The map of the Fullmetal Alchemist universe makes no fucking sense. I mean look at this peace of shit. The country Amestris where the show mainly takes place in would never be successful in the real world. One, the country is entirely land locked. It connects to no sea or ocean so no trade. Also it has no neighboring allies. As mentioned in the show there bordering countries are there enemies. With pressure on the borders, they are surrounded on all sides except for the side where there is a fucking desert. Which brings us to our next point. How the fuck is there a huge desert just east while only a couple hundred miles north there a snow covered land basically being Siberia on steroids. In conclusion fuck the lazy asshole who designed this map. Also Amestris should've been poor as dirt sense the day it was founded.
An immortal godlike homunculus did it.
The map is simply low in detail and only shows the borders. It was seen throughout the story that there are multiple large rivers through which trade can flow.
They have also shown that the country is rich with natural resources, exploited by multiple large-scale mining operations.
>>140398379
>tfw your gigantic irrelevant country is named after a Pagan currency
aaaaaand Germany, checkmate atheists
>>140398379
Did you miss the part about how a pseudo-deity created and sustained it for the sole purposes of creating a massive sacrifice?
You're right, a country like that couldn't naturally exist, which is the whole fucking point.
>how the fuck is there a huge desert just east while only a couple hundred miles north there a snow covered land basically being Siberia
What is the Taklamakan Desert and Tian Shan mountain range?
>>140398969
So you have no face?
The drachma is Pagan? I thought it was Greek. Or is it both?
>>140398379
You're correct, in the real world Amestris should fall apart.
It's bordered by its enemies because that gives more blood to the giant ass transmutation circle that comprises the entire country. Don't forget that the Ishvalens came from the desert so they have pressure on that border too.
All of the people in Amestris are living on borrowed time and on the promised day all will be silence.
>>140398379
Alchemy, brah
Maybe if you fucking watched the show you would understand how such country could exist.
>>140399162
Pagan either means the original "from pagus" or simply "non Christian"
>>140401973
How?
>>140402478
IT'S EXPLAINED RIGHT HERE INT HEF UCKING THREAD HOLY FCKING SHIT
>>140398379
>All that unclaimed desert in the East
The world building was such shit in this show
>>140398379
Looking at that map, seas don't even exist in the FMA universe, so the concept of "land locked" is meaningless.
>>140403213
They do exist, but they never actually stray too far out of Amestris.
>>140402765
They're barely at the tech level to claim useless desert. Remember, if you claim it, you have to police and defend it. Why bother, especially when it's a nice buffer between your dinky country and the biggest kingdom in the world?
Geologist here, there are rules for creating landforms such as deserts.
Either rain shadow or desert belt. I'm guessing author-chan has no idea about either.
There are many landlocked countries, some of them, such as Switzerland are incredibly wealthy.
>>140403507
I would've liked a fun Alchemy adventure across the world than stopping a man-made evil trying to become god in one country. That really is my biggest complaint is they didn't do enough adventuring in the setting.
>>140404468
But those countries have generally not explicitly pissed off every neighboring nation.
Father and Ed's dad did it.
The desert land and probably parts of Amestris were part of an ancient kingdom. Which Father and Hohenheim destroyed through Alchemy.
Hohenheim goes west and teaches Xing how to do alchemy for good purposes. Father goes west and founds the tiny kingdom of Amestris.
Father works in the shadows to make Amestris stronger than it should be. Teaching them alchemy and giving them advance technology. Every few generations he gets them to expand the borders to make it into a giant transmutation circle. Created in massive bloodshed of innocent people. The country is pretty much Nazi Germany.
Hohenheim in the meantime has come to Amestris and gets a mortal and frail waifu. Fathers two children and then vanishes to fight Father.
>>140402765
> Unclaimed desert
Where the fuck do you think the Ishvalans were, Paris? The desert was claimed, it's just that:
A: The occupants just got genocided about 10 years ago.
B: There was gigantic empire there that blinked out of existence, so every other nation is still super cagey about moving into there since no one knows what happened. Don't risk disturbing the Balrogs or something.
>>140404468
It was semi arid before Father used Alchemy to suck all the life out the land and people. It is desert now because a supernatural force made it that way.
It is also artistic license to show how Father devastated the land.
>>140405073
>>Hohenheim goes west and teaches Xing how to do alchemy for good purposes.
East. Also, citation needed; I thought the Xingese taught themselves, Honenheim went there to LEARN from them?
>>140405187
Honenheim taught them.
One of the Xing people in Elric group expositions on how a stranger was found in the desert and how he taught the first alchemists.
>>140404789
They were great characters for travel hijinks.
>>140404468
Update your desert creation rules to include nation-sized magic circles.
>>140405269
So the old country - Xerxes? - had both types of alchemy?
