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So, I was planning to wait until I was all caught up on the FMA manga to make this post . . . but seeing as I still have around sixty chapters left, that will probably be a while. And I am impatient!
I knew when I started watching the new Full Metal Alchemist series that it was a shounen show about a pair of angsty brothers and a military officer with ambitions. And that is fine, and also accurate! But nothing that I had heard about the show prepared me for what would happen: that I would fall completely in love with the story's surprisingly full complement of badass women. With a few exceptions, FMA has surprised me again and again with how consistently awesome its female characters are, whether they are leads or just passing through the storyline. And because I am sure I am not the only person here who loves awesome ladies: here, have a picspam!
If you hear about one female character in Full Metal Alchemist, it will probably be 1st. Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye. And with good reason: RIZA HAWKEYE IS A BADASS. Military sniper and aide to Lt. Colonel Mustang, she's a bit like Zoe from Firefly, if Zoe actually got backstory - 100% loyal, 100% capable of taking down anyone who threatens her superior officer . . . and trusted by said superior officer to take him down, too, if he crosses the Moral Event Horizon to the point where it becomes necessary.
The moment when I first fell madly in love with Hawkeye involves a DRAMATIC SHOWDOWN between Mustang and series antagonist Scar early in the series. "This is my fight!" Mustang declaims, starts to pull on his Special Solar-Powered Flame Gloves, steps forward . . . and Hawkeye body-slams him out of the way and opens fire. Mustang: "WHAT THE HELL, LIEUTENANT!" Hawkeye, calmly: "You're useless when it's raining, sir." Mustang: *goes off into a corner to grow mushrooms*
If Hawkweye is the Zoe of the show, Winry Rockbell is the Kaylee . . . okay, and I swear I'll stop with the Firefly references now. Anyway. Winry is the Elric brothers' childhood friend and mechanic; she and her grandmother fitted Ed out with his automail leg and arm, and she gets called in to make repairs any time there's damage (which she is NOT happy about. Her displeasure tends to involve throwing wrenches at people. Also, sidenote: another thing I love about the show is that it never forgets that while metal prostheses may do cool things, they're still prostheses, and prone to inconveniences like mechanical failure. But that's another story.) What I love about Winry is that she is a full-fledged machinery dork; she gets hearts and stars in her eyes when she sees new and exciting kinds of automail!
The show does have an unfortunate tendency to damsel Winry at times and privilege her innocence to a ridiculous extent; she is, after all, our designated Cute Teenaged Girl. On the other hand (as I will proceed to demonstrate!) there are more than enough physically badass ladies in the show, and not everyone has to be a super-hardcore fighter - and the show never forgets that Winry is very competent at what she does, while at the same time avoiding Unearned Specialness. Winry's very talented, and she's also fifteen, and still learning about her trade, and I really enjoy that part of her character arc.
You know how every epic fantasy saga has The Master, The Most Hardcore In The Land, The One Who Taught Our Heroes Everything They Know By Beating Them Upside The Head One Million Times And Nearly Killing Them But That's Okay Because They Learned From It And Respect The Master All The More?
In Fullmetal Alchemist, the Master is IZUMI CURTIS.
Yes, I have linked this picture before, and I don't care. Izumi is fabulous. She is, so far as I can tell, the most badass person in the FMA universe. What's that, you say, Elrics? Your training is hard? Izumi did her training alone for a month in the FROZEN NORTHERN WASTELANDS! WITH BEARS! It's okay, though, these days, Izumi is perfectly happy to hang out in the kitchen with her husband, Not-As-Badass-As-Izumi Curtis, and throw knives back and forth. (My FMA OTP: CURTISES. <3333 They are so cute! Hearts and sparkles and sharp things follow them everywhere they go!) It bears mentioning that Izumi is also missing a good percentage of her internal organs, and occasionally has to pause in her task of dominating everyone else with her badassery to vomit up copious amounts of blood. But does this stop her? NO, IT DOES NOT.
