If she was the only woman in Brotherhood, I would complain about creating unfair and unattainable standards for women. She’s a blonde beauty, but her actions are always swift and sure. Compared to her brawny younger brother Alex, whose personality is literally sparkles and roses, Olivier is a staunch and ruthless leader. Out of all the women on this list, General Olivier Mira Armstrong is the closest to falling into the “strong female character” trap. Gracia is the only active mother represented on the show, and it’s nice to see her role valued alongside all of the highly trained ass-kicking women. She’s often there to bake Ed and Al an apple pie and give them comfort during tough times. Her primary function is as a supportive military wife and stay-at-home mom to a three-year-old. Gracia Hughes is by all means a secondary character, but I don’t think that makes her any less remarkable. She loves her husband and prefers the butcher shop they run together over the riches associated with becoming a State Alchemist, and the show lets her determine her own role. Despite her amazing talent, Izumi would rather be thought of as a housewife than an alchemist. Even after years of training and military life, it’s clear that Ed and Al never surpass her in skill. She’s tough as nails and begins their training by abandoning them on an island for a month (don’t worry, she left her assistant to secretly watch over them). Izumi Curtis takes the boys in after the death of their mother and teaches them alchemy. And then on top of that, she’s the only person who knows an alternative form of alchemy called alkahestry that can save the country from certain doom. It embraces the fact that cute fuzzy pandas and getting psyched about talking to a boy that you like are parts of adolescence. She builds him up in her mind and fantasizes about their life together. At twelve, everyone gets an obsessive crush, and May’s obsessive crush is on Alphonse. The reason I love May so much is that, even though she’s a pretty tough little girl, her toughness doesn’t trump the fact that she’s twelve years old. Because of this, she’s committed to doing everything in her power to fix the country’s military dictatorship rather than lusting after Mustang. She is a military sniper, and the human death toll that she was personally responsible for during the Ishvalan War weighs on her heavily. Along with doing everything in her power to help him achieve his ambitions, she’s also dealing with some pretty heavy stuff on her own. They’re extremely co-dependent, but luckily this isn’t a case of Hawkeye slavishly following his orders. Her fate is inextricably tied to her superior, Colonel Roy Mustang, and their relationship is dysfunctional to say the least. Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye is my personal favorite character, and she’s certainly one of the most complicated characters on the show. Her commitment to helping the brothers drives them forward, but it doesn’t prevent her from succeeding in her own right. But, on top of her career success, she doesn’t shy away from her more tender feelings and cries easily for her friends. She’s a damn good mechanic, succeeding in a male-dominated field, and she’s unabashedly proud of her skills. She could have so easily fallen neatly into the “love interest” category, and even though the two eventually harbor romantic feelings for one another, there’s so much depth to her character that it seems secondary. Take Winry, Edward’s childhood best friend. Instead, the series lets the ladies be complex, fully fleshed-out human beings. The best part about Brotherhood is that it doesn’t just rely on a generic “badass women” to fill the “strong female characters” trope and call it a day. In fact, there are so many women who are fully fleshed out, both as main and supporting characters, that it’s almost an embarrassment of riches (if there was anything embarrassing about representation, which there isn’t). The show takes place in a military setting, which could easily rely on male soldiers to get the storytelling done, but Brotherhood doesn’t fall into that trap. The first time I watched Brotherhood, the depth of representation took me by surprise. Fullmetal Alchemist has the subtitle “Brotherhood,” which is accurate insofar as it portrays the story of two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, but it’s inaccurate in that it fails to highlight the contributions of the consistently awesome and diverse women in the cast of characters.
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