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New glasses = urgent & key
So apparently it tasks my vision to follow a PowerPoint presentation from the back of a classroom that seats fifty people? Yeah. Not slides filled with meeny text, either.
Stuff-I've-read updates:
Fullmetal Alchemist vol.9: where I'm at now (series currently serves as my commute reading). At this point the storyline's pretty much diverged from the anime, and it's funny how disorienting I find it - doesn't fit well into the usual conceptual boxes. XD It's a shounen manga that doesn't have story arcs. It's a quest narrative that goes in circles. And so on. Stuff seems to happen mainly as a result of the last thing that happened. Characters with a stake in the proceedings are introduced, their psychology is developed, then they die (not unlike Death Note). Meanwhile "colour" characters resurface unexpectedly. I also can't grasp the "moe value" at all, which is kind of weird because I know there's a huge fandom and I don't usually deviate that far from the fangirl mean. XD;
Structurally the entire thing is the third act of a Monkey's Paw story, after the devastating unexpected consequences, when the characters are trying to return to status quo. They're looking for the - nebulously defined - piece of information that will get them there, and practically every action or event in the series hinges on access to or withholding of information, by someone, from someone (author and reader included). Often enough the reader gets hold of information but Ed and Al don't, which makes it difficult to mark their progress. And a lot of times Things just crazily happen (ex. Scar). I'm oddly frustrated by this. XD Like, once I get to volume 30 I'd better look back and see that it makes sense in retrospect that each specific Thing happened when it did.
Most shounen manga is about process really - here's a pie-in-the-sky goal, now about the friendship, courage and hard work that get you there. Or: here's a case, now learn by solving the problem how it relates back to you, past and present. This might change, but up to date I'm not certain what kind of growth the process of the third act instigates in Ed and Al as people (the first two acts, sure). Instead I keep thinking past the goal itself. So they figure out how to get back to status quo. Then what? What do they do with themselves? Or they find the opportunity cost is too high again, in whatever sense. Again, then what?
The anime addresses some of these but the manga gives me the feeling that any answers forthcoming are waaaaay far down the line.
The best hope I have is that the mangaka really is painstakingly putting together a very large jigsaw puzzle and it's just at the stage where even the pieces that fit together have no greater context in which to relate to each other. XD Will know more once I finish up to vol.16, I guess.
Stuff-I've-read updates:
Fullmetal Alchemist vol.9: where I'm at now (series currently serves as my commute reading). At this point the storyline's pretty much diverged from the anime, and it's funny how disorienting I find it - doesn't fit well into the usual conceptual boxes. XD It's a shounen manga that doesn't have story arcs. It's a quest narrative that goes in circles. And so on. Stuff seems to happen mainly as a result of the last thing that happened. Characters with a stake in the proceedings are introduced, their psychology is developed, then they die (not unlike Death Note). Meanwhile "colour" characters resurface unexpectedly. I also can't grasp the "moe value" at all, which is kind of weird because I know there's a huge fandom and I don't usually deviate that far from the fangirl mean. XD;
Structurally the entire thing is the third act of a Monkey's Paw story, after the devastating unexpected consequences, when the characters are trying to return to status quo. They're looking for the - nebulously defined - piece of information that will get them there, and practically every action or event in the series hinges on access to or withholding of information, by someone, from someone (author and reader included). Often enough the reader gets hold of information but Ed and Al don't, which makes it difficult to mark their progress. And a lot of times Things just crazily happen (ex. Scar). I'm oddly frustrated by this. XD Like, once I get to volume 30 I'd better look back and see that it makes sense in retrospect that each specific Thing happened when it did.
Most shounen manga is about process really - here's a pie-in-the-sky goal, now about the friendship, courage and hard work that get you there. Or: here's a case, now learn by solving the problem how it relates back to you, past and present. This might change, but up to date I'm not certain what kind of growth the process of the third act instigates in Ed and Al as people (the first two acts, sure). Instead I keep thinking past the goal itself. So they figure out how to get back to status quo. Then what? What do they do with themselves? Or they find the opportunity cost is too high again, in whatever sense. Again, then what?