I'm not going to lie: between the name and the va-va-voom outfit, I definitely had some major feminist concerns about antagonist Lust. And . . . yeah, there are certainly issues there. However, there were way fewer issues than I was expecting going in. Name and character design to the contrary, Lust is not played at all as a representation of dangerous female sexuality; instead, she appears to be the most competent member of Team Evil, and her clashes with Team Good generally involve her giving as good as she gets in non-sexualized fight scenes. The one time we see her using her looks to get information out of a hapless Team Good member, it is all surprisingly downplayed - Lust is dressed demurely and they go to a nice outdoor cafe and talk. There are flowers! The rest of the time, Lust is generally portrayed as a respect-worthy opponent, considered dangerous by her enemies and respected and cared for by her teammmates. I kind of appreciate that, and therefore, Lust earns a rank on the Awesome Ladies list.
Tiny adorable Mei Chan crossed the desert alone (except fr her tiny adorable panda Xiao Mei), searching for the secret to immortality. She's the smallest and least valued of the Xingese emperor's children, but she's determined to take the succession and gain respect and security for her mother's clan. I'm not sure how old she is - my guess is somewhere between 8 and 12 - but she's skilled in alkahestry, her country's version of alchemy, and can use it to heal wounds. However, she's still a little girl, and, like many little girls, she is also prone to developing RIDICULOUS crushes on very little evidence, which, uh, I find kind of hilariously endearing. Also, she carries a large number of knives.
Hey, remember that time that Mei Chan was in the hospital, saw a member of a rival clan in the hospital bed next to her, and launched immediately into a knife fight? I DO! :D :D :D
Speaking of that rival clan member . . . Lan Fan is the bodyguard to another one of the emperor's sons, Ling. She is from a long family line of bodyguards (her partner is her grandfather), incredibly loyal, and SO HARDCORE I DON'T EVEN HAVE WORDS FOR IT. Or at least, not any that are non-spoilery.
(Although even she is bemused by the sheer number of severed limbs in this series.)
At this point, you might be saying to yourself, well, Becca, all these bodyguards and military aides and so forth do seem very hardcore, but wouldn't it be nice if we could get a lady who was actually in charge? I know I was! Fortunately, sometimes Arakawa likes to make me happy.
This is Olivier Mira Armstrong, General of the North. SHE RULES WITH AN IRON FIST. An iron fist of AWESOME. Her men are completely devoted to her, and with reason. Once, one of her soldiers brings up - completely hypothetically - the possibility that he might defect. THAT'S FINE, says General Armstrong, AS LONG AS YOU CAN DEFEAT ME IN SINGLE COMBAT. The possibility is never mentioned again. And she's middle-aged, and an ambitious career soldier, and still going strong! I would have an enormous girlcrush on her if my heart was not already taken up with Izumi and Hawkeye . . . okay, maybe I still do have kind a girlcrush on her.
Is that a bazooka? MAYBE.
Don't cross General Armstrong, is the point. YOU WON'T WIN. As the bad guys will learn to their peril. (Also, hilariously, when General Armstrong is discussing the possibility of allying with Mustang, Armstrong is like "hey, he works with Hawkeye! HAWKEYE IS AWESOME! Mustang, he is kind of lame.")
And dude, guys, these women are all main, featured-in-the-opening characters! (Well, except Izumi. Izumi is so awesome she TRANSCENDS opening credits.) Anyway, I haven't even gotten to the minor characters yet!
Pinako is Winry's tiny, badass, pipe-smoking grandma, and surrogate grandma to Our Protagonists. She is (presumably) an automail mechanic who has trained Winry up as her partner.
Once upon a time, she was less tiny, but no less badass and pipe-smoking! I have not seen too much of her backstory yet in what I have watched and read, but we have intriguing hints of it - we know she was an old drinking buddy of the Elrics' dad who knows most of his secrets, and we also know that the mention of her name sends other cranky old automail mechanics into a state of terror. >:D
I fell in love with 2nd Lieutenant Maria Ross when she politely asked a (fifteen-year-old) officer of superior rank permission to speak freely; when it was granted, BITCHSLAPPED HIM ROUND THE HEAD and chewed him the hell out for putting himself in danger; and then waited to be court-martialed. Uh, that is not really super characteristic; most of the time Ross is a good soldier! She's perfectly happy with where she is and feels no need to stick her nose where it doesn't belong and get involved with complicated conspiracies and so forth, so it's really just her bad luck that she gets stuck with the Elrics. But when called upon to cope, she copes with a spine of long-suffering steel!