>>140405392
No, Honenheim mixed alchemy with the wonky shit Xing was doing to create something new.
>>140398379
Amestris is literally keikaku.
>>140405392
No. Amestrian alchemy is wholly artificial, powered by Father.
>>140405392
it had a type. which was really primitive, but managed to pull Father into the material world. Father then teaches Honenheim. Then they sacrifice the entire nation of Xerxes in a trick, to give Father a human body and more power.
Father and Honenheim then created the two different kinds of Alchemy.
>>140405494
It's been a very long time since I've read it. So basically Father was everyone's familiar? If we're relating it to IRL alchemy.
>>140405523
Only Honenheims familiar, since it planned/plans to backstab everyone else but likes him a lot. Even after Honenheim gets horrified at the genocide, Father is still chill enough with him to let H go do his thing, so long as H doesn't interfere with Father's thing. However, H happens to fall in love and have kids, and is super unchill with the idea of another genocide, so they come in to conflict again.
>>140405676
>>140405523
but Father is the battery powering everyone in Amestris alchemy.
Father can turn it off at will.
>>140405725
That doesn't make it a familiar. A familiar is a more or less benevolent or neutral guide to the alchemist, and not the source of their power.
I dunno, maybe there's a huge transmutation circle requiring the blood of everyone, made by a demigod?
Jesus, you guys are legit low iq beasts.
>>140405837
>demigod
No, Father is a little 'g' god. A demigod is either an elevated mortal or the offspring of a god and a mortal- so, Honenheim is a demigod.
>>140405825
In some IRL folklore familiar's are the source of a witch's power, as humans aren't magical creatures.
>>140403507
Source on the map? It doesn't look legit in the slightest. Why would the countries not included in the original map suddenly have a different, nigh-illegible font?
>>140406007
>Screenshot_2016-04-19-20-57-28.png
Golly gee, let me think.
>>140405135
Ishvalans lived in a part of the desert that is now part of Amestris. Meaning the desert the Ishvalans lived in IS claimed, so mentioning them is kinda irrelevant.
>>140406006
But that's not what predominates. Not every familiar is Fucking Kyubey.
>>140406079
Amestris didn't care if the Ishvalans claimed any more of the desert. They don't even care if all that desert on their map really is a desert. Father makes sure they are inward-focused.
>>140406081
Not every alchemy god starts out as a homunculus in a bottle.
>>140406045
I think you're retarded anon, so let me clarify for you.
What's the source of the map posted in the comment I quoted? I'm not asking about OP's smaller map, which was shown multiple times in the show.
>>140406150
He's still not the familiar of anyone except Honenheim, because he has not relationship or contract with anyone except H.
>>140406150
>Amestris didn't care if the Ishvalans claimed any more of the desert. They don't even care if all that desert on their map really is a desert. Father makes sure they are inward-focused.
Okay but that doesn't really affect anything I just said? All of the Ishvalan lands WERE claimed by Amestris. OP is asking about all the unclaimed desert, in which nobody lives. So to bring up the Ishvalans, who never lived in the desert that OP is talking about, is kinda pointless.
>>140406236
In the sense of a magical being that provides supernatural power, Father is a familiar for every Amestrian alchemist. Because all their alchemy goes through him, unless they went through the door themselves. Is that last part right? I don't quite remember.
>>140406285
Sure it does. The Ishvalans could have claimed that entire desert area, they could have had it marked on their maps, they could have sent an ambassador to Xing. There could still be Ishvalan tribes wandering around there. Nobody in Amestris cares. The other nations can do something to them, so they mark them on their maps.
>>140405015
You kidding? Everybody fucking hated the Swiss during the world wars because >muh neutrality. The mountains are the only reason they could pull that shit off, and alchemy serves a similar purpose for Amestris.
>>140406007
That map's a recreation, but the guy was using the map shown in ep 64 of Brotherhood for reference. It's fairly accurate from what I can see, but the names are barely legible, so obviously he's gone out on a limb.
>>140406374
There's a giant difference between "why wont you help us!?" anger and "You just killed thousands of our people and took some of our territory!" anger.
Also, everyone was kind of busy during the World Wars.
Also, Amestris does not have the explicit terrain advantages that Switzerland does. Mountains north, and desert east, possibly, but the West and South are really fucking exposed.
>>140406362
>The Ishvalans could have claimed that entire desert area
But all of the information ever presented to us tells us that they didn't.
Technically there could also be Ishvalan colonies on the other side of Xing because technically nothing directly says otherwise, but it's a huge, baseless logical leap required to make that claim.
Plus, if there were more Ishvalans and Ishvalan land that was not belonging to Amestris, there would still very much be a war going on with them, would there not?
