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justatalkingface · 1 year

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can I ask you what you think of ochako as a character in bnha? I know that in theory she was 'developed to match toga', with all the things toga has going on with her character and where she is in the plot. But when I think about ochako a little deeper I don't really get her 'goal development' exactly, because don't they kind of conflict with each other rather than evolve together?

Because first ochako wanted to make lots of money for her family, then later it became 'who saves/protects the heroes?' But if she runs with that goal and continues to rock the proverbial boat in hero society, that probably won't lead to her making a lot of money right?

And her third emerging goal likely being something about saving/helping the villains in some way, which is definitely better/more interesting for the overall plot, but even more conflicting with her previous goals.

Which would be cool if it was really focused on in her head about how that all might work out or not but we never really get that with ochako. Can I ask you what you think about all this?

As a series, MHA has reached a point where every character can easily be labeled with 'wasted potential', but Ochako is a special case because she's a main character that was sidelined.

I always knew that, to some extent, 1A as a whole would be sidelined over time (though I couldn't have predicted how fast it would happen), but Ochako was part of the main trio, she was one of the more important characters in the early narrative. Even more, compared to Sakura, for example, or Orihime, she wasn't just the girl teammate, or someone's love interest. She had her own goals and ambitions. Most importantly of all though, and what made her so interesting to me, is that she decided to put aside her own feelings.

Manga is... let's be honest here, manga is broadly sexist. Shonens like this are worse. When a woman in shonen is in love? It defines her character, drives it. Their entire character arcs for the entire time they're in love, if not beyond it, hinge on that basic fact.

Sakura, Hinata, and Orihime are all broadly driven by their love for their men at first, and even when they grow past that being their sole motivation to fight, it still remains a fundamental core of their drives. Sakura's big growth early on, for example, is that she wants to marry Sasuke and become a proper ninja, when before her primary purpose in living seemed to be to unironically to have his babies. It was a good step, but it was kind of an insulting step, is the thing, and she never gets beyond her love of Sasuke even when both of them are trying to kill each other after he abandons her for years.

Ochako, though? She has goals first, then gets a crush, and then weighs being in love with her own ambitions and chooses her ambitions over love.

I shit over almost everything Hori does with anyone that isn't a man, because it's pretty much always shit, and the more I think about it the more I almost want to applaud him, just for this, because this? This isn't just a main heroine uninterested in love. This is one who explicitly rejects it for her own agenda, and as pathetic as it is to phrase it this way, that's a huge improvement for a shonen manga.

I mean, I've seen people say that she didn't need to do that, that she could both train to be a hero and chase her love interest, and when you think about it UA students do seem to have enough free time for her to pursue it, but you know what? Who cares?

Maybe there's actually not that much free time, maybe she just doesn't realize how much time she has, maybe she's exactly right! Does it matter? She decided she's not ready for a relationship at this portion of her life and she'd rather do something else with her time; good for her! Chase your dreams! Do what you want when you want!

And for a time, Hori seemed content to treat her as an actual important character, who develops as a combatant (which, as much as I like to say 'power ups aren't character development', I'm not blind to basic facts that mangas like this orbit around a lot of fighting, and you need to be able to fight to stay relevant to the story line) as well as develop as a person.

Actually, let me stop here and pivot a bit to better handle part of your question: her development.

Early on, Ochika training to be a hero was a basiclly a poor kid going to be a sports star to support their family; it wasn't about the job itself, per say, so much as that the job would pay well, and they could get in without getting crippling debt in the process. She had the talent, so she wanted to use it to support her family because she loved them. This was a lot more modest than, say, Lemillion's goals, but it was still noble, and she'd still do a lot of good while supporting her family. At the same time, though, she also just wanted to help people just to see them smile and what not, and so becoming a hero was really a multifaceted goal for her.

The problem with the later development, though, is the same thing that happened to everything about her post her learning Gunhead Martial Arts or so (let me take a brief aside to kind of laugh at that, because 'Gunhead' Martial Arts, rather than just martial arts or whatever just seems really ridiculously to me, but whatever): she was replaced, then her development was largely just given to her by the author happened off screen so we couldn't really connect with how it happened.

