I finished FMA manga
Overall I really, really liked it. Ed lost his alchemy, but he has a strong mind and body and he's creative. I think he'll do fine without it. He was great in the fight. Tireless, badass. Exactly what I expected.
Roy got his sight back. Frankly, I thought that was pretty much a cheat that he lost it. He never asked for anything, it was forced on him. Apparently the toll was that it also weakened Pride, but since Pride's strength was pretty arbitrary (he was exactly as strong as would allow the plot to progress) I still found that to be a cheat, too. But since he didn't have to live with it too long, I guess it's mostly a no-harm no foul thing, though it did rob him of the chance to be awesome for most of the big battle. He got off a few rounds with Riza helping him aim, but dude.... In any case, I like the fact that he did get to be in power (though not as fuhrer) and is enacting all the things that we as a reader wanted.
Riza. She lived, which is yay! She also remained in the role of loyal subordinate, which is also yay. Yeah, I know that it's kind of a party poopery attitude, but given the obnoxiousness of some of the Royai fans, I'm really, really glad that the two never did get romantic. They didn't need canon on their side to help that along. Live and let live shipping for the win.
But more than that, this was a case, for me, where I really, really liked the platonic relationship. There is something about the intense closeness of a superior officer and his loyal underling. It's a powerful relationship in itself, an intensely loving one -- but it's a relationship of two people, back to back, facing the world rather than two people, face to face, excluding it. As a romantic relationship, it didn't work for me, because they were never partners. She was subordinant, and content in that role. She gave, he took. He ordered, she obeyed. Together they protected each other and worked to make the world better. It's a beautiful thing in a hierarchical relationship but bordering on sexist in an equal one. It's more akin to master and servant than husband and wife.
I could see it as being a fucked up, abusive romantic relationship, but not as a waffish, healthy one, but the strident Royai shippers don't like that either.
Anyway...
Al. I'd have loved for Al to have gotten his body back earlier and have been able to be there for the final fight. Yeah, it worked dramatically to have him spend it as hostage, but in a way that was a cheat, too. This wasn't Ed's story, it was Ed and Al's story, and Ed ended up doing pretty much everything.
No, that's not true.
Ed and Mai.
I admit to having a bit of prejudice against Mai for reasons other than her character's behavior. It's the chibi thing. I just can't wrap my head properly around a serious character who is exclusively drawn as being chibi. I mean, I get that that's supposed to make her cute and adorable, but being cute and adorable really undercuts things when she's acting decidedly neither. Is it supposed to be funny when she battles Father? Because it sure didn't look funny to me. I find myself really, really wishing that she changed from chibi to realistic the way all the other characters (save Pinako) did. It would have become obnoxious with Pinako too if she'd had a larger serious role, but as a bit character who was largely around to provide wry comment it worker.
The point is, Mai rocked. She was awesome. A kind of a darkhouse character who I didn't really expect much of, but who was more effective in the final showdown than Roy, Riza or Al. And then for her troubles at saving the goddamn world her reward is... not to die when Ling takes over.
Speaking of Ling, it was actually sad when Greed left him. In the end they were pretty married to each other. I felt very sad for him. Not that having Greed taking over Xing would have necessarily been a good thing, but Greed really wasn't that greedy in the end after all. He was the most caring and loving of the humunculi. The most human.
Father: Father was everything I hoped he'd be. Totally bad ass and remarkably attractive. He was convincingly hard to kill, though the fight did appear a bit redundant after a while. Hit him with all they have, nothing happens, lather, rinse, repeat. I liked that he had to be chipped away on many fronts, both betrayal by Greed, frontal attack, and the souls themselves defying him. I liked the idea that all the souls were able to bounce back into their bodies. And I liked that it was ultimately his own hubris that brought him down: He couldn't contain the "god" he wanted to harness and in return, it contained him.
My only sadness is that there wasn't any space between the lines to canonically play with him. Any scenarios would have to be AUs. That and the fact that we never got much of an idea of what he'd have done with the world if he had won. But that's correctible by AU's, too.
God: I would have liked to have known more about what it was that Father took into himself. Visually that whole matter was confusing. Philosophically it was undeveloped.
The Gunbu: Remember them? Apparently neither did Arakawa. Sure they did get tangentially involved in that laboriously long, ultimately moot fight for central. But considering they were set up at the beginning to be Roy's support, it seemed sad that they were pretty much shunted aside at the end in favor of Olivia's crew and the Chimeras. Even Broche got more time -- and he was just a schmuck who was ordered to escort Ed and Al once.
Olivia's crew: were basically caught up in the whole coup, as made sense for them. Olivia and Armstrong were cute together, bonding over fighting.
The Chimeras: WTF. These guys were henchmen that switched sides late in the fight. They aren't terribly bright, or loyal, or useful, or interesting and in the end they did very little. And yet they were there. Constantly. In the center of the fight. Making the occasional peanut gallery comment. Yeah, I get that they were wronged. LOTS of people were wronged in this world. There is no way that these dudes should have gotten nearly equal frame time in the final fight with freaking Scar, especially since all the freaking did was stand around.
Scar: Was cheated. He should have been fighting Father, not Bradley. Bradley should have been dead 10 x over before he finally did die. And in the end it wasn't Bradley who was responsible for what happened in Ishbal -- it was Father. Bradley was just a loyal human turned humunculi. Things that I did like were the fact that Scar's backstory was finally revealed. He became balanced, creation and distruction. However, I thought that honestly should have happened well before the final fight, as part of his character arc. Scar really did steal the scene whenever he showed up, it would have made much more sense for there to have been more of him than say those useless chimeras.
Bradley: In some ways I'm most disappointed with this character. Obviously Arakawa loved him. She devoted more attention to his back story than any of the other humunculi, with the possible exception of Greed/Ling. In the very beginning, Bradley was a combination of charming, funny and dangerous. That balance worked. It made him dynamic and exciting. But once it was revealed that he was a humunculus, it seemed that the charming and funny side of his character just died away and all we were left with was the flat dangerous side. I'd have loved to see Bradley lure people with that charming and funny side of his in the final battle. Having him reason and waylay their fears while setting them up to be killed would have be far more powerful than just having him go "die, die, die". He turned flat. And with turning flat, he also became neigh on invincible. I mean, dude, Lust went down far, far too easily in restrospect to Roy's glove. Envy was pile driven. Sloth was tough, but was taken down by the B team. Pride cheated by swallowing gluttony, so him being badass towards the end was understandable. But Bradley? He was a human with a philosopher's stone, not a construct. Other than being quick with his swords he had no appreciable power, and he just kept coming back. To the point of Monty Python Black Knight absurdity. And he didn't add anything to the final battle, other than something to occupy Scar with so that he couldn't fight Father.
Kimbley: I don't know what Arakawa meant to do with Kimbley, but in the end he seemed like an asshole who showed up once or twice, made a wry comment and then wandered away. I don't know what he was even doing in the final fight at all. He literally only showed up to say he wouldn't be participating. What the hell.
Anyway, despite the gripes, I actually really liked the way the Manga worked out. It was a satisfying ending for a great epic story. It didn't devolve into nonsense and everyone ended up pretty much in the best place they could be.