|
|
 Spotlight: FullMetal Alchemist-- Spotlight Conclusion
Written by Park Cooper
This is the conclusion to last week's Spotlight on FMA, readable here:
http://www.mangalife.com/features/PartOneSpotlightFullMetalA.htm
Anyway...
Volume 12: Fight Fight Fight! We finish the results of THAT crazy plan, which led to Scar getting away, and everyone else—except we DID capture the bad guy known as Gluttony (he’s kind of a bottomless pit, he likes to eat people). But just when we think we’ve got things under control, we find out that Gluttony is WAY scarier when you get him good and mad/hungry!
Volume 13: Gluttony eats Edward! And a supporting cast member you don’t care that much about! And Gluttony’s teammate/sibling Envy! So now they’re trapped in some weird limbo dimension with nothing but the stuff Gluttony’s eaten over the centuries! Will Edward figure a way out? Also, supporting character Roy Mustang finds out how high up the governmental conspiracy goes... and that he’s in over his head. Alphonse tricks Gluttony into leading him back to Gluttony’s home, and finds the incredibly powerful guy who’s the leader of the bad guys... who looks a whole lot like Dad for some reason?
Favorite Jake Forbes Adaptation moment: Edward, holding Alphonse’s lost gauntlet-hand, wishes he could communicate with Alphonse somehow... and then he says... “NNNNGH! POWER OF TELEPATHY, CONVENIENTLY AWAKEN WITHIN ME! ...RECIEVE MY SIGNAL, LITTLE BROTHER!” Cracked me up.
Volume 14: Fight fight fight! Also, a Moderately Bad Alchemy Thing happens to that supporting character you don’t particularly care about, and I have to admit, he gets a lot more interesting.
Volume 15: Almost all flashback to the days of the war against the Ishbalans, but it works, even though it doesn't involve the two brothers.
Volume 16: The local library stopped at 15, so I ran out and got this one myself. There's a lot of post-14 post-game show, as everyone sort of sets out for new places to be-- a lot of that is toward the North, where it's really, really cold. That crazy guy who we saw locked up in his cell way back around issue 5 is let out by Team Bad Guys, and he fights Scar-- and mostly loses! Wow, go Scar. The brothers meet Armstrong's sister, a really super-tough gal whom everyone respects but all you can think is that she's really got a stick up her butt, to be colloquial about it. But right at the end, the cliffhanger is that we meet one of the now-least-known members of the Seven Deadly Bad Guys: Sloth, who, while not incredibly motivated, does seem incredibly powerful.
Oh, and if you like, here’s Joy Kim’s review of volume 15:
http://www.mangalife.com/reviews/FullmetalAlchemistv15.htm
And 16:
http://www.mangalife.com/reviews/FullmetalAlchemistv16.htm
Having said all this: Is FullMetal Alchemist for my wife Barbara? I say, it is not.
Barb: “You seem to like this.”
Me: “Yes. Yes, I do.”
Barb: “So do I need to read it?”
Me: “...No. And I’ll tell you why. It’s because there’s too many characters for you to keep track of. You have a limit on how many characters you can be expected to care about and keep track of. Star Wars—the original 3, that is—was just fine in that regard, but it came within shouting distance of your limit. I’d say, about 4 or 5 more important characters, and you would have said heck with it.”
Barb: “True. But Hunter X Hunter has a lot of people.”
Me: “True. But they’re... not all on stage at the same time. First there was Gon, then there was his two buddies, then there was Killua, and then there was Hisoka. Then there was the old man... and then there was Killua’s brother Illumi. And then by volume 5, we were introduced to more of Killua’s family... but Hisoka and Illumi took off. And then it was back to just Gon and Killua. All through that series, when he adds new characters, other people go off and go to medical school or train in the mystic arts or search for an exorcist or whatever. And old people come back, but then recurring villains take off for parts unknown again. It’s like in Shakespeare’s day when you’d have actors who played different parts in the same play—well, that meant you couldn’t have those same people one guy played on stage at the same time.”
