I'm not sure at all it's my reflection

[lotesse]

So we just possibly, like, ate all the episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood that are currently up on Hulu - through episode 30. In not very many days.



I feel like this take on it - even more so than FMA Prime - is doing really interesting allegorical things with WWII, and it's been frustrating to me that I don't have the cultural knowledge to interpret them. Because - okay, I know enough about anime to be able to locate Ishval and alchemy in general as atomic anxiety. Hagaren takes that one further, though, by introducing German/Holocaust imagery as well. And it's clear to me that Amestris is in some way a Germany-analogue, but I can't figure out if it's also a Japan-analogue at the same time.

Actually, one of the things that I've been really worrying about on this watchthrough is race. Because again, I know enough to know that however much difficulty we westerners have in detecting/interpreting Japanese visual race coding, anime characters are as a rule not white. I don't have the ability to interpret for myself, so I just pretty much assume unless told otherwise that every single person in any given anime is Japanese. But I can't figure out if, in FMA, we are being told otherwise. Ling and company are analogue-Chinese. Scar is analogue-Israeli. But what about the Elrics, with their blond hair and German names? Winry? Hawkeye?

The Ishval flashbacks in Brotherhood very carefully emphasize the Aryan nature of the Amestrian soldiers, which leads me to suspect that our blondies are meant to be read as white. But then again, my strong initial impulse is to read Mustang as analogue-Japanese. Right now, my working theory is that Amestris is a Germany/Japan fusion, combining both atomic anxiety and Holocaust issues - which, in view of actual WWII Japan, is fascinating. And then it would make sense for the Amestrians to be a combination of Japanese and Aryan phenotypes.

(Is anyone doing scholarship, or even blogging, about this sort of thing? I really, really want articles - possibly more than I want fic!)

But apart from that - my god, I didn't think it was possible to make Edward any more heartrending. Clearly I was wrong. Baby!

Comments

[aiffe]

I'm really glad you asked this question, because everyone, even people who get that anime characters are usually Japanese, keeps insisting that FMA is a prime example of Caucasian anime characters. (The first series made this hard to refute, with Edward's real-world self living in 1930's Germany.) Even the Racebending comm was using it to show that characters aren't necessarily the race of their creators, or the majority race of the country they were created in. Yet, I was torn on it. Final Fantasy, with its advanced CGI, has shown us conclusively that the Japanese have no problem putting blond, blue-eyed Japanese people in Western fantasy settings. (Is this so different from how we keep populating non-European fantasy worlds with white people? Probably not nearly as harmful, but done with the same sort of blind ethnocentrism?)

I honestly can't figure out what they're supposed to be. Louis Armstrong looks white to me. Mustang and Hawkeye look Japanese. The idea of a WWII fusion of Germany and Japan into this fantasy world is fascinating. I wonder if it was intentional, or even if Arakawa was just winging the character designs.

[lotesse]

I have no idea. My usual trick is to go by language and to look at names, but - not so much in this case! (if you have links to any of the discussions mentioned above, I'd love to see them - I only dip my toes in anime fandom, and I can find the infrastructure kind of impenetrable.)

As far as the blue-eyed or whatever Japanese people, I wonder if it's actually not more like western characters with purple eyes or green hair or whatnot - sexy exotic impossible characters, you know? But none of us are going to see a heroine with purple eyes and conclude that she must not be caucasian. We're just not always good at extending the same imaginatve freedom to other cultures/ethnicities.

[aiffe]

Ummm... here's one. There were other posts on it, I think, but I can't find them.

I'm not really in the FMA fandom, though. Came across this because the race issues leaked over into the Avatar fandom.

And yeah, I agree it's just to make the characters more visually appealing. There are a lot of impossible colors mixed in there too. Also, it helps differentiate the characters at a glance. Anime characters are so simplified, sometimes hair style/color is just the easiest way to tell them apart.

[lotesse]

Thank you so much for the link - that discussion clarified a few things for me. Sailor Moon as blonde Japanese, but also the canonical use of English writing in Amestris, which I had forgotten about.

Although I'm still not sure I'm even close to a conclusion!