I'm currently rewatching the anime series Full Metal Alchemist. The most recent episode I finished was about a serial killer who's abducting young girls and slicing them apart, later dumping their bodies in fringe area. Because he lost family friend in an earlier episode and is trying to avenge her, the protagonist Edwards spends half the episode investigating any leads he can find on the killer. Later an old family friend Winry from his far away home town came to visit him at work but disappears at the last minute. However Edward notices some iffy things about the scene such as footsteps, dropped items (belonging to Winry), and fresh tire tracks. Using these fresh evidence, uses them as a lead and eventually he comes across a butcher shop.
The rest of what happens you can see in this video links. Be sure to watch it because it explains (and forms) a fundamental basis for my question (and so I don't have to type the scene word for word).
Because there are so many lovely things in this scene that I have questions about (and because I see so many parallels to your writings and also to real world violence, I will limit today's question to one. But I will also give a brief summary about both an earlier episode,a brief about Edward, also my feelings on the specific scene above (because its relevant points to my question).
In an earlier episode, Edward was on a train ride to his new home. However Lady Luck did not favor him in this episode and this train was attacked by a bunch of terrorists. After the terrorists took the entire train passengers as hostages,the rest of the episode consists of Edward along with his brother Al fighting back the terrorists and giving control of the ship back to the trainworkers. These terrorists were armed with machine guns and were trained members of a hardened organization. In fact when Edward finally took out the grunts and confronted the mastermind behind the plan, the mastermind revealed himself as a former military who's seen his share of danger in service. Edward engages in a one-on-one battle but Edward eventually wins.
AS you saw in the clip, Edward is a kid so this sounds like utter BS but in the earliest episodes, he was shown along with his brother as taking lessons from a military instructor they hired for training and they are shown in all sorts of military training from surviving in the wilderness to practising martial arts to PT to learning espionage and how to react to ambushes as well as perform stealth attack. So being able to take on terrorists who took over a train made complete sense to me when they were still airing this on TV and was fanatically watching it every weekend, not missing a single episode.
However when they reached the Butcher episode, I was like "WTF thats lovely ********!"! Literally not lying if you saw the expression on my face after watching the Barry the Butcher incident you'd think I just saw an Alien running in the streets or I just saw a hot busty girl flash her tits at me.
I was at an utter loss at how Edward-who's not only well-trained in military arts but even took out an entire terrorist group armed to the teeth with machine guns and explosives and lead by an ex-military guy with some experience in real wars- was terrified but more importantly PANICKED at the last moments of Barry's assault. To the point of just sitting there frozen with his arms held up in a desperate attempt to defend himself from the butcher knife. I was like "come on this guy took on trained terrorists with guns! There's no reason he shuld be so terrified of a cleaver that he's a sitting duck who couldn't fight his way out!"
Just as equally BS to my 13-year old self at the time was the thought of a butcher not only being so quick and ferocious in his attack that he'd nearly overwhelm Edward several points in the fight, but that he can SWING a bladed weapon with such power and technique that can even break apart Edward's defenses (as seen when he got a metallic staff to fight off Butcher Barry).
Especially at the near end when despite Barry losing all composure and deciding to abandon the technique, finesse, and skill he exhibited throughout the whole fight, he decided to just flail his blade random and wild and try to hick his way through Edward's metallic arm (that as you seen in the vid was transformed into a blade as large as Barry's cleaver at the last minute). Despite blocking all of Barry's blow with his metallic turned sword arm, Edward still got some open and relatively large cuts not just throughout his body but even on his left human arm (which as seen on the last moments of the attack in the video, was not hit by the cleaver- at least on the angle they animated the fight).
I wasn't the only one who thought the scene was utter BS. I remember at school all my classmates who followed this show were agreeing how the writers made up such a BS episode in an otherwise excellent TV show and how someone like Edward who could disarm terrorists and who took military training should not have frozen irl like he did in this specific episode.
However looking back now as I rewatched the series and after reading Marc MacYoung's books and his NNDS website, I somewhat have an understanding of why Edward freezed as he did (and why the Butcher was so aggressive). But I'm still confused about these things I somewhat have a basic understanding off so I'll ask you them for another time.
