Something I was wondering about regarding Fullmetal Alchemist 03 vs Brotherhood that I need explained *Spoilers for both*
Something that really peeved me off about Brotherhood (unless I didn't understand what they presented right) is their version of Chimeras. How later they made Chimeras in the series this easy as pie thing that anyone can hand out like candy, with anthropomorphic animal beast men just running around like bebop and rocksteady. Able to transform, able to be super soldier weapons no problem, fighting and everything.
This basically renders what shou tucker did, besides being the worst thing in the history of anime regardless, ultimately pointless and beyond senseless. If the military already had that technology, why the hell were they entertaining shou tucker's designs at all. It just doesn't make any sense. And if the point is that what he did was senseless and meaningless to add to the tragedy, it doesn't add up that the military was funding someone who was making something they had already perfected. It would be like funding someone to make a cropduster airplane when they already have supersonic jets.
Since the nature of chimeras and their creation was a big part of fma and its themes (creating life, messing with creation, etc) I wonder if what was presented in Brotherhood I should take at face-value or if I missed something.
This basically renders what shou tucker did, besides being the worst thing in the history of anime regardless, ultimately pointless and beyond senseless. If the military already had that technology, why the hell were they entertaining shou tucker's designs at all. It just doesn't make any sense. And if the point is that what he did was senseless and meaningless to add to the tragedy, it doesn't add up that the military was funding someone who was making something they had already perfected. It would be like funding someone to make a cropduster airplane when they already have supersonic jets.
Since the nature of chimeras and their creation was a big part of fma and its themes (creating life, messing with creation, etc) I wonder if what was presented in Brotherhood I should take at face-value or if I missed something.
Commentaires
Don’t forget that the man leading the government behind the scenes is the one who spread alchemy to this land in the first place. He probably knew how to make perfect chimeras from the start.
First, the perfected chimeras were a super top secret military project done with military resources. So Tucker is still a big deal to the scientific community because they don't know about the other ones. And the government treats him as kind of important because dismissing him entirely would be suspicious. But they don't really care about his work which is why they were ready to drop his funding.
Second, and some speculation here, the military chimeras were made using philosopher's stones which would fit with the secrecy and being made in the secret labs. It's essentially a cheat code to making a chimera, so Tucker would still be impressive for making progress on chimeras without using a stone.
Third, all of the military chimeras are humans with some animal thrown in. From an effectiveness standpoint for the military, that's great. But Tucker's creation was initially presented as an animal he modified to be more human like, and he hid Nina's involvement. In terms of scientific discovery, that's a bigger deal because it's the creation of intellect. It's the difference between Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man and some random spider becoming Spider-Man.
But it's been a long time since I've seen the show, so these are my best guesses from what I remember. There might be a canon explanation somewhere, but these are just some ideas.