Okay. It's been a hot second since I watched FMA and I've been meaning to revisit. BUT. Something that always got to me, watching it, was Ed and Al's youth and their relationship to the military and power? Does that... that might be too vague. But is that something you can work with?
Ohhhhhh, that is SUCH a juicy topic and I probably can't even begin to touch up on all of it... but let's get started, shall we?
Sometimes that I always deeply loved (and found horribly frustrating) is how convincing Ed and Al are written as teenagers. Genius teenagers, maybe, but teenagers nonetheless. We see this wonderfully in the very first episode of the anime, when Isaac McDougal (what a delightful name) tells them that there's something wrong with the country, that the military is involved in that, and Ed literally tells him "I don't care. You have a philosopher's stone, right?".
Like.
WOW.
Plot of the whole show could be over right then and there if Ed had only stopped to listen. But, of course, that's not what a teenager would do, especially one so guiltridden he can only see his incredibly selfish goal right in front of him.
We are at the beginning of the story, after all, and there needs to be some room for character development.
But Ed and Al never quite lose that selfish, teenage viewpoint even as they grow (Ed comparing the bombing of Resembool with the genocide of Ishval to Major Miles' face, Ed throwing a hissy fit when they join forces with Scar even though Winry has made peace with it, Al sounding all of five years old when he repeats "Hughes moved to the countryside" like a child whose favorite animal just "ran away") but they do grow. Considerably.
They were always good kids. They always had an inane sense of fairness. But by the end of it, that sense of fairness has grown beyond them and their immediate surroundings. They can see farther than just themselves and Winry and the handful of people they call friends.
By the end of if their good deeds changed enough in the hearts of the Amestrian people to allow a certain degree of unity.
But how does that relate to power and the military?
Now, you see, Amestris is presented to us as a military state and we quite often get the sense that the military is the most common career path available to most of the country. At least if you want to eat. Somehow the Amestrian military has to feed all these endless wars after all, and that only happens if people join up voluntarily.
And it only happens if the benefits are good enough.
Which is exactly how Roy gets them. He dangles hope in front of their small, traumatized faces and makes it quite clear that the military is the only way to get what they want.
They need research materials, power, and the oversight of the state. They get all that by Ed joining up with the State Alchemists programme. As a civilian, all of that would be restricted and inaccessible to him.
But -- even in the beginning -- Ed never really identifies with his identity as a Dog of the Military beyond his title. He, in odds to all other State Alchemists, is known as Hero of the People, because while the rest of the Amestrian military exploits and the State Alchemists break with their promise of "be thou for the people" Ed and Al do give back. They do help. They do free towns from corrupt military officials, they do fight terrorists on trains, they do fix a street vendor's broken radio.
Ed is uncomfortable with the power he theoretically holds. When Maria Ross and Danny Brosh call him "sir" and use his official rank, Ed asks them to just call him Ed, saying that he's nothing special. We never once see him lever his status as "major" over any of the lower ranking officers. Later, we see him desert with no regards to his future career, and by the end we know he quit because the military was only ever a means to an end. And he reached that end. He reached his goal.
Ed never shows respect for authority figures (but he does salute Hughes once, so he must have had some formal training on how to behave), he doesn't claim the power he is theoretically owed beyond the independence it allows him, he has no invested interest in the politics of it all (even though he is aware of them), and he actively fights the corruption within the military when personally affected by it (even if he is way too selfish in the beginning to see the bigger question).
And both he and Al hate killing. They seem to accept it as a part of a soldier's job -- their problem isn't death, I don't think, considering how unbothered they are by dead bodies throughout the show - but the act itself is so abhorrent to them, that they try to stop even tangentially related murder plots simply because they want no part in it. It is naive -- the show tells us so. Many of its characters tell us so.
But.
But it is also a reclamation of Ed's agency. And it is hope for the future. Because Ed knows that he has become a Dog of the Military, he knows -- on some level -- that he's just sold his soul to a monster far bigger than him, but he will keep this one part of his innocence for himself. He will not kill in the name of the Amestrian government.
And you know what? Riza Hawkeye is impressed with him for that. Because she pulled the trigger when ordered to, and Ed is her hope for the future. Because he is the next generation. And he refuses to do what she once did.
(I think it is interesting to investigate under which circumstances Ed would kill and how that would influence his character and what would be the consequences of that, but for the sake of the show itself, I think it is a wonderful visualization of the world healing beyond what Riza and Roy and Armstrong and Marcoh and Kimblee did to it)
Now, how does that all tie together?
Well, I think it is Ed's youth that allows him to disregard much of the military's power over his life, and it is his stubborn teenage-ness that allows both him and Al to hold so steadfast to their ideals, be that the selfish goal of self-realization or the refusal to kill. Not once does either character strive for power, and even at the end of the series, once they're all grown up, we see them long for a simple life. For interesting travels, good food, family, and a future worth living.
The military is a tool, for Ed and Al - because the military state ensured that they would have to use it.
It is interesting, really, because Roy joined up because he believed the propaganda, and once he recruits the Elrics he's been firmly broken by that belief -- and the Elrics join up even though they distrust the military (the Rockbells seem firmly anti-military all things considered) simply because it offers the resources they need.
If Ed was any other protagonist this would be a very different story, because they handed a twelve-year old a whole lot of power and a pretty high-up rank and the worst he did was blow up a few buildings and buy ugly clothes.
This is probably not at all what you expected, but... well, you successfully activated my rambling button! AND MANY THANKS FOR THAT!!! <3 <3 <3
