Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
We interrupt your day to bring you perhaps the most depressing moment in anime history. Her name was Nina Tucker, and Fullmetal Alchemist destroyed her and it made me cry.
Shou Tucker, Nina’s father, was a kindhearted alchemist who famously gave speech to a chimera, an unholy creature brought to life by alchemically combining two living animals. Fullmetal Alchemist’s (and its 2009 version Brotherhood‘s) protagonists, Edward and Alphonse Elric, lost their bodies as children attempting to bring their mother back to life with novice alchemy. Shou Tucker, they thought, could help restore their full human forms. They paid a visit to his house, where he lived with his four-year-old daughter and friendly big dog, Alexander. Shou Tucker’s wife, his daughter believed, went to live at her parents’ house two years ago.
Tucker’s experiments immersed him. Much of the time, his daughter was left alone to play with her dog. After her mother passed, she confided in the Elrics, her father had cast away all other pursuits and dedicated himself to his alchemical studies. In fact, his position as a State Alchemist was in jeopardy — if he didn’t do some impressive research soon, his job and reputation were at stake. Edward, Alphonse, Nina and Alexander while away time together, playing and laughing. Laughing. Laughing.
One day, close to her father’s research deadline, Nina tries to alleviate his anxiety. She tries to tell him that she loves him and it will be ok. That’s when he gets an idea that is so fucked up on so many levels that I still cannot hear the words “big brother” without choking back tears.
Soon after, Shou Tucker reveals to Edward and Alphonse his recent breakthrough: a canine beast with dead, white eyes and brown, long hair.
“Edward…” she coos. It talked.
“I made it just in time for the assessment. Now I won’t have to worry about my research funds,” Tucker says.
“Ed… brother..,” she says. Edward balks. He asks when the last time he’d transmuted a chimera. It was two years ago, around when Tucker’s wife died.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood left Netflix last July. Yesterday, it was added to Crunchyroll.
There, there. Go ahead. Watch one of the most upsetting and horrifying moments in all of anime and tell me how you managed to ever laugh again in the comments.
Comments
37 responses to “A Tribute To One Of The Most Depressing Moments In Anime”
Like I thought I just got over this…..
Is this a cross post from the US site? FMA: Bros is still currently available on Netflix AU, was watching it on the long weekend.
I’m going to watch Mustang torch Lust to get over this
Lust getting torched was satisfying on so, so many levels.
I comfort myself with the single funniest line in anime, also from FMA:B:
“Conveniently manifest yourselves, telepathic powers of mine!”
I’m just re-watching Fullmetal Alchemist at the moment and watched this ep only yesterday. Is such a crazy moment, you can see the pain and anger in Edwards eyes, which makes the reaction seem so real. Made a great episode, to a most excellent series.
Yup, it still haunts me to this day.
Watching the series with friends at the moment. Saw this episode last night. One friend already knew it about from the internet but the other friend didn’t.
FMA was the first anime I ever watched, I loved it and continued watching anime for years. I don’t remember this though.. must have blocked it out!
You probably saw the original Fullmetal Alchemist. This is from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (which only came out a couple years back). It’s a retelling of the story more inline with the manga, and is quite different to the original anime. I’d highly reccomend it for anyone who liked the original, it’s extremely well done and quite a bit darker / more mature.
I’m not crying, I was just chopping onions…
no, its raining
I dunno about the most depressing.
I recently watched Clannad (and Clannad AS) and towards the end of that was by far one of the most brutally depressing stories iv seen to date.
But I will agree that FMA has some real tear jerking moments.
If you want depressing, the true pit of despair, there’s a little thing called “Saikano, or My Girlfriend, the Ultimate Weapon”. Caution: only watch if you have prepared something ultra-uplifting to see or do afterwards.
Saikano is definitely one of the most devastating anime I’ve seen. Similar in tone to this FMA ep, but stretched to the point of torture.
I binged watched it when I first saw it just because I just had to get to the other side.
…but, in a good way? I guess?
Now and Then, Here and There.
Make sure you phone a friend and get a suicide watch set up beforehand though.
I just looked this up and realised I watched this years ago. yeah there’s some shit that goes down in this anime. The one main thing that sticks in my mind is that girl that has that horrific stuff happen to her. i won’t go into detail so as to avoid spoilers but yeah…
It’s one of the most bleak things I’ve ever watched.
fuk. I’m going to have to re-watch brotherhood.
One of the best Anime’s ever.
Two anime moments that destroyed me. This and the ending of Tekkaman Blade
Actually.. pretty much the whole Tekkaman Blade series. The whole show was based on sacrifice. He constantly had to sacrifice everything to survive and the ending…
Ooo someone who remembers TB! Super underrated series. That last episode was indeed bittersweet.
“Hooray! You have an awesome suit and can fight the aliens!”
“Ps. you need to horribly murder everyone you ever cared about. kthx!”
yeah. (@*&$ Tekkaman Blade. Brutal to sit through when you realise what’s going on.
Yes. I spent so many years trying to get my hands on a copy of Tekkaman.
I’ve only seen Brotherhood as everyone keeps saying that it is the best adaption. I wonder if the original is still worth watching?
Nah stick with Brotherhood, I’ve watched both, Brotherhood is by far the superior show. If memory serves the start of the original was good because it followed the Manga, once the Anime caught up to the books they went off-script and as a result down hill. To better define the difference, Brotherhood has much greater depth to the story throughout the entire show, the original had a fair bit of filler in my opinion.
Not only was the original full of filler, the tone was so jarringly inconsistent that it became a chore to watch.
I’d say it’s worth watching for some of the filler episodes. There’s a lot more Maes Hughes in FMA so his death hits home more and the few episodes surrounding the humunculus and how they’re created is pretty good as well. Although standard FMA doesn’t have any of the Fort Briggs or Xing peeps … so there’s that
One of things I like most about FMA was that it tied everything together more neatly. A dropped plot element from FMA:B regarding breaking the great taboo (bringing people back from the dead) became a major part of FMA’s mythology and overall tied it into a tighter, more contained story.
These are the kinds of horrors that you have to face and come back from in order to achieve “a heart that is fullmetal”.
No! You monster! How could you bring this up! Too soon man…too soon….
I’ll just leave this here…
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/175/643/4e8.jpg
It made for a ruff watch
http://i.imgur.com/HkGhjm5.jpg
Yep, total dog-act
Watched this and it didn’t hit me at all. The character is only around for like 2 episodes.
The one that really hit me is Euphie in Code Geass… That poor sweet innocent soul :'(
Not that anyone will see this comment so far down but the first series was more emotional than Brotherhood, though it did have more filler episodes and arguably not as good an ending.
Yeah that was pretty messed up, Brotherhood was such an intense show!
Still a classic though =)
This was sad but nothing has utterly devastated me like Clannad. I went from Kanon to this in a single week and it just ruined me for life…….
A local TV station (44 adelaide) was showing FMA:B a while back airing two eps back to back twice a week. Except they must have had a glitch because for several weeks in a row, the second ep was always episode 6, which is the one in this article invloving nina and the dog. Seeing that ep once is painful enough – seeing it five times was just torture.
Amazing series though. I’d highly reccomend it for fans of the original FMA anime. It starts similar but then rapidly diverges into a very different telling of the story that is superior to the original in almost every way.
Best dad ever!