>>140406408
Okay thanks, I figured it wasn't a canon map. Very nicely made though.
I guess as far as we know, oceans don't exist in the FMA-verse.
>>140406408
>>140406197
I know you're retarded, so let me clarify for you.
That map in the OP gets zoomed out in one episode of Brotherhood to be essentially >>140403507
The only changes from that episode snapshot are the addition of a compass, fucking with the unreadable font to produce an unreadable font, and a laughable hypothesis of the size/ position of Xerxes.
You could have learned all of this if you used the reverse image search features instead of bitching
>>140406576
Hey, it's in the anime, so as far as we know they DO exist.
>>140406362
>>In the sense of a magical being that provides supernatural power,
Except that's not a familiar without the other stuff stated in the posts you've been responding to.
This thread is surprisingly interesting.
>>140406408
Sorry sir, didn't mean to include you in >>140406614
>>140403507
I understand >>140399000
But if going only a little farther north lets you see the snowy mountain ranges in Amestris, then why are there so many more countries up north?
The top right corner country makes me think of way northern Canada.
As far as I can tell, there would be more countries directly east compared to northeast.
>>140406614
What episode though? I want to see the original map shown without fan interpretations but nobody has a picture of it. Reverse image search does absolutely nothing except link me to places like DeviantArt and Pintrest where people have posted that fan-made map. I know the map is fanmade now, and when I first asked I was simply wondering if it was fanmade or not, yet you made a reference to OP's picture saying it's obviously a screenshot, even though I wasn't asking about OP's picture.
>>140406936
They just told you it was episode 64 moron.
>>140406936
Ep 64 (last ep) of Brotherhood, around the 17 minute mark. Al's talking about how big the world is.
>>140406891
Even with the map, we still don't know how big these countries are, though with days of train travel it's implied that Amestris is way bigger than it should logically be if other countries countries are shown to be an exponent up in land area. Even at an average speed of 25 mph to account for stops and such, a train could still clear 600 miles a day, so if days of travel are involved we're rapidly climbing out of Europe scale and into 'Murrica! scale. Even so, we still don't see most of the oceanic borders or evident projection distortion.
>>140406936
Saucenao all but throws it at you and IQDB gives you a fucking link you lazy fuck.
>>140407349
Spoonfeeder.
>>140398379
Alchemy son.
>>140407364
They could just be in the middle of a continent the size of asia
>>140407705
Which should show a fuckton of obvious* projection distortion.
*to someone who looks at a lot of maps, has basic geographic structural knowledge, and understands that every projection is a compromise.
>>140407825
Obviously the world in FMA is much larger than our own.
>>140407364
>we still don't know how big these countries are
I'm not sure how accurate it is, but here's a map of Amestris with a legend.
http://i.imgur.com/IzRVg.jpg
Apparently the country is 723,456 km^2. The closest comparison to a real world country would be Zambia, which is 752,614 km^2.
>>140407364
From the FMA wiki, Amestris is has an area of 723,456 km².
According to Wolfram Alpha, that area is 1.3x the total area of France.
Using my eyeballing and Photoshop skills, I've come up with this image.
>>140408161
haha Niger
>>140407944
It couldn't be enough larger to make a difference in surface area without drastically changing the volume and mass, which would greatly increase gravity and therefore affect the form of creatures and terrain we see. For instance, the angle of repose of the mountains we see in FMA could not be as sharp as it is if the gravity was appreciably more than Earth's is. The planet is also unlikely to be much less densely due to the inherent properties and makeup of rocky planets that support human life, like a magnetic field and an oxygenated atmosphere.
>>140408161
>Xing is as big as China
like pottery
>>140408192
And there's a country named Montenegro, as well as numerous other placenames with other forms of the word, because Niger/negro/etc means black in other languages, and used to in English. It's our dumb shitty luck that ignorant Southerners corrupted that into Nigger and were so insulting about its use that the only way blacks could defuse it was to coopt it and ban anyone else from using it.
>>140408161
Nice, though given the positions of the real world analogue nations, it might fit better somewhere around the Caspian.
Actually, if Amestris was in an equivalent of the Caucasus region, that would explain a hell of a lot.
>>140408035
Fuck the font in that linked image and the sinner against all things good and typographic who used it.
Dont forget that they only had a population of around 50 million.
If we go by the "Amestris is the size of France" that makes for a lot of empty space considering France is around 60million now
>>140408035
Huh. Zambia is only 700ish miles across at its longest, which must be much longer than the equivalent for Amestris since Amestris is roughly circular, so probably not even a day is needed to cross. Why the fuck are there multiday train trips and little indication of commuter train traffic, then?
>>140408443
Implying France now doesn't have a lot of empty space.