But now I have a specific question inspired by Marc MarcYoung's writing that he did not ever address directly.
I remember MacYoung once mentioned that its farmer classes and other people who worked in manual labor who were most practical about violence as well as most experienced in it. Its this statement that inspired my question along with the Full Metal Alchemist episode.
MacYoung frequently comments about know in the martial arts, self defense, and military combatives world how people brag about "OMG deadly killer katanas", "I'm so goooood because I'm a master of Army special forces knife combaties!" and other such expression about how because they own and practise with weapons they are utter badasses that they literally believed that they'd have no problem disarming a mugger or they'd have no problem cracking someone's skull using a Bo staff.
And its not limited to self defense instructors and martial artists too, MarcYoung had criticized people who work in violent professions (police, military, bounty hunting, etc) but are relatively new (as in they're rookies who have barely done one year in their resume) to the job think so high of their ability to use a weapons just from a few jobs they've taken and the training they received.
Indeed whenever a fictional portrayal of someone who doesn't work in violent jobs but does work a job, where tools are utilized, I always hear from self defense instructors, martial artists, and violence professionals frequently train with and use in their jobs such as a baseball bat, such contempt. To be specific they always make a comment about how such nonviolent people using such tools are not using the tools properly for fighting when the movie finally gets the working class man into conflict with a criminal syndicate. Comments with contempt like "its not the real way to use a stick in fighting!" or "he's using his slashing technique wrong!" or "he's holding the grip of the baton wrong" are what I always hear from RBSD instructors, martial artists, and inexperienced violence professional criticize a fictional portrayal in which a farmer defends his family from a burglar or a man who trims animal fur for a living kills a Mafia thug with his animal trimming knife.
One just has to see how self defense instructors who "teach self defense against bats and how to use a bat in self defense" mock baseball players for not "properly hitting with their bats" because they focus too much on training on hitting baseballs rather than real people as an example.
I can't comment for other relatively non-violent professions but as someone who's majoring in culinary and who wants to get into the butcher profession, when I was rewatching the Full Metal Alchemist episode earlier, the moment I saw the pigs who were sliced open and had their organs ripped out in the butcher shop, I was literally like "OMG! Now I understand why the butcher is gonna give Edward a lovely hell of a fight and why Edward froze!" I can tell you from my class lessons about meat cutting that CUTTING an dead animal wide open with a butcher knife is a task that requires immense skill, strength, reflexes, and knowledge of human anatomy. Just removing the internal organs alone is a task that requires such dexterity not even your average professional martial artist and boxer would be able to do it (we're not even going into psychological factors).
So the way he attacked Edward with such ferocity and skill with a cleaver to hack through Ed's makeshit staff finally made sense. Even though the show doesn't portray cutting techniques properly (and I'll also grant Barry was an outraged psycopath so bloodthirsty his swings was not concentrated), I can literally see a trained butcher's finesse as Barry was swinging his cleaver nonstop.
But the episode comes into another point now relating to psychology and violence that only I (as a butcher in training.) noticed. A lot of people in the Full Metal Alchemist fandom unanimously agree that the reason Barry just went berserk and started killing people so easily was because he was initially a decent guy who's probably been facing so much stress from life. Having a nagging housewife is just the straw that broke the camels back and once he killed his wife, many fans theorize he finally lost any sanity he had and just kept on killing and killing to soothe his anguish from his problems in real life.
However fans still were saying its BS that he can be so terrifying enough to freak out Edward (who could already taking on machine-gunned armed terrorists) and keep his cool against attacking someone he knows who's a member of the military (as at this point Edward already was an officer in the Army). "Even if he can kill helpless kidnapped women so easiy, someone like Edward should have made Barry nervous!"
HOWEVER what so many people in the FMA fandom fail to realize is how Barry's occupation DESENSITIZES the reluctance to commit violence that is such an intrinsic part of modern western society and humanist ethics. In fact I was just watching a video on PETA and animal abuse in the farming and ranching industries in one of my classes last month and one of the things caught on tape was how many workers (especially in slaughterhouses) could easily kill animals so easily without hesitation and how slaughterhouse workers were playing around animals and torturing them in various games before killing them.
