Nope.

From Olympus

Photo: Ana Martinez 

Styling and Creative Direction: Mario Ville (Kattaca) 

Makeup design and make up artist: Lewis Amarante for Kryolan and Pankr0 

Makeup and hairdressing: Sergio Jiménez 

dude straight up arrives in a foreign country with no plan, no money, no food and no sense and when he passes out in an abandoned alley instead of being eaten by rats like any respectable member of society he instead gets literally plucked up by not one, but TWO alchemists that just so happen to be two thirds of the total number of living people that know the secret of a philosopher’s stone and Aren’t in on the massive government conspiracy to murder everyone 

Arakawa realized the burgeoning youth of the early 2000s wasnt interested in another plucky spry optimistic young shonen protag. Instead she gave us a short ugly egotistical asshole smarter-than-you atheist with so much money and power that people could no longer best him in arguments by telling him “dude shut up ur literally like 12″ 

Five pages in we’re told Edward’s famous and rich and powerful. Five more pages and he’s calling some girl stupid for thinking God exists. Five more pages and he’s proven right. Five more and he’s kicked an evil priest’s teeth in. And no one can tell his mom on him.

FMA is shonen. It’s targetted primarily at young boys like most shonen is.

And it deals with heavy shit. It has gore, it has parental abandonement, it has abuse, it deals with genocide and militarization and a fuck tonne of rights abuses. But it also deals with it sensitively. Arakawa wrote a compact story with great escalation and increasing of odds.

It also has fucking complex characters. FMA is one of the few shonen series that has made sure it’s female characters are on par with it’s male characters. It would’ve been easy to fall into the shonen trap and just sideline the female characters. But no. All the women hold their own, they do stuff. Winry is the mechanic. Lust is a great spy. Riza’s importance is never toned down. In fact she serves as a great escalation point to show shit hitting the fan. Olivier Mira Armstrong fucking commands one of the tightest and most brutal regiments, and she will chop heads. Lan Fan goes from bodyguard to assistant revolutionary. Mei chan’s development is huge for a kid. Izumi is the badass mentor.

But it’s not just the women. Even it’s male characters are varied. They’re soft. They emote. Maes Hughes won’t shut up about his family and how much he loves them. Alex Armstrong is a gorgeous buff dude who’s the second softest dude in the series. And they’re all shown as complex people.

It also was set in a crapsack world that relied on teenagers to do shit. But you know what else it did. It made it clear that this was not what teenagers and kids should be doing. It made it clear that this was the fault of the adults, and adults should make the world safe for kids.

It had teenagers and kids who grew up, emotionally too. It showed that the emotionality was valid. It broke up pairs of it’s most codependent characters to do this. Ed and Al get a fuck tonne of development once they get separated. The same goes for Ling and Lan Fan. And you know what, even though the circumstances that separated them were shit, it’s shown that their growth away is equally important as it is together.

You know how great that is for the young boys the series is primarily targetted at? To see badass women who emote and are different? To see buff men being gentle and emotional?  To realise that you have to take responsibility for your actions? To realise that yes saving the world is good and all, but it should not be your responsibility?