Actually one of the things I really admired about FMA is that it did not demonize ALL military people—there were good and decent soldiers such as Hawkeye, Hughes, and Mustang (along with his whole crew)—the real horrors were perpetuated by homunculi in their hunger for human sacrifice.
I am by no means a pacifist.
And I am no militarist. I just thought I’d point out that the Japanese typically have a much more extreme anti-military position than the US and Australia (from where I come). You’re right to point out the more three-dimensional characters for their virtue, which I have to admit I’d forgotten. They did still strike me as starting off starkly utilitarian, and only developing into virtue. Perhaps that’s an even stronger argument for your case?
Arrogance is not hammered out of Ed. No one and nothing could do that to such a strong personality but God. God led him through a wondrous journey of love and sacrifice and through this miracle he is utterly changed by the end of the series.
But in the Japanese context this makes no sense. From the perspective of the target audience, there is no one God who does this. Furthermore, arrogance didn’t have to be hammered out of Ed (in the way it is for real-world Japanese) as long as the vice of arrogance is shown to make way for the virtue of humility. The means are not as memorable as the message, which is that good Japanese suffer for arrogance and are rewarded for humility.
Izumi makes some reference to what happens when divine law is broken—in fact all characters do. That is why human transmutation is the ultimate taboo.
Couldn’t this just as easily be the “cosmic law”, especially in Japanese? It’s certainly not Divine Law as understood by Augustine and Aquinas.
As for the book, it’s still in the works. Cannot say more. I have, however, written in Gilbert magazine about anime and Catholicism, which may continue now and then.
I am unfamiliar with Gilbert Magazine, but I look forward to this book of yours. It’s a topic which has increasingly arrested my interest, and I’m glad that there are others about who have managed to do the heavy lifting!
I also belileve the literal meaning of otaku is: your home. And that it’s sometimes considered a put-down in Japan. Here, we take it differently.
Its general use is honorific, it means someone else’s home (when speaking to someone of superior status). A particularly Japanese quirk is that the meaning of honorific terms is sometimes warped in colloquial speech: The personal pronoun “boku” (males use it to say “I” or “me”) actually means “servant”, but is often considered impolite when speaking to a superior. Likewise, “otaku” in the context we’re discussing describes someone who does not leave their own home, but is consumed with a childish obsession.
There are no Japanese who take pride in being called otaku, even if they freely admit to the criteria. Furthermore, no otaku wants to be one forever. They all expect, sooner or later, to lay their collections aside and find a job, a girl, a house of their own.
This is why when foreigners (not just Americans) show up in Japan calling themselves “otaku”, they only give us a worse image than we already have. They gladly and needlessly adopt a mantle of shame and derision, never realising that they do so. It does no service to encourage the use of the term outside Japan, claiming a “redefinition”. I think the easiest (and least innocuous) substitute would be “enthusiast”.
I consider an interest in manga, anime, and/or video games to be no different to an interest in movies, photography, novels, or astronomy. It is an enthusiasm. Of course, unlike the etymology and semantics of お宅 “otaku”, that’s a mere matter of taste. =)
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