I'm pretty sure Sheska is Yomiko Readman's unacknowledged twin sister. She loves books! A LOT. She had a job in a library! Then she got fired for reading all the time. Basically, she is a blatant geek self-insert, and who doesn't love that? :D However, Sheska also has a perfect memory for everything she's read, which saves the day more than once. She's a good example of a character who is very cool without having to be physically badass.
You know how Grindhouse had Rose McGowan with a bazooka-prosthesis, and everyone thought it was incredibly awesome? Yeah, Paninya did it first. Paninya lost her parents and her legs in a train accident as a kid (seriously, most limb loss of any series EVER), and proceeded to become the grumpiest tiny amputee in the world. Until she was picked up by an even grumpier mechanic who fitted her with BAZOOKA LEGS. Now Paninya has vowed to pay him back! But for some perplexing reason he will not accept her pickpocketed money! Paninya can out-maneuver both Elric brothers together; it takes Winry (and Winry's obsession with SHINY AUTOMAIL) to take her down. After which they become adorable BFF. <3
Martel used to be a soldier. Then she was wounded in the war and experimented on by the military, and now she is part snake. Unsurprisingly, she then decided to join a secret rebel underground group of other experimented-upon people (she is better off than the guy who is half dog!). We don't see all that much of her, but from what we do see, it is clear: a.) she is very clever and rather unscrupulous with unorthodox battle techniques; b.) she is fiercely loyal to her team; c.) she is brave to a degree of a hundred and twenty percent.
Even with this epic list, I am pretty sure I am forgetting people; others who know the series can feel free to chime in!
I will say that the series is in no way perfect with feminist issues; although there are, as demonstrated, a whole lot of awesome female soldier characters, the background military characters tend to default male, and there are a few (three, to be exact) female characters who seem to exist for no other purpose that I can see other than to be sweet and motherly angels in the house whose lives center around their husbands and children. Still, for me, that is counterbalanced by the sheer number of insanely awesome female characters, who kick ass, take names, and in many cases drive the plot.
In other words: I HAVE A CRUSH ON EVERY GIRL.
I knew when I started watching the new Full Metal Alchemist series that it was a shounen show about a pair of angsty brothers and a military officer with ambitions. And that is fine, and also accurate! But nothing that I had heard about the show prepared me for what would happen: that I would fall completely in love with the story's surprisingly full complement of badass women. With a few exceptions, FMA has surprised me again and again with how consistently awesome its female characters are, whether they are leads or just passing through the storyline. And because I am sure I am not the only person here who loves awesome ladies: here, have a picspam!
If you hear about one female character in Full Metal Alchemist, it will probably be 1st. Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye. And with good reason: RIZA HAWKEYE IS A BADASS. Military sniper and aide to Lt. Colonel Mustang, she's a bit like Zoe from Firefly, if Zoe actually got backstory - 100% loyal, 100% capable of taking down anyone who threatens her superior officer . . . and trusted by said superior officer to take him down, too, if he crosses the Moral Event Horizon to the point where it becomes necessary.
The moment when I first fell madly in love with Hawkeye involves a DRAMATIC SHOWDOWN between Mustang and series antagonist Scar early in the series. "This is my fight!" Mustang declaims, starts to pull on his Special Solar-Powered Flame Gloves, steps forward . . . and Hawkeye body-slams him out of the way and opens fire. Mustang: "WHAT THE HELL, LIEUTENANT!" Hawkeye, calmly: "You're useless when it's raining, sir." Mustang: *goes off into a corner to grow mushrooms*
If Hawkweye is the Zoe of the show, Winry Rockbell is the Kaylee . . . okay, and I swear I'll stop with the Firefly references now. Anyway. Winry is the Elric brothers' childhood friend and mechanic; she and her grandmother fitted Ed out with his automail leg and arm, and she gets called in to make repairs any time there's damage (which she is NOT happy about. Her displeasure tends to involve throwing wrenches at people. Also, sidenote: another thing I love about the show is that it never forgets that while metal prostheses may do cool things, they're still prostheses, and prone to inconveniences like mechanical failure. But that's another story.) What I love about Winry is that she is a full-fledged machinery dork; she gets hearts and stars in her eyes when she sees new and exciting kinds of automail!