In fact studies have shown that people who get involved in slaughterhouse jobs (even those not killing the animals) and butcher work not only get desensitized about seeing animals get hurt but are even far more aggressive people than most civilians who work in nonviolent jobs to the point studies have shown slaughterhouse workers are known to more likely blow out in public and to use unreasonable physical violence on others including dangerous targets sucha s police.
There are even several cases in real life of butchers losing it like Barry and starting to murder people (among victims include strong athletic men, police, and even some amateur boxer and martial artists as well as military victims).
The aggression of working in the slaughterhouse and butcher shop is such that companies are now providing psychological counseling to workers and require an annual psychological examining. Some retired butchers and slaughterhouse employees even admit years later they suffer PTSD and have nightmares of killing animals or witnessing animals get their stomach open alive. Which they could not understand because they actually used to play "kill the piggie" as a game where they even waged money on who can kill the most animals within an hour or who can slice a cow open with the least blood on their clothes, etc.
And there have been ex slaughterhouse workers and former butchers who admitted that they were so aggressive during their years of working some of them even considered killing people because they were so used to witnessing violence and because of the stress of their jobs but once they left the meat industry to work at desktop jobs or retired, they lost most such disturbing violent thoughts of considering murder.
So despite how the FMA fandom attributes Barry's breakdown to only his nagging wife but calling BS that Edward is so terrified of his aggressive personality pretty much incorrect and FMA is actually Truth in Television in terms of how Barry is so aggressive that even Edward, a violence professional, was terrified nervous.
As a butcher-in-training I wasn't surprised at how Barry could swing his knife with such speed and ferocity as though he was a veteran of hacking of living humans into chunks of pieces and to see his technique quite realistic portrayal of swinging the butcher knife (for an anime series). I wasn't also surprised at his lack of remorse of killing humans because of how in real life a lot of butchers and people working as the "butcher" of the slaughterhouse because of the jobs hardens a person's mind irl and even conditions him to think killing animals and hacking their corpses as "fun".
But it made me curious. I can only comment on butcher work but does the same concept about Barry being skilled with blade techniques and so aggressive- does it apply to other occupations?
I mean I remember the outrage many French military and policemen got when the Battle of Algiers showed uneducated poor peasant farmers sneaking up behind policemen and military personnel on leave and hitting them in vital points with such precision that said soldier and police were killed within seconds. They were calling BS because there is no way peasants who only farmed all their lives could be skilled enough to perform maneuvers taught only to military commandos.
However I have relatives in Algeria who are farmers and ranchers. Parts of the country are soo poor that hunting food is the norm and last time I visited Algeria, my relatives took me along to go on a hunting troop. They not only moved with such silence and quick feet that they quickly caught quick creatures like rabbits within seconds but they also killed the animal alive. At the time I still hadn't taken up culinary as my major and was taking general studies so I was so disgusted at how they killed the rabbit and other creatures they caught alive and I was just shocked at how they could do such killings like its second nature.
In addition they invited me to kill a bird (dn't know the breed but it was around the size of a Turkey/chicken) they caught. I tried to cut its neck but I couldn't make any puncture to slit it. Despite over 10 attempts of trying to swing the blad, not a single cut appeared. Finally one of my relative took the knife I was using and told me "this is how you do it!" and killed the bird within seconds of slitting it throats. I was just so amazed at how he was able to cut the bird's neck in one strike as though it was softer than butter. I mean I swore as I was hitting its neck, it was so hard it felt like I was hitting frozen meat!
So to hear the French police and soldiers get outraged years later was ridiculous. Because I lived with Algerian farmers/ranchers and they are just amazing in their skills to hunt wild game and use their knife to produce food on the table. They may not have formal training but they can use knives on actual living flesh far better than any soldier I know.
