Fullmetal Alchemist

[starlady]

Arakawa Hiromu. Hagane no Renkinjutsushi | Fullmetal Alchemist. 27 vols. Tokyo: Square Enix, 2002-10.

This is, I think, the best manga I've read yet. If you're going to read one manga in your life, you could do much, much worse than this one. If you don't like manga, I urge you to give this manga a try; it's amazing, as a story and as manga. Arakawa is a master of what the medium can do, and she does it.

I imagine most people have a vague idea of what the story is about at this point, but let me try to rehash it here regardless. The manga follows two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, in their quest across the cod-German-esque country of Amestris to regain their original bodies. Ed and Al are alchemists in a country that has made alchemy a military science and the root of its imperialist expansion, and to fund their quest, because they're only children when they lose their body and an arm and a leg, respectively, in an attempt to resurrect their mother through failed human transmutation (for alchemy follows the law of equivalent exchange, and something must be given up for whatever is received in return), Ed becomes a State Alchemist, a dog of the military, bearing the title of "Fullmetal" for his automail arm and leg, in order to fund their research into the Philosopher's Stone, which very quickly leads them into the heart of a morass of politics, history, and suprahuman machinations with the gravest consequences.

One of the most striking things to me, thinking about this manga, is how much Arakawa doesn't pull punches, either at the level of story or of character development. Set in a vaguely European 20th century environment, bordered by countries ranging from some sort of West Asian analogue to a clear cod-China, Amestris is a military dictatorship with a warped history of imperialism and violence; many of its characters are military personnel, and many of them, having participated in the recent Ishbalan War, are, as one character says bluntly, war criminals. I took pages of notes on this aspect of the manga in particular when I first read all of what was published in 2008, and I remain convinced that Arakawa is consciously reworking aspects of the history of both Japan and of Germany in our twentieth century to ask some very hard questions. I think some people will certainly say that, in the end, she shies away from returning the hardest possible answers, and if issues of war and imperialism and militarism and ethnic war and genocide aren't the entire focus of the story, they are unquestionably very much on the table. The prices we pay and are willing to pay--and just as important, what we do once we've done things we can't live with--is a very, very live debate in this story.

The other thing I really appreciate about this manga is how--'progressive' would be the wrong word here, but it unquestionably has a very refreshing approach to its characters; the female characters are just as strong as the male characters, and they fill many varied and morally fraught roles, just as the men do. Given that this is a shonen manga, that's saying a lot, and I lay it entirely at the feet of Arakawa's gender (are you listening, CLAMP?). Given that Amestris is a cod-Germany, most of the cast is white, but there are quite a few who are Xingese (cod-Chinese) and Ishbalan (somewhere between Arabs and Jews, in terms of our world-analogues), and they have very important roles to play too.

The manga is also, just as a manga, stunning: it's funny and amazingly powerfully drawn and action-packed. I remain absolutely amazed that virtually the only thing Arakawa created before this manga was a 40-page one-shot that won her the 21st Century Shonen Gangan Award, because the pacing of the series has been pitch-perfect from the very first panel, and that doesn't relent here at the end. Deservedly, she won the Tezuka Prize in the New Artist category this year.

Comments

[yifu]

Arakawa once said that, growing up in an environment where everyone works, she can't imagine people not working, and that includes women. That may have contributed greatly to her treatment of her female characters, who, alongside the men, sometimes must make their own, equally hard choices.

how much Arakawa doesn't pull punches

Yes. She thinks of the worst or next-to-worst situation, then writes it. A very refreshing approach in a popular shounen manga.

[starlady]

Yes! I once read in an interview with her that she does martial arts herself, so the "shonen power-up" style of ability development has always rung completely false to her, which is why the characters in FMA improve their skills so gradually and realistically. She is awesome, in other words.

[anehan]

Do you know what the English translation of this manga is like, or did you read it in Japanese? I'm wondering whether this is, once again, one of those mangas I should read in Japanese (when my Japanese is a little bit better :D ).

[starlady]

Nope, I read it all in Japanese (and let me tell you, it took me eons to read volume 1 in 2005, and I polished off the last volume in about 90 minutes last week). I've heard the English is fine.

One of the things that Arakawa is really good at that English doesn't really convey very well is different characters' speech styles--I saw a good post about that somewhere on LJ-land last year-ish, I wonder if I bookmarked it. I'd definitely say to check out a volume of the Japanese at some point, just to get a taste of that.

[anehan]

I know something like 300 kanji, so I'd say reading anything in Japanese is going to have to wait for a while. *eyes her kanji flashcards* But I'm determined! I shall conquer this! :D

[starlady]

Oh, flashcards. I remember those days.

