Hey yall who wants to know another thing I love about FMA.
There are a lot of shonen shows that fall under the category of “protagonist joins some organization, travels around the world on missions, is working toward some general Ultimate Goal™ that falls in and out of focus.” And this format makes writing a lengthy shonen story easier because it allows the main characters to be passive in moving from one arc to another. The characters get sent on their missions by third parties, and the author can write as many non-sequitur mission arcs as they want, or until the Jump money runs out.
Naruto gets assigned one ninja mission, then the next, then the next, filler, non-filler, filler, non-filler. Kentaro Monjiro Tanjiro gets assigned new demons to target and kill by the master of the demon slayer organization, one arc ends, a new order comes down, the next arc begins. Deku is literally in school his teachers just tell him what’s next. And sure, sometimes the main characters are the instigators. Sometimes Naruto goes after Sasuke of his own will. Sometimes Deku goes after Sasuke Bakugou of his own will too. But those are the exceptions, rather than the rule.
And again, I get it. It’s strategic to keep a series running indefinitely. You can stitch together as many unrelated arcs as you want. And it’s probably a necessary crutch to have when forced to produce manga at the rate these publications need to.
Which, mind you, set itself up in the exact same manner. Ed joins the Goddamn Alchemist Military. That’s absolutely the FMA universe version of the Ninja Alliance/Pro Heroes/Demon Slayers. All of FMA’s arcs could have been the military telling Ed “this is your new mission go do this” while Ed and All just stumble through 200 chapters, following mission orders, vaguely acting with the ultimate goal of regaining their original bodies.
FMA doesn’t do that. FMA doesn’t take the easy route. Hiromu Arakawa pointed to Ed and said “see this fucking 15 year old gremlin? He’s gonna go instigate everything that happens to him, and he’s gonna like it.” The military tried asking Ed a favor once and Ed hated it so much that instead of following orders he fucked off down a mineshaft.
DOWN A FUCKING MINESHAFT.
Leore? Ed and Al went there on their own. Robbery on the Train? They just happened to be on the same train. Shou Tucker? Mustang introduced them as a favor for Ed handling the train incident (Brotherhood says it repayment for Leore since they cut the Train Robbery, shame). Dublith and Greed? they were there to see Izumi. Central? There to see Hughes, then saw too much, got dragged to Xerxes, stopped by home to do some grave robbing, decided to catch a homunculus for the lulz, got eaten and went to hell, met god, came back. Briggs? They decided alkehestry was their best lead so they followed Mei to Briggs. Leore again, cuz Al wanted to. Resembool, cuz Edward needed to hide after fucking off down a mineshaft. Slums of the Kanama region. Central again. Hell 2.0. God 2.0. Central. God again but the first one. Xing. Resembool.
Every SINGLE place these two chaotic hell-mongers go, every SINGLE mission they take up is a self-motivated, self-imposed, self-actuated logical follow-up to however the previous arc ended, to the point that the lines between the “arcs” begin to blur and transition into a brilliantly woven narrative of cause and effect. Where the instigators are never “mission-assigners said so” and instead are always the characters themselves spinning strategy, forming covert alliances and plans, making use of gathered knowledge to be their own driving force of actions, sieges, subterfuges, and the occasional overthrowing of the government from an Ice Cream Truck.
And I respect that a goddamn hell of a lot, cuz FMA has to go above and beyond in every facet of every single thing it does.
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titsay
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