So with all this said, I am curious. Can civilians who don't work in violent jobs (police, bounty hunger, criminal syndicate, soldier, RBSD instructor) have far better skills with weapons than violence professionals and trained martial artists?I put two examples but my experience is limited and I see how violence professionals and martial arts/rbsd instructors bash films for portraying civilians who don't work in dangerous jobs but work in jobs using tools that are similar to weapons such as a knife used to trim horse hair be just as good in technique as trained martial artists.
I already commented about butchers but how much does this apply to other civilian professions?
The rest of what happens you can see in this video links. Be sure to watch it because it explains (and forms) a fundamental basis for my question (and so I don't have to type the scene word for word).
Because there are so many lovely things in this scene that I have questions about (and because I see so many parallels to your writings and also to real world violence, I will limit today's question to one. But I will also give a brief summary about both an earlier episode,a brief about Edward, also my feelings on the specific scene above (because its relevant points to my question).
In an earlier episode, Edward was on a train ride to his new home. However Lady Luck did not favor him in this episode and this train was attacked by a bunch of terrorists. After the terrorists took the entire train passengers as hostages,the rest of the episode consists of Edward along with his brother Al fighting back the terrorists and giving control of the ship back to the trainworkers. These terrorists were armed with machine guns and were trained members of a hardened organization. In fact when Edward finally took out the grunts and confronted the mastermind behind the plan, the mastermind revealed himself as a former military who's seen his share of danger in service. Edward engages in a one-on-one battle but Edward eventually wins.
AS you saw in the clip, Edward is a kid so this sounds like utter BS but in the earliest episodes, he was shown along with his brother as taking lessons from a military instructor they hired for training and they are shown in all sorts of military training from surviving in the wilderness to practising martial arts to PT to learning espionage and how to react to ambushes as well as perform stealth attack. So being able to take on terrorists who took over a train made complete sense to me when they were still airing this on TV and was fanatically watching it every weekend, not missing a single episode.
However when they reached the Butcher episode, I was like "WTF thats lovely ********!"! Literally not lying if you saw the expression on my face after watching the Barry the Butcher incident you'd think I just saw an Alien running in the streets or I just saw a hot busty girl flash her tits at me.
I was at an utter loss at how Edward-who's not only well-trained in military arts but even took out an entire terrorist group armed to the teeth with machine guns and explosives and lead by an ex-military guy with some experience in real wars- was terrified but more importantly PANICKED at the last moments of Barry's assault. To the point of just sitting there frozen with his arms held up in a desperate attempt to defend himself from the butcher knife. I was like "come on this guy took on trained terrorists with guns! There's no reason he shuld be so terrified of a cleaver that he's a sitting duck who couldn't fight his way out!"
Just as equally BS to my 13-year old self at the time was the thought of a butcher not only being so quick and ferocious in his attack that he'd nearly overwhelm Edward several points in the fight, but that he can SWING a bladed weapon with such power and technique that can even break apart Edward's defenses (as seen when he got a metallic staff to fight off Butcher Barry).
Especially at the near end when despite Barry losing all composure and deciding to abandon the technique, finesse, and skill he exhibited throughout the whole fight, he decided to just flail his blade random and wild and try to hick his way through Edward's metallic arm (that as you seen in the vid was transformed into a blade as large as Barry's cleaver at the last minute). Despite blocking all of Barry's blow with his metallic turned sword arm, Edward still got some open and relatively large cuts not just throughout his body but even on his left human arm (which as seen on the last moments of the attack in the video, was not hit by the cleaver- at least on the angle they animated the fight).
I wasn't the only one who thought the scene was utter BS. I remember at school all my classmates who followed this show were agreeing how the writers made up such a BS episode in an otherwise excellent TV show and how someone like Edward who could disarm terrorists and who took military training should not have frozen irl like he did in this specific episode.
However looking back now as I rewatched the series and after reading Marc MacYoung's books and his NNDS website, I somewhat have an understanding of why Edward freezed as he did (and why the Butcher was so aggressive). But I'm still confused about these things I somewhat have a basic understanding off so I'll ask you them for another time.
But now I have a specific question inspired by Marc MarcYoung's writing that he did not ever address directly.
I remember MacYoung once mentioned that its farmer classes and other people who worked in manual labor who were most practical about violence as well as most experienced in it. Its this statement that inspired my question along with the Full Metal Alchemist episode.
