I love reading these theories. I hope the movie incorporates some of them, and expands upon it. I know it won't be likely anyway, but I'm really hoping they won't make the movie only to satisfy the semi-emptiness lots of people felt after the show ended with the separation of Ed and Al.

I'm hoping for some good storyline.. just like the series had. Eh, two hours to do it, but I hope it turns out great.





But then again.. the movie won't come out in America for another gazillion years.

Maybe I'll go to Japan this summer O_O





Pardon my random, and trailed off thoughts.

double post! omg!!!11!!1one1!SHIFT!

yeah the theories are interesting but i read them right after i finished watching 51 for the first time and i got a headache. lol serves me right brain overload.

Haha sorry for the double post, but I'm a new kiddo here. I thought when you edit, it fixes your post, but... I learned that it just reposts it O_O.

Yeah. What I love about the anime, though, is how there's such an overload of information and storyline in it that it is so re-watchable. I was sitting at my computer yesterday thinking I'd see an episode I remember liking, only to find myself 2 hours later wondering why I kept watching. Haha.



And I repeat that I hope the movie does the anime justice.

Here's the thing though. If Christianity totally fell out, why was Psiren dressed up as a Roman Catholic nun in episode 10?

Has anyone thought who that wierd guy in a mask in the trailer is? Think it could be Dante in disguise....

Because Bones think it will be nice to put in those religious stuff into the anime when the original setting had none of that.

There were a few other anachronisms too. Besides the nunnery, take a closer look at the "mansion" in Episode 10. Definitely out of line with the other architecture, unless there is the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures (but from what I can tell, Asians, Europeans/White, etc. all mingle in the world of 鋼之鍊金術師) except for the Ishbalites and the Liorites and other ethnic minorities.

Then again, we might just be overanalyzing

Someone asked what the "truth behind truths" is. While I'm not a Buddhist, there's a belief that by realizing the "truth" of the world and realizing yourself you can escape from the "endless wheel" and enter nirvana.

Oh, and I'm looking forward to going to Japan as well this summer. Although I'll be studying since I signed up for my university's summer (8-week) study-abroad program at Hitotsubashi University. I'll get a good chance to make practical use of my Japanese (which is very limited).

I wish my high school offered Japanese... why is it they offer chinese and not japanese? I would take it in a heartbeat, but im stuck learning online.

Hmm... I'd say that Chinese is incredibly useful, especially in the coming twenty years. I used to be the same way when I was in high school ("Dammit, why don't they offer Japanese?"), but because of my Chinese background, I've grown to realize how important learning languages really is, especially when you ask to see the Chinese menu and then realize you can't order any of the stuff your parents ordered . But joking aside, I'd take Chinese as well as Japanese, since you'll learn a lot of kanji that have similar meanings. It's only to your advantage to study more kanji, since the average Japanese knows about 1,000 to 2,000 and the average Chinese knows about 4,000 hanzi.

Keep in mind, though, you will need to be very good with languages. It can be confusing, since you will encounter three forms of characters: 繁體字 - Traditional Chinese (Taiwan, Hong Kong, and California); 簡體字 - Simplified Chinese (大陸 - Mainland China, Singapore, and other areas): and 日本漢字 (Japanese-Chinese Characters).

Also, Japanese makes the matter even more difficult since you'll likely need to learn very difficult grammar as well as different pronunciations depending on how you compound kanji. You'll also need to firmly memorize two phonetic alphabets. I won't even attempt to describe the amount of time you'll spend memorizing word compounds as well as kanji created and simplified by the Japanese.

Though Chinese won't be cakewalk either if you didn't grow up in a Chinese-speaking environment. What you don't pay for in grammar, you pay back in learning kanji and pronunciation. Chinese Mandarin has five tones, and depending on the way you say a word, you could mean a completely different thing.

However, Chinese hanzi and Japanese kanji have a lot in common, since the ancient Japanese were largely influenced by the 唐朝/Tang dynasty. However, Japan has taken liberties to simplify characters as well as mainland China (although the use of traditional characters is becoming more common on the Mainland because of "national glory"). Compound this with very different grammar and two alphabets and you get Japanese.

Consider this. By 2020, many economists have predicted China's GDP will surpass United States's national GDP. China's political and economic presence will become a behemoth. Therefore, I can't stress the need to learn both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. I didn't realize how much I missed until I visited 上海 and discovered what a future it has. I also realized that I had to guess a lot of words since I can only read the full/traditional characters (I'm working on Simplified on my spare time).

People have become ignorant of China, for reasons of "I don't want to think about the future" to "Yuck, why would I want to learn a commie language?" But come 2020, it will be very difficult to ignore China.