Barb: “Yeah.”
Well, as I told Barb, FullMetal Alchemist isn’t like that. The cow likes her supporting characters, and she doesn’t feel she can have too many. Does she balance using them well? Yes, as well as anyone possibly could. But take the Elric (boy I hate that that’s their name) brothers, and their mechanic friend, and Roy Mustang, and his girl-Friday, and the 7 villains, not all of whom we’ve even MET yet, and Dad, and Teacher, and Armstrong, and all Roy Mustang’s other military pals, and Scar... well, by the time we get to the people from the extremely-Chinese-seeming-country of Xing, even I’m kind of on my Oh For Pity’s Sake threshold, and that’s not even to speak of all the friends they make along the way, some of whom yes we do encounter again later. It’s one of the flaws of the series, sorry. Naruto gives you a couple of dozen ninja you have to know in Konohoa, and then the three guys who used to hang out there, one of whom is our big season 5 villain... and that’s IT. Well of course that’s not remotely it, there’s various other villains from other villages or whatever... but for Naruto’s hometown, that’s IT. About 5 trios of kids, with one mentor each, and the Third Hokage, and the 3 legendary Sannin (spelling?). And people who are dead who we meet in flashbacks. But that’s IT. There’s no “And here’s some Hidden Leaf Village Ninja whom you’ve never met before!” Nope. You’ve met the village, anyone else important is going to have to come from elsewhere, and somehow that’s enough of a gesture toward my sanity that I appreciate it, crazy as that sounds.
So FMA is not for my wife (she totally agreed with my assessment). But it could be for you. The danger is honestly fairly suspenseful, the overarching quest works—it’s both challenging and yet the cow makes it clear it’s potentially attainable. The mysteries do work, although I admit the cloak-and-dagger, who-can-you-trust-(Answer?-Nobody) stuff with the military government gets a bit old—but with this many supporting characters, she CAN’T stick with one subplot for very long and juggle the rest successfully, which she mostly does. The planning that she’s put into the backstory as well as the eventual endgame works. The sense of impending and building menace... of Evil, frankly, and that means a lot in a series so caught up with the mystical meaning of God... works.
The bits of characterization work... I stopped and read to Barb the opening of some volume (just took all the books except 14 back to the library... was it 12? I think so), with Dad travelling somewhere, and he’s looking at an old family photograph, and a woman asks about his kids, and he seems sort of proud of how fierce and independent his eldest son has grown to be, even though they sort of had a fight... Bandits come and stop the vehicle they’re travelling in. When Dad speaks up, they shoot him—to no effect. Then they shoot him some more—to no effect. Then the bandits run away. One of the lenses of Dad’s glasses is broken, but he’s pleased to see that the old family photo hasn’t taken on any holes from the bullets. Dad doesn’t even seem to be bleeding.
“Those men ran away as if they’d seen a monster! Mister... who... who ARE YOU?”
With all the sadness in the world, Dad turns and gravely answers:
“I’M A MONSTER.”
If you can put up with the large amount of characters, FullMetal Alchemist is an exciting, tense, entertaining trip... but also one which contains an interesting, hardly-ever-taken flavor of mysticism... and a much more serious and less-sappy consideration than usual of what God means in a world where some sort of magic seems to exist.
Overall, as a series, I’d say that I’d give FullMetal Alchemist an A. It nearly drops into an A-, but since the author has done such careful planning, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt that it’ll stay strong.
: :
|
13 August 2008
Words of Truth and Wisdom: Meow 6 August 2008
Manga Bulletin: August 6th, 2008 5 August 2008
MangaLife Spotlight: The Manga Bible: It's Pretty Good, Believe It or Not 29 July 2008
Words of Truth and Wisdom: Thoughts on DubsWhat I Read: July 30, 2008 22 July 2008
Manga Bulletin: July 23rd, 2008
|
