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*flappy hands*
... so apparently I stopped reading the FMA manga right before things got good, eh?
I just mainlined vols. 6-10 tonight (up to the latest one the library had in stock), and
OMG OMG THE FIGHT WITH LUST WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS WAS SO AWESOME *_*
It's pretty rare for me to ship a couple who aren't an established couple in canon, but ever since the beginning of the series I've shipped Riza/Roy liek whoa (though my adoration is firmly rooted in their comrades-in-arms bond, and if they never do anything but save each other's lives for the rest of the series, I'll be a happy camper). The original anime gave me a bunch of happy little crumbs, but the manga is giving me GOLD.
The only part that fell a little flat for me was Riza giving up and deciding to die when she thought Roy was dead (and he was right to chew her out for that afterwards) but other than that, all I really have right now is SQUEE! FLAIL! SQUAIL! Code names and trust and worry and SHE'S dead and then HE'S dead and stabbings and explosions and PRESUMED DEAD WITH NOT-SO-DEAD LAST-MINUTE RESCUES I LOVE IT SO!
... oh, and I guess there was something in there about Ed, too, but I was distracted. XD
(I actually love all the characters in FMA, even most of the bad guys -- and was so delighted that Havoc and Maria survived, though I saw the Maria thing coming from pretty much the moment of her "death", and the Elrics and Winry will never not be adorable ... but OMG, pretty much the entirety of the fight between the Sins and Roy and his people in vols 9 & 10 mashed down my fan buttons SO HARD.)
I shall be off to get subsequent volumes as soon as I can! Please, please do not spoil me beyond vol. 10, which I think is about ep. 20 of Brotherhood (not that I've been looking up episode guides or anything XD ... though with one eye squeezed shut to avoid spoilers). FMA is a series that I really, really want to read unspoiled, because I love those "OMFGWTFBBQ" moments that Arakawa does so well.
Edit: Also, does anyone know of any good Riza gen or Riza/Roy (actually, Riza/anyone, come to think of it) that's not spoilery for post-vol. 10(ish) of the manga? Anything from the original animeverse (i.e. not Brotherhood) is also fine; I've seen all of that. I'm afraid to look up fic or vids for fear of spoilers, but I want more Riza like burning! (So to speak...)
I just mainlined vols. 6-10 tonight (up to the latest one the library had in stock), and
OMG OMG THE FIGHT WITH LUST WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS WAS SO AWESOME *_*
It's pretty rare for me to ship a couple who aren't an established couple in canon, but ever since the beginning of the series I've shipped Riza/Roy liek whoa (though my adoration is firmly rooted in their comrades-in-arms bond, and if they never do anything but save each other's lives for the rest of the series, I'll be a happy camper). The original anime gave me a bunch of happy little crumbs, but the manga is giving me GOLD.
The only part that fell a little flat for me was Riza giving up and deciding to die when she thought Roy was dead (and he was right to chew her out for that afterwards) but other than that, all I really have right now is SQUEE! FLAIL! SQUAIL! Code names and trust and worry and SHE'S dead and then HE'S dead and stabbings and explosions and PRESUMED DEAD WITH NOT-SO-DEAD LAST-MINUTE RESCUES I LOVE IT SO!
... oh, and I guess there was something in there about Ed, too, but I was distracted. XD
(I actually love all the characters in FMA, even most of the bad guys -- and was so delighted that Havoc and Maria survived, though I saw the Maria thing coming from pretty much the moment of her "death", and the Elrics and Winry will never not be adorable ... but OMG, pretty much the entirety of the fight between the Sins and Roy and his people in vols 9 & 10 mashed down my fan buttons SO HARD.)
I shall be off to get subsequent volumes as soon as I can! Please, please do not spoil me beyond vol. 10, which I think is about ep. 20 of Brotherhood (not that I've been looking up episode guides or anything XD ... though with one eye squeezed shut to avoid spoilers). FMA is a series that I really, really want to read unspoiled, because I love those "OMFGWTFBBQ" moments that Arakawa does so well.