I'm a Supply Chain Mgmt. major and the only piece of advice I can offer is to take lots of languages.

blue remembers fondly the first time she heard that if ma is said the wrong way, Mother can mean horse


I very much agree with the importance of China in the upcoming years. I'm taking Japanese because I love it, but Chances are I'll take Chinese in my final year because it will definitely be useful when looking for a job the following year.


Anywho...we should get back on topic:
I hope the movie brings up religion the way it did in the show. It always intrigued me how they presented religions' manipulative hypocritical standpoints.

um... as someone who has spoken and read chinese for their entire life i would just like to say that the amount of chinese you can learn in a year is most likely only enough to get by in a conversation with a 10 year old, and you can pretty much forget about reading... i would say you would MAYBE be able to read a child's book in a year, a manga if you are REALLY good at assimilating languages. not to discourage you or anything but chinese is HARD, and for those of you that say but what about ping ying... useless except for when used to teach nonasians chinese.

Five tones? I thought there were only four.

the fifth is the flat tone, you know the one symbolized with a dot in zhu yin fu hao..

I agree that its hard, (the phonetics are what scared me out of taking it this year actually)

But the random thing about my major is that I either have to take a year of another east asian language (choices mandarin or korean) or a semester in classical Japanese....

Ohh, I see now . . . my Chinese school teachers never called that the fifth. *suddenly feels deprived*

you're right in traditional chinese instruction there are only 4 official tones, the fifth unofficial one being the flat or no tone. why this is true i have no idea...

Chinese is similar to Japanese(literature-wise) in that the text is harder to recall than speaking. You can get away speaking with a smaller vocabulary set in both languages than if someone ask you to sit down and write an essay. In English, you can spell out the words just through listening word by word and you can write down something close to it. However try doing that for Chinese. Japanese is slightly easier because they use a partial 'spelling' style system as well but if you write entirely in hiragana/katakana, likely you'll be getting a lot of puzzled looks from your readers as they would have to start guessing at certain sentences you are writing.

The easiest way to build up and maintain your language ability is of course to continuously use it or be immersed in it. Listening and reading more and understanding aids in comprehension. Conversations with a person conversant in that language is however necessary to build your speech skills. Getting a penpal/emailpal who grew up speaking that language and who's willing to correspond with you in it and correct you at the same time is also good though not as good as speaking it out. If you can't find such a person, do the next best thing and immerse yourself. Get the news and tv shows(though the shows might teach you bad grammar) and watch, watch and try to understand what's going on. At least you'll improve your comprehension and you can slowly pick your way through improving your speech and construction of sentences in later encounters.

A tip on learning Chinese: Learn the idioms! A lot of elaborate situations and ideas can be expressed through the simplicity and beauty of 4 character phrases or a combination of them. They say a picture describes a thousand words, so do the Chinese idioms! Japanese also like it if you master their Japanese idioms. But beware of how you use them(don't overuse them too, you'll look a fool).

The fifth tone is the double dots, right....
as in a journey, 旅程, lü chéng.
As far as I know, it's used only for the vowel 'u'.

The ü is one of the vowels (a, o, e, i, u, ü) and therefore not the fifth tone. And what the French calls the "trema" accent (the double-dots; I don't know the English terminology for them) only goes over the 'u'.

(someone correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm not the most fluent in Mandarin . . . )

You are right that Chinese has a lot of similarities to Japanese, besides just sharing meanings and kanji. If you take a look at Cantonese (what is believed a form of it was spoken during 唐朝/Tang dynasty), the inverted word order, grammar, and forms of politeness existed. Modern Mandarin Chinese, though, is similar yet very different.

Moreover, as I said before, the written form of Japanese derived from the 唐朝/Tang Dynasty. That's why there are so many similarities.

For instance:

乾杯 - ganbei/ㄍㄢㄅㄟ - kanpai - "Cheers!"
先生 - xiansheng/ㄒㄧㄢㄕㄥ - sensei - teacher
茶 - cha/ㄔㄚˊ - cha - tea

拼音/pinyin is a love-hate relationship. Personally, I like 注音符號/zhuyinfuhao better, but there's some people who could say that about the other.

Oh, and yes, I love how Full Metal Alchemist portrays religion and the way people present them. It's insightful, but you do see Buddhist elements here and there (such as the truth behind truths, and so forth).

We call the fifth tone 「輕聲」 or qingsheng/ㄑㄧㄥ ㄕㄥ (lit. light tone)．

there's a reason for this... japanese and all the east asian languages were originally based on chinese. hell its was only roughly 45 years ago when the japanese changed their written language from traditional chinese.

Exactly. In addition to the standard set of kanji and hiragana and katakana, they have many invented and simplified characters, and changed the meanings for some words. Like some kanji are just used for phonetic purposes. But all in all, Japanese is fairly close to Chinese yet enough to be different.

whatever happened to fma?

Merged with "Post Ep 51" thread and "Post Episode-51 Theories".