#fma commentary

[xing-side]

Sometimes I remember that Al’s armor was originally Hohenheim’s

[damon-mikaeslon]

F U C K I N G K I L L M E

[laerugo]

so i want to talk about how like………. the city of kirkwall is a gigantic human transmutation glyph that was built for the sole purpose of sacrificing thousands of slaves PER YEAR in mysterious ritualistic blood magic rites for CENTURIES.

hmm SOUNDS FAMILIAR

[xing-side]

One of the details that gets lost in the transition of manga-to-anime for Fullmetal Alchemist, is the overt presence of foreign language. For example, the Xingese characters actually regularly speak Xingese amongst each other. While they aren’t the only example of foreign language being spoken, they are the most prominent. In the anime, every character no matter what race or what country they are from, speaks the same language as a translation convention. The only real hints that there are other languages present are very minor, like the fact that Ling wrote his message to Lan Fan completely in Kanji and that no one outside of them could read it. 

However, the manga has an interesting convention to denote that foreign language is being spoken, by giving every foreign language speech bubbles that are horizontal instead of vertical. This is lost slightly even when the manga gets translated because in Japanese, the vertical speech bubbles also have vertically typeset dialogue which help better distinguish the languages. Nonetheless, the speech bubble shapes are very distinct. When Ling talks to Ed, his speech bubbles are all vertical

As are Lan Fan’s

But look at Fu’s thought bubbles here and compare them to Paninya and Al’s vertical bubbles. They’re horizontal! Fu is shown to be thinking in his native tongue!

Conversations that we heard all in one language in the anime, were supposed to be in Xingese.

Like Ling, Lan Fan, and Fu on the roof.

And Ling speaking with Mei at the end of the final battle.

Its just one of those really neat details Arakawa uses that makes FMA’s world just a bit richer in the manga than what we see in the anime version of the series.

[xing-side]

Let’s talk about Xing and hair customs!

or at least one of my headcanons surrounding them and my reasoning for its basis.

In the comic I posted the other day  Ling complains about how others perceive bangs to be childish. Basically my headcanon is that for most of Xing, its not considered socially acceptable to wear any hair not tied back in some way once past a certain age. And even though he is Emperor now, Ling’s bangs are no exception.

The reason has a basis in many historical customs across Asia, where hairstyle was used as a means to identify a person’s status or stage in life. China and Japan in various different dynasties for example. Children in both countries were allowed to cut or wear their hair as they wished, but that changed upon adulthood. During the Han Dynasty until the Qing, All Han Chinese stopped cutting their hair once they came of age (15 for women, 20 for men) and would allow it to grow for the rest of their lives, wearing all of it bound completely in a topknot, bun or some variation. In both China and Japan, the hairstyles of adult women in particular could mean anything from their social status, if they were married or not, or even if they had children. Talking about that alone would be worth an essay so I won’t go into that.  In Japan, until the Meiji Restoration (1868), the Coming of Age Ceremony called Genpuku (which was based off of Chinese coming of age ceremonies) explicitly involved shaving a boys bangs off as part of the ceremony. Ergo, bangs were seen as a symbol of childhood. While some men eventually allowed this part of their hair to grow out again, they did not wear them out as bangs. Something I want to note here is that unlike China, the timing of coming of age varied in Japan, as someone could be as young as 11 or as old as in their 30’s to undergo this ceremony. Interestingly, the average age a boy went through this was 15, which is the age Ling was when we met him. 

(image above courtesy of the manga Kaze-Hikaru which discussed this) A far more cutthroat system arose in China during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) after the Han people were taken over by the Manchu. Upon coming of age, men were mandated to shave the entire front half of their head while they left the back half to grow. This hairstyle was called a queue, was used as a form of social control by the powers that be, where if a man didn’t comply doing this within 10 days of coming of age they were executed. A slogan came about for this, meaning  “Lose your hair and keep your head, keep your hair and lose your head”.

(a more comprehensive article about the history of the hair of chinese men can be found here ) Obviously I’m not going that hardcore with this headcanon so there won’t by any compulsory head shaving. Nonetheless I believe that there definitely still are certain social norms in Xing regarding hair, although there might be differences clan to clan. Its worth noting that in Japan at least, these kinds of hair customs were less stringent for both men and women as you went lower down the caste ladder, while they were extremely important higher up. Because of this, and because Ling has such an enormous task ahead of him uniting all 50 Xingese clans, I feel like for the sake of appeasing some grumpy powerful traditionalists Ling probably does wear his hair properly for the first several years of his reign for the sake of appearances, but overtime will eventually start to rebel and wear his bangs out again (and influence the rest of Xing as a whole regarding how hair is worn, lol). but until then Ling will mourn his bangs in private.  

[xing-side]

I just realized Greed 2.0 Lived and Died by Lan Fan’s left arm and my emotions are short circuiting. 

[xing-side]

Fun Fact: FMAB drew the Xingese bodyguard uniform incorrectly

In the 3rd ending animation and during the episodes taking place during the Promised Day, the uniform is drawn with the top being a solid mass of shirt

But if you read the manga, its clear the top is actually supposed to open at the front like a martial arts gi.

This isn’t a case of simple anime-manga differences either, it’s a legitimate error because the anime drew the uniform correctly in episode 18, when Fu is shown preparing to escort Maria Ross to Xing.

Oh the things you catch when you obsessively search for references. 

[xing-side]

Ling and the Emperor

In the FMA Brotherhood anime, Ling reveals himself to Ed and Al as a prince from Xing immediately after the scuffle with Lan Fan and Fu. But in the manga, Ling takes a bit longer to disclose that fact about himself.

In the manga, Ling brings up the details of his heritage for the first time after Al prompts him in this scene here, which was not included in Brotherhood:

We all know that life wasn’t rosy for Xing’s many royal half-siblings, who are all pitted against each other over who gets to succeed the throne. But it speaks volumes that even though Ling’s goal is to impress his father the Emperor enough to gain his favor, Ling very flatly states that he and his father have never even spoken with each other. It makes me wonder if the Emperor interacted with any of his (43) children at all. And if so, which ones and why them? And what do the other siblings feel about their familial situation? I think it’s interesting that Ling takes this fact very nonchalantly; he doesn’t seem pleased about it, but also doesn’t appear to have any strong feelings about it either. For him, it is what it is. In that way, it could be said he’s more like Al than Ed with regard to absentee fathers. Or he could just be hiding his feelings which would also be in character at this point since it seems he’s avoiding saying unnecessary information. (side note but Ling’s “you guys are imagining all kinds of things about my life aren’t you” -  WELL YEAH LING IT’S KIND OF HARD NOT TO WHEN THE INFORMATION THE PROVIDED ABOUT YOU AND YOUR COUNTRY IS SO SCANT. We fans are instead forced to come up with our own speculation.)