The anime addresses some of these but the manga gives me the feeling that any answers forthcoming are waaaaay far down the line.
The best hope I have is that the mangaka really is painstakingly putting together a very large jigsaw puzzle and it's just at the stage where even the pieces that fit together have no greater context in which to relate to each other. XD Will know more once I finish up to vol.16, I guess.
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The vaguely disturbing thing about being in a small program is that so far, like *six* of my eight classes have been in the same two rooms.
...and from back when in undergrad, I know that my vision is shit. So, no shame *at all* about just plopping down behind the desk closest to the blackboard.
...though also helps that when the professor calls on me, or even just looks vaguely desperately in my direction, I usually know what I'm talking about...
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Not that I need another shounen series to follow, GTO and Samurai Deeper Kyo are plenty long enough
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Helps, yes, if you like the characters; which I do. Helps to be a fan of unrevealed backstory, which this has. But I still never get that deadly whiff of following one's nose/ we're only here for the fights that hangs over any Jump series I can think of off-hand.
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So when I see progress, it's all good, but when I don't je piétine. It actually feels to me like nose-following, big time (so does Saiyuki). Whereas Jump series... should be read very quickly in large chunks, anyhow. XD
I also love backstory but thus far I've gotten it all from the anime, so. XD
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So I'm asking, would it be worth picking up the series again now that I'm a little older?
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Re: moe, it's hard getting a grip on the manga because there are characters like Ed who are like right out of violent gag manga (have you read Prince Zushio?) but the themes are serious, serious, serious. You can laugh when it's Zushio getting his arms chopped off because he's indestructible, but is it really that funny when Ed gets brained with the wrench, considering that the violence on the Eastern Border is systematic genocide?
Speaking of genocide, it used to bother me that Arasawa would pull out these totally horrific events as well as heavy themes like racism or war crimes or personal responsibility, and not discuss them, but lately Ed has started to have those conversations and now I kind of want to go back to the way it was before. -_-; Your whole race and way off life were wiped out, but my friend lost both parents, so we're equal! In-character for Ed, but it offends my delicate North American sensitives.
So in conclusion, it's weird. ^^; You have to detach to read it, but you can't detach all the way, or there's no point. Also, like you said, your ability to read on really hinges on how much faith you have in the author. Which explains why so many FMA-manga fan-communities look kind of like Arakawa-cult communities. XD; Not sure how I feel about that. But I do think she knows what she's doing, and I do want to know how it ends.
Maybe I'm just trying to forget the end of the anime (meaning, the movie), which I am still extremely bitter about. XD
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Anyway I got over the heavy themes with the anime, which I basically watched with a thought bubble hanging over my head to the effect of "NOT ABOUT AFGHANISTAN DAMMIT." (Or is it???) I thought it was neat that one got to see how deeply FUBAR the country was by demonstration before anyone started talking about something being rotten in the state of Amestris. But then, insofar as talking goes every conversation not involving Ed and Al in the series is based on hints, inference, and need-to-know.
I guess it really is the non-linearity that bugs me. XD; Halfway through volume 12 and it is putting together a jigsaw puzzle of information, so. I can't help framing it as Ed And Al's Quest For Redemption because Elric brotherly love is basically my emotional hook into the series. Looking ahead, yeah, it's pretty obvious that much empirically bigger changes are going to take place - by saving themselves they'll save the world, or they'll have to choose between the two goals, or something.
In several instances I thought the anime version/explanation of What Happened is superior to the manga's, in terms of packing a punch. The ending isn't one of them though (too much like cheating XD).
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I love puzzles, so. XD Don't need an emotional hook, puzzling out who did what and when and for what reason is enough for me. But I agree that the anime was much more effective in terms of really bringing out the trauma, especially in the scenes where Ed young and vulnerable (in contrast to brash exterior). The manga discusses this, but only for like one page, and we don't even see Ed's expression! Actually, the anime was so much better than the manga in this, that I couldn't read the manga back then -- but I guess it's been long enough by now that I've kind of forgotten what the anime was like.
Cheating, and Hughes was a Nazi. JUST SAYING.