How the FUCK is it possible that there’s no general thread for quite possibly the most well-written and even leftist-oriented Shounen serial of the 2000s?
Wanted to make a general because I been tearing up listening to shit like this
https://youtu.be/WSyqRAc0f9cBest anime soundtrack ever imo, easily tops even Jojo’s
>>5432>FMA>leftist Lol. Shin sekai yori is the only leftist anime.
>>5434I did want to fuck this character though, i gotta admit
>>5445Ep 10 for me. People say it is the GOAT of of shonen alongside HxH and while I do think HxH is the GOAT, I never got into FMA.
What am I doing wrong?
>>5452Nah FMA:B is a legitimately good story with a great soundtrack to boot
What you’re saying applies more to Naruto or DBZ where it was legit crappy stories that drew in people as kids and kept them based on nostalgia
>>5467>besides wanting to fuck envyThe writers knew this and decided to add in some male power fantasy, when they let Roy assrape Envy.
Personally, I find Envy resembles a little bratty boy too much, so fucking him was never an option
>>5508I’d say they were in a sort of “fringe case” regime where we don’t know enough about how the political system functioned for sure to say it was specifically a fascist (palingenetic ultra-nationalist) regime; but from everything we’ve seen they certainly appear to be some form of military dictatorship (when Mustang talks about usurping Bradley he never mentions an election)
>I never noticed it when I was young, but, now that I am older and more politically aware the show sure seems to take place under; hell even glorifying the righteousness of a military police state governed by, near, fascist political powerI wouldn’t say FMA *glorifies* Amestris; after all Amestris itself and the people that lead it are the main antagonists. The Ishavalan Genocide is explicitly enough of a reason to overthrow the entire government and Amestris is portrayed as an aggressive, imperialistic power. The real question about the leanings of the show depend on whether you think the homunculi represent (((somebody))) or whether they represent something else.
>>8883>tumblr1) that site is trash
2) FMA on tumblr? really? I haven't seen that
>>5525>>5508Given that the story seems to think the right people to steer Amestris back onto a good path are equivalent to SS officers who personally carried out the genocide, at best it does seem to be pretty nonchalant about the whole military dictatorship and genocide thing. They even have the one alchemist who refused to participate in the genocide, but that's seen as cowardice in-universe and the show doesn't otherwise comment on it. In the end, the story actually vindicates the genocide
s, plural because
the souls of the genocide victims are what allows Von Hohenheim to banish Father in the end.What's really stupid about imbuing something like genocide with magical elements in your fantasy setting is that it ignores the actual reasons something like that happens and also importantly the senselessness of it. Turning genocide into a spell component (for villains and heroes) robs any potential to say something meaningful about the subject. Worse, in the context of the rest of the story's treatment of the setting's politics, it cheapens the actions of the villains and furthers the apologism for their fantasy counterpart to fascism. That's not to say genocide in a fantasy setting doesn't work, but that making such a direct parallel to something from the real world
(so direct that the original anime made it a literal parallel universe version of the nazis) but rewrite the reasons and consequences to fit shonen fantasy the way that they did makes it hard not to see this as adjacent to holocaust revisionism.
At the very least it's framing the whole subject in bizarre way that's irresponsibly sympathetic to nazi-like figures, which is bad enough honestly. The nazis are historical figures at this point. The reason our understanding of them matters is because of what to learn about how to deal with similar people in the future, and this show is ridiculously tolerant of their behavior.
>>8950?
>>8955>implying your narrow use of the internet = all sitesKek
>>8957Possibly, but I have yet to see any.
>>20797True, but it is overrated and wanked by /a/.
>>9262> I read the manga and watched both series and I barely remember anything If it was so boring how did you and why did you watch/read all that?
>>5437>2003 > FMABWhy?
>>5508>Were these two living under a fascist military police state?Yes.
>>23326>At no point is the genocide of the Ishvalans portrayed as good, necessary, or desirable.The souls of people killed in genocide are necessary to doing alchemy that defeats Father.
>It seems pretty explicitly critical of the country's military government, its genocidal tendencies, and the weaponization of alchemy.All of this is blamed on a conspiracy of inhuman monsters secretly running the government, which has rather obvious parallels to antisemitic conspiracy theories. At the end of the story, in a "happy ending" the government continues to exist more or less as it was before, but with the "right people" in charge, who were themselves genocidaires and military personnel.
>>23340>The souls of people killed in genocide are necessary to doing alchemy that defeats Father.Killing people to harvest their souls is what makes him so powerful in the first place.
>All of this is blamed on a conspiracy of inhuman monsters secretly running the government, which has rather obvious parallels to antisemitic conspiracy theories.You're imagining those parallels. Japan has no history of such antisemitic conspiracy theories and its extremely unlikely that any similarity is intended. The homunculi are living examples of the horrors that alchemy (science) produces when directed towards the ends of domination.
>in a "happy ending" the government continues to exist more or less as it was before, but with the "right people" in charge, who were themselves genocidaires and military personnelI haven't seen the end of Brotherhood yet (currently watching it for the first time) but iirc at the end of the 2003 series Amestris becomes a liberal democracy. I think its valid to criticize "good" soldiers being the solution, but that's more a critique of the means by which the series suggests these problems can be solved. It still very clearly regards ethnic cleansing and militarism as evils to be fought.
>>23342>You're imagining those parallels.The head of state is called the fucking Fuhrer dude. Amestris is clearly based on nazi germany.
>but iirc at the end of the 2003 serieswhich famously diverges from the manga since it overtook it and had to come up with its own ending
>>23347>>23348>but the homunculi are the ones running the government and instigating the genocide.Yes, which means the framing of the story makes it seem as if it's not the government that's the problem but subversion by an inhuman element (which was how the nazis blamed the conditions of weimar germany)
>They can't really be an allegory for the Jews if they're the ones running this Nazi-inspired state and doing Nazi shit.They are if you're trying to defend the nazi expies and absolve their government and ideology of wrongdoing. These kinds of people regularly say the holocaust was either a hoax or perpetrated by Jews.
>>23362 (me)
Also, Bradley looks and acts kinda like Stalin tbh. Wonder what that implies.
>>23368He is both a strong figure with a prominent chin, strong shoulders, accurate, short hair and a lush long mustache. He's also a very reserved figure
despite being Wrath. Hitler, while also smiling to others and trying to larp as a loving father of the German people, still throws temper tantrums in his speeches and at his subordinates. He also has no chin and is a weakling with a terrible haircut and a very small mustache.
>>23373 (me)
Honestly, Bradley is more similar even to ᴉuᴉlossnW, the only similar attribute he has with Hitler is being called a Fuhrer which just means "Father" in German. He's the father of the people of Amestrix so to speak, that explains the amount of respect the Elrics have to him in the beginning of the story. He's literally Omniman before Omniman.
>>10517>I want to FUCK enbyThere we go, I've fixed it.
>>23324 (me)
Why did nobody answer my question?
I recently binged Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and it's now my all-time favorite anime. But I read it as ML anti-imperialist agitprop, at least until the last episode with the redemption of Selim Bradley. I read the homuncali as the bourgeoisie constantly sending the nation to war to collect oil at the cost of human life and how we need an international proletarian revolution (which does mean American ex-miliary and the people they who's countries America has destroyed allying).
The first verse of my new song "Arkansan Proletariat" is about this very reading of FMAB:
https://youtu.be/hdBvAbB9kV4?si=BrgWeX_QXGLeSLFaUnique IPs: 24