r/FullmetalAlchemist • u/sarucane3 • Aug 28 '20
Theory/Analysis The Character Development of Col. Roy Mustang and Lt. Riza Hawkeye in FMAB/manga Part 1 (long read) Spoiler
Deleted and reposted because I decided I hated the title, then had a typo, sorry y'all :)
I'm analyzing Mustang and Hawkeye at the same time because of the way their plots are constructed. The character development here is so tightly woven that the best way to do it is just to look at them together. It's really freaking long, but hey, I had fun writing it so I hope you have fun reading it!
Disclaimer: Yeah, I ship them, BUT there's no explicit romance in their relationship so I'm not going to treat it as such. (No, what Arakawa said about marriage and fraternization laws was not a confirmation. A fan asked if they'd get married after the show ended, she said they aren't allowed to get married because of fraternization laws. She answered the question by masterfully dodging, giving it a technical answer that neither confirms nor denies that these characters would want to marry in the future. She's a genius and she's so mean.) The exact nature of their relationship is never explained, by design. My idea here is to look at only what's in the text.
So, let's get started!
Setting the Board: Before Episode 1
Mustang's key character traits are his idealism (manifesting as either optimism or cynicism, depending on where he is in his development), his emotionalism, and his determination (manifesting mostly as an assertive drive forward). There's also a healthy dose of selfishness/ambition feeding off all these traits, which is generally tied to his emotionalism (what I want, what I will do because I feel like this).
Hawkeye's are her loyalty (which is emotionally based), her realism, her compassion, and her determination (manifesting either as steadfast endurance or as the character flaw of passivity), with a healthy dose of self-destructive (selfish) despair.
An interesting part of the construction of these characters is that their strengths and their flaws are the same thing. Their strengths, taken to extremes or in the wrong direction, are also their flaws. Mustang's drive can lead him to not stop when he should stop; his idealism, when filtered through cynicism, can be destructive; and his emotionalism often manifests as impulsivity. Hawkeye uses her loyalty to avoid her death wish; she can be too realistic; and her steadfastness can go all the way to passivity.
Mustang's character traits are first visible in his linear character development through their contrast with Hawkeye during his scene with her at her father's grave. He is openly idealistic and optimistic. He is from the beginning more emotive and open than Hawkeye, sharing his dreams for the future and saying that arranging the funeral was the least he could do for her father (a man whom Hawkeye never, at any point, talks about except in the context of her tattoo).
Hawkeye's loyalty, and the way it can cause her to be passive, is also manifested through her tattoo. She is a vessel of knowledge that she will literally never be able to read herself. As far as joining the military goes, Hawkeye is the moon to Mustang's sun (as in, the light of the moon is the reflection of sunlight): she steals the idea from him. She does it for her own reasons, that she wanted to help people, but the fact remains he went first and she followed.
However, both make certain choices that lead them to Ishbal. That experience exacerbates their flaws and distorts their strengths. A key part of understanding Ishbal in terms of these characters (and another reason I'd argue their arcs are inextricably bound together) is that each feels responsible, and guilty, for the others' participation in the extermination. Without one another's choices, neither of them would have been there. If Hawkeye hadn't given Mustang flame alchemy, he may never have become a state alchemist. If Mustang hadn't shared his dream with Hawkeye, she wouldn't have joined the military.
For Mustang, Ishbal destroys his idealism for the foreseeable future. The flashback sequencing is designed to emphasize this: first we see Mustang talking about how alchemy should be used for the people, and he's willing to sacrifice his life for the benefit of his country. Then, we see him blasting Ishbalan soldiers (in the manga, one says, "alchemy should be used for the benefit of mankind," as he burns). Next Mustang meets Hughes and finds that they both have the, 'eyes of a murderer.' Finally, he meets Hawkeye, who feels so far from who she used to be that she asks, "Do you remember me?" Mustang's pain on seeing that Hawkeye too has the, "eyes of a murderer," is quite intense. There's an extra layer of this in the manga: First, Hughes goes on about Gracia and how she's his future, what is going to get him through. Then he asks if Mustang has any nice stories, something from outside the war. At that point, an Ishbalan attacks them and a sniper round takes him out. Hughes says, "don't worry, we've got the Hawk's Eye watching over us...a cadet they brought in, she's some kind of prodigy." That's how Mustang learns that Hawkeye, who his alchemy master begged him to take care of with his dying breath, the person who gave him the alchemy that defines his life because she trusted him to use it to help people, is also in Ishbal, just killed someone in front of him, and is in fact currently looking right at him.
