Fullmetal Alchemist was the only decent shonen ever created, and that’s the truth.
I ranted in the tags, but you know what fuck it let’s go.
FMA is shonen. It’s targetted primarily at young boys like most shonen is.
And it deals with heavy shit. It has gore, it has parental abandonement, it has abuse, it deals with genocide and militarization and a fuck tonne of rights abuses. But it also deals with it sensitively. Arakawa wrote a compact story with great escalation and increasing of odds.
It also has fucking complex characters. FMA is one of the few shonen series that has made sure it’s female characters are on par with it’s male characters. It would’ve been easy to fall into the shonen trap and just sideline the female characters. But no. All the women hold their own, they do stuff. Winry is the mechanic. Lust is a great spy. Riza’s importance is never toned down. In fact she serves as a great escalation point to show shit hitting the fan. Olivier Mira Armstrong fucking commands one of the tightest and most brutal regiments, and she will chop heads. Lan Fan goes from bodyguard to assistant revolutionary. Mei chan’s development is huge for a kid. Izumi is the badass mentor.
But it’s not just the women. Even it’s male characters are varied. They’re soft. They emote. Maes Hughes won’t shut up about his family and how much he loves them. Alex Armstrong is a gorgeous buff dude who’s the second softest dude in the series. And they’re all shown as complex people.
It also was set in a crapsack world that relied on teenagers to do shit. But you know what else it did. It made it clear that this was not what teenagers and kids should be doing. It made it clear that this was the fault of the adults, and adults should make the world safe for kids.
It had teenagers and kids who grew up, emotionally too. It showed that the emotionality was valid. It broke up pairs of it’s most codependent characters to do this. Ed and Al get a fuck tonne of development once they get separated. The same goes for Ling and Lan Fan. And you know what, even though the circumstances that separated them were shit, it’s shown that their growth away is equally important as it is together.
You know how great that is for the young boys the series is primarily targetted at? To see badass women who emote and are different? To see buff men being gentle and emotional? To realise that you have to take responsibility for your actions? To realise that yes saving the world is good and all, but it should not be your responsibility?
FMA is fucking great, and all shonen works need to get on it’s level.
