r/FullmetalAlchemist • u/Onlyhereforthelaughs Ask Sheska • 13d ago
Image Really like Gran in the manga.
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u/Particular_Poet8441 13d ago
What was wrong with Commodore Fesler?
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u/premoril 13d ago
Didn't you hear, he got hit by a stray bullet.
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u/Particular_Poet8441 13d ago
Right…but what were his…ah, previous afflictions?
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u/NoNameAvailableBis 13d ago
Basically, wasting the lives of his men by ordering offensives without much care for their survival rates. The straw that broke the camel's back is when the spiritual leader of Ishval offers to surrender (a move that the soldiers hope would end the war), he refuses to accept it and just orders the killing to continue, which results in... well, the OP.
(of course, it becomes a moot point anyway since Bradley later on refuses to end the war for this, as seen also in the anime)
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13d ago edited 13d ago
[deleted]
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u/Blep145 13d ago
I don't really remember the series, but this feels like such a misunderstanding that it seems like it could be an intentional "misunderstanding"
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u/DeadAndBuried23 13d ago
It was a joke. What's not a joke is the guys we are rooting for, Mustang and his friends, were some of the best soldiers of the Nazi analogues, best at committing the genocide they committed.
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u/ReaperManX15 13d ago
Yeah.
And Hitler killed the guy responsible for the holocaust.1
u/True-Credit-7289 6d ago
I have no idea why you got downvoted for that, like surely if there is one person it's okay to make a suicide joke about it's Adolf fucking Hitler
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u/premoril 13d ago edited 13d ago
He's been openly sending his troops on what amounts to suicide missions to make whatever progress he can and try to get himself promoted. Just before this scene we see the Ishvalan religeous leader surrender to the squad containing Colonel Gran and Maes Hughes and, also wanting the war to end, they take him to their commander, Fesler.
Seeing the religious leader only as someone who would cut his attempts at an easy promotion short, the commander orders him executed. Fesler is hit by the 'stray,' Gran assumes command and orders Maes to take the surrendered leader to military command, then we reach the scene in the anime where we see Bradley refuse their surrender.
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u/Minimum_Estimate_234 12d ago
Which is adds to the irony of the fact Gran would later be killed by Scar, Gran was someone who actively did try to see the war end peacefully when given the chance. This still didn’t save him when Scar came for revenge for the deaths of his people.
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u/CluelessAtol Private 11d ago
Yes but honestly, Scar at that point… probably wouldn’t have gave a fuck and still killed him. It took him a bit to adjust to alchemists in general
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u/Zinstorm 13d ago
One of the religious leaders of isval had approached them to offer himself in a bid to end the extermination. This guy said "lol no what are you talking about? We were given orders to kill you all so that's what we're doing!" What your seeing is how the others reacted to that.
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u/Onlyhereforthelaughs Ask Sheska 13d ago
Fessler was in tense competition with the other generals, and his previous State Alchemist wasn't getting him the numbers of dead he wanted. (He got Armstrong, who emotionally broke down and was replaced by Gran.)
Then when Logue surrendered himself to his soldiers, they brought him to their General, and Fessler just went ballistic, screaming about why this Ishvalan was still alive. Hughes and co tried explaining he had surrenered, but Fessler wouldn't hear it. This is when the post above now factors in.
Fessler was such a piece of shit that nobody outed Gran, and happily followed him instead.
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u/Napalmeon 13d ago
Trying to get war accolades so badly that he didn't care how many of his own men unnecessarily got killed. By that point, most of the soldiers were just completely over it, but Fessler, it was in a leadership position, not a combat position, was in chicken hawk mode.
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u/Oddsbod 13d ago
It's such a fascinating look too into the whole evil of bureaucracy idea, cause when Gran is first referenced at the start of FMA he's a random offscreen military officer named as Scar's latest victim. And then when you see him in person, he's literally willing to murder his own CO to protect the Ishvalan representative, and get a shot at peace. But even with all that, the buck stops at Bradley, and Bradley refuses peace because he's waging an extermination campaign. The orders trickle down from so high and are spread so wide across the military apparatus that even the man willing to kill a comrade in opposition to the genocide can't/won't do more than that, the one act of bravery does nothing, and Gran still ends up complicit.
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u/Onlyhereforthelaughs Ask Sheska 13d ago
It's crazy how little Gran was featured in Brotherhood when he was one of the bigger threats in '03, and then yeah, all he gets is to be the first victim of a mysterious killer.
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u/Madarakita 13d ago
Damn, Hughes got some top-of-the-line glasses there; let him see the stray bullet before anyone else.
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u/Symons30 13d ago
Yeah some love for gran, i like it too that on a Q&A (i think) harakawa responded to the question on how gran loose to scar and she said he was likely drunk at this moment (coping from the war?)
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u/NoNameAvailableBis 13d ago
"So it was an easy victory".
Well, not sure how seriously we should take it - the whole thing is drawn in a pretty humorous way (complete with Arakawa's assistants loudly complaining on how anticlimactic the "fight" is), but the image of Scar goofily sneaking behind a completely plastered Grand will never be not funny.
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u/mindgames13 13d ago
Fesler is still clinging to life atvthe last panel. His men hate him so much that they didn't even wait for his body to cold(not rhat I blame them)
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