After rewatching Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood recently, I was once again extremely disappointed at the amount of content the anime cut out when it covered the Ishval war in episode 30. Volume 15 of the manga (which was entirely dedicated to showing the war in detail across four chapters) still remains my favourite volume of the whole series, so I wanted to talk about 15 things that Brotherhood cut out. Some of them are minor scenes and some are more major plot points.
The images I’ve included in this post have been taken directly from the Viz Media manga, as I really dislike the poor quality scanlations of FMA that are out there. I would highly recommend buying Volume 15 for yourself, even if it’s the only volume of FMA you ever own.
The things I’ll be covering are:
Neighbouring country Aerugo’s role in the war
The Ishvalans as people - their lives and strengths
The Rockbells’ extra scenes
The military’s order to kill the Rockbells
Roy, Hughes, and Hawkeye’s extra scenes
Hughes’ extended scenes as a squad captain
Corruption of high-ranking officers and internal assassination
Armstrong’s extra scene
Torture & human experimentation of Ishvalans
Doctor Marcoh & Doctor Knox’s extra scene
Roy’s role as the Hero of Ishval
Scar’s brother’s scenes
Roy’s squad
Children as the victims of the war
The overall portrayal of the war, and how Volume 15 was written/illustrated
** VERY LONG POST UNDER THE CUT, VERY IMAGE HEAVY **