#fma friday

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FMA Friday!

Just starting out with Ed first

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FMA Friday

I was just sitting there and this scene came to mind. I drew this one in the car from memory so it’s not as good as I was hoping it would be. The note on Ed’s chest says, “‘Roy Mustang is the best best commanding officer in the whole world!’—Edward Elric, The Fullmetal Alchemist”

This is for @cryran88 because of her fic “Comfort Zone” you can read it here:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

And, Cry, this is not because of what Thorn said. :)

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FMA Friday

I did Roy this time! I made a bit of a mistake deciding to try doing his transmutation circles right on there without any practice before hand. XD

And I almost forgot to draw something for today.

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dash coincidence got me feeling some type of way ;;;

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which-hawkeye-both-hawkeyes reblogged your photo

#FMA#you guys might want to blacklist FMA at somepoint#I'm on a kick

shout out to tumblr user which-hawkeye-both-hawkeyes for going through my FMA tag

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okay also I've seen comments (not like mean-spirited or anything but they made me think) about how the series would have been much better if Ed and Al had been half-Ishvalan, and I think it's important to address why they're not, and why Arakawa didn't write, say, from Scar's perspective about this whole thing

Genre considerations aside (shonen manga wants a young protag, generally a prodigy, etc.) FMA is mostly informed by the fact that its author is Japanese, and Japan has a long and messy history with imperialism. This post has some good information, but most of what I want to talk about here is Japan's actions during WWII (and slightly before). 

Not only was Japan allied to Nazi Germany (and all the baggage that comes with that), but Japan performed the exact same kinds of inhuman experiments in China that German doctors did in concentration camps. In fact, Japan had been doing those sorts of experiments even before WWII - still in China, using Chinese subjects. If you didn't know about that, well, you're not alone: the USA hushed it up and didn't put the Japanese doctors on trial because we didn't want the information Japan had gotten about biological warfare to get to Russia. 

Now of course, Japanese citizens born after the war didn't have any way to stop that, but the legacy still hangs heavy (especially since the Japanese government has not specifically apologized for or even directly acknowledged these human experiments).

So looking at the journey in FMA, where Ed and Al start as innocents and slowly learn the awful, awful truth about their country's past, it becomes a direct parallel to a Japanese citizen learning about the history of her country. It's compounded and dramatized for the sake of the plot, but the basic structure is there.

Arakawa displaces the war crimes into a very Western-based Amestris (military dictator called the Fuhrer with that distinctive mustache, a genocide against a specifically monotheistic culture with desert origins, horrifying experiments on captured members of said culture, etc.), but, again, Japan committed many of the same actions, albeit on a smaller scale. And if Amestris was supposed to be a direct analogy to Germany, what's missing? Concentration camps. There's a genocide, and presumably some kind of prisons from where the philosopher's stone experiments got subjects, but there is nothing in FMA to indicate the kind of systematic extermination in a camp setting that so dominates the discussion of WWII war crimes. 

FMA is not a story about the oppressed fighting for their freedom. That is a good story, and a story that is worth telling. But that is not the story a reasonably well-off Japanese woman in the early 2000's is going to try to tell. Instead, Arakawa gives us a a story about coming to grips with a legacy that's heavy with guilt and unjust bloodshed. It's about the children of the oppressors discovering the past and resolving to create a better future.

This is why you have Roy and Riza, explicitly stating that once their goal is realized, they will likely be tried as war criminals, and that is what they want. This is why, when Ed and Al discover what a Philosopher's Stone is made from, they vow to give up pursuing it. This is why Doctor Marcoh surrenders his life to Scar and heals Roy on the condition that Roy actively work for the betterment of Ishval.

These are not fuzzy little details to cement the good-alignment of the heroes: these are critical to the plot and message Arakawa is trying to send. The correct response to historical oppression is to acknowledge it and then combat it.

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RIZA HAWKEYE LOOKING THIS TINY 14 YEAR OLD HALF-ISHVALAN KID IN THE FACE AND EXPLAINING THAT SHE KILLED KIDS JUST LIKE HIM BECAUSE SHE WAS ORDERED TO

ALEX LOUIS ARMSTRONG MEETING ED FOR THE FIRST TIME AND FLASHING BACK TO THAT KID WHO DIED IN HIS ARMS BEFORE ARMSTRONG LEFT ISHVAL - IMAGINE HOW MUCH MORE PROTECTIVE OF ED AND AL HE WOULD BE

IMAGINE KIMBLEE'S CREEP FACTOR MULTIPLIED BY LIKE A MILLION

but more importantly consider Al watching Ed take all this awful abuse because their mom (THEIR MOM THAT THEY TRIED TO GET BACK AND LOOK HOW THE WORLD TREATS THEM BECAUSE OF HER) (LOOK HOW THE WORLD WOULD HAVE TREATED HER) is Ishvalan and after one particularly cruel day (Ed tells him not to worry about it, says he's fine) Al's just sitting up all night and agonizing over it and when Ed wakes up, he can tell something's wrong and when he pushes him Al just says

"I don't think I want my body back"

AND CAN YOU IMAGINE?????? HOW ANGRY ED WOULD BE??????? THAT PEOPLE ARE MAKING HIS LITTLE BROTHER ASHAMED OF WHO HE IS? WHO THEIR MOM WAS?????????????

and ugh them meeting Olivier and Miles and how much more meaningful that would be for them  AND WINRY

and Winry with her deep-seated grief and hatred of the war that killed her parents but also because the prejudice threatens her adopted family

and then she finds out that Scar killed her parents - Scar who can't kill this Ishvalan state alchemist - and Scar who suffered the same losses from the war and because he's Ishvalan just like Trisha Elric and Ed throwing himself in front of her to keep her from shooting Scar takes on a whole other level of meaning 

anyway that really got away from me at the end there but yeah

Ishvalan Ed

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"I've never seen Brotherhood just the original anime!!!"

please love yourself