That replacement was bad for a bunch of reasons, really: because Bakugou was being promoted from classroom bully to rival character, he needed more focus with his 'rival' so he replaced Shoto. Shoto, who had all the build up of the rival character at first, needed to be in the story since he was so important to later plotlines, but didn't have a place anymore, so he needed to be put somewhere else still in the audience's eyes. The eventual fallout of all this, plus Endeavor's heavy character salvaging attemptings by Hori, is Izuku's core friend group of Ochiko, Iida, and himself was replaced by New Trio of Shoto, Bakugou, and Izuku.

Or, if I'm being even more honest, The Duo of Shoto and Izuku and then Bakugou is there too for some reason.

Something I want to point out here, while we're on talking about it; then new trio isn't a friend group, like the original one was, they're more... work associates. Shoto and Izuku are friends, by this point (and for some reason Shoto is hanging out with a person channeling the traits of his father he despises the most (cough cough, to try and salvage Bakugou)), but we don't see the three of them, like, hang out: they're together at first because they were all interning with Endeavour (for some god forsaken reason (cough cough, to salvage Endeavour)), then after that because they were heavy hitters and honestly just them being put there by the author. There's every indication that the original three are still friends, we just... don't see it, anymore.

But I'm off topic: point is, with the focus shifting from school life to 'let's save the world as first years!', the friendships took the backseat, and Ochika was just... ignored by Hori.

Eventually, she started being put back into the story, since she was still somewhat important, but by this point we had reached The War Arc (and shit, I don't think there's a post where I haven't dunked on that, is there?), and, well.

Everything Changed When The War Arc Attacked.

Everybody's characterization went to shit after that, not just her, and it's not surprising her story went down the cracks.

So, part of her changes, and part of the reason they're confusing with her original goal, is that at least part of them is mixed with her largely dropped but still weirdly there romance plot. Izuku is the origin of her thinking, 'who saves the heroes', because, well, Izuku needs saving from his own idiot self all the time later on, and he's heroic.

I'll point out that this isn't, fundamentally, a conflict with her original goal of supporting her family: she wants heroes to be treated better, she doesn't want heroes to stop being monetized (because that's too far against the status quo for any hero to support!). Even if that impacted her career (which, logically, makes sense as a possible concern and probably part of why you were confused, yet I don't think she thought about once) she's not Mt Lady; she's not going to be paying thousands in damages everytime she does anything. A rescue hero like her is always, unfortunately, going to find someone who needs to be saved by having heavy things lifted off them. Maybe she'd never be rich if this backfired on her, but she'd certainly be well enough to support her parents, at least, since we've never seen a poor hero (sighs, gestures vaguely in a, 'gee, wouldn't that have been nice to see to help develop the profession in literally any way!' sort of fashion).

The second point of 'development'... now that is honestly shit. I've mentioned before how, after a certain point, MHA's plot started turning more and more from the complex and fascinating topics that they presented to us (and got so many of us engrossed in the first place), to a more cliche format that I fondly call a 'Full Shonen'. Part of a Full Shonen plot is, unless an important villain is truly, absolutely evil (so, basiclly AFO) they aren't beyond redemption, no matter how little sense that makes. If they're not beyond redemption, The Good Guys(TM), are therefore obligated to at least try and save them from themselves. Another typical Full Shonen plotline is, if there's a female bad guy, the female good guy will have to be the one to fight them.

Following that logic, Himko, the crazed female serial killer, is not beyond salvation, and so it fall to Ochako, the female hero, to save her, no matter how little sense that makes on a character or narrative level, because, you know, cat fight or something.

*sighs for forever*

Problem being everything post-War is so quarter-assed that this entire new plot line is built off, and really isn't held together by, the fact they both love Izuku. Or rather, Himiko is vaguely in love with Ochiko because she's cute (or 'cute', by whatever arcane and ill-defined criteria she uses to target people) and feels a bond with her because she also loves Izuku, and Ochiko is just... there, basiclly, and fights her because, you know, she's a villain. The connection is beyond forced, and yet we all know that somehow she'll be essential to 'saving' Toga.

