Fullmetal Alchemist
Nov. 14th, 2020 08:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
potofsoupThere's gonna be spoilers here for FMA, which I assume, given that it's at least a decade old at this point, will be all right.
So, I was in college when the FMA anime came out, and I bounced off of it HARD. The first few episodes felt too generically shounen rule of cool, and then the flashback just seemed too grimdark (having the Elric brothers see all these dark moments of alchemy when they're 12 and on their way to get the state alchemist license!!) and the whole thing felt very alchemy monster of the week PLUS the random bits of Lust and Gluttony were very Conspiracy Central. (I've been pretty allergic to conspiracy stories ever since getting burned by Alias back in high school.*) Anyway, it being 2003, I went online, found a fansite that had episode summaries, and read enough to be like "okay, it goes seriously into Conspiracy Town and the ending reveal is that King Bradley is actually alternative universe Hitler??" And so I decided that FMA was not for me, and have resisted watching it since then. I understood the basic premise of the Elric brothers trying to bring back their mom but instead losing body parts, but my general sense of the story was that: there were homunculus running around that seemed arbitrarily 7-deadly-sin-themed and also they may get created whenever someone tries to bring someone back to life? and there's a lot of conspiracy shenanigans involving the army and the desert? and yet for some reason everyone wanted to run around anime conventions dressed as FMA chars from the military? And that even if you take down the big bad there's just another alternate universe jump? And also the FMA movie involves bellydancing?
Yeah, it didn't seem particularly interesting, and despite many people over the years being like "you should watch FMA!" I remained unconvinced.
Anyway, recently Nonymos was trying to convince me to read the FMA manga, and told me that the FMA anime that I watched actually wasn't true to the story at all, so last Sunday, a series of random events** lead me to start reading a very sketchy fan scanslation of the FMA manga. I finished 4 days later and actually liked it! So now I'm here to blog about a 20 year old story that everyone has already hyped at me about.
1) I really enjoyed the plot pacing and it mostly avoided the issues of Too Much Conspiracy.
I really appreciated that instead of a long dive into flashbacks, it just started doing reveals and introducing characters. Mustang sends the brothers to Tucker, he turns his daughter into a chimera, Scar shows up, kills them, destroys Ed's arm, then Armstrong escorts them back to Winry's farm, they meet Dr. Marco along the way, Lust burns down the library, and the brothers discover that the Philosophers' Stone is made from people, all in a few short chapters (ch 5-10). So efficient in establishing major characters, regions, and institutions! Like, the fact that thesoylent green Philosophers Stone is actually people is the sort of reveal that you can see a mile away but for some reason most stories would hoard for a reveal around chapter 30, and Arakawa's just like "yup! okay now let's get into the more interesting reveals." I also want to take a moment to appreciate that the bad guys were competent and complex! I tend to want only good things to happen to protagonists, so I really admire the ballsiness of saying "let's have the bad guys destroy this and figure out another way forward for the protags."
Overall, despite the story having some major plots and conspiracies, it didn't trigger my conspiracy allergy by (a) revealing the next conspiracy element with speed and without fanfare, (b) having most of the conspiracies actually be something that has been built up over the centuries, and (c) seeding the reveals early and connecting it to existing people so that they don't seem to come out of nowhere. We see Father and his connection to the Homunculi really early on, so it's less "he has a plot" and more "how deep does the plot go." We knew that Sloth was digging really early on, so when he busts through Briggs, it didn't come out of nowhere. The only couple of times I was a little side-eye about it was when Scar's brother's notes, arranged in a sketchy pile and then turned over, revealed a reverse alchemy circle. That just seemed like so much effort to hide, and Scar's brother had so little incentive to hide it that way. And why was Father able to open the door of the world when he only sacrificed Amestris? And I still don't know why the emperor of Xing wanted the philosopher's stone, that seems like a not-good thing to want.
Plot pacing-wise, it reminded me a lot of early Homestuck, where new mysteries keep appearing and things keep shifting, such that just being a few chapters ahead means that things are completely different. (Unlike Homestuck, I could trust Arakawa to actually go somewhere thematically, instead of it being mostly smoke and mirrors)
2) I was impressed by the thematic consistency of the whole thing.
