Al knew, but didn’t actually know, that got killed because of them anyway.

In the manga Winry stays at Hughes’ place, but Ed and Al enter his house for the first time after they found out he died. For them, it’s not about losing a friend (though I am sure they liked him just fine) because that story is already Roy’s - for them it’s about realizing that this plot they’ve involved themselves in kills people that aren’t actually directly involved at all to begin with. It makes sense for their allies and friends and loved-ones to be targeted by the antagonists - but a soldier who mostly joined in because he was at the right (or wrong) place at the right (wrong) time? That’s not supposed to happen. And that’s what makes Hughes’ death so hard on them.

(and poor Elicia - abandoned children without their fathers were always a weakness of Ed’s)

But Roy? Yeah… he suffers. From the moment of Hughes’ dead on, Roy is haunted by it. By him. His best friend follows him everywhere. We see it in the way Roy only involves himself in the plot because Hughes figured something out and Roy is desperate for answers. He hunts down the homunculi to save this country, sure, but mostly so he can burn his best friend’s murderer to the ground. When Riza talks about winning against the Führer and their military dictatorship, she talks about all of them, not a hint of revenge coloring her vision - but Roy? It is telling that it isn’t a greater ideal that makes him torture Envy, but the agony of his best friend’s death.

The thing that almost breaks Roy is Maes.

No.

It’s Maes’ memory haunting the narrative.

And isn’t that beautiful?

The tragedy of it all, the horror, and the realization that Roy Mustang never really recovered from the War, that his friends are the only think keeping him in one piece, the fact that Roy Mustang is a Hero and a Monster and a fallible human capable of love.

Maes Hughes has to die to remind all of us of what Roy Mustang is capable of: love, loyalty, devotion…. and the slaughter and torture of numerous people.

His ghost is haunting the narrative - and for that I love him.

mob psycho 100 except the only 100% mob gets is for his math test 

i’m upset that part of the Shigeo/Mob conversation that was cut in the anime was Shigeo holding Mob’s face almost lovingly, with Mob being the one to eventually push the hands away. i just feel like that would’ve added a shit-ton of subtext to the confession arc that the anime didn’t really provide.