Ask John: Is Alphonse Elric a Mecha Substitute?
Question:
In Fullmetal Alchemist, do you think Ed binding Al’s body to a piece of armor, was that anime’s sort of way of having a semi robot in the anime?
Answer:
I’m not an expert on manga creator Hiromu Arakawa’s work, nor do I know what her exact motivations for the development of Fullmetal Alchemist were. However, I think it’s safe to presume that Al Elric was not consciously designed as a psuedo robot. Given the sword and sorcery setting of Fullmetal Alchemist, medieval style suits of armor are a natural presence. Furthermore, considering the fantastical character of the story, had Arakawa wanted to include a conventional robot or cyborg character, she probably would have done so. As far as I’m aware, none of Arakawa’s manga – including Stray Dog, Raiden-18, Shanghai Yomakikai, Souten no Komori, and Jyushin Enbu – include robots or robot characters. Typically popular shounen adventure manga seem to not include obviously mechanical characters. Manga series including One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Gintama, Soul Eater, Fairy Tail, Yu Yu Hakusho, Flame of Recca, Saint Seiya, and Hokuto no Ken don’t feature prominent robot characters. Dragon Ball does include androids but rarely features obviously mechanical major characters. But that’s not to say that Arakawa couldn’t have included a genuine robotic character had she wanted to. Buichi Terasawa’s popular and long running shounen adventure manga series Cobra prominently features the female robotic character Lady. Similarly, the titular character of the current shounen adventure series Heroman is a robot. So there’s no logical reason why Arakawa would have had to subversively hint at a robot character instead of overtly including one in Fullmetal Alchemist if she had wanted a robot character to appear in Fullmetal Alchemist.
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That’s a really interesting question. Although the context of the original author’s work leads me to say no, I might consider otherwise given nature and purpose of mecha in anime from a historical perspective.
A mech might ultimately be categorized either as an autonomous robot, or some man-powered construction to serve the purpose of its pilot/operator. For little Alphonse, he’s the benefactor of metal shield of a body not of his own making, which enables him to enlist all the miraculous physical accomplishments of a compact mobile suit while still retaining some small facets of his human character that should still make him appealing.
I suppose that’s arguable, but I think of “mecha” as an abbreviation for “mechanical.” So “mecha” refers to robots, cars, spaceships, computers, vending machines, and powered armor, but not bio-organic armor like Guyver or anything worn like clothing, such as a suit of armor plate.