The show does have an unfortunate tendency to damsel Winry at times and privilege her innocence to a ridiculous extent; she is, after all, our designated Cute Teenaged Girl. On the other hand (as I will proceed to demonstrate!) there are more than enough physically badass ladies in the show, and not everyone has to be a super-hardcore fighter - and the show never forgets that Winry is very competent at what she does, while at the same time avoiding Unearned Specialness. Winry's very talented, and she's also fifteen, and still learning about her trade, and I really enjoy that part of her character arc.
You know how every epic fantasy saga has The Master, The Most Hardcore In The Land, The One Who Taught Our Heroes Everything They Know By Beating Them Upside The Head One Million Times And Nearly Killing Them But That's Okay Because They Learned From It And Respect The Master All The More?
In Fullmetal Alchemist, the Master is IZUMI CURTIS.
Yes, I have linked this picture before, and I don't care. Izumi is fabulous. She is, so far as I can tell, the most badass person in the FMA universe. What's that, you say, Elrics? Your training is hard? Izumi did her training alone for a month in the FROZEN NORTHERN WASTELANDS! WITH BEARS! It's okay, though, these days, Izumi is perfectly happy to hang out in the kitchen with her husband, Not-As-Badass-As-Izumi Curtis, and throw knives back and forth. (My FMA OTP: CURTISES. <3333 They are so cute! Hearts and sparkles and sharp things follow them everywhere they go!) It bears mentioning that Izumi is also missing a good percentage of her internal organs, and occasionally has to pause in her task of dominating everyone else with her badassery to vomit up copious amounts of blood. But does this stop her? NO, IT DOES NOT.
I'm not going to lie: between the name and the va-va-voom outfit, I definitely had some major feminist concerns about antagonist Lust. And . . . yeah, there are certainly issues there. However, there were way fewer issues than I was expecting going in. Name and character design to the contrary, Lust is not played at all as a representation of dangerous female sexuality; instead, she appears to be the most competent member of Team Evil, and her clashes with Team Good generally involve her giving as good as she gets in non-sexualized fight scenes. The one time we see her using her looks to get information out of a hapless Team Good member, it is all surprisingly downplayed - Lust is dressed demurely and they go to a nice outdoor cafe and talk. There are flowers! The rest of the time, Lust is generally portrayed as a respect-worthy opponent, considered dangerous by her enemies and respected and cared for by her teammmates. I kind of appreciate that, and therefore, Lust earns a rank on the Awesome Ladies list.
Tiny adorable Mei Chan crossed the desert alone (except fr her tiny adorable panda Xiao Mei), searching for the secret to immortality. She's the smallest and least valued of the Xingese emperor's children, but she's determined to take the succession and gain respect and security for her mother's clan. I'm not sure how old she is - my guess is somewhere between 8 and 12 - but she's skilled in alkahestry, her country's version of alchemy, and can use it to heal wounds. However, she's still a little girl, and, like many little girls, she is also prone to developing RIDICULOUS crushes on very little evidence, which, uh, I find kind of hilariously endearing. Also, she carries a large number of knives.
Hey, remember that time that Mei Chan was in the hospital, saw a member of a rival clan in the hospital bed next to her, and launched immediately into a knife fight? I DO! :D :D :D
Speaking of that rival clan member . . . Lan Fan is the bodyguard to another one of the emperor's sons, Ling. She is from a long family line of bodyguards (her partner is her grandfather), incredibly loyal, and SO HARDCORE I DON'T EVEN HAVE WORDS FOR IT. Or at least, not any that are non-spoilery.
(Although even she is bemused by the sheer number of severed limbs in this series.)
At this point, you might be saying to yourself, well, Becca, all these bodyguards and military aides and so forth do seem very hardcore, but wouldn't it be nice if we could get a lady who was actually in charge? I know I was! Fortunately, sometimes Arakawa likes to make me happy.
This is Olivier Mira Armstrong, General of the North. SHE RULES WITH AN IRON FIST. An iron fist of AWESOME. Her men are completely devoted to her, and with reason. Once, one of her soldiers brings up - completely hypothetically - the possibility that he might defect. THAT'S FINE, says General Armstrong, AS LONG AS YOU CAN DEFEAT ME IN SINGLE COMBAT. The possibility is never mentioned again. And she's middle-aged, and an ambitious career soldier, and still going strong! I would have an enormous girlcrush on her if my heart was not already taken up with Izumi and Hawkeye . . . okay, maybe I still do have kind a girlcrush on her.