Edit: Also, does anyone know of any good Riza gen or Riza/Roy (actually, Riza/anyone, come to think of it) that's not spoilery for post-vol. 10(ish) of the manga? Anything from the original animeverse (i.e. not Brotherhood) is also fine; I've seen all of that. I'm afraid to look up fic or vids for fear of spoilers, but I want more Riza like burning! (So to speak...)
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I promise not to spoil anything ever, because you're right - Arakawa does brilliant storytelling, and the twists and turns is one of the best thing about a series that has MANY bests!
I'm like you - I was feeling kind of so-so about the manga for the first couple of volumes, and then somewhere around 5 or 6 the pace picked up and I found myself glued to the edge of my seat.
I haven't come unstuck yet. XD
And I, too, find Roy & Riza to be fantastic together in all sorts of capabilities. Um. Sorry I can't help you out with fic or anything - I haven't really felt up to dealing with fandom yet, not with so much canon to digest. But if you find stuff, I'd love recs, I think. ♥
Oh, the fight with Lust is EPIC - Roy is as badass as badass can be, and especially following his moment freaking out about Havoc (ordering people not to die!!) and then Riza freaking out about him and. Awwwwwww~!
The fight itself is... kind of gruesome. She does that well, Arakawa does. Fighting is cool, sure, but it's also horrible. Killing is horrible - even when the enemy is a monster.
And I am so happy that you love all of the characters! Yay! Me too~!
I think one of the major differences between FMA and the manga/FMA:B is that the manga has more humor. And it is far better for it! FMA really took the angst and ran with it (ran a whole marathon, dragging your heart over broken glass for half the way), but in the manga - sure, the angst is there, but there's a lot of other things, too. There's more... hope, maybe? more lighthearted moments. And less rubbing the reader's face in DRAMATIC ANGSTY DEATH!! DRAMATIC ANGSTY MOMENT!! FEEL THE ANGST!!!
And I say this as someone who loved FMA the first time around.
Okay, I will stop flailing excitedly at you now. ^^;;
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The only problem that I'm having right now with the official Viz translations is that they're going for a YA audience, which means that there are some occasions (especially in the fight scenes) when it's very obvious that they're being considerably more vulgar than what the translation is supplying, which is usually along the lines of "Hey, you!" XD
Sorry I can't help you out with fic or anything - I haven't really felt up to dealing with fandom yet, not with so much canon to digest. But if you find stuff, I'd love recs, I think.
*nods* It's really more canon that I want right now, anyway. *makes grabby hands* Come to think of it, I started writing a Riza & Roy genfic back when I was into the show before; perhaps I should find that and finish it. (It was her daily unofficial notes on the goings-on around the office, or something like that ...)
The characters are just so wonderful! This is one of these series where I feel like I should be into the angst of the main characters more than I am, but find myself gravitating towards the supporting ones instead. It's not that I don't love the Elrics; it's just that for some reason, Roy's bunch of ridiculously loyal military folks are the ones that really mash my buttons down. But I love everyone enough that I really don't feel like complaining when the scene changes to a different group. (Admittedly, the situation at the end of vol. 10, with Ed going off to Xing by himself, is making me go "... wait", because Ed and Al apart is just not right! *makes woeful sounds*)
Roy and Riza are just so awesome; I love the mutual respect, and how she protects him, and is able to yell at him when he's being an idiot. I adore how she's as badass as he is in her own way, despite not having alchemist abilities -- which I think is really part of the draw for me, because I adore characters who are relatively underpowered in a group of high-powered individuals ... the "normals" in the midst of the weirdness XD).
The two of them kinda get me the same way that Murphy and Harry do in the Dresden books.
One problem with loving the characters so much is that Arakawa does kill people (... oh, Hughes ;_; ...) and nobody, except probably Ed and Al, is really safe until the end. I enjoy the delicious edge-of-my-seat tension, but I'm almost afraid to cling to Riza too tightly, not knowing if she'll make it.
