Very recently, out of a desire to have something to do that didn’t require any input or attention from me (well, and to continue teaching Crunchyroll what kinds of stuff I liked), I started watching Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. This is easily one of my favorite anime since it is a remake of the Fullmetal Alchemist story that closely adheres to the manga by the same name, which is absolutely my favorite manga series. I am not a fan of the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime since it seems to go in some odd directions pretty much immediately (largely because the anime series was made well before the manga series was finished), but I know plenty of people who watched it and enjoyed it. I’ll admit a level of bias here since I started reading Fullmetal Alchemist as one of my first manga series right as the first two volumes were released in the US and I didn’t miss a new volume until the series concluded. I read through it at a very formative time in my life and the story has stuck with me for years, standing up to scrutiny each time I read through it again and sometimes revealing things I missed the first time. Which is what I’m finding now as I watch the anime and think my way through the bits of the manga that it skips past or trims to fit a different media format. There’s a whole major aspect to this story I never really considered all that deeply despite how integral it is to the setting. Sure, it isn’t something that’s addressed explicitly by the manga or anime, but it’s not only a major aspect of the setting and worldbuilding, but a active backdrop that helps develop every single character in the series. After all, the story wouldn’t be even close to the same if it wasn’t about power struggles and working towards the good of all within a facist, authoritarian state.