Is that a bazooka? MAYBE.
Don't cross General Armstrong, is the point. YOU WON'T WIN. As the bad guys will learn to their peril. (Also, hilariously, when General Armstrong is discussing the possibility of allying with Mustang, Armstrong is like "hey, he works with Hawkeye! HAWKEYE IS AWESOME! Mustang, he is kind of lame.")
And dude, guys, these women are all main, featured-in-the-opening characters! (Well, except Izumi. Izumi is so awesome she TRANSCENDS opening credits.) Anyway, I haven't even gotten to the minor characters yet!
Pinako is Winry's tiny, badass, pipe-smoking grandma, and surrogate grandma to Our Protagonists. She is (presumably) an automail mechanic who has trained Winry up as her partner.
Once upon a time, she was less tiny, but no less badass and pipe-smoking! I have not seen too much of her backstory yet in what I have watched and read, but we have intriguing hints of it - we know she was an old drinking buddy of the Elrics' dad who knows most of his secrets, and we also know that the mention of her name sends other cranky old automail mechanics into a state of terror. >:D
I fell in love with 2nd Lieutenant Maria Ross when she politely asked a (fifteen-year-old) officer of superior rank permission to speak freely; when it was granted, BITCHSLAPPED HIM ROUND THE HEAD and chewed him the hell out for putting himself in danger; and then waited to be court-martialed. Uh, that is not really super characteristic; most of the time Ross is a good soldier! She's perfectly happy with where she is and feels no need to stick her nose where it doesn't belong and get involved with complicated conspiracies and so forth, so it's really just her bad luck that she gets stuck with the Elrics. But when called upon to cope, she copes with a spine of long-suffering steel!
I'm pretty sure Sheska is Yomiko Readman's unacknowledged twin sister. She loves books! A LOT. She had a job in a library! Then she got fired for reading all the time. Basically, she is a blatant geek self-insert, and who doesn't love that? :D However, Sheska also has a perfect memory for everything she's read, which saves the day more than once. She's a good example of a character who is very cool without having to be physically badass.
You know how Grindhouse had Rose McGowan with a bazooka-prosthesis, and everyone thought it was incredibly awesome? Yeah, Paninya did it first. Paninya lost her parents and her legs in a train accident as a kid (seriously, most limb loss of any series EVER), and proceeded to become the grumpiest tiny amputee in the world. Until she was picked up by an even grumpier mechanic who fitted her with BAZOOKA LEGS. Now Paninya has vowed to pay him back! But for some perplexing reason he will not accept her pickpocketed money! Paninya can out-maneuver both Elric brothers together; it takes Winry (and Winry's obsession with SHINY AUTOMAIL) to take her down. After which they become adorable BFF. <3
Martel used to be a soldier. Then she was wounded in the war and experimented on by the military, and now she is part snake. Unsurprisingly, she then decided to join a secret rebel underground group of other experimented-upon people (she is better off than the guy who is half dog!). We don't see all that much of her, but from what we do see, it is clear: a.) she is very clever and rather unscrupulous with unorthodox battle techniques; b.) she is fiercely loyal to her team; c.) she is brave to a degree of a hundred and twenty percent.
Even with this epic list, I am pretty sure I am forgetting people; others who know the series can feel free to chime in!
I will say that the series is in no way perfect with feminist issues; although there are, as demonstrated, a whole lot of awesome female soldier characters, the background military characters tend to default male, and there are a few (three, to be exact) female characters who seem to exist for no other purpose that I can see other than to be sweet and motherly angels in the house whose lives center around their husbands and children. Still, for me, that is counterbalanced by the sheer number of insanely awesome female characters, who kick ass, take names, and in many cases drive the plot.
In other words: I HAVE A CRUSH ON EVERY GIRL.
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(Yuuko does sound pretty intriguing, I will say.)
I think this is my default Awesome Ladies icon
(YUUKO IS AMAZING and even if the token love interest is kind of bland she is never bland in an annoying way! And I think you would like the Ame-Warashi even though she only shows up sporadically! --it is kind of difficult to go on about awesome female characters in Holic, not because there are none, but because there are not very many characters who show up on a regular basis. It is worth noting, though, that there are pretty much only three guys who show up on a regular basis at all> and one of them doesn't appear until the second season. ALSO YUUKO IS AMAZING. Anyone who could believably instigate a threesome with Tenma and Jacuzzi has to be, really.)
it is an excellent option I feel
(. . . this is a truth that has to be acknowledged. *giggling*)
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THAT SAID, I am super-tempted to try again just for Olivier Mira Armstrong. She just sounds too cool not to give a chance.
