arakawa really did the most didnt she? like she didnt HAVE to have us hear gracia break down and elicia saying dont cry mommy, or see fu’s break down after he realized his granddaughter’s arm was really gone, or have that doctor guy crying asking if it was okay for a bad person like him to just want to be happy with his family, or establish that the embodiment of all human greed is just a desire for companionship but man did she do it
I like how she cares about her characters like that. I mean, she could find many ways to hurt us by killing a bunch or something, but she wanted to hurt us through these tiny characters because they deserve a chance to have their feelings explored. For once, after we see so much of Hughes loving his family, it’s only fair we see the impact of his death on Elicia and Gracia. I freaking love Arakawa’s choices.
Butting in and hijacking this post a little to say that “doctor guy” is Dr. Knox.
AND HE IS REALLY IMPORTANT. AS MUCH AS HE GOT A LOT OF GOOD SCREENTIME A LOT OF OTHER SUPER GOOD MOMENTS OF HIS STILL GOT CUT FROM FMAB GOOD GRIEF.
including his despair during Ishval about how he’s a doctor killing people (and look at those heartwrenching expressions Arakawa draws ugh)
And how the major reason he and his wife separated after the war is that he’s got severe PTSD
Another thing that was cut, was exactly how he gets Mei and Lan Fan to stop trying to kill each other While yes, like in the anime there’s a comical moment of him threatening that disturbing the floorboards could “UNLEASH A PATHOGEN THAT WILL KILL EVERYONE” the more palpable peptalk he gives Lan Fan and Mei is THIS
Which goes on to help inspire Lan Fan’s decision to request that Ling be kind towards the other Xing clans, when before all she cared about was the Yao.
Dr. Knox wasn’t even close to being a major character, in fact for the most part he was just instrumental in helping certain plots move along and EASILY could have Only Been That. But he got SO MANY extremely human moments and had a lasting impact on who he interacted with. Arakawa’s ability to put this amount of care into her characters is honestly inspiring.
So, as it’s roughly explained, the state alchemist program is a kind of “recruit potential human sacrifices” mechanism, with a side-order of “brute strength for the army”. But basically, the state alchemist title is mostly about being a researcher–given people like Shou Tucker exist, and given that the only requirement to stay a state alchemist is to submit a yearly report of your research that says “look I’m still being a useful scientist”.
So far, so far this is sensible, yeah? Father and the delightful children from down the lane are running a recruitment program for potential human sacrifices. So sure–butter them up! Give them lots of money, get them buddy-buddy with the government, and give them endless resources for research. It’s be pretty easy to trick a state alchemist in that position to open the portal if Sugar DaddyBradley is nudging them to do it.
And I’m still willing to go with this logic for the whole “draft the state alchemists into war” move. They make it pretty clear that was something of a last-ditch effort. And the blood transmutation circle around Amestris was an absolute necessity for Father’s plan. So the risk of a few state alchemists dying or resigning from your Potential Sacrifice Pool is worth it for the completion of the circle.
Now. To get to my fucking thought.
Edward fucking Elric. This fucking fight-me 12 year old troglodyte shows up to the exam and performs circle-less transmutation in front of mother fucking Bradley, demonstrating to one of the seven Actual Fucking Homunculi that he’d already opened the portal. Ed was literally prepped as a human sacrifice before he showed up to Central. A fully set human sacrifice showed up at the homunculi’s door, said “hey look what I can do!”, proved he’d opened the mother fucking portal already, and said “hey yeah hire me”. Human sacrifice, free shipping, no assembly required, handcuffs not included!
