So, over Tuesday evening, the H and I finished up Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. Having watched both animes, and read the manga, I thought it would be fun to post some thoughts on the various versions. Insofar as I can remember, the FMA:B anime follows the manga pretty closely (if there are divergences I haven’t spotted, feel free to yell at me in the comments).
(spoilers below the cut. You have been warned)
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So, we’re still watching Le Chevalier D’Eon, out of which a good section takes place in 18th-Century Russia, and I tell the BF, “It’s fascinating how many empresses Russia had in the Eighteenth Century, when you compare it with the other European countries”.

A quick foray into Wikipedia revealed that out of three Empresses, two had seized power through military coups, and that the third had been designated as figurehead Empress, but soon decided the Privy Council was an inconvenience, and established an autocratic regime of terror to make sure no one would get in her way…

Uh. Women’s liberation indeed.
(I do know any woman who wanted to seize and keep power in those times would have to be twice as ruthless as men, and that Russian czars haven’t been particularly known for their gentleness, but still…)

Coherency pass on Foreign Ghosts. It looks like it might not be as broken as I feared it was–making a list of all the stuff that’s currently missing, but the basic plot is starting to be reasonably leak-free. At chapter 16 out of 25.

Going to watch a few episodes of Chevalier D’Eon now, a decidedly odd anime set in France during the reign of Louis XV. Gorgeous backdrops, but obviously done by someone who had very little idea of the history of Paris–for instance, the obelisk of La Concorde was brought back by Napoleon, about 50 years after Louis XV; the big, large airy streets are Haussman, about 150 years later… But it’s still fun, in a very Japanese way (brother-sister uncomfortably close relationship? check. Creepy magic that takes more out of you than it gives you? check).

I do love the fact that religion is so omnipresent, though, and that D’Eon’s faith is so important (major pet peeve of mine: having religion thought of as weird, nonsensical, or as a science, in an era where Cartesian thought was either not developed or in its infancy, and where belief was widespread).