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(And if not, I mean, that is okay! Sometimes stories just do not work for people. It is sad but true. :( )
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I might just try diving in with Armstrong and seeing what happens, though. She sounds a little bit like a more badass version of a character from Crest of the Stars of whom I am exceedingly fond.
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BUT ARMSTRONG IS AMAZING. FULL STOP. :D
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I've always loved the sheer amount of awesome chicks in this series, though manga!Lust lost serious points with me when she pulled the Havoc stunt, because I love the State Military as much as I love the women and basically this is me gushing because this post is so much how I feel about this series. It is so awesome, isn't it? Isn't it isn't it isn't it?
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I love the State Military also . . . and I love the women IN the State Military! \o/ EVERYONE IS AWESOME TO THE UMPTEENTH DEGREE. (Also, to jump off your icon, though I love BSG, I find the military characters in FMA way, way more identifiable than the ones in BSG. They are such ordinary-albeit-badass people!)
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I think it's because most of the State Military aren't alchemists, so in comparison to the *special* alchemists (who come across as slightly removed from reality), they seem a lot like us. Whereas in BSG everyone is in the military and they are super special!!
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Yeah, exactly! I always felt sorry for everyone in the cast who wasn't in the military in BSG (all . . . two of them), because it was so clear that to be Super Special and Useful in that context you needed to be in the military. (Or to be Laura Roslin, admittedly.) Whereas I feel sorry for everyone who's in the State Military.
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STOP INSPIRING ME
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DOOO IT
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I BLAME THE FEMALE CREATOR. AND THE BADASS THAT FLOWS OUT OF HER EVERY INKED PAGE AND COLOR SPREADS.
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(FMA is my first actual shounen, and now I am worried that no other will POSSIBLY compare. D:)
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One of my favorite action shounen series ever, period, full-stop, is Kekkaishi, although I'll admit that Yellow Tanabe seems to occasionally forget that Tokine's... you know. there. But when Tokine does appear, she's this massive badass who holds her own against the main character. And then there's Tokine's grandmother (A++) and Yoshimori's mother (A++ A++ A++), who's equal parts awesome and creepy! But Kekkaishi's pretty fabulous, in general.
Now I'm going to sit back and try to think of other good shounen series. Huh.
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I have heard good things about Claymore too in terms of female characters, though I have not seen/read any of it . . .
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Eh, I'm indifferent on Claymore. Picked up the first volume and found it to have awful art, dull action, and bland, at best, storytelling. Didn't pick it up for a second volume. Guess it gets better, though. I've seen a lot of good reviews for it. I just can't help but think, "Good lord, that art is ugly" whenever I try reading it.
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That's fair! It's hard to enjoy a graphic story when you can't enjoy the artwork.
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Haha, bad-to-mediocre art's never stopped me before! Claymore's the first series that made me go, "... the artist is competent, but everything's so ugly!" though.
In the action seinen branch, I loved Black Lagoon, which has a lot of badass women: from undercover CIA agent to the soldier-turned-mafia-boss (http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/6153/balalaika2ev4.jpg) to the unhinged Chinese-American New Yorker who likes her guns a lot. Although this is a very action-oriented series where the focus is more on supreme acts of wtf-badassery.
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Oooh, I have heard good things about Black Lagoon! And I just saw and loved Baccano!, so . . . supreme acts of wtf-badassery are not really a bad thing. >.>
(BUT DOES IT HAVE AS MANY SEVERED LIMBS)
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I loved Baccano! something fierce! Although everything with Claire and the freaky little boy made me go oh my god oh my god OHMYGODMYFACE.
(I THINK THERE HAVE BEEN FEWER THAN TEN SEVERED LIMBS IN THIS SERIES SO FAR BUT THAT'S BECAUSE PEOPLE TEND TO GET SHOT OVER AND OVER AGAIN INSTEAD OF HAVING BITS OF THEM CUT OFF. On the top of my head, I'm counting one (1) severed(?) head, three (3) severed/exploded hands, and many (?) wounds thanks to a poleaxe.)