While we're talking about these two, I'm going to point out that people saying Ochaka in the latest chapters wanting to talk about love are dramatically missing the point. She didn't want to go girl talk with Toga about their mutual crush, no matter how hilarious a meme summary that was. Toga was leaving via warp portal, while turning into Twice, and Ochkaka wanted to stop her because, you know, Twice-Toga is going to make their temporary existence everyone else's problem. She couldn't physically stop her from where she was, so turned to the one thing that has always distracted Toga in the past: talking about love. Even a mere thirty seconds of Toga gushing about Izuku, after all, is thirty seconds less of a one man army fucking up the heroes plans, not even mentioning duplicating AFO or SFO or some other nightmare scenario; anything she could do to run the clock on Twice's blood at all is priceless for the heroes.

And before anyone says it, that's not some brilliant insight on Ochako's part, it's not some sign of their 'deep connection'; anyone who spends two minutes around Toga would know that much. Anyways, because of Toga's... random ass character development just before all this happened, she's finally able to control her impulses like a normal person, and leaves instead. Ochaka's comment at the end, 'she didn't want to talk about love', isn't sad that she didn't get to talk about some threesome or whatever bullshit, it's surprise, because that's not how Toga works.

So, yeah, Ochaka's great start early on fell apart after she lost the spotlight, and it's a shame. The evolution to 'saving heroes' could have easily been handled better just by, you know, focusing on her at all, and we could have seen rising concerns about how heroes are treated in their cutthroat line of work (obligatory screaming at failed heroic society development) over time, and grow more organically in her mind and motivation. Saving Toga... Toga is so unreasonable as a character that, barring a drastic redesign of her characterization, or more reasonably, something for Ochika to connect with her and make her care beyond being a female who, gasp, likes Izuku too!!!!!!, that... that was never going to work well. It, and she, are too much of a mess, and Ochaka is too good of a person.

#ask #mha critical #bnha critical #urakara ochako #wasted potential #ochako chose her own path #too bad she was left behind on it #hori's chronic loathing of women #bakugo critical #Everything Changed When The War Arc Attacked #the failure of the development of heroic society and corruption #Full Shonen #Himiko critical #quarter-assing the plot

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arysthaeniru · 10 months

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Things I find are handled so interestingly well in the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist compared to Brotherhood:

Ishval! The true horror and terror of Ishval is handled so much better: it is the centre of the show’s thesis about the violence done against other people in the name of scientific progress and the empire’s violence

Speaking of: racism is handled better in this show too! The way that Ed and Al are so callous and dismissive about Ishval through most of the show, despite Marcoh’s warnings, and it really doesn’t hit them until they go there in person and realize that Rick and Rio have suffered just like them: in fact, Rick and Rio have suffered even more than them. Ed and Al can always go back to Resembool. Rick and Rio can’t. The casual racism of our main characters is really good! It’s very realistic that Ed and Al believe the racist lies about Ishval for SO LONG, despite rationally understanding the military is bad

Liore! Because Liore gets to have this back-and-forth with Ishval, you get this really strong empathy and solidarity between Rose and Scar, as this representation of Ishval and Liore: religious brown people versus the Empire coming to genocide them out of existence...the solidarity and love between Scar and Rose and the peoples of Ishval and Liore is really good!

Ed and Al really get to be kids and get to be wrong a lot? They get to be such unreliable narrators in a way that is so interesting! When they say something about alchemy or make comments on other characters, they’re often wrong and misguided! Ed’s petulance and anger and stubborn defiance and Al’s naivete and inability to question other people’s lies gets them in trouble way more often than it does in Brotherhood and it really emphasizes just how much he and Al are children out of their depth in a horrible system, in a way that Brotherhood often doesn’t.

The metaphor of alchemy: Alchemy IS science. For all its goods, it is all the evils and fallouts of unethical science: science that is done at the expense of people, science that is done in the name of greed, science that is done only in the name of violence, and with this strong metaphor, the Philosopher’s Stone as this pinnacle of progress that is built on the blood of common people is just a less complicated metaphor. Because Alchemy is science and FMA 2003 is a commentary on imperialistic, colonial science that is so directly commenting on the Gulf War, it gets to say things much more angrily than I think Brotherhood ever gets to?? You feel the anger about the lies of the Gulf War in FMA 2003 and how it parallels to WW2 better. The animators seem more angry and I enjoy that more!

