Fullmetal Alchemist

This series was originally published in Japanese by Enix from 2001-2003 then Square Enix from 2003-2010. In English it's been published my Madman Entertainment in Australia, Chuang Yi in Singapore and physically from 2005 by Viz Media and digitital release only from 2014 by Yen Press. At least according to wikipedia. It's been adapted twice to anime, with each being followed by an animated movie. A live action movie (that I felt was waaaay too compressed) did come out in 2017.

An dark fantasy adventure that definitely feels more then a little steampunk. Fullmetal Alchemist is categorised as Shonen if you care about that sort of thing. Not my favourite category, this still remains one of my favourite shonen titles.

As with many other books aimed to adolescence of it's time (maybe this will be different some day) lots of people die in not terribly graphic ways but there is no apparent drug use and/or nudity. Then I remembered some fairly harrowing (mostly off page) alchemist child abuse that happens between two pages.

Pulling up Arakawa's biography on goodreads, I'm sorry this is a bit long but I feel like it's all pretty interesting plus generally amusing. "Arakawa's elf-portrait is usually that of a bespectacled cow, as she was born and raised on a dairy farm in Hokkaido with three older sisters and a younger brother. She worked as a farmer for 8 years before moving to Tokyo.

Arakawa thought about being a manga artist "since [she] was little" and during her school years, she would often draw on textbooks. After graduating high school, she took oil painting classes once a month for seven years while working on her family's farm. During this time, she also created dōjinshi manga with her friends and drew yonkoma for a magazine.

Arakawa started out as Hiroyuki Eto's assistant writer for Mahōjin Guru Guru and a friend of Shakugan no Shana author Yashichirou Takahashi.

Arakawa's career started with a work titled STRAY DOG, but she is best known for creating the Fullmetal Alchemist."

Apparently she is also a Taurus and blood type A.

As I mentioned already, Fullmetal Alchemist is set up in a pretty steampunk AU that melds magic and "old-timey" tech in a time and empire that never was. The story follows two adolescent brothers with a secret, they have committed the ultimate sin of alchemy, and lost literally parts of themselves in payment to the universe.

In an attempt to make himself and his brother whole again, The older (but shorter) of the two boys, Ed, has joined the government's Alchemist organisation, known as the "Dogs of the Military".

So far in this first volume each volume has been one fairly self-contained story, but there's clearly long-term trouble brewing which renders it not very episodic. A bit of a slow burn as far as exposition goes, it does feel like almost everything happens does reveal something - with nothing going to waste. Besides that, each character is larger then life in a way that is pure joy.

The artwork for the series is pretty straight forward and feels like it would be pretty easy to read even if you don't read many comics. But it's still full of a lot of energy. If I remember correctly this is one of the first manga series I actually read all the way through back in high school I guess. Although, honestly it is still one of the few series I've read all the way through because I'm horrible at this thing.

How is gender and sexuality treated in this initial omnibus? Ok I guess. A big theme that I hadn't really picked up on consciously my first time through is family. Ed and Al's journeys are intimately tied to their loss of biological family, and their dependence on chosen family. Almost everywhere they go they are invited into the homes of heterosexual monogamous couples, often with young children. The fact that the brother's chosen family includes an older woman and her granddaughter, neither of whom fulfills anything like traditional gender roles helps. But I can't ignore the lack - so typical I certainly didn't notice during my first read through.

The other disappointing intersection of this series was the fact that the two main characters are tragically disabled and the main thrust of the story is their journey to becoming "whole" again. It's a tired trope, I guess it's a plus that they can still kick ass? As a mostly able bodied person I did think that the way that they often have to go out of their way to fix Ed's metal gear arm that he keeps pushing too hard was interesting. But yeah, the tropes are tropes because they are everywhere and always a good reminder to read more own voices.

Class is actually a bit of a thing a couple time in this first omnibus, which is interesting. The first time because they run into a company town run by a corrupt bureaucrat and the boys are able to save the day with whit, and then when Ed can use his government connections to help a woman with literally one skill (previously thought unemployable) a job to pay for her mother's hospital bills. Das Capital it is not, but it's so rare for me to run into mainstream fiction where people honestly don't seem to have enough money for things, even if they are supposed to be "poor".

Despite having a couple blind spots I had not previously noticed, I have still managed to (with some help from rose tinted glasses) really enjoy this reread so far. Because, while I didn't really have the language for it when I first read through the series, this series has a lot of really good hot takes when it comes to issues of empire, imperialism, war, genocide, racism, and the military/police. Focusing on this first omnibus, I'm not sure if a first time reader would have realized this yet, but already we can see the naivety being peeled away from Ed's eyes as he starts to discover what it means to be a "dog of the military". And while some people present as good and some as bad, they are all caught up in this system that is rotten to its core.