There's some great moments in discussing the "All is one, one is all" and the "equivalent exchange" ideas, and how the bad guys can pervert it to mean "therefore human lives are worth very little." She really goes hard on the value of human lives (or rather, that the value can't be measured and traded), and the importance of family and friends and basic recognition of the person. I thought that the whole 7 deadly sins thing was just going to be "oh hey, Father excised these emotions from himself by putting them into homunculi", but it turned into "because you removed those emotions, you're actually less human, and this is the wrong way to create a family and genuine connections," which was pretty cool. I loved that at the end, everyone was basically rejecting their philosophers' stone to help friends and family (Lin and Hohenheim both offering their stones to help get Al back). It was a nice thematic parallel to have Ed give away his Door in order to save Al, especially since the Big Bad was willing to sacrifice the entire country in order to open the biggest Door.
I also loved how the story showed the pervasiveness of the military structure, and how hard it is to challenge and dismantle -- from the younger soldiers who are like "wait there's no way the military would condone human experimentation!" to the people who lived through the Ishbalan genocide and can only deal with their trauma on an individual level, or through revenge. Even Mustang was like, "gotta get to the top, and then make it better via moral leadership", which is pretty Confucian, tbh. I did like the note about seeing past the presidency, and honestly was a little sad that they didn't dismantle the military structure at the end of the manga. I mean, it makes sense that change takes time, and sudden dismantling would cause chaos and instability for everyone, but still. How can we ensure that eventually the military state will become obsolete for Amestris? Would healing Ishbal and making peaceful treaties with the neighbors be enough to start on that path? There's still a whole friggin' circle underneath the entirety of Amestris.
This does lead to some small dissatisfactions with some parts of the ending, though.
- One was the military thing mentioned above (plus Gruman coming in and Pride being raised as a child just seem like unnecessary dangling threads).
- I also kind of wished that Greed stayed with Lin -- why did Greed only get affirmation of his friendships when he died? I think it would have felt thematically consistent to say, hey, Greed actually gets to become human because emotions, when done honestly, *is* human. (And Greed is nothing if not honest)
- I wish that Hohenheim stayed alive and rebuilt his relationships with his sons. Like, he was a shitty father, and taking a 10-year journey around Amestris to drip souls into the dirt doesn't excuse him for never checking in on his family. At the end, he was like "I still have enough energy to pull one more life back" but then when that's not needed, he just goes and dies? I would have much preferred Hohenheim being like "well, I guess I still have this one single life to live" -- no longer immortal, and the only soul inside him is his own. Maybe stand in front of Trisha's grave and be like "I'll be joining you, but first I gotta be with our kids." And then go on a journey with Ed! The end is all about healing and family, and Hohenheim just decides to die?
- I like the thematic parallel of Ed giving up his Door, but I feel like the result of that could have been better played out? For one, I would have loved it if Al was there to help Ed whenever he needed alchemy, since Ed was like "who needs the Door to Truth when one's got family?" (alas, Al was mostly shown doing bicep curls). For another, Ed not being able to do alchemy seems to go against how alchemy was established as a science earlier? Like, throughout the thing, Alchemy is a thing that you studied. Sure, some people might be better at it because they were better at numbers and symbols, or they had more access to alchemy texts, but theoretically, anyone can do alchemy if they put in the work, right? It's kind of like being a surgeon -- I don't know how to do it because I didn't do a bajillion years of med school. It would make sense to me if Ed giving up the Door meant that he can't do his clappy thing anymore and can only draw basic symbols, but to not be able to do alchemy at all seems a bit weird. (Okay this is maybe just a really long-winded way of saying that I wished the Ed-is-fixing-the-roof scene either ended with Al showing up and being like "oh hey, want me to help with that?" or Ed making a smol alchemy circle and realizing that it still worked.)
Anyways, despite those small quibbles, it was a fun, fast-paced, thoroughly thrilling read. I loved Arakawa's deft hand with thematic resonance and character depth, her ability to juggle so many plot pieces and still find time for cheeky humor.
----
* I don't like the thing where there's a secret agency behind the secret agency and everyone is a double-triple agent and it turns out the secret agency that was bad was secretly trying to take down a 3rd secret agency. Discovering more secrets is not the same as having actual plot, and giving people more secret agencies to work for is not the same as giving people character motivation, eugh.
** I came across a video snippet from a live action version of Gokushufudou, which was about a Yakuza who left to be a Househusband, and, being a major sucker for retired assassins being domestic, went hunting for the manga. It turned out to be extremely unsatisfying because everything was played to trope, for laughs, so I was like, "hmm, I wonder if this sketchy website has FMA?"