(More about pacing, characterization and the overall tone of the show under the cut!)

Although the show ultimately whiffs it, the homunculi being the leftover remnants of human transmutation allows for so many climatic, interesting conflicts between both the homunculi and humans, but also between different humans! Ed and Izumi and their relationship in this show is defined by their fundamental disagreements regarding the role of alchemy and what to do with the homunculi: and it is SO good!

I love that the homunculi are resentful of humans for living and want the philosopher’s stone to be human again! I could do without them all being controlled by a mysterious entity who is so much more boring than all of the other homunculi, but hey. That happened in Brotherhood too, Father’s very boring.

Speaking of the homunculi: they are so much scarier and intimidating!! When they show up to a fight, pretty much everybody loses! It’s great! It’s not until the last 10-15 episodes of the show that Ed is able to actually put up a fight against them, so you really feel the stakes everytime they show up on screen. They kill Hughes masterfully, they beat the shit out of Scar, they beat the shit out of Ed and Al, they beat the shit out of Izumi--they’re genuinely scary and I love it! In Brotherhood, they are able to evenly fight them SO MUCH MORE QUICKLY and I think it makes them less of a threat than in 2003.

The main women in Ed and Al’s lives get so much more to do! Maria, Sheska, Izumi and Winry all have a HUGE amount of screentime compared to Brotherhood, where Winry is mostly just running around and has very little initiative to investigate the main plot! Here, she and Sheska investigate homunculi, participate in fights and really are emotionally impacted by events. Izumi barely shows up in Brotherhood ever, and she is a fundamental player in the game in 2003! And Lieutenant Maria Ross gets to really actually play the role of ‘first adult to be like CHILDREN SHOULDN’T BE IN THE ARMY’ which gives her genuine depth and emotionality.

Oh, Martel’s a real character too! She and Al are fun, I enjoy their banter and I enjoy that she gets to really emphasize to Ed and Al that Ishval was entirely a false-flag operation

Rose too! I love that Rose comes back as a real character and not cameo! I love that Rose’s rape too, is not just this moment where Ed truly and really realizes that the military does interpersonal violence, but also is something that motviates Rose herself! I love that moment where she screams at Ed to keep walking, just as he shouted at her at the beginning of the show. I love that her continuing on as a character means that Ed’s shitty speech at the beginning of the show gets to be recontextualized as a thing of strength again. I love her resilience, and I love her.

On the villain-side, at the expense of Greed being a character, Lust gets to be a very sympathetic character! I love her contemplations on why she wants to be human, I love her slow realization that she’s tired of the fight, I love her immediate betrayal of Dante once she realizes that Dante is just using her, I adore her and Envy’s petty bickering. She gets so much depth by being formerly human and being linked to Ishval.

Speaking of Winry: Roy killing Winry’s parents is just. So much better. I love how it immediately breaks Winry’s faith in the government entirely, I love how much it really and truly shows how the Amestrian military is evil. I love how it really creates this moment of weakness and vulnerability in Roy, which he doesn’t get nearly as much in the other show! Roy’s too cool in Brotherhood! I love how young, sad and pathetic he is when he kills the Rockbells, it really sells the horrors of war much better.

I really like getting to see Ed and El’s counterparts across all of the side characters: the characters that only show up for one or two episodes: everybody is brothers. Everybody is consumed by this burning posessive love. But nobody goes as far as Ed and Al are willing to. I love how they are confronted with their mistakes and failures everywhere they go! It really sets the tone of horror. It really sells Ed and Al as the protagonists of a dramatic tragedy. They made the mistake, and they will make it again, in the name of love!

A small thing: but I love that Izumi and Ed disagree with what the Gate is? I love that Ed thinks of the Gate as Truth. And Izumi doesn’t! Izumi simply thinks it is a horror. Izumi thinks that what insight the gate gave her was not truth but something else, and I agree with her. I love the idea that Ed’s conception of reality is based on him being Mr. Edgy Angsty Atheist! I love that the gate is silent in 2003, I like that there are very little answers. And I agree with Izumi! The answer to the question: what lies behind the ultimate taboo of science is NOT truth!! It doesn’t quite make sense!