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THAT'S BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME but yeah, Czeslaw's constantly exploding HEAD is a thing that caused a LOT of flinching augh! Oh Claire Stanfield. Why so hilarious, and yet, so terrifying?!?
(Not too shabby, I must say! Severed/exploded hands seems to be a seinen thing; Baccano! did it a lot too iirc!
FMA on the other hand has fourteen severed limbs in total as of chapter 45 of the manga. WHY YES I HAVE BEEN KEEPING TRACK AS I GO.)
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Mmm, yes, Baccano!. So violent. So tasty. Hoping they decide to make a proper sequel someday, because I'd be so onto that.
(Aha, yes. I suspect Arakawa has a thing for limb severing because. ... limbs! augh! I like them! FOURTEEN LIMBS IS BAD, OKAY
not sure why more people don't blow up feet, though.)
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Me too! I have read some bits of the translated light novels and it seems like there is tons of room for awesome sequels. From what I understand, though, the creators have another similar-if-not-direct-sequel series that is airing now? It is called Dualala or something!
(Admittedly I am counting all four of Al's limbs as severed in there, so it may not be quite fair, but on the other hand, I don't count it every time he or Ed gets an arm BLASTED OFF that would be a limb-severing if they had those limbs to begin with, so I think it evens out!
Dude, why take just feet when you can take THE WHOLE LIMB? *reasonable!*)
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Aha, Dulalala's being done by the same animation studio, but it's not an adaptation of Baccano! ... or, apparently, anything close, idk. Brain-Base did do Kurenai, though, which has some pretty nicely epic battle scenes, but not too many. Kurenai does have, however, a musical segment to one of their episodes that blew my mind like a stack of cards in a tornado.
(Aha, okay. Nice. Still, it's a pretty high limb count. And it only gets worse from chapter 45!
I figure that it'd be easier to cut off the foot alone, right? because the whole limb... would you have cut off the hip to get the entire limb off or or auugh I don't want to have an imagination!)
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Yeah, but I think the Dulalala books were also written by the same author as Baccano!? I just went to the wikipedia page and all I could find out was that there is a character who is a headless Irishwoman who has traveled to Japan to find her stolen head (!!) on a horse disguised as a motorcycle (!!!) which means, uh, I WILL BE TUNING IN.
(Hee hee I am just about to get to Lan Fan's epic limb sacrifice in the manga! And I am sure there are more coming up that I'm not even remembering at the moment.
What I always wonder is, if Ed's leg is cut off from way up at the hip - which it seems it is! - then how MASSIVELY AWKWARD are those service operations where Winry has to perform maintenance on it? :O)
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Huh! Go figure, it's written by the same person. But Brain-Base keeps churning out all these crazy series and that sounds both brilliant and completely insane, how does the lady hide her missing head?! Paper bag? Artificial head? Wet fish?
Goddamn, I need to watch this, because Brain-Base + Baccano!-like series = potential.
Also: geeze, no wonder they only ever show Ed's arm being serviced. Because if they show his leg being serviced... uh. Well, that's just merrily awkward!)
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Maybe it is all of the above . . AT THE SAME TIME! I would not put it past either these animators OR this author. :O I am also kind of wondering how on earth you disguise a horse as a motorcycle. Paint job???
(I suspect every time it happens, Ed and Winry both turn bright red, shut their eyes, and go "WE NEVER SPEAK OF THIS.")
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I imagine some ~*~mystical~*~ ~*~magic~*~ or something like that. Failing that, some really, really creative origami. Or a portable house of mirrors. Or maybe it's a symbolic horse? ... I don't know. I just broke my brain trying to get my head around it.
(Or maybe she makes Ed wear a pair of shorts and. kind of. gropes around, poking at the plugs and asking, "um is this right" while Ed moans and goes "OW.")
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I'm just picturing a horse wearing a giant sign that says "I'M A MOTORCYCLE." No one will know the difference!
(Or maybe she doesn't even notice, because AUTOMAIL!!!! *_*, and Ed is lying there trying to pretend none of this is happening. "CAN YOU JUST KNOCK ME OUT FOR THIS PART.")
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Haha, I'm kindn of picturing something from Kino no Tabi, where Kino's motorcycle, Hermes, talks to her and is the only other regular character in the series. Then again, Hermes is literally a talking motorcycle and not a horse at all...