So, I was in college when the FMA anime came out, and I bounced off of it HARD. The first few episodes felt too generically shounen rule of cool, and then the flashback just seemed too grimdark (having the Elric brothers see all these dark moments of alchemy when they're 12 and on their way to get the state alchemist license!!) and the whole thing felt very alchemy monster of the week PLUS the random bits of Lust and Gluttony were very Conspiracy Central. (I've been pretty allergic to conspiracy stories ever since getting burned by Alias back in high school.*) Anyway, it being 2003, I went online, found a fansite that had episode summaries, and read enough to be like "okay, it goes seriously into Conspiracy Town and the ending reveal is that King Bradley is actually alternative universe Hitler??" And so I decided that FMA was not for me, and have resisted watching it since then. I understood the basic premise of the Elric brothers trying to bring back their mom but instead losing body parts, but my general sense of the story was that: there were homunculus running around that seemed arbitrarily 7-deadly-sin-themed and also they may get created whenever someone tries to bring someone back to life? and there's a lot of conspiracy shenanigans involving the army and the desert? and yet for some reason everyone wanted to run around anime conventions dressed as FMA chars from the military? And that even if you take down the big bad there's just another alternate universe jump? And also the FMA movie involves bellydancing?
Yeah, it didn't seem particularly interesting, and despite many people over the years being like "you should watch FMA!" I remained unconvinced.
Anyway, recently Nonymos was trying to convince me to read the FMA manga, and told me that the FMA anime that I watched actually wasn't true to the story at all, so last Sunday, a series of random events** lead me to start reading a very sketchy fan scanslation of the FMA manga. I finished 4 days later and actually liked it! So now I'm here to blog about a 20 year old story that everyone has already hyped at me about.
1) I really enjoyed the plot pacing and it mostly avoided the issues of Too Much Conspiracy.
I really appreciated that instead of a long dive into flashbacks, it just started doing reveals and introducing characters. Mustang sends the brothers to Tucker, he turns his daughter into a chimera, Scar shows up, kills them, destroys Ed's arm, then Armstrong escorts them back to Winry's farm, they meet Dr. Marco along the way, Lust burns down the library, and the brothers discover that the Philosophers' Stone is made from people, all in a few short chapters (ch 5-10). So efficient in establishing major characters, regions, and institutions! Like, the fact that the
Overall, despite the story having some major plots and conspiracies, it didn't trigger my conspiracy allergy by (a) revealing the next conspiracy element with speed and without fanfare, (b) having most of the conspiracies actually be something that has been built up over the centuries, and (c) seeding the reveals early and connecting it to existing people so that they don't seem to come out of nowhere. We see Father and his connection to the Homunculi really early on, so it's less "he has a plot" and more "how deep does the plot go." We knew that Sloth was digging really early on, so when he busts through Briggs, it didn't come out of nowhere. The only couple of times I was a little side-eye about it was when Scar's brother's notes, arranged in a sketchy pile and then turned over, revealed a reverse alchemy circle. That just seemed like so much effort to hide, and Scar's brother had so little incentive to hide it that way. And why was Father able to open the door of the world when he only sacrificed Amestris? And I still don't know why the emperor of Xing wanted the philosopher's stone, that seems like a not-good thing to want.
Plot pacing-wise, it reminded me a lot of early Homestuck, where new mysteries keep appearing and things keep shifting, such that just being a few chapters ahead means that things are completely different. (Unlike Homestuck, I could trust Arakawa to actually go somewhere thematically, instead of it being mostly smoke and mirrors)
2) I was impressed by the thematic consistency of the whole thing.
There's some great moments in discussing the "All is one, one is all" and the "equivalent exchange" ideas, and how the bad guys can pervert it to mean "therefore human lives are worth very little." She really goes hard on the value of human lives (or rather, that the value can't be measured and traded), and the importance of family and friends and basic recognition of the person. I thought that the whole 7 deadly sins thing was just going to be "oh hey, Father excised these emotions from himself by putting them into homunculi", but it turned into "because you removed those emotions, you're actually less human, and this is the wrong way to create a family and genuine connections," which was pretty cool. I loved that at the end, everyone was basically rejecting their philosophers' stone to help friends and family (Lin and Hohenheim both offering their stones to help get Al back). It was a nice thematic parallel to have Ed give away his Door in order to save Al, especially since the Big Bad was willing to sacrifice the entire country in order to open the biggest Door.