Relatedly, I love that Ed learns all of his horrible communication skills and bottling everything up coping mechanisms from Izumi. They make all the same mistakes all the time! Izumi always takes everything on her shoulders even though she has help, as does Ed. Izumi never communicates her love and appreciation for the people around her, letting her actions do the speaking, as does Ed. They are terrible mirrors of each other, and I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

I like that Armstrong is not comic relief? He puts on ‘Mr Muscle Man’ as a facade about three times in 2003, and every single time, it’s a distraction, it’s supposed to make people look elsewhere. Most of the time in 2003, he’s incredibly solemn and serious, as he tries to endure doing the wrong thing in the name of duty. I love that he’s still suffering the consequences of being too kind in Ishval.

I like that Mustang, Hawkeye and all our favourite main characters put Ishvalans in trains and take them off to concentration camps. It’s not very subtle with its metaphor, but it shouldn’t be. If anything, Brotherhood deeply de-emphasizes the horrendous nature of the genocidal play of the army and the constant violence they partake in. Roy and his people are so heroic in Brotherhood, and I really like how much they are complicit. How much they are ultimately soldiers who are ‘just following orders’ in a genocidal regime.

I like that they don’t turn to act for the side of good until the very end of the show. I think it highlights the stakes a bit more. I like that the show makes us doubt Roy for a lot longer before finally giving Ed hope! It’s far more cathartic!

I like that Paninya ISN’T ACTUALLY A THIEF???? I like that Paninya is just a gal who wants to make her adoptive dad proud and she steals Ed’s pocketwatch not for Winry to teach her a lesson about how ‘stealing is bad’ but that Ed gets the lesson that he’s not the only one that makes automail work for him! I love that Ed loses actually in 2003!

I really enjoy Fletcher and Russell. Fletcher especially is my good boy. He and Al should hang out more :)

I really like that Kimblee starts out as a fugitive in 2003! There is something so slimey in Brotherhood where the army just immediately takes him out of jail to track the Elric brothers: it definitely shows just how evil the Amestrian army is, but I think I prefer him being a traitor to Greed’s gang! I love how much more personal Martel makes her fury with him! I like how it takes a while for the military to take him back in here, mostly because it allows for Archer to be a character instead.

I think Archer being a character makes Kimblee more effective: Kimblee is not Ed’s enemy. He’s Scar’s enemy. And I LOVE that in 2003.

Archer’s initial attempt to do the right thing instantly being overtaken by craven greed is also a really fun arc! I just enjoy more military characters getting to be pieces of shit.

Scar gets to interact with more Ishvalan characters because he’s not tied down by far too large an entourage cast, and as a result, he is just. SO much better. I love that he and his mentor fight and talk and he ties himself to the refugees of Ishval in a way he doesn’t quite get to in Brotherhood. I LOVE his determination to make a Philosopher’s Stone out of the military’s lives. I love that he has no hesitation about it either. This is praxis!

I love that Ishvalan people’s legacy is alchemy too! I like that alchemy is the lost art, the old art, and not something that missed Ishvalans by entirely! Although I do like that Scar’s brother in Brotherhood is trying to combine alchemy and alkahestry, I LOVE that 2003 is simply him going back to Ishval’s ancient history. It makes the science metaphor more interesting, especially when you see that apparently the ancient Ishavalsn found out how to make a Philosopher’s Stone and then rejected it and alchemy entirely as a result. I think it’s really interesting worldbuilding!

I love that whole sequence where Ed kind of makes Wrath’s hatred of him worse? I love how mean and obsessive Ed can be in the show sometimes, I love how flawed and interesting he is. He really feels like a teenager lashing out against the cruel world, and it emphasizes the tragedy of it all.

I love that Hohenheim’s immortality is NOT an accident. I like that he actively did evil things to gain immortality and I like that now his is a story of regret! I think it makes Hohenheim so much more compelling when he is a man seeking repetence for an actual sin instead of being tricked? I think it’s more compelling that he has the same sins as his sons. I like that he was the first to do human transmutation and the first to make a Philosopher’s stone, and that these are Ed and Al’s legacy?? It’s so interesting and fun!

