I am in fandom purely for the Awesome Ladies and also sometimes the Dudes
So, I finally finished reading the FMA manga/have been rereading large chunks of it, and two things:
1. Fullmetal Alchemist is so beautifully constructed it makes me want to weep.
2. I love almost all of the characters in this manga, but most especially The Ladies. (Winry is my homegirl, and I have a major girlboner for Olivier. For example.) Like, seriously, Arakawa treats her female characters better than almost any other canon in any media.
I mean, let’s just take a look at my BFF Winry. At a glance, she looks like one of those typical ‘girl back home’ characters who just wait for the male main character and then angst when he has to leave again to save the world. But she’s NOT. She is waiting for the boys to come home, yes, but she has her own life, ambitions, and emotional arc that exist outside those of the two male protagonists - who, btw, totally respect and appreciate her and trust her when she says she knows what she’s doing, even if it involves, say, confronting known serial killers, and they tell her the information she needs to know instead of keeping her completely in the dark for her own safety. And if they try any of that martyr bullshit, she refuses to take their crap.
ALSO, she has a love epiphany that is basically, “Oh, huh, I guess I am in love. Well, back to work.”
You guys, I seriously love Winry. When I was originally in this fandom (I say ‘in’. I was a lurker, of course), Winry bashing was like a national pastime. I got super protective, okay? Fourteen-year-old-Kay’s opinion quickly became, “IF YOU BASH WINRY I WILL BASH YOU. PHYSICALLY.”
I won’t ramble on about any of the other Awesome Ladies, because then I would be at it all day. Trust me when I say I could easily flail for many paragraphs about even the very minor characters (you guys, isn’t Paninya awesome?!).
However, to give an idea of the kind of canon Fullmetal Alchemist is, I will just point out that, in a world where people can control fire, make things go boom, and generally manipulate their environment to their will, Major General Olivier Armstrong, the woman armed with the sword and the stolen gun that was aimed at her head two pages ago, is probably only bested in general badassery by this fine lady, who, despite being an alchemist, will most likely choose to beat the crap out of you with her bare hands.
And, proving that dreams really do come true, Arakawa blessed us all by putting those two in the same room for a good portion of the story’s final arc. Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be that guy, either.
tl;dr FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST IS FUCKING AWESOME
...and I need better icons for it, preferably featuring the aforementioned Ladies.
1. Fullmetal Alchemist is so beautifully constructed it makes me want to weep.
2. I love almost all of the characters in this manga, but most especially The Ladies. (Winry is my homegirl, and I have a major girlboner for Olivier. For example.) Like, seriously, Arakawa treats her female characters better than almost any other canon in any media.
I mean, let’s just take a look at my BFF Winry. At a glance, she looks like one of those typical ‘girl back home’ characters who just wait for the male main character and then angst when he has to leave again to save the world. But she’s NOT. She is waiting for the boys to come home, yes, but she has her own life, ambitions, and emotional arc that exist outside those of the two male protagonists - who, btw, totally respect and appreciate her and trust her when she says she knows what she’s doing, even if it involves, say, confronting known serial killers, and they tell her the information she needs to know instead of keeping her completely in the dark for her own safety. And if they try any of that martyr bullshit, she refuses to take their crap.
ALSO, she has a love epiphany that is basically, “Oh, huh, I guess I am in love. Well, back to work.”
You guys, I seriously love Winry. When I was originally in this fandom (I say ‘in’. I was a lurker, of course), Winry bashing was like a national pastime. I got super protective, okay? Fourteen-year-old-Kay’s opinion quickly became, “IF YOU BASH WINRY I WILL BASH YOU. PHYSICALLY.”
I won’t ramble on about any of the other Awesome Ladies, because then I would be at it all day. Trust me when I say I could easily flail for many paragraphs about even the very minor characters (you guys, isn’t Paninya awesome?!).
However, to give an idea of the kind of canon Fullmetal Alchemist is, I will just point out that, in a world where people can control fire, make things go boom, and generally manipulate their environment to their will, Major General Olivier Armstrong, the woman armed with the sword and the stolen gun that was aimed at her head two pages ago, is probably only bested in general badassery by this fine lady, who, despite being an alchemist, will most likely choose to beat the crap out of you with her bare hands.
And, proving that dreams really do come true, Arakawa blessed us all by putting those two in the same room for a good portion of the story’s final arc. Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be that guy, either.
tl;dr FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST IS FUCKING AWESOME
...and I need better icons for it, preferably featuring the aforementioned Ladies.