MacYoung frequently comments about know in the martial arts, self defense, and military combatives world how people brag about "OMG deadly killer katanas", "I'm so goooood because I'm a master of Army special forces knife combaties!" and other such expression about how because they own and practise with weapons they are utter badasses that they literally believed that they'd have no problem disarming a mugger or they'd have no problem cracking someone's skull using a Bo staff.
And its not limited to self defense instructors and martial artists too, MarcYoung had criticized people who work in violent professions (police, military, bounty hunting, etc) but are relatively new (as in they're rookies who have barely done one year in their resume) to the job think so high of their ability to use a weapons just from a few jobs they've taken and the training they received.
Indeed whenever a fictional portrayal of someone who doesn't work in violent jobs but does work a job, where tools are utilized, I always hear from self defense instructors, martial artists, and violence professionals frequently train with and use in their jobs such as a baseball bat, such contempt. To be specific they always make a comment about how such nonviolent people using such tools are not using the tools properly for fighting when the movie finally gets the working class man into conflict with a criminal syndicate. Comments with contempt like "its not the real way to use a stick in fighting!" or "he's using his slashing technique wrong!" or "he's holding the grip of the baton wrong" are what I always hear from RBSD instructors, martial artists, and inexperienced violence professional criticize a fictional portrayal in which a farmer defends his family from a burglar or a man who trims animal fur for a living kills a Mafia thug with his animal trimming knife.
One just has to see how self defense instructors who "teach self defense against bats and how to use a bat in self defense" mock baseball players for not "properly hitting with their bats" because they focus too much on training on hitting baseballs rather than real people as an example.
I can't comment for other relatively non-violent professions but as someone who's majoring in culinary and who wants to get into the butcher profession, when I was rewatching the Full Metal Alchemist episode earlier, the moment I saw the pigs who were sliced open and had their organs ripped out in the butcher shop, I was literally like "OMG! Now I understand why the butcher is gonna give Edward a lovely hell of a fight and why Edward froze!" I can tell you from my class lessons about meat cutting that CUTTING an dead animal wide open with a butcher knife is a task that requires immense skill, strength, reflexes, and knowledge of human anatomy. Just removing the internal organs alone is a task that requires such dexterity not even your average professional martial artist and boxer would be able to do it (we're not even going into psychological factors).
So the way he attacked Edward with such ferocity and skill with a cleaver to hack through Ed's makeshit staff finally made sense. Even though the show doesn't portray cutting techniques properly (and I'll also grant Barry was an outraged psycopath so bloodthirsty his swings was not concentrated), I can literally see a trained butcher's finesse as Barry was swinging his cleaver nonstop.
But the episode comes into another point now relating to psychology and violence that only I (as a butcher in training.) noticed. A lot of people in the Full Metal Alchemist fandom unanimously agree that the reason Barry just went berserk and started killing people so easily was because he was initially a decent guy who's probably been facing so much stress from life. Having a nagging housewife is just the straw that broke the camels back and once he killed his wife, many fans theorize he finally lost any sanity he had and just kept on killing and killing to soothe his anguish from his problems in real life.
However fans still were saying its BS that he can be so terrifying enough to freak out Edward (who could already taking on machine-gunned armed terrorists) and keep his cool against attacking someone he knows who's a member of the military (as at this point Edward already was an officer in the Army). "Even if he can kill helpless kidnapped women so easiy, someone like Edward should have made Barry nervous!"
HOWEVER what so many people in the FMA fandom fail to realize is how Barry's occupation DESENSITIZES the reluctance to commit violence that is such an intrinsic part of modern western society and humanist ethics. In fact I was just watching a video on PETA and animal abuse in the farming and ranching industries in one of my classes last month and one of the things caught on tape was how many workers (especially in slaughterhouses) could easily kill animals so easily without hesitation and how slaughterhouse workers were playing around animals and torturing them in various games before killing them.