Oh, the fight with Lust is EPIC - Roy is as badass as badass can be, and especially following his moment freaking out about Havoc (ordering people not to die!!) and then Riza freaking out about him and. Awwwwwww~!
*nods vigorously* And ripping Lust's heart out to heal Havoc, OMFG ...! (Well, to try to heal him anyway. Way to fail, Roy! But you get A+ for effort ....)
And yes to what you said about the brutality of the fight scenes! The manga-ka doesn't ever really let you forget that Roy's way of killing people is really gruesome, and that he used it on humans during the war. It's heartbreaking but I like that it isn't backgrounded or glossed over, even when he's going after a being like Lust.
FMA really took the angst and ran with it (ran a whole marathon, dragging your heart over broken glass for half the way), but in the manga - sure, the angst is there, but there's a lot of other things, too.
Hee! Excellent point. :D And I loved the anime too, but I definitely see what you mean about the manga being less, well, soul-crushing. XD
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I've bought up through 18 or so, read through 15 or so, and forgotten huge chunks. That's the problem with series, for me; with each new release, I have to go back and reread all the previous to remember what the heck is going on. I find that with most anything, but especially with FMA, because there's just so much going on.
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When I first got into FMA I was getting them concurrently, though with a lag -- I'd initially encountered the series via scanslations of the first couple of volumes, then started watching the anime as the new episodes were released and fansubbed. At some point, though, I moved and a lot of other things happened, and when I went back and got caught up with the anime via the official releases, I never got caught up with the manga as well. It's interesting because it's the same story with the same characters, and yet -- so very different!
And heh, yeah, I definitely see what you mean about keeping up with the plot! It helps for me that when I stopped reading the manga, it was still following the anime pretty closely -- and I remember the early part of the anime fairly well, so I didn't have too much trouble re-orienting myself. But we're definitely off into new territory now.
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>who aren't an established couple in canon
they practically are
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they practically are
Good point. *g* But they aren't really coded as a couple -- I think a lot of the subtext simply comes from the fact that they're an opposite-sex pair of working partners (yeah, I know she's his subordinate, but they interact on equal footing quite a lot of the time) rather than a same-sex pair. I'm not saying that the attraction isn't canonical -- it definitely is on Riza's end, anyway -- but if Riza was a guy, I don't think their interactions would be significantly different. Which might be one reason it works so well for me, really ... not that I think she ought to be a guy, but that they've got the whole working-well-together, saving-each-other's-lives thing going on without flirting or overt UST.
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Well in the anime there was that last scene where Riza is looking after Roy at the end, which codes it fairly strongly for me. But no lovey dovey stuff or UST, it's true -- which I tend to like in het relationships. (I often judge my het pairings by transforming the girl in my head into a guy and seeing whether their relationship would still work for me, anyway.) I'm not a huge fan of Roy/Riza but I've always thought of them as the canon-intended couple.
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And yeah, I agree with you about the end of the anime definitely leaning towards Roy/Riza ... but still not in a way that couldn't be read gennishly, I think, or at least as being one-sided on her part -- you could kind of fill in the blanks. (It made me very happy, but then, I have certain shippish tendencies for those two. *g*) No idea how the manga and new anime will work out, though.
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I do really love Fullmetal Alchemist and recommend it. The series takes a little while to start bringing in the plot twists and emotional scenes, but wow, once it does, it really delivers!
Another manga you might want to try is Planetes -- it's a near-future, realistic sci-fi series, and the visual style is more like Western comics than a lot of what gets translated and exported, so it might be a good gateway manga. :D (One thing I find frustrating about manga, or rather I should say the manga translation industry, is that most of the ones that get picked up outside of Japan, at least here in the US, are the actiony, pop-culture-ish ones, which tend to be really frenetic and abstracted and are probably not nearly as appealing to people outside the Western anime-fan crowd as the more visually quiet and slice-of-life titles. I recently downloaded scanslations of one called "Otoyomegatari", set along the Silk Road, which looks absolutely gorgeous -- check out (http://precur.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/otoyomegatari1.jpg) the art (http://www.mydailymanga.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/otoyomegatari-chapter-1-01.png) -- but most of what you find on the shelves here is basically teenagers in spandex, same as American comics.)