Quite honestly between Rikai-chan and alc.co.jp, I definitely don't "know" all the kanji in the manga I read, and I definitely can't really write most of the kanji I do know at this point, since it's been four years since I was writing things by hand regularly. *sigh*

[torachan]

You don't need to know any kanji to read shounen and shoujo manga. They all have furigana.

[anehan]

Cool! I didn't know that. That makes it much easier.

[torachan]

Reading manga is actually a really good way to remember kanji, IMO, because you see it over and over with the readings right there. :)

[starlady]

Definitely! It has really helped me keep up my kanji knowledge, even if I can't write them very well anymore.

[torachan]

I can't write hardly any kanji anymore, because I never write anything by hand (in Japanese or English). XD But I can read them and know which ones to choose when writing on a computer, which is pretty much all that matters.

[stultiloquentia]

One of the things that Arakawa is really good at that English doesn't really convey very well is different characters' speech styles

Could you elaborate on this a bit, or see if you can dig up that LJ link? I read the manga in English and was impressed by how witty and idiomatic and smart it was, but I have nothing to compare it to.

[starlady]

I have failed to find that post, which is disappointing. I'm glad to hear the English is witty and idiomatic and smart!

It's not that English doesn't allow for different speech styles, because obviously people do speak very differently depending on a variety of factors (and that doesn't even really get into accents or non-standard Englishes, or Japaneses), but Japanese allows for a much more fine-grained differentiation. I can think of at least four or five ways to end a sentence in a negative construction, for example, and each has different connotations--and then whether the character habitually uses long (polite) or short (informal) endings adds a whole other layer. Olivier, for example, tends to speak in very, very short forms (she sounds pretty 'masculine' actually, going by the gender ideology of Japanese), while Mustang speaks less informally but still 'roughly.'

This is probably the thing that gives me the fits the most when translating, actually--obviously with word choice and contractions or their lack it's possible to convey some of it, but what particle a character uses is also very indicative and just has no firm equivalent in English. And Arakawa is very good at giving each character a particular speech style.

Actually, one of the little things I liked best about the manga that probably doesn't come through very well in translation is the Xing characters speaking horizontally instead of vertically. It's so clever!

[lnhammer]

Oh, that last is a excellent use of speech bubble styling.

I should search about for some Japanese FMA -- I've been using shoujo manga for practice texts (because apparently someone who sells to my local used book store is/was a Saito Chiho fan) but having an available English translation to check against tends to boost my confidence.

---L.

[boundbooks]

Fullmetal Alchemist wins the most @$#$%ing amazing, sustained, clear narrative award for a 10 year-long manga. I am consistently blown away by the fact that she wrote this epic story over nearly a decade, but that every single bit of it feels sharply relevant and planned out from the beginning.

[starlady]

I know! I do think it's slightly easier because it's a monthly series, but her pacing is extraordinary, panel to panel, chapter to chapter, volume to volume.

[amalnahurriyeh]

I have given in to the fact that it's summer, and that one of my good LJ friends writes in this fandom...and requested the first five issues from my library. I like reading comics (though all my experience is in Western comics), so I'm anticipating it going well...

[starlady]

My nefarious plan is succeeding!

Seriously, it's so good.

[dorothean]

I've been hearing of Fullmetal Alchemist for years, but this is actually the first thing I've read about why it's good, and you've totally sold me. Now to see if it is available at the library!!

[starlady]

Yay! That's what I hoped. :)

[meganbmoore]

Say what you will about Arakawa (and this is actually one of my favorites series and Hawkeye is currently my favorite manga character ever) she's a brilliant storyteller and even you don't like her artstyle, she's one of the best visual storytellers out there.

[starlady]

Yeah, exactly.

[pseudo_tsuga]

Fullmetal Alchemists is one on a short list of stories I absolutely trusted when it came out. I'm so glad it stayed that way all through the end.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

Excellent writeup!

And. . . I don't know, I like what I see as the fundamental optimism of the ending, in spite of everything. I think Arakawa gets away with it because it's not a "happily ever after" it's an "if you want things to get better, keep working on them" ending.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

I was convinced for most of the manga that one of the main characters was going to die at the end--probably Ed or Roy, really, though roundabout volume 22 or 23 I started to hope against hope that they'd all survive. I think it's a tribute to Arakawa that I was so convinced that someone else was going to get killed.

I am okay with the ending too, really. I do think people paid enough for it, and I'd agree that it also works partly because it's very clear that there is so much work to be done still.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes! Honestly, I read up to vol. 24 of the series published in the US and I have to say I more or less assumed Roy was going to die in the end -- so then I went ahead and spoiled myself, and was like, "Oh, okay, huh. . ." But I'm glad it didn't play out that way because I feel like I've seen that resolution before. The way it plays out is more open-ended and, while it does leave a few big threads hanging, it feels appropriate to me, like an acknowledgement of how messy and unfixable the whole situation is, but that it's necessary to keep moving forward.