#fma commentary

so i want to talk about how like………. the city of kirkwall is a gigantic human transmutation glyph that was built for the sole purpose of sacrificing thousands of slaves PER YEAR in mysterious ritualistic blood magic rites for CENTURIES.

However, the manga has an interesting convention to denote that foreign language is being spoken, by giving every foreign language speech bubbles that are horizontal instead of vertical. This is lost slightly even when the manga gets translated because in Japanese, the vertical speech bubbles also have vertically typeset dialogue which help better distinguish the languages. Nonetheless, the speech bubble shapes are very distinct. When Ling talks to Ed, his speech bubbles are all vertical

As are Lan Fan’s

But look at Fu’s thought bubbles here and compare them to Paninya and Al’s vertical bubbles. They’re horizontal! Fu is shown to be thinking in his native tongue!

Conversations that we heard all in one language in the anime, were supposed to be in Xingese.

Like Ling, Lan Fan, and Fu on the roof.

And Ling speaking with Mei at the end of the final battle.

or at least one of my headcanons surrounding them and my reasoning for its basis.

In the comic I posted the other day  Ling complains about how others perceive bangs to be childish. Basically my headcanon is that for most of Xing, its not considered socially acceptable to wear any hair not tied back in some way once past a certain age. And even though he is Emperor now, Ling’s bangs are no exception.

The reason has a basis in many historical customs across Asia, where hairstyle was used as a means to identify a person’s status or stage in life. China and Japan in various different dynasties for example. Children in both countries were allowed to cut or wear their hair as they wished, but that changed upon adulthood. During the Han Dynasty until the Qing, All Han Chinese stopped cutting their hair once they came of age (15 for women, 20 for men) and would allow it to grow for the rest of their lives, wearing all of it bound completely in a topknot, bun or some variation. In both China and Japan, the hairstyles of adult women in particular could mean anything from their social status, if they were married or not, or even if they had children. Talking about that alone would be worth an essay so I won’t go into that.  In Japan, until the Meiji Restoration (1868), the Coming of Age Ceremony called Genpuku (which was based off of Chinese coming of age ceremonies) explicitly involved shaving a boys bangs off as part of the ceremony. Ergo, bangs were seen as a symbol of childhood. While some men eventually allowed this part of their hair to grow out again, they did not wear them out as bangs. Something I want to note here is that unlike China, the timing of coming of age varied in Japan, as someone could be as young as 11 or as old as in their 30’s to undergo this ceremony. Interestingly, the average age a boy went through this was 15, which is the age Ling was when we met him. 

(image above courtesy of the manga Kaze-Hikaru which discussed this) A far more cutthroat system arose in China during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) after the Han people were taken over by the Manchu. Upon coming of age, men were mandated to shave the entire front half of their head while they left the back half to grow. This hairstyle was called a queue, was used as a form of social control by the powers that be, where if a man didn’t comply doing this within 10 days of coming of age they were executed. A slogan came about for this, meaning  “Lose your hair and keep your head, keep your hair and lose your head”.

(a more comprehensive article about the history of the hair of chinese men can be found here ) Obviously I’m not going that hardcore with this headcanon so there won’t by any compulsory head shaving. Nonetheless I believe that there definitely still are certain social norms in Xing regarding hair, although there might be differences clan to clan. Its worth noting that in Japan at least, these kinds of hair customs were less stringent for both men and women as you went lower down the caste ladder, while they were extremely important higher up. Because of this, and because Ling has such an enormous task ahead of him uniting all 50 Xingese clans, I feel like for the sake of appeasing some grumpy powerful traditionalists Ling probably does wear his hair properly for the first several years of his reign for the sake of appearances, but overtime will eventually start to rebel and wear his bangs out again (and influence the rest of Xing as a whole regarding how hair is worn, lol). but until then Ling will mourn his bangs in private.  

In the 3rd ending animation and during the episodes taking place during the Promised Day, the uniform is drawn with the top being a solid mass of shirt

But if you read the manga, its clear the top is actually supposed to open at the front like a martial arts gi.

This isn’t a case of simple anime-manga differences either, it’s a legitimate error because the anime drew the uniform correctly in episode 18, when Fu is shown preparing to escort Maria Ross to Xing.

In the FMA Brotherhood anime, Ling reveals himself to Ed and Al as a prince from Xing immediately after the scuffle with Lan Fan and Fu. But in the manga, Ling takes a bit longer to disclose that fact about himself.

In the manga, Ling brings up the details of his heritage for the first time after Al prompts him in this scene here, which was not included in Brotherhood: