About a year ago, I stopped watching anime. I had always loved it, and thought it presented some of the most striking and unique artistic and aesthetic experiences I had ever seen. But it had always had a lot of... problematic aspects. I don't mean “problematic” in the modern sense, as a left-wing snag word that's just a euphemism for “misogynist” or “racist” - I mean “problematic” in the sense that some of the things it presented (a lot of which, yes, were tied up in gender issues) caused a tension that was worth examining. To put it simply, there were a lot of extremely questionable things that were common to a lot of anime – a bizarre psychosexual streak, for example, or a totally fucked sense of drama and pacing – that were (and still are) totally accepted protocol in a lot of shows. And, for some reason, these tendencies are totally allowed, or even worse, codified as genre tropes, as something inherent to the experience of watching anime.
So I'll just go out and say it: most anime is very conservative. I mean that politically. That's what comes out of a culture like Japan – and look, I adore Japanese culture, but I don't think I'm overstepping my bounds by saying that the whole country has some bizarre, puritanical hangups about gender, sexuality and race. Is it worse than in America? I don't know, and it's not my place to say. But it manifests in a fundamentally different way, and seeing that manifestation as an American, we're confronted with a weird and alien version of some other country's subconscious. Maybe that causes us to have an adverse reaction, to not want to judge it or even touch it with a ten-foot-pole.
But some things should transcend national borders, and some things need to be said. A lot of anime is just fucked up and awful. Objectifying and minimizing women the way a lot of it does is awful. There's a tendency to sexualize little girls, which is awful. Whenever it comes time to present someone from another country, it's almost always done with stereotypes, which is awful. It's just awful and there have been some anime shows that have left me feeling truly scummy from even watching them.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood isn't one of them. It is absolutely, shockingly progressive for an anime. I mean, most of the reason I decided to give this one a shot was because it seemed like it wouldn't have that much embarrassing fanservice. It fulfilled that promise, sure enough – there's only one skimpily-dressed woman in the show, and it's a demon named Lust. It's maybe predictable to personify the idea of lust as a temptress, but it's probably the most acceptable situation to show a scantily-clad woman and have it be relevant or important.
But... it's more than just the refreshing lack of fanservice. This show is progressive in many, many ways – I'm willing to credit that, by the way, to the fact that Hiromu Arakawa, who wrote and illustrated the manga that this show faithfully adapts, is a woman, a relative rarity among manga writers. It shows a large variety of strong and distinct women – I'd estimate, offhand, that there are equally as many women characters as there are men, and even though the two most prominent women in the show are both more-or-less of the shouty, violent, STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER archetype, this accusation stings a lot less than it should because of the wide backbone of the many female characters who may not be as important, but manifestly do not fit that mold. Not only that, it's very skeptical of the institutions of religion, government and military, not only in terms of their treacherousness but also of the material harm they do to innocent people. Speaking of which, there's also a couple different races represented, one of which is clearly an analogue to the Palestinian people in the way they've been killed and displaced from their homes, and the series treats this as a legitimate and unforgivable moral horror. Its attitude towards disabled people is probably the quietest and most subtle of its many socially-aware tendencies, but also the most unreservedly triumphant; Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is resplendent with a variety of sympathetically-rendered disabled people, up to and including its main characters.
It's not a perfect show by any means, but so much of what it does just seems like a breath of fresh air considering the stultifying conservativeness of almost every anime surrounding it. The bigger complaints to raise here are mostly aesthetic – the show, especially in its early going, relies entirely too much on lame-duck comedy and stereotypical anime reaction shots. It also suffers a lot from stilted pacing; roughly the first half of the show is attempting to adapt material that had already been covered by the previous Fullmetal Alchemist anime series before it can branch off into its own storyline, and this leads to some really disjointed storylines. This all starts to smooth out towards the end, though, when all the backstory dumps and character motivations start paying off in the final arc, which is essentially a series of sequestered confrontations in which characters are confronted with tough decisions that lead to some very satisfying character arcs. For all I could complain about the weird feeling of the show's first half – and I could – it manages to pull off a pretty magnificent ending.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood isn't necessarily a series I'd show to an anime hater to convince them that the artform is worthwhile. At the same time, if an anime hater did see it, I imagine it would rankle them a lot less than most anime. When it chooses to straightforwardly recite its genre tropes, they're always the less reprehensible ones, and a lot of what the show does is totally comprehensible with a Western sensibility of pacing and drama, again unlike most anime – it's totally clear why this series is so relatively popular over here in America. This is a base that more anime should, but probably won't, draw from. And while that's really unfortunate, it's also lucky that we got it – a breath of fresh air, an anime I can appreciate unreservedly without feeling like a creep or a weirdo, and a show with an unmistakably positive, forward-thinking outlook. It's impossible to understate how much of a treasure that is.
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