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The advantage of the b/w is that they're quite inexpensive, once I converted the yen into euro. (postage is freakishly expensive to make up for it.)
Well, I found a streaming site for FMA - Brotherhood with subtitles. I usually watch tv while drawing so I'm missing a lot but even so I rather liked the first one. Enough to want to check out the next one anyway, so that's good. I really *have* to start watching japanese tv.
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If you don't mind me asking: where? :)
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hxxp://animephase.com/category/full-metal-alchemist-brotherhood/
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Haha, I went back to this post after watching the first two dozen eps of brotherhood, and see that your reaction to that episode was exactly the same as mine.
I was plodding through the first couple eps, valiantly trying to understand a thing of what were saying, and suddenly going, "hm, who's that dark-haired guy, he's interesting." :)
I like the mythology and everything (though I couldn't care less about all the epic battle scenes), but for me Roy and his loyal band are so far the most interesting part of the series. Unfortunately the problem with supporting characters is that they never get as much screen time as I'd like.
How does it work, though: I understand that ep 19 of brotherhood = vol. 10 of the manga. And the manga is up to vol. 45? But why is everybody talking about chapter 100-104, are those = vol. 44? So confusing. At least someone explained to me why there are two anime series with apparently conflicting canon...
Anyway, all this anime-watching has been really helping me with my Japanese. I never would've thought to notice and improvement after a mere week, but it's actually working. This is so cool!
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Hee! That is exactly what happened to me; I was pretty indifferent to the manga for the first little while (actually, I'm not sure if I would've kept reading if I hadn't been at a point in my life when I was reading tons of manga -- this was 2003 or so) and then ... Roy happened. :D Roy and his little group are by far the most interesting part of the series to me; I like the others (this is one of those series where I really don't dislike anyone, except the characters who are supposed to be unlikable, and even they have their moments) but Roy and his team are where my heart is. (Riza! ♥)
How does it work, though: I understand that ep 19 of brotherhood = vol. 10 of the manga. And the manga is up to vol. 45? But why is everybody talking about chapter 100-104, are those = vol. 44? So confusing. At least someone explained to me why there are two anime series with apparently conflicting canon...
Aha! Easy question to answer. :) The manga is being serialized in chapters in a monthly magazine in Japan (as most manga are), and each of the books collects several individual chapters into one volume. So 104 is the latest chapter (which I may have, er, downloaded *g*), and the books are up to, I think, vol. 24 or so.
And I'm impressed that you're watching it in Japanese -- without subtitles, I'm guessing? I've actually picked up some extremely limited Japanese just from watching anime (though I realize that the way people talk in anime has about as much to do with the way people in RL speak Japanese as learning English from sci-fi *g*) but there is no way I know enough to make much of it without the subs.
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*nodnod* Yes... the mini-arc between eps 11-19, starting with Hughes' death (which *really* affected me even though I'd only been half-paying attention until then) and the framing of Lieutenant Ross and Roy killing her (and I was rather concerned about that because I thought that it might be a fakeout but what if not, he was so ambiguous until this point and while I like my heroes morally ambiguous I don't like them *that* dark) and then of course ending with the epic fight and why the hell are there no post-ep fics? I mean, we got a hero who gets impaled by claws, left for dying, ends up using his fire magic to cauterize his own wounds, heroically staggers after the bad guy and kills her and saves his friends, and only then falls flat on his face... I mean, if this was SGA fandom there would've been about 300 episode tag fics popping up. :D
Um. Anyway, so far that has been my favorite part. I'm currently somewhere around ep 33.
And I'm impressed that you're watching it in Japanese -- without subtitles, I'm guessing?
Heavens, no, there are subtitles. But I try not to rely on them all the time. Mostly because the plan is to watch while I'm drawing and the tv is behind me and I'm starting to get whiplash. Right now I'm watching all available eps through, because I want to know where the story is going. I figure, once I know the basic plot I can go back to mainly listening when I rewatch it.
