You know who would’ve been way better suited for the ‘waiting for soldiers to come home’ storyline than Winry? Izumi.
I goddamn love Izumi’s involvement during the Promised Day, but strategically speaking, it’s really fucking stupid not to have even a single human sacrifice flee the country. I know Arakawa tried to explain it away because something something human nature, but honestly, it’s just a bad strategy. Any logically thinking person would’ve come to the conclusion that at least one human sacrifice needed to get the fuck out of the country. If anyone (probably Mustang, let’s face it) had actually come to that conclusion, Izumi is obviously the one who would’ve been at the top of the list; after all, Izumi is the only human sacrifice with health issues severe enough that it limits her fighting abilities (although she’s obviously still terrifying).
Now, I’m not saying that she’d go quietly. She’d obviously fucking LOATHE the idea. But she’s not unreasonable, and honestly? I think that it would’ve made for some great character development if she did, eventually, decide to leave.
I’ve praised Arakawa before for keeping her disabled characters in the heat of the action, and I stand by that, but I also want to point out that, in many ways, ableism is a double sided sword. On the one hand, we have people who continuously believe that we’re incapable of doing anything at all. On the other hand, we have people who expect us to be able to do everything abled people can do without help, and who refuse us accommodations when we need them.
I have the feeling Arakawa would be the second.
While I think Arakawa’s disability rep is a very mixed bag, I think she mostly does great with keeping her disabled characters actively involved in the story and giving them agency. But, at the same time, I can’t help but feel like there’s a glaring flaw in her rep when every single disabled character pretty much refuses to acknowledge their own limits, pushing themselves far beyond them (Lan Fan), or somehow getting healed so that they don’t really matter (Izumi, who, after Hohenheim rearranges her organs, isn’t shown to have any physical issues whatsoever). The only character who arguably ends up accepting and working within their own limitations is Havoc, whom we see precious little off after he gets disabled.
I think FMA would’ve benefited from at least one prominent disabled character who, in the end, accepted their disability, and tried to work within the limitations it set, instead of constantly being forced beyond them. Izumi would’ve been a prime candidate for that, because she starts the story off by being introduced as an absolute badass who, despite her title of ‘housewife’, has no desire whatsoever to sit the action out.
I think it would’ve been a much more interesting arc for Izumi if she hadn’t ended up being magically healed by Hohenheim (functionally, at least), and if she had, as her health kept deteriorating, ultimately ended up completely incapable of fighting in a large-scale fight like the Promised Day, and if she would’ve been forced to accept that. Izumi never really accepted the limitations that her health forced on her, and I think it would’ve been a major step forward for her if she actually had done so, and if the narrative hadn’t treated this as a loss, but as a victory.
Admitting to yourself that you simply can’t do all the things you used to be able to is hard, but its a tough lesson that chronically/terminally ill people needs to learn, and I think a narrative that would’ve celebrated the acknowledgement of your own limitations as a personal victory, if a bittersweet one, would’ve been extremely powerful. Izumi’s existing character arc is already primarily about forgiving yourself for past mistakes, and I think that forgiving yourself for not being who you used to be would be a really neat fit.
While I’m not sure whether it would’ve necessarily been better than how she was portrayed in canon, progressing Izumi’s character from someone who is actively involved in the action to someone who cannot be involved in it anymore and needs to come to terms with that would’ve been a logical and fitting development, that I think could’ve been very powerful in its own way.