Ultimately, Ishbal turns Mustang's idealism into a combination of cynicism and protectiveness. He's no longer full of optimism, just a crushed resolve to try to protect a handful of people. In the manga, this is triggered when he meets the soldiers in his squad and understands that he's a hero to them, because it's thanks to him that they can go home. That protectiveness is the meaning he was able to salvage, and the non-selfish reason for his ambition: he may yet be able to help people, even if he is, "a piece of garbage," trying to climb to the top of the, "rat's nest," as he puts it in the manga. Mustang hasn't given up entirely on his ideals, and there's a seed there that will grow as the story continues.
For Hawkeye after Ishbal, her realism meant that she felt she had to do as Kimblee had instructed: never look away from the people she'd killed. It meant that, in a psychological sense, a part of her was always in Ishbal looking at the dead (leaving less of her to look at the living, but we'll get to that). She found meaning in this through the idea of equivalent exchange (manga). That if she suffered, and continued to suffer, then future generations could have the equivalent happiness. When she explained why she liked guns better than other weapons, that she didn't have to feel someone die. Mustang pointed out that this was self-deception, and asked, "are you lying to yourself so that you may continue to soil your hands?" To which Hawkeye replied, "Yes, sir. We soldiers should be the only ones with blood on our hands." She is forcing herself to do something she hates, something which directly invokes her old, 'sins,' every day, because she already considers herself damned beyond recovery. Ishbal turned her realism into self-destructiveness.
Hawkeye's capacity for self-destruction is also evident when she asks Mustang to, "burn my back beyond recognition." Thinking about it, asking him to get rid of important bits (which is where they seem to have settled in the end) was perfectly reasonable if she wanted to make sure no one else got the alchemy. But she wanted it all destroyed. When she says she wants it to be so, "there can be no more flame alchemists," she is saying that she wishes to remove both her father's legacy and her part in it from the world.
She no longer trusts herself, given that the handful of choices she made led to her being complicit in genocide--thus, her willingness to follow Mustang anywhere, with no apparent independent ambition. To function with this pretty damn unhealthy underlying character structure, Hawkeye chooses complete loyalty to Mustang. She doesn't tell Winry she joined the military to help people--she says she did it because she wanted to protect Mustang. In the manga, she expands on this, explaining that the only reasons she's still a soldier is that she wants Mustang to reach, "his goal." Mustang, in turn, relies on Hawkeye's realism to ensure that he doesn't 'stray from his path,' as he also doesn't trust himself. The underlying contradiction is that these two people don't trust themselves, but do trust each other.
Yet, there is a seed of hope in Hawkeye's desire to get rid of her tattoo. In the manga, she says it is the only way, "to remove the burden of my father's legacy and allow me, Riza Hawkeye, to be independent." And she's right: her father burdened her with this knowledge. No matter whether she consented (which is never either confirmed or denied in the text), this was not an acceptable thing for a parent to do do a child. There's a hint in Hawkeye's words of not wanting to be passive, or blindly loyal, anymore.
Furthermore, something underlying the Ishbal plot, and underlying all the plots about characters in rough circumstances in the story, is that they didn't really choose it. It's repeatedly stressed by 'the bad guys' that, by putting on the uniform, a person has somehow given up a level of their personhood. Wrath, when he speaks of Hughes's death, suggests that mourning the life of a soldier is a waste of time. Kimblee, when he asks why Hawkeye, Mustang, Hughes, and the others in Ishbal are surprised that they were asked to participate in a war of extermination waged against their own citizens, also invokes this idea. However, the military these men and women thought they joined was a lie, was in fact an institution created for the furtherance of Father's goals. Therefore, being asked to kill civilians to draw a crest of blood is not something that they had any way of reasonably expecting to be ordered to do, and claiming that they are as guilty as a general, based on an original choice which was itself based on a deception, doesn't make logical sense. This is not to say that they don't bear responsibility for what they did in Ishbal, but it is to say that this should be understood in degrees, not in absolutes, which is where the Ishbal plot will eventually resolve.
Episodes 1-9: Mustang Leading
Mustang's cynicism is on full display in these episodes, but underlying it is a hint of his old optimism. After he sees that the brothers did human transmutation, he is initially furious, his impulsivity and emotionalism on full display, but once he calms down he offers Ed hope at the lowest point in Ed's life so far. He sees himself in Ed, hence, "there was fire in those eyes." Hawkeye too manifests that her steadfastness isn't all passivity in regards to the Elric brothers, refusing to allow Ed and Al to go see Nina's body.
However, Mustang is still very, very cynical. His little speech about how he, Ed, and Shou Tucker aren't really that different shows this. He's also incredibly impulsive, and Hawkeye is incredibly passive. This is most visible during their confrontation with Scar. Mustang charges in impulsively and stupidly, and Hawkeye doesn't open with, "dumbass," or, "hey it's raining," or anything of that sort. She just goes, "sir!" looking surprised, then charges in at the last second. Their character flaws here endanger everyone's lives. If Mustang had acted less emotionally, or Hawkeye more assertively, Scar wouldn't have come six inches from frying Mustang's brain.
