Very recently, out of a desire to have something to do that didn’t require any input or attention from me (well, and to continue teaching Crunchyroll what kinds of stuff I liked), I started watching Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. This is easily one of my favorite anime since it is a remake of the Fullmetal Alchemist story that closely adheres to the manga by the same name, which is absolutely my favorite manga series. I am not a fan of the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime since it seems to go in some odd directions pretty much immediately (largely because the anime series was made well before the manga series was finished), but I know plenty of people who watched it and enjoyed it. I’ll admit a level of bias here since I started reading Fullmetal Alchemist as one of my first manga series right as the first two volumes were released in the US and I didn’t miss a new volume until the series concluded. I read through it at a very formative time in my life and the story has stuck with me for years, standing up to scrutiny each time I read through it again and sometimes revealing things I missed the first time. Which is what I’m finding now as I watch the anime and think my way through the bits of the manga that it skips past or trims to fit a different media format. There’s a whole major aspect to this story I never really considered all that deeply despite how integral it is to the setting. Sure, it isn’t something that’s addressed explicitly by the manga or anime, but it’s not only a major aspect of the setting and worldbuilding, but a active backdrop that helps develop every single character in the series. After all, the story wouldn’t be even close to the same if it wasn’t about power struggles and working towards the good of all within a facist, authoritarian state.

I know I saw this, the explicit facism and authoritarianism on display in so much of the country that most of Fullmetal Alchemist happens in (a place named Amestris), in previous readings of the manga and watchings of the anime. Both are incredibly clear about how Amestris is analogous to pre-World War II Germany (I mean, the ruler of the country is given the title of Fuhrer!), something the writer talks about in the frequent bits of commentary she added to the manga volumes as they were published. She mentioned taking great care with this incredibly sensitive subject matter, especially given that she depicts this government as authoritarian, facist, and entirely too willing to commit mass murder and genocide by showing the government being or doing those things rather than by naming them as such. It is not a flattering view, no matter how you look, but the characters only ever indirectly grapple with it (or, in the case of the genocide, by describing it rather than naming it). Some of them grapple with the way they and their powers were used as weapons of war, a conflict that comes up in the present tense for one of the protagonists, Edward Elric, when he is commanded by the state to commit wholesale slaughter in order to keep the state badge he acquired (and is forced to keep prior to this command). It also comes up in the past tense for characters who participated in an insurrection by a repressed people that the government used as an excuse to commit. None of them shy away from the war crimes they committed, but only one of them (and his subordinates, sure, but he is the only commander in the military structures we encounter in the anime and manga who does this) advocates not only for reforming the country but eventually trying the war criminals who are currently being shielded by the country’s military-run government.

This insurrection-turned-genocide sows the seeds for much of the conflict in the book. For one character, it is the reason he is hell-bent on killing all the state-certified alchemists, a revenge quest he pursues with death-defying furvor after his experiences as a near-victim of the genocide. For another character, it provides the undeniable truth that everything he believed about the country of his birth was wrong. For most other characters, it helps define them by being the reason they are missing limbs, missing family members, or have become disillusioned with the world in which they live. No one we encounter is unaffected by this “extermination war,” though some are removed enough that they can pretend that the racial subtext underlining this war doesn’t matter and anyone who cares about it should shut up and fall in line. This broad scope of references for what it means to be impacted by this war helps draw a lot of subtextual lines. The one commanding officer, Colonel Mustang, who wants to not just reform the country but also eventually try the war criminals it is shielding even though that it includes himself, was in the thick of this campaign and one of its most effective weapons. He has been so changed by the things he did, that he felt he must do, that has dedicated his life to dismantling the systems that resulted in his war crimes, along with eventually erasing the power he used to commit them.