In the beginning I didn't understand a word. Which was really frustrating. They were just talking so fast. Then after a while I noticed that I could make out single words. Now I can make out entire sentences even without reading the subtitles, but it's still not enough to follow the plot. I'm missing quite a bit of vocabulary, too.
(though I realize that the way people talk in anime has about as much to do with the way people in RL speak Japanese as learning English from sci-fi *g*)
Actually learning English from sci-fi works really well... *fondly thinks back of Star Trek addiction in her teen years* :) I mean, okay, you got vocab like 'flux capacitor' and 'dilithium matrix' but essentially they talk like we do. The problem is the darn Manga. Vol.1 of the Manga just got here... I started to read and it's harder to understand than the anime. Gah. I read the first two pages and barely understood a word. A couple years ago I read Prisoner of Azkaban in Japanese - granted, I had the English version lying next it but still, it was easier than any Manga I'd tried. Maybe because in Manga you got nothing but dialogue, and colloquial dialogue at that. It's like they don't bother with grammar at all!
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*hee* I KNOW! You'd think it would be total fangirl bait.
Hughes' death was such a blow. There's more of him in the original anime, I think; he dies around episode 25. *wail* I really love how his death is about the farthest possible thing from a throwaway death, though, because it continues to motivate Roy and to be regularly referred to. Actually, one thing I love in general about the series is how she (the author) deals with the consequences of what she inflicts on her characters; she doesn't magically fix them (even though there IS magic!) and they are quite obviously carrying around the psychic scars of all the things that have happened to them. (In the manga, Roy actually cut a transmutation circle into his skin in that battle with Lust -- I think in the anime they had him draw it in blood -- and in the manga, you continue to see the scars whenever they show his hand, for chapters and chapters ... I think eventually it healed, but I loved the continuity there.)
I'm just now starting to poke around in the fic; I'd been trying to avoid it earlier for fear of spoilers. I remember from my earlier forays into the fandom that it seems like it used to be dominated by Roy/Ed slash (not my cup of tea). I'm not really getting that impression this time around, though; either that or I've just gotten better at seeking out the sort of thing that I want to read (and the tags at Archive Of Our Own are really awesome for that!). I ought to have enough to do a recs post sometime soon.
A couple years ago I read Prisoner of Azkaban in Japanese - granted, I had the English version lying next it but still, it was easier than any Manga I'd tried. Maybe because in Manga you got nothing but dialogue, and colloquial dialogue at that. It's like they don't bother with grammar at all!
That's really interesting! I would have kinda thought it'd work the other way since with manga, you have the pictures to help ...
Back when I was into manga in a major way, which was about '99 and the early '00s, there really wasn't that much of it translated, at least not the ones I wanted to read. I ended up buying a lot of my books from Japan and struggling to get the gist of it with a kanji dictionary and a vague (... very very VERY vague) understanding of Japanese grammar. I certainly couldn't have done a translation; it was the best I could do to get a general understanding of each scene from the art and what words I could read. Now that I'm getting back into it a little, it's kind of wince-inducing to discover how little of it I can still remember and understand.
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They do so in the anime too. I only noticed it when I was watching some of the later episodes, where you can still see faint traces of the scars on his hand.
I'm just now starting to poke around in the fic; I'd been trying to avoid it earlier for fear of spoilers. I remember from my earlier forays into the fandom that it seems like it used to be dominated by Roy/Ed slash (not my cup of tea).
I browsed a bit on fanfiction.net and a lot of it seems to be Roy/Ed. Also, a lot of it seems to be not very well-written but well, that's partly ffn. And partly me being spoiled by SGA fandom. (I enjoyed my foray into FMA fic but tonight I'm really looking forward to that SGA AU you rec'd the other day!)
