Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Dec. 29th, 2010 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrI just finished watching the anime "Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood", the second more faithful adaptation of the original manga by Hiromu Arakawa. WAY better than what I remember of the first anime(*), there is basically no filler and it's well written, exciting, and emotionally affecting from start to finish. The last ten or so episodes cover a single day (apart from the final epilogue-y episode) which does drag a bit but on the other hand I prefer that to a sudden unsatisfying ending where none of the loose ends are tied off.
Full Metal Alchemist set in around 1915 in an alternate Germany/England where some people are able to perform alchemy, reshaping matter. The main characters (though the cast expands vastly by the end) are teenage brothers Edward and Alphonse who had a horrible accident trying to bring their dead mother back to life and are determined to do whatever it takes to restore their bodies (one is missing an arm and leg, the other had his soul bonded to a suit of armour) But as they join the army and delve into the hidden secrets of alchemy to accomplish this goal they end up being pulled into much larger concerns and have to decide what it is they really value.
FMA does two things I absolutely adore in fiction:
1) Conflict and contrast between two or more cultures all of which are supposed to feel a bit alien to the reader/viewer. I think this is much more interesting than having an Us and a Them.
2) Compassion for antagonists who do horrible things to people we like.
It was interesting to compare to Avatar the Last Airbender: both are set in an alternate version of the past in another culture (A:TLA is Asia by Americans, FMA is Western Europe by a Japanese person(**)) and are about a ragtag group of people, many of them teenagers, working together to overcome the forces of oppression, violence and war and create a better world. They explore the conflict between power and responsibility, and the importance of compassion and friendship instead of selfishness and revenge.
I think A:TLA is more effective, but the message it has to give is simpler and less realistic. In ATLA pretty much all the good guys with power get it given to them by a Deus ex Machina (being born the Avatar etc), and tend to reject it until deciding to do their best with the responsibility they've been given. In FMA power has to be sought, often pretty ruthlessly, and the only difference between the good powerful people and the bad is whether or not they shoulder the responsibility that goes with that power, and how ruthless they are willing to be to get it.
FMA is the best sympathetic portrayal of war criminals I can think of off the top of my head (there's definite overtones of Nazi soldiers deciding whether or not to follow orders), but I still sometimes got annoyed when it felt like we were expected to sympathise more with the people feeling bad about killing all those innocent people than the innocent people themselves.
I didn't realise it was written by a woman until just now since it's pretty unambiguously shonen in style but I'm not surprised, the female characters do tend on average to be more passive/subservient than the male ones but are still awesome. There's a middle aged ambitious female general! Who seems entirely happy to be single without children! Plus the fanservice is mild and includes men and women and one agendered person (a bad guy, alas, though there is a sympathetic if horribly cliched camp gay guy).
The portrayal of disability is better than average, but still problematic. A common theme is: someone's body becomes "abnormal" in some way (from losing a limb to becoming a weird half human/half animal hybrid) They or someone else says this makes them "less than human" or worthless etc. But then they realise they still have a resilient human soul and shouldn't lose hope that one day they will get their original bodies back, and go on to be awesome and helpful despite their "abnormality". Even those that seem likely to never get their "normal" bodies back end up pretty happy the way they are, and there's lots of examples of disabled people (especially amputees) being awesome which was nice, but the subtext still felt a bit off. Lots of characters experience major permanent facial deformation and neither die nor turn evil, huzzah.
If you decide to watch the subtitled version, I recommend familiarising yourself with and listening out for the Japanese word nakama, since it comes up a lot and gets translated differently in different circumstances so you may miss it as an underlying theme. (I only recognise a few words of Japanese, but it was said so often even I noticed. Than and "Oniisan", brother, but that theme is right in the title)
It hit my "bad things happening to children" squick every now and then REALLY hard, though not so often I couldn't stand it. Plus it danced around my zombie squick a bit, and overall has some dark and horrific scenes and a Whedonesque willingness to unexpectedly break your heart. There was also some vomiting and slavery, since I know those bother some people who read this. But in the end I came out feeling hopeful and happy (and like writing some long squee-ish meta :))
(*)Looking up the plot of the movie that came after the first anime…yeah I'm ok not having seen that.