Other characters with ambitions of similar scope tend to not be as extreme as he is. One, a character who is a mentor to Mustang, seems content to leave the military as the powerful force it is, albeit theoretically reducing its power by reintroducing the civilian government. Another, a rival to Mustang, seems only to want to rule and codify her even more extreme brand of authoritarian rule, one that exists without the layer of plausible deniability the current facist regime relied on to allow the general populace to live in peace and not be concerned that they live in what is essentially a dictatorship. Other characters range from merely self-interested to unwilling to even engage with the concept. We get a whole range and while some of these characters are useful allies for the ones positioned as the story’s heroes, the creator stops short of ever really showing them as being in the right. The only people whose ideology we really get to explore in a positive but complex light is that of those who are seeking complete reform and justice. Everyone else’s ideology is explored as something we encounter along the way and quickly reject for either its toothlessness or its extremism.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this whole story (and depiction of this facist, authoritarian state) is that the power central to this story, alchemy, is an equalizing force in this incredibly unequal world. While those in power tend to not only have a great deal of political and military power but personal power as well, almost all of the characters we follow are also shown to wield a great deal of personal power. Sure, for a lot of characters, this great power is shown as the ability to fight well, the intelligence to problem-solve on the fly (often in a fight), sheer destructive capability, or sheer creative capability, but its also shown as the ability to empower others. One of the most important characters never gets in a fight. She is a (teenaged genuis of course, because this is an anime) bioengineer and doctor who specializes in creating mechanical prosthetics for people who have lost their limbs due to the various wars or accidents of this industrial society. The one time she picks up a weapon out of rage and pain, we spend an entire collection of chapters dealing with not just the fact that she couldn’t bring herself to use it in pursuit of revenge, but that those around her were willing to sacrifice themselves in order to prevent her from joining them in the cycles of violence and revenge that they were already caught up in. She doesn’t even need alchemy to do this, though the story does depict her power as “lesser” (in terms of immediate effect, anyway) than that of the story’s alchemists, but it also directly states that hers is the better power because it is used to help others and to empower those who feel like they are at the mercy of the world at large.

Because of this balance of personal power, the story is able to take people of extremely different positions in life and throw them into conflicts as their ideologies clash alongside their individual combat abilities. Of course, not even this degree of power completely equalizes things, but it does allow all of the characters to play on the same field. It allows them to compete so that even the grandest and most powerful can be felled by an upstart with a cause, given the right combination of direct power, planning, or luck. Even someone who should not be able to fight at all can, with the right mindset and enough cleverness, find a way to compete. There is a time when this power gets taken away, when the person with the greatest power takes away everyone’s ability to compete such that previously powerful individuals are rendered entirely helpless (once again making real the entire metaphor about power structures and power imbalances), but because this is a world where magic is essentially real, the characters are able to figure out a way to bypass the power they’re allowed to have by this individual and gain access to the power they were supposed to have all along.

It is difficult to avoid seeing all of this and thinking about the ways it is an even more topical story than it was when it originally came out. Right now, as I’m watching this anime again, I’m also watching the rising authoritarianism, facism, militarism, and colonialism of the world at large. Of my own country. As the people in this story are forced to figure out how they want to react to their new understanding of the world and its power structures, I am forced to grapple with my own. In these stories, it makes sense for the heroes to offer change from within. After all, each of them has such great individual power that they can bring about change on their own, given enough time. Sure, it means becoming complicit in the evils of the system you’re trying to change, but it is still a change that a sufficiently driven individual, with enough support, can bring about. The real world makes no such offers. Time and again, people have risen up in oppposition to the encroaching evil of the powers that be in the world and while some change comes, it comes slowly. Even the most sensible reformations take time and are at the mercy of those within the power structures who might oppose them for no other reason than to exercise the power they’ve been granted or stolen. There is no easy change, nor is there ample room for gradual change from within. Opposition, as loud and broad as it has been in recent years (against Trump, police brutality, the war in Ukraine, and now the genocide in Palistine as people are slowly moving away from their knee-jerk support of Zionism), can do little to change the power structures that exist because no group of protesters will ever be as powerful as the war-mongering, genocide-excusing, or literally criminal head of a major government. It is a difficult concept to wrap your head and heart around, given the disparity between desire and ability to enact change.

I wish I had answers. I spent three days writing this, trying to come up with something to say at the end that would wrap this all up in at least one step forward, but so much has happened. So much has changed for the worse from one day to another that I do not know what to do beyond what I’m doing. Calling my political representatives, supporting charities, staying aware, and looking for chances to give support to those who are suffering seems to be all I can do from my position. It would be an improvement to feel like a drop in a bucket since right now I feel like a molecule in the ocean. There are no great equalizers in this world. There is no ultimate comeupance. A small force of dedicated scientists can’t bring about change to an entire country just by throwing off a yoke most people don’t even realize is there. It will take decades of work. Generations of activists. The people who have commmited their crimes in this day and age will likely be long dead before there is any way to actually hold them accountable (or anyone with the power and willingness to do so, as well). It is not an encouraging place to be, mentally, so all I can do is continue the actions I can take and continue to think about stories of a better world or the slow, grinding process of change.