(Haha! That's definitely how it works out! "*___* AUTOMAIL" "AUUGH WATCH WHERE YOU'RE TOUCHING" "Shut up, Ed! I'm working!" "Big brother? ... I'll go now." "A-Al--")
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Are you SURE that motorcycle is not really a horse? Think of the brand new world this has opened up now! ALL MOTORCYCLES MUST BE QUESTIONED!
(*Cackling* this is totally my mental canon now)
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And Claymore is a good series, but as mentioned, the art isn't great, and you have to hold out for about 3-4 volumes before the story really gets going. On the other hand, 95% of the major characters are female and every single one of them is a hardcore badass.
Also, Soul Eater is also pretty good for the female characters (the main character IS a girl, and she's great) but there is a fair amount of fanservice in the earlier half of the series.
/drive by reccing XD;;
(Um, hi, random lurker here. I friended you because you post about books, and you read JOAN AIKEN and I have never found anyone on LJ who knew who she was omg. Which is tragic because her crack is amazing)
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drown in a giant pile underlet my life be devoured byenjoy! :D :D :D(Also, hi and welcome! :D I am ALWAYS EXCITED to have more people to babble about books with. Especially people who have the truly excellent taste to appreciate the GLORIOUS INSANITY that is Joan Aiken. Do I still crack up every time I think about the giant cannon that was going to shoot Buckingham Palace from Nantucket Island? MAYBE.)
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drag other people underhelp? XD(Not to mention assassinating the king-to-be by ROLLING HIS CATHEDRAL INTO THE THAMES. Well, if you're going to kill a king, I guess you might as well do it in style. I just. Have to wonder if she wrote the books by CACKLING EVILLY EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. Not that this is a bad thing per se.)
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(I at least like to imagine that that is how it went down! Joan Aiken, sitting in her desk, tapping her pencil: "I want to write something Arthurian, but Arthur is kind of boring . . . OH I KNOW! How about we make it so that Queen Guinevere is LIVING OFF THE BONES OF VIRGINS IN BRAZIL? That'll spice things up! Mwahahahahahahaha! >:D")
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(Not that Riza and Kara are actually at all alike in personality . . . but if I was gonna do live-action casting, IT'S POSSIBLE THAT THAT'S HOW I'D CAST IT.)
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NO WAIT YOU DON'T BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET
Oh wait what about that time that Mustang came running to Riza's rescue and then Riza chewed him out for putting himself in danger and -
- wait, you haven't seen that either, I KEEP FORGETTING.
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(Alternately: collect enough badass older ladies that did not make the first cut that you can make a sequel! :D :D :D)
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. . . yeah, we really do need a better word for that, don't we. "Mature ladies," maybe, but that sounds like one is trying too hard/selling porn. :-/
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I need more icons of older hardcore women!
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it is amazing how lots of non-creepily-sexualized ladies with weaponry can change one's perspective on things . . .
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I want to slash Riza! I just don't care for her paired with other canon characters, which frustrates me.
The only other woman I can think of from the original anime was Psiren, but I hate that episode so much it totally taints her for me. She's gratuitously sexualized and plays into the deceitful woman trope, but I'm willing to be convinced she's not as bad as I think she is.
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There's Rose too, isn't there? Who . . . I've seen mentioned but know nothing about. She's in one episode of the new anime, and is did not impress me over-much, so I forgot to include her. >.> But I don't feel too bad about that.
I would highly recommend the new anime! :D EVEN MORE LADIES. (More female characters to potentially slash Riza with?)
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I forgot about Rose! She has a moment of awesome in the original anime, but is mostly portrayed as the perpetual victim. Probably the biggest fail in the series when it comes to women. Ed meets alternate!Rose in the movie and I don't remember much about her, except that I didn't particularly care for her.
And there's Gracia, who doesn't do much but be wife and mom, but given the other characters I don't feel that's as problematic as it otherwise would be.
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Yeah, Gracia and Mrs. Bradley both seem to basically have the good-wife-and-mother characterization, which, while I could wish they had a little more personality, and some indication of having any interests of their own, I am okay with given the sheer amount of awesome distributed over the other female characters! (Actually I don't know if Mrs. Bradley even exists in the old series. Um.)
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