(**)And in both cases a lot of research was clearly done to get the setting right but the humour is unapologetically mired in the idioms of the writer's culture.
Full Metal Alchemist set in around 1915 in an alternate Germany/England where some people are able to perform alchemy, reshaping matter. The main characters (though the cast expands vastly by the end) are teenage brothers Edward and Alphonse who had a horrible accident trying to bring their dead mother back to life and are determined to do whatever it takes to restore their bodies (one is missing an arm and leg, the other had his soul bonded to a suit of armour) But as they join the army and delve into the hidden secrets of alchemy to accomplish this goal they end up being pulled into much larger concerns and have to decide what it is they really value.
FMA does two things I absolutely adore in fiction:
1) Conflict and contrast between two or more cultures all of which are supposed to feel a bit alien to the reader/viewer. I think this is much more interesting than having an Us and a Them.
2) Compassion for antagonists who do horrible things to people we like.
It was interesting to compare to Avatar the Last Airbender: both are set in an alternate version of the past in another culture (A:TLA is Asia by Americans, FMA is Western Europe by a Japanese person(**)) and are about a ragtag group of people, many of them teenagers, working together to overcome the forces of oppression, violence and war and create a better world. They explore the conflict between power and responsibility, and the importance of compassion and friendship instead of selfishness and revenge.
I think A:TLA is more effective, but the message it has to give is simpler and less realistic. In ATLA pretty much all the good guys with power get it given to them by a Deus ex Machina (being born the Avatar etc), and tend to reject it until deciding to do their best with the responsibility they've been given. In FMA power has to be sought, often pretty ruthlessly, and the only difference between the good powerful people and the bad is whether or not they shoulder the responsibility that goes with that power, and how ruthless they are willing to be to get it.
FMA is the best sympathetic portrayal of war criminals I can think of off the top of my head (there's definite overtones of Nazi soldiers deciding whether or not to follow orders), but I still sometimes got annoyed when it felt like we were expected to sympathise more with the people feeling bad about killing all those innocent people than the innocent people themselves.
I didn't realise it was written by a woman until just now since it's pretty unambiguously shonen in style but I'm not surprised, the female characters do tend on average to be more passive/subservient than the male ones but are still awesome. There's a middle aged ambitious female general! Who seems entirely happy to be single without children! Plus the fanservice is mild and includes men and women and one agendered person (a bad guy, alas, though there is a sympathetic if horribly cliched camp gay guy).
The portrayal of disability is better than average, but still problematic. A common theme is: someone's body becomes "abnormal" in some way (from losing a limb to becoming a weird half human/half animal hybrid) They or someone else says this makes them "less than human" or worthless etc. But then they realise they still have a resilient human soul and shouldn't lose hope that one day they will get their original bodies back, and go on to be awesome and helpful despite their "abnormality". Even those that seem likely to never get their "normal" bodies back end up pretty happy the way they are, and there's lots of examples of disabled people (especially amputees) being awesome which was nice, but the subtext still felt a bit off. Lots of characters experience major permanent facial deformation and neither die nor turn evil, huzzah.
If you decide to watch the subtitled version, I recommend familiarising yourself with and listening out for the Japanese word nakama, since it comes up a lot and gets translated differently in different circumstances so you may miss it as an underlying theme. (I only recognise a few words of Japanese, but it was said so often even I noticed. Than and "Oniisan", brother, but that theme is right in the title)
It hit my "bad things happening to children" squick every now and then REALLY hard, though not so often I couldn't stand it. Plus it danced around my zombie squick a bit, and overall has some dark and horrific scenes and a Whedonesque willingness to unexpectedly break your heart. There was also some vomiting and slavery, since I know those bother some people who read this. But in the end I came out feeling hopeful and happy (and like writing some long squee-ish meta :))
(*)Looking up the plot of the movie that came after the first anime…yeah I'm ok not having seen that.
(**)And in both cases a lot of research was clearly done to get the setting right but the humour is unapologetically mired in the idioms of the writer's culture.