In fact studies have shown that people who get involved in slaughterhouse jobs (even those not killing the animals) and butcher work not only get desensitized about seeing animals get hurt but are even far more aggressive people than most civilians who work in nonviolent jobs to the point studies have shown slaughterhouse workers are known to more likely blow out in public and to use unreasonable physical violence on others including dangerous targets sucha s police.
There are even several cases in real life of butchers losing it like Barry and starting to murder people (among victims include strong athletic men, police, and even some amateur boxer and martial artists as well as military victims).
The aggression of working in the slaughterhouse and butcher shop is such that companies are now providing psychological counseling to workers and require an annual psychological examining. Some retired butchers and slaughterhouse employees even admit years later they suffer PTSD and have nightmares of killing animals or witnessing animals get their stomach open alive. Which they could not understand because they actually used to play "kill the piggie" as a game where they even waged money on who can kill the most animals within an hour or who can slice a cow open with the least blood on their clothes, etc.
And there have been ex slaughterhouse workers and former butchers who admitted that they were so aggressive during their years of working some of them even considered killing people because they were so used to witnessing violence and because of the stress of their jobs but once they left the meat industry to work at desktop jobs or retired, they lost most such disturbing violent thoughts of considering murder.
So despite how the FMA fandom attributes Barry's breakdown to only his nagging wife but calling BS that Edward is so terrified of his aggressive personality pretty much incorrect and FMA is actually Truth in Television in terms of how Barry is so aggressive that even Edward, a violence professional, was terrified nervous.
As a butcher-in-training I wasn't surprised at how Barry could swing his knife with such speed and ferocity as though he was a veteran of hacking of living humans into chunks of pieces and to see his technique quite realistic portrayal of swinging the butcher knife (for an anime series). I wasn't also surprised at his lack of remorse of killing humans because of how in real life a lot of butchers and people working as the "butcher" of the slaughterhouse because of the jobs hardens a person's mind irl and even conditions him to think killing animals and hacking their corpses as "fun".
But it made me curious. I can only comment on butcher work but does the same concept about Barry being skilled with blade techniques and so aggressive- does it apply to other occupations?
I mean I remember the outrage many French military and policemen got when the Battle of Algiers showed uneducated poor peasant farmers sneaking up behind policemen and military personnel on leave and hitting them in vital points with such precision that said soldier and police were killed within seconds. They were calling BS because there is no way peasants who only farmed all their lives could be skilled enough to perform maneuvers taught only to military commandos.
However I have relatives in Algeria who are farmers and ranchers. Parts of the country are soo poor that hunting food is the norm and last time I visited Algeria, my relatives took me along to go on a hunting troop. They not only moved with such silence and quick feet that they quickly caught quick creatures like rabbits within seconds but they also killed the animal alive. At the time I still hadn't taken up culinary as my major and was taking general studies so I was so disgusted at how they killed the rabbit and other creatures they caught alive and I was just shocked at how they could do such killings like its second nature.
In addition they invited me to kill a bird (dn't know the breed but it was around the size of a Turkey/chicken) they caught. I tried to cut its neck but I couldn't make any puncture to slit it. Despite over 10 attempts of trying to swing the blad, not a single cut appeared. Finally one of my relative took the knife I was using and told me "this is how you do it!" and killed the bird within seconds of slitting it throats. I was just so amazed at how he was able to cut the bird's neck in one strike as though it was softer than butter. I mean I swore as I was hitting its neck, it was so hard it felt like I was hitting frozen meat!
So to hear the French police and soldiers get outraged years later was ridiculous. Because I lived with Algerian farmers/ranchers and they are just amazing in their skills to hunt wild game and use their knife to produce food on the table. They may not have formal training but they can use knives on actual living flesh far better than any soldier I know.
So with all this said, I am curious. Can civilians who don't work in violent jobs (police, bounty hunger, criminal syndicate, soldier, RBSD instructor) have far better skills with weapons than violence professionals and trained martial artists?I put two examples but my experience is limited and I see how violence professionals and martial arts/rbsd instructors bash films for portraying civilians who don't work in dangerous jobs but work in jobs using tools that are similar to weapons such as a knife used to trim horse hair be just as good in technique as trained martial artists.
I already commented about butchers but how much does this apply to other civilian professions?
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