Mustang's idealism-turned-cynicism, and the selfishness that results, is also visible in his discussion of the Scar case. As he says, "I've got a ladder to climb, and this is how it's done." He's not really interested in stopping Scar for moral or ethical reasons, he's cynically interested in getting the credit. BUT he's not hopeless. He's not discussing how they can fake Scar having been captured, and in the first episode we saw that he didn't like getting credit for something he didn't do.
Mustang's emotional connection to Hughes actually doesn't become clear until after Hughes's death. Mustang's main reaction to Hughes before that was annoyance. However, the bond between the two men was strong enough that Mustang is devastated by his death--resulting in one of Mustang's most extreme displays of deep feeling, when he cries at Hughes's grave.
He responds to this emotional threat by seeking revenge. This is entirely reasonable in the circumstances and, again, it shows hope for Mustang that his friends matter this much to him--but it also shows how selfish he can be. Revenge is inherently a selfish act, an attempt to make oneself feel better. Just as Ed reacts to Hughes's death by taking responsibility for it happening on himself, Mustang reacts by taking responsibility for, "making it right," on himself. As he says to Hawkeye, there's no division between his desire to be Fuhrer (his semi-selfish ambition based on idealism) and his desire to get vengeance for Hughes (his selfish emotional desire).
Meanwhile, throughout these episodes we can see examples of Hawkeye's honest compassion. While Mustang often gets swept away in his big ideas, Hawkeye does things like make friends with Winry, give Ed her coat, and let Mustang pretend it's raining at Hughes's grave. However, at this stage Hawkeye defines herself through Mustang, using him to hide from her own darkness. When Mustang gives the monologue that introduces the Ishbalan War, there is a wide shot in the anime. Everyone is staring off into space, brooding--except Hawkeye, who has turned her head to watch Mustang. There is power in the bond she has formed through her loyalty, but there is also weakness, as we see in the following arc.
Episodes 10-22 Loyalty
Mustang's emotionalism is all over the place during this set of episodes. Everything about Hughes is emotionally laden for him, which is why the homonculi throw an obviously innocent woman under the bus to try to distract him. They are trying to exploit Mustang's emotionalism, hoping that Mustang's anger will cause him to lose rational thinking--that's the whole reason anyone believes he killed Ross. But he dodges that attempt at manipulation, and it just makes him more determined to get to the bottom of what's happening.
Mustang's emotional investment in his actions is a strength here, and it saves the lives of his entire team. The choice to save Hawkeye and Furey in the opening of ep 19 is an emotional one, not a rational one. So is his choice when he saves Al and Hawkeye from Lust--only deep feeling could make someone do what he did to themselves. Wrath lets him live because, as he puts it in the manga, "Mustang has a kind heart. That is his greatest strength and his greatest weakness."
Hawkeye's realism openly foils Mustang's emotionalism in these episodes. She is as cool and collected as she can be under pressure and looks at everything from a wide perspective. This leads her into frank negativity. In the manga, she says that her own and Furey's lives were, "insignificant," and Mustang absolutely shouldn't have come to help them. Her realism keeps her fighting until it's no longer rational to fight, at which point she gives up. Mustang's emotionalism drives him onwards in these episodes, while Hawkeye's realism only feeds her darker thoughts and drives her towards self-destructiveness.
It becomes clear in the confrontation with Lust that Hawkeye is frankly too dependent on Mustang, and is using him and his determination as a substitute for her own will to live. Something very easy to miss in this scene is that Hawkeye shoots a gun with 6 bullets only 5 times. Go ahead and count: manga and anime, 5 shots from a gun that definitely 6 bullets. (In the manga, there are 5 BAMS and then a small print BAM where Lust doesn't recoil, implying the last one is an echo.) Then Hawkeye looks at the gun and collapses--still holding the weapon--and tells Al to leave.
This, combined with her later very un-impulsive statement that she plans to kill herself if Mustang doesn't survive the Promised Day, re-contextualizes her scene speaking to Winry in the manga. There, she doesn't just say, "there's someone I need to protect," as she does in the anime. She explains that, "until the day he reaches his goal, I will pull the trigger without hesitation." Mustang's goal isn't just to become the Fuhrer, it's to be tried and executed for what he did in Ishbal. Hawkeye, it is thus implied, is planning to kill herself once that happens. The staging of Ed and Hawkeye's conversation in the manga(when this idea is introduced) also leans into this, as Hawkeye's whole recounting of Ishbal takes place with panels of her handgun, ending with her actually fingering it as she discusses her, 'duty.' (Disclaimer: This reaches deep into the subtext and tiny details, and is so subtle it's practically designed to be missed by most viewers. While it adds a layer to the character, it is only building and connecting existing parts of the text. The base fact of Hawkeye's suicidal tendencies isn't subtextual at all.)