The slow pacing really allows for the tragedy to actually build! I love how slow yet purposeful all the episodes are! The only truly filler episodes are the weird episode about the sexy female thief that keeps tricking Al because Al is too horny/naive, and the Mustang Team’s side adventures. Every other filler episode is doing important work for building the themes of the show! And even the two filler episodes are doing importent things re: characterization!

Shou Tucker is such a CREEPY minor villain that is used to perfection in 2003. I love how he keeps showing up, I love how awful he is, and I love how much more significant he and Nina are to 2003, because Ed and Al spend four episodes with them instead of their story being wham-blam-ka-blam like it is in Brotherhood, where everything with them happens in 1 episode.

Laboratory Five is SO MUCH MORE DEVASTATING as a dramatic tension point for Ed! I love how much more evil it is! I love how much more hopeless the situation is. I LOVE the dramatic irony of Ed almost killing hundreds of people because he believed Shou Tucker, despite everything. It’s so good. It makes Brotherhood’s Lab Five Arc pale in comparison.

Hot Take: I kind of love that Ed goes to Nazi Germany by going through the Gate xD They don’t spend nearly enough time on it, but I kind of adore it anyway. FMA 2003 said subtlety is for cowards, and they were CORRECT!

Things I think weren’t as good but still interesting

Brotherhood really went off with making the homunculus the root of the nation-state of Amestris. I love that in Brotherhood, the state was founded for the explicit purpose of genocidal violence, and the homunuculus as simply the underside of the genocidal turn, the secret police that make the state violence seem legitimate. The hazy relationship between the military/state and the homunuculus muddies the otherwise clear message that 2003 is going for re: state violence and the role of science in perpetrating/continuing violence.

Dante’s bad. Not that Father is GOOD, not in any way, but Dante’s plan is very stupid and is very underexplained. Why do Trisha and Bradley still follow Dante when she clearly reveals she’s just using them to prolong her own life and has no intention of making them human? Why do they not immediately just turn traitor like Lust does--the show never builds any real loyalty between Dante and the other homunculi, which makes for a rushed climax, alas. (I do LOVE her and Hohenheim’s bodies physically rotting, that’s some really fun body horror! And I can’t help it, I love exes who were evil scientists and one continued to be evil, and one repented. It’s a fun trope and it was DEEPLY underutilized, alas)

I’m sad Scar died! 2003 obviously has an incredibly high body count and I defend all of them, but Scar dying is just kinda sad! I like that he has to live with himself in Brotherhood and make Ishval again.

Greed doesn’t get to do much at all, and his weird acceptance of his own death is VERY strange compared to his own acceptance of being a man so greedy that he wants everything. Although I ended up liking his role as Ed’s first murder, I think Greedling is SUCH a highlight of Brotherhood, that its absence felt jarring.

May Chang and Ling are such good characters, and I miss Xing! I think I really end up liking 2003′s laser focus on Ishval more, in the end, I think it does a better job of focusing on genocide and racial violence as the catalyst for the state’s and science’s expansion. But May and Ling are such lovely characters and I missed them.

Al’s angst about maybe not being a real person goes on for SO LONG. I forgot it’s like a full four episodes! It’s the one emotional stake that doesn’t quite feel as impactful as the rest of the show.

Sloth-Trisha had so much potential that was squandered, I loved when she finally became a fighting antagonist, but I wish they’d spent more time on Ed and Al arguing about her and what to do with her/what she means. I mean, it tracks with them both: that Al instantly goes ‘oh, homunculi are remnants of human transormati--OMIGOD MOM’S OUT THERE’ and Ed’s like ‘i refuse to think about this until the last possible minute’ it’s very in character, but it means they never get to really fight about killing Sloth-Trisha, which is a shame!

#fullmetal alchemist #fma #i have way too many opinions #haha #these are all deeply personal and subjective of course #if you like brotherhood more still YOU ARE SO VALID #there's a lot to love about brotherhood!#but i have such ADORATION in my heart for 2003 and what 2003 angrily says #i think ultimately 2003 is just a genre i enjoy more #2003 is a dramatic tragedy and a horror anime while also following some shonen tropes #while brotherhood is just full on shonen #and brotherhood is good shonen!! but i just enjoy horror and tragedy so so much more #which is why i have such deep love in my heart for 2003

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