Though most of it is occupiable, which is obviously not the case for Amestris. Amestris does have a well laid out and gigantic capitol, though.
>>140408234
Magic, m8. It's not real, it's fantasy.
>>140408443
one could assume that the majority of the population in Amerstris is in Central and its outlying areas. seeing as Risembool is considered a small as fuck farming area and the regional capitols appear to only be in the 100k at most in terms of population.
>>140408543
For comparison, France has roughly the same population density as Syria (prewar, anyway).
>>140408545
We're talking about nonalchemic elements here, so that argument doesn't apply. Ordinary physics still obviously hold sway in FMAverse most of the time, since guns and people still work the same way (comedy and plot armor notwithstanding).
>>140408607
Syria is 186,480 km²
France is 549,970. km²
Amestris is 723,456 km²
They all have roughly the same population. Draw your conclusions
>>140408676
It's a manga. They have guns and shit in HxH as well.
>>140406500
West has a great canyon.
South has an Alchemy-built wall.
Amestris is REALLY REALLY overpowered.
>>140408693
Population DENSITY.
Syria had about 20 million people before half either died or said "fuck this shit, I'm out."
>>140398379
It's because of 9/11 tier conspiracy to form a perfectly circular shaped country for a large-scale dark alchemy which would sacrifice the entire nation so that one man could become God.
but its based off germany
germany is mostly landlocked yet still thrived.
they also had good natural borders
>a desert to the east for protection
>a tundra to the north making it hard to invade through their
>the creta border had a huge trench
amestris was also the capital of alchemy in the world making them very powerful. no other country has been shown to use state alchemists as weapons
>>140408161
>>140408383
This got my geography autism going, thanks. Damn it.
Okay, so, climate would put it just a bit north of the "Caspian" equivalent (ironically making Creta a near match for a "filled in" Caspian moved down a bit). It's like if you carved out Germany and shoved it right under Russia, then threw the Caucasus Mountains in there. To the north is an equivalent to the Urals, with Tundra and shit, Drachma clearly looking at the mountains as a natural barrier and border. The vast desert is where a bunch of the -Stans are reaching up to the Urals equivalent, and it's where Blonde-Eyed Caucasi-Persians once lived (makes a bit of sense, lighter skin tones reflecting them being from a more northern region). Ishval too was a -Stan equivalent, though more like if you shoved Azerbaijan right under where you shoved Germany, which Germany somehow mistook for Poland and shoved it down its throat faster than you could say "Lebensraum." Xing is fucking HUGE, probably actually bigger than China, but it's like if Ming China expanded into Siberia, with Manchuria doing its own thing, and a dozen or so more countries all hanging out with it. Finally there's Aerugo, some kind of... Italy where Iran is supposed to be.
The borders are odd, but you can make some sort of sense out of them.
>>140409045
>germany is mostly landlocked yet still thrived.
It thrived because it was fucking gigantic compared to most other European nations from the day of its founding.
Why just amestris though? You'd think to become god you'd have to sacrifice all of humanity or something. And what was father going to do with that power anyway?
>>140411397
What is any villain every honestly going to do once their plan is complete.
>>140411419
The Major from Hellsing decided to get himself shot by a hot brown woman after mathing alucard out of existence.
These are just the villains off the top of my head. Anime has no excuse now.
>>140411397
What do gods do with their power?
>>140411628
Rape?
>>140411691
Fuck off Zeus
>>140411628
Be knowledge. All knowledge. Be the world. The universe. Be willing to share a fraction of that knowledge for something of equal value, and keep offering, until finally...they see the Truth.
>>140411697
What is zeus' rape count anyway?
>>140411628
Create a new world
>>140411628
Play favorites.
Make deals.
Hit people with shovels.
s
>>140411697
I believe that's his plan, yes.
>>140411397
I thought it was pretty clear that Father was once part of Truth, pretty pissed at Truth, and was planning to fight Truth however god tier entities fight each other.
>>140411909
No father is an enigma. All we know is that he was from the gate. He never said anything about fighting him.
>>140408234
This is what legit autism is.
>>140411969
Knowledge and logic that you don't have is autism?
>>140411954
What about when Truth sucked him back in?
>>140412256
That's why I'm saying he's a mystery. What was he in the gate? What was he doing? What is it like? We at least know he was an individual with awareness as he seems to remember what its like.
>>140406374
Reminder, Tannenbaum was a success without a single shot fired. And Swiss neutrality does not exist.
>>140398379
>in real life
fuck off
>>140411149
using that logic russia should have thrived because of its size, yet russia never even had a prosperous period
>>140412239
No, justifying that the world couldn't be larger because of the law of physics is. It's fantasy, it's beyond the law of physics in the first place.
>>140406891
Those northeastern countries look 80% like a simplified, old Chinese provincial map.