... speaking of, I don't have any Riza fic but I spent two nights reading a rather enjoyable bit of Roy-whump which I found during my otherwise unsucessful search for post-ep fic for ep 19. It's a 83,000 word gen ensemble fic, Altered Perception (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4298613/1/Altered_Perception). It comes with angst galore, but I'd say it's in tone with the show... I mean, this is one very angsty show. ;) I have no idea where it's placed in canon - probably during the first anime. Riza is in it but not as much as I'd have liked. There is more Roy&Ed/Havoc/Hughes, but that stuff was actually really interesting. (And strictly gen! When it comes to yaoi I'm very much 'do not want' right now.) But I really like Ed in this, all the characters in fact.
I like the others (this is one of those series where I really don't dislike anyone, except the characters who are supposed to be unlikable, and even they have their moments)
I was gonna say 'me either' but I just realized that I really don't like Hohenheim. Weirdly enough I've just been starting to wonder whether I have a problem with father figures in fiction... during the hate-of-fictional-women debate I was trying to think of characters I have a knee-jerk dislike of, and remembered that that is very much the case for Gibbs' mentor on NCIS as well as Dad Winchester on SPN, and I can't even say why. I find it just weird because my own Dad is a really cool guy and I'm grateful for that. Maybe just coincidence.
Anyway, I don't know if we're supposed to dislike Hohenheim; he's a pretty shady figure - I have no clue what his gig is - and he left his little boys. Maybe it'll become clearer in the next eps. (My most recent one 35 - up in the north - was pretty cool!)
[eta: eh, I just noticed a little tidbit about him that I completely overlooked on first viewing... that's what you get for not paying enough attention...]
I ended up buying a lot of my books from Japan and struggling to get the gist of it with a kanji dictionary and a vague (... very very VERY vague) understanding of Japanese grammar. I certainly couldn't have done a translation; it was the best I could do to get a general understanding of each scene from the art and what words I could read.
Wow, that's impressive. I mean, I know the grammar and even so I have just a general understanding. /o\ Though it's getting easier to understand after a while, I notice.
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I was gonna say 'me either' but I just realized that I really don't like Hohenheim. Weirdly enough I've just been starting to wonder whether I have a problem with father figures in fiction... during the hate-of-fictional-women debate I was trying to think of characters I have a knee-jerk dislike of, and remembered that that is very much the case for Gibbs' mentor on NCIS as well as Dad Winchester on SPN, and I can't even say why.
Hee! You know, now that you bring it up, while I wouldn't go so far as to say I dislike Hohenheim, at best I'm kinda indifferent to him. Ditto for John Winchester on SPN! I think my problem in John's case, specifically - and this may also be true of Hohenheim - is that an absent father-figure is much better for the main characters' ability to solve their problems on their own. (See also: Dumbledore in Harry Potter.) Once a powerful, wise mentor character is introduced, they almost have to be killed off (Obi-Wan Kenobi, say ... or John Winchester) or they just kinda hang around solving the main characters' problems for them.
I don't think I had that problem with Gibbs' mentor because he typically caused more problems than he solved. *g* For me, I don't think it's the mentor/father-figure type that bothers me so much as the fact that I'm just not really all that fond of well-adjusted characters in general, especially if it goes hand-in-hand with being super-powerful, or extremely competent in the main characters' field. I like characters who are slightly messed-up, and while I can certainly jump on board the character-love bandwagon for someone who actually is an emotionally healthy person (in fact, there are a few characters that I like just because of that, since, in the sort of thing I typically watch, they tend to be islands of sanity in the midst of chaos *g*), they become a really hard sell for me if they're also ridiculously badass at the same time.
(Though I just realized as I typed the above that John Winchester is a TERRIBLE example of a well-adjusted individual, isn't he? But he definitely provides an emotional pivot for the boys, as well as falling into the "too competent for his own good" category -- I felt like it was a mistake for the show to bring him into the middle of the action as quickly as they did, and I thought that killing him off was really the best thing they could have done with that character at that point.)
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It is fully awesome is it not.
Which reminds me i still have to acuire the anime at some point.. it sooo spensive! and i keep getting distracted By Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
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