straightforwardly | 114 | in which I post another Mystic Messenger update, & watch FMA: Brotherhood for the first time

► Another Mystic Messenger update! Since I last posted, I got two of Zen’s bad endings, and have started Jaehee’s route.

I have to say, holy hell Zen’s Bad Ending 3 was so good. Exactly what I want from my otome bad ends. ♥ There’s so much excellent fucked-up fic potential there. It was definitely worth having to live through picking all of those terrible chat options, and actually revitalized me in regards to going through his bad endings at this point in time.

Unfortunately, his Bad Ending 2 did not live up to that same promise. It was just painful to live through, and relied too much on those plot elements that I didn’t like anyways. I figured that the likelihood of Bad Ending 1 being any better...wasn’t that high, and so decided to save it for a later date.

So I started Jaehee’s route! One thing that struck me is that the format of Mystic Messenger makes redoing the Prologue/Days 1-4 chats more interesting, because it’s been long enough since you’ve read them that the details have already faded a bit. (At least, that was the case with me and my terrible memory.)

I don’t have too much to say about those days other than that. Though I suppose it was interesting to note how the tone of Zen’s interactions with the main character feels different when she’s not actively pursuing him.

Today is Day 5, and the first day of officially being on Jaehee’s route. ♥ I do already know from osmosis that their relationship isn’t going to end up being romantic, so I’ve adjusted my expectations accordingly. That being said, I really like the friendship between her and the main character already, and as of now think that it’s definitely worth playing through a route for it. There was this really excellent phone call today (after the 17:15 chat) that really nailed everything that I like about them so far.

In that same phone call, Jaehee said something that really struck me— enough so that I took the time to write it down. She said, “I think being a member of society… always entails a struggle on finding the balance between what society wants and what I want.”

Honestly, a lot of today’s chats (especially the ones with Yoosung) struck close to home for me, with the discussions about purpose/fulfillment, figuring out what you want to do with life/if your decisions really were correct, and so on.

I’m also really enjoying Zen’s concern for Jaehee, and how he and the main character can bond over having respect for her/being worried about her.

Honestly, my only problem with this route so far is that I'm not really sure what the overarching story is going to be. Zen’s was that thing with Echo Girl, I’d bet good money that Yoosung’s is going to deal with some combination of his gaming addiction/his obvious depression/Rika’s death, Seven’s is clearly going to be Overarching Plot Reveals, but I’m not really sure about Jaehee yet, outside of being pretty sure that it’s going to have to do with her general dissatisfaction with her job/life.

This morning’s chats also made me really worried about Jumin? I felt sorry for Jaehee too, but… some of the details revealed about Jumin started sending off warning alarms in my head, particularly in regards to how he turns to cat-based projects to “relieve stress”. Now, I could definitely be reading too much into this, but… I’m starting to get the impression that Jumin might be depressed, and that he turns to his cat as his source of comfort/reason for happiness, and that’s why he’s so obsessively overprotective/caring of her. Which, again, I could be wrong, and there’s definitely a chance that I'm just projecting on him, but still. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s hiding something really wrong with him, emotionally speaking.

► I also started playing Liar! Uncover the Truth!. Right now, I’m about to finish up with the 4th Liar, and I’m really enjoying it! It’s interesting in the sense that I’m not particularly interested in the romances in this game— I’m mostly playing because it’s fun to fit together all of the clues and figuring out who’s the one who’s lying.

I did have to laugh when I met the main character’s coworker, Ayumi— mainly because I was about two seconds away from naming the main character Ayumi before I decided no, that name didn’t really suit her. (Instead, I named her Kanae.)

► I think that I’ve mentioned before that my big brother and I have this thing where we chose a series (usually an anime) and watch through it together? I mentioned this because last night we finished watching Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which we started after I came home. It was a rewatch for him, but the first time for me.

I was actually really obsessed with the 2003 anime back when I was in middle school— it was actually my gateway to fandom. So the 2003 anime is incredibly important to me, in so many ways. I never read the manga, though, and when Brotherhood first came out, I only watched three episodes before throwing it down in disgust. I thought it absolutely terrible, and lacking the kind of emotional connection that the 2003 series had. It didn’t help that I was surrounded in real life by the kind of manga/Brotherhood fans that liked to bash the original anime at every opportunity.

I’m not really sure when it started, exactly, but at some point I began to be vaguely curious about it again. My brother was up for it, as long as we skipped the first ten or so episodes that the 2003 anime also covered, which I was more than fine with— I really didn’t want to relive how angry the Brotherhood Liore episode made me, haha. So we started about ten or so episodes in (I don’t remember the exact episode number right now), and… I really fell in love? It actually reminds me of why I love fairy tale retellings— because I like seeing different takes on the same concept.

With Brotherhood, I liked the extra politics and world-building (especially with the countries outside of Amestris), and I loved Ling, and his relationship with both Greed and Ed. (God, Greed’s death— I cried so much.) (Though, to be fair, I actually cried at a lot of moments, especially during the finale.)

Hohenheim was so much more likeable in this version, and I loved everything about his backstory. I felt torn about Father— in the flashbacks, before he had a body, he was such a fascinating character, but during the actual ending he felt really generic? Idk, he didn’t entirely work for me. I also got a better idea about why people like Roy and Riza’s relationship so much, and I actually really like it too now, though I still don’t ship it.

Olivier Armstrong is amazing, and I adored everything about the Sloth fight. I also really liked the depth of character that (Alex) Armstrong gets in this series, and was delighted to realize that Catherine is also in this series! (For some reason, I’d thought she was 2003 anime-original character.)

The differences between the homunculi were also pretty interesting! Lust was much more boring in Brotherhood than she was in the 2003 anime, while Bradley was much more interesting. (That whole thing with him and his wife— ♥) Envy was my favorite character in the 2003 anime, and while I’d say that he was very different in Brotherhood, he still managed to hit so many character traits that I am an absolute sucker for, so I ended up loving him in this version as well. His death was perfect.

Speaking of favorite characters: Roy. ♥ Words cannot describe how much I loved his political maneuvering in the finale. SO MUCH LOVE.

Hated Ed losing his alchemy, though. I mean. I understood the reasoning behind it, and I do understand how it works with the themes and structure of the series and whatever, but one of my most hated fictional tropes is “main character loses their special powers and becomes a normal person”, so. HATE.

I also kind of want to rewatch the 2003 anime now, but it looks like it’s no longer on Netflix, and crunchyroll only has the movie. Woe.

Speaking of which, it occurred to me while watching Brotherhood that since the series takes place in the early 20th century, the 2003 anime really screwed up when the Gate connected to Germany in World War Two. World War One would have synced up much better with the timeline, and would have been so much more interesting/less generic!

► Google just suggested that I correct the word "homunculi" to "munchkin". I find this hilarious.