They could have just tossed Ed into a shoebox and kept him there until the Promised Day. They wouldn’t even need to make up an excuse he attacked the f u c k i n g president. That’s fucking treason babey. He’s 12, he’s an orphan, he’s from a rural town in buttfuck nowhere, he’s literally the easiest person alive to disappear.They could have arrested him for assassination crimes, kept him in gay baby jail, and just popped him out for the Promised Day
What do they do instead?! “Oh lmao this kid’s great. Let’s give him infinite money, no supervision, no governmental responsibilities, access to all our secret resources, and toss him on a train to who-the-fuck-knows-where-land”
They fucking did that
And like? They then had the audacity to be concerned when Edward “Fight Me” Elric almost got himself killed about 293 times. Just an endless game of “I thought u were watching him” from one homunculus to another when Ed fucking absconds half-way across the globe to go entice some other hostile entity into murdering him to death. That’s the whole series. Every arc is Ed baiting death while the homunculi are in the background like “:/ wish he wouldn’t do that”
This only gets worse when you consider they later learned Al opened the portal too because really?? These two stab-happy globe-trotting public menaces are 40% of your final evil plan for godhood. 40%. Almost half. You couldn’t fucking set aside a cardboard box to keep these idiots in?
We all knew Father was terrible at planning when we learned his thousands-of-years-in-the-making-plan involved him procrastinating until the last five minutes to get his last sacrifice, while he was?? playing chess in his fucking basement, I guess. But it’s like every time I think about it like really think about it I find 7 more reasons Father was a fucking shit idiot moron, king of the stupid fucking idiot club, flesh and blood founder of seven other established dumbasses, all living in their idiot hovel under central, just giving random dumbass 12 year olds infinite money, j u s t b e c a u s e.
People in the replies trying to explain Father’s actions fall into one of three categories
Father didn’t baby-gate Ed because humans are like ants to him and he had no concept of how thoroughly Ed and co. could fuck his shit up
Father and the Hot Topic Brigade didn’t lock Ed up because they recognized the unbridled chaotic 12-year-old energy compressed into such a small vessel and they understood no jail cell on earth would reliably hold this thing
Father and his sin-sonas didn’t put Ed in a box because locking Ed away in their lair would mean dealing with Edward Elric day-in and day-out in their own home for the next four years and frankly even godhood isn’t worth certain flavors of hell.
And then, for a second, it seemed like maybe we could survive the child,
and then, 5 miles under the capital city, an evil homunculus was like, “I have a huge transmutation circle and I’m going to kill everyone to become god!” And before we could say
anything, the child was like, “If you even fucking look at Amestris,
I will punch you to death with my fists. I dare you to do it. I want
you to do it. I want you to do it so I can take my unresolved daddy issues out on you, I’m
so fucking crazy.”
This is even funnier if you imagine it’s Roy complaining to Riza
“I like the new color of your suit, Kimblee.” remains to be the most savage destruction of any man I have ever seen to this day. Dude was literally bleeding out all over his white overcoat and some 8 year old roasted him. Imagine dying in the middle of nowhere with the president’s 3rd grader memeing on you.
Of all the many wonderful, complex characters in Fullmetal Alchemist, I find that Izumi Curtis is one of the most nuanced and original, both within the series and in the shounen manga field. In a genre full of dead mothers and overbearing harpies, Izumi stands apart as a physically and magically talented fighter who is also an “ordinary housewife”; she has, most unusually for a shounen manga female character, survived not only childbirth but also an horrific, failed attempt to resurrect her dead baby.
She is chastened but not broken by the experience. Izumi is the only female alchemist within the series to have seen “the Truth.” Her payment is highly gendered – I take “my organs” (or “some of my insides,” as another scanslation group renders it) to mean her womb and ovaries. And she is the only character whose payment is neither returned nor compensated for with automail or a surrogate body*.
I think it is so gutsy (no pun intended) of Arakawa to have Izumi remain in this state. It feels so radical to see a woman whose worth extends far beyond her ability to give birth. Who lost a child but still finds meaning in her family, work, and community. Who has a fulfilling life but still mourns for and thinks about her lost baby, even after her guilt is assuaged. In another author’s hands, Izumi would be long dead, a woman with no value beyond her womb, existing only to provide fodder for another character’s development. Or she would be a villain, a broken woman madly hungering for what she cannot have. Or she would have her organs restored, and be shown pregnant or holding a newborn at the series end. Instead, Arakawa gives us a female character who is both happy and wanting, powerful and poignant, and presents those dualities as valid, inseparable aspects of a whole.
*Within the context of the FMA universe, adoption is shown as an option, but one which the Curtises appear not to have pursued. Surrogate pregnancy, I believe, is not discussed within the series.