I also loved how the story showed the pervasiveness of the military structure, and how hard it is to challenge and dismantle -- from the younger soldiers who are like "wait there's no way the military would condone human experimentation!" to the people who lived through the Ishbalan genocide and can only deal with their trauma on an individual level, or through revenge. Even Mustang was like, "gotta get to the top, and then make it better via moral leadership", which is pretty Confucian, tbh. I did like the note about seeing past the presidency, and honestly was a little sad that they didn't dismantle the military structure at the end of the manga. I mean, it makes sense that change takes time, and sudden dismantling would cause chaos and instability for everyone, but still. How can we ensure that eventually the military state will become obsolete for Amestris? Would healing Ishbal and making peaceful treaties with the neighbors be enough to start on that path? There's still a whole friggin' circle underneath the entirety of Amestris.
This does lead to some small dissatisfactions with some parts of the ending, though.
- One was the military thing mentioned above (plus Gruman coming in and Pride being raised as a child just seem like unnecessary dangling threads).
- I also kind of wished that Greed stayed with Lin -- why did Greed only get affirmation of his friendships when he died? I think it would have felt thematically consistent to say, hey, Greed actually gets to become human because emotions, when done honestly, *is* human. (And Greed is nothing if not honest)
- I wish that Hohenheim stayed alive and rebuilt his relationships with his sons. Like, he was a shitty father, and taking a 10-year journey around Amestris to drip souls into the dirt doesn't excuse him for never checking in on his family. At the end, he was like "I still have enough energy to pull one more life back" but then when that's not needed, he just goes and dies? I would have much preferred Hohenheim being like "well, I guess I still have this one single life to live" -- no longer immortal, and the only soul inside him is his own. Maybe stand in front of Trisha's grave and be like "I'll be joining you, but first I gotta be with our kids." And then go on a journey with Ed! The end is all about healing and family, and Hohenheim just decides to die?
- I like the thematic parallel of Ed giving up his Door, but I feel like the result of that could have been better played out? For one, I would have loved it if Al was there to help Ed whenever he needed alchemy, since Ed was like "who needs the Door to Truth when one's got family?" (alas, Al was mostly shown doing bicep curls). For another, Ed not being able to do alchemy seems to go against how alchemy was established as a science earlier? Like, throughout the thing, Alchemy is a thing that you studied. Sure, some people might be better at it because they were better at numbers and symbols, or they had more access to alchemy texts, but theoretically, anyone can do alchemy if they put in the work, right? It's kind of like being a surgeon -- I don't know how to do it because I didn't do a bajillion years of med school. It would make sense to me if Ed giving up the Door meant that he can't do his clappy thing anymore and can only draw basic symbols, but to not be able to do alchemy at all seems a bit weird. (Okay this is maybe just a really long-winded way of saying that I wished the Ed-is-fixing-the-roof scene either ended with Al showing up and being like "oh hey, want me to help with that?" or Ed making a smol alchemy circle and realizing that it still worked.)
Anyways, despite those small quibbles, it was a fun, fast-paced, thoroughly thrilling read. I loved Arakawa's deft hand with thematic resonance and character depth, her ability to juggle so many plot pieces and still find time for cheeky humor.
----
* I don't like the thing where there's a secret agency behind the secret agency and everyone is a double-triple agent and it turns out the secret agency that was bad was secretly trying to take down a 3rd secret agency. Discovering more secrets is not the same as having actual plot, and giving people more secret agencies to work for is not the same as giving people character motivation, eugh.
** I came across a video snippet from a live action version of Gokushufudou, which was about a Yakuza who left to be a Househusband, and, being a major sucker for retired assassins being domestic, went hunting for the manga. It turned out to be extremely unsatisfying because everything was played to trope, for laughs, so I was like, "hmm, I wonder if this sketchy website has FMA?"
no subject
Date: 2020-11-14 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-24 09:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-24 06:29 pm (UTC)it's never too late to start finishing! scrolling through manga is like, so fast. The really really shitty manga scanslation that I was reading can be found on manganelo
no subject
Date: 2020-11-24 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-25 05:16 am (UTC)oh noesssss man what a rough scene. I feel like it's the equivalent of "pushing Bran out the window" from Game of Thrones in the whole "hey there buckle your seatbelts, the author means business." I do love how much Hughes' death impacts everyone emotionally.