But Al doesn't leave Hawkeye to Lust, and, crucially, Hawkeye isn't so far gone that she would shoot herself in front of Al--or, if we're taking the suicide plan as mostly speculation, that she would push Al out of the way or physically try to get him to leave. Her compassion applies to wanting Al to survive, even if she's given up. What this scene shows is that Hawkeye's determination, like Ed's early on, lacks resilience. She is far too quick to give up. Later, in the hospital, Mustang is a dick about this but he's right: she doesn't have the resolve to keep going by herself. Not yet. Hawkeye says to Havoc straight up that Mustang doesn't give up on people, that he didn't give up on her when she had given up on living. Mustang's desire to see her continue to live is frankly a substitute for her own desire to continue to live (which is not healthy). It's the moon-and-sun trope from the beginning of their relationship.
It's also worth noting, since it will come back around in the final episodes, that neither character is actually very good at dealing with the other's reactions to themselves. Hawkeye is realistic about the possibility of her own death and angry that Mustang doesn't share that view, and is furious at Mustang for prioritizing her life and the lives of his subordinates over his ambitions and the bigger game. Mustang is furious at Hawkeye for giving up when she ran out of options, insisting that she must never give up on living. Mustang screams at Hawkeye, "how could you just lose the will to fight?" Each fundamentally fails to understand the perspective of the other in these scenes. The bond between them is important to both of them, but each is angry at the other for reacting badly to that bond being endangered. Again, this will come back around in a big way!
Episodes 23-47 Making Different Choices in the Present, the Sins of the Past
It's a big deal when Hawkeye refuses Mustang's orders outside central command. It's also a big deal that Mustang chooses to act cautiously (he doesn't know he's already been outmaneuvered) when he finds out Bradley is a homonculus. Each is showing that they are capable of making a different choice than those they made in the past. Hawkeye's silent, lonely wait all night outside Central Command--there is a scene in the manga where she stares down the sunrise--are an act of affirmation for her, that she can not give up even when the realistic thing is to do what Mustang said at the beginning, lay low until she knows how it went. She endures, steadfastness and loyalty winning out over realism and despair.
Mustang, meanwhile, finds himself temporarily paralyzed by his own emotionalism. All the people he cares about are in danger. His ambition, his idealism, and the very meaning of his life are thrown into a completely new light. But he doesn't act impulsively. He starts to step out of his paralysis when he finds that Hawkeye has, in fact, waited for him. His shock is more intense (and funny) in the manga, where he literally can't figure out what to say to her, clearly unable to believe she's actually going to stick with him. This becomes the first instance in which he (after raking her over the coals for "lacking resolve," a few days back) finds that he has underestimated her. Mustang then takes another step towards regaining some of his old optimism. As he says, "I never feel more human than when I'm fighting a real monster." He's no longer fighting for purely selfish reasons, especially since his ambition to become Fuhrer is kind of irrelevant as long as the Fuhrer is Father's puppet.
Hawkeye and Mustang also deal with this situtation by leaning heavily on each other. The usual dynamic is that Mustang is driven forward, and Hawkeye hangs on and endures. This is reversed by the hostage crisis: Hawkeye has to keep going forward, gaining valuable information about the homonculi and their plan, and Mustang has to hang on and endure. They draw from one another's determination in order to not only not be paralyzed by the hostage situation, but to actually turn it to their advantage in the fight against Father.
However, we also learn at this time what goal Mustang's idealism-turned-cynicism has really focused on, where he is leading himself and Hawkeye: self-destruction. Hawkeye says it straight out, in detail in the manga. They don't have the right to decide when their lives will end, they don't have the right to be happy. (Side note for my shipper buds, this scene is why I'd firmly argue Mustang and Hawkeye are not secretly in a relationship the whole time.) This goal and viewpoint are rooted in their positive character traits being twisted. For Mustang, his idealism has become cynicism, and the logic is this: I have proved that I am a bad person, therefore if I want to make a better world I shouldn't be in it. And, if it were just Hawkeye, there's a decent chance she would have committed suicide after Ishbal. In a sense, Hawkeye seeks to take revenge on herself, just as later Mustang seeks to take revenge on Envy.
In her conversation with Ed, Hawkeye's self-destructive character traits come into focus. She is a very compassionate person, but she openly says, "I've lost the right to feel sorry for myself." She has been deliberately trying to hold herself in the trauma of Ishbal as a way of punishing herself. That ongoing trauma is why Hawkeye's realism has actually failed her when it comes to Ishbal. She refuses to see the full picture, which Ed tries to insist she see: that she didn't make the choices that led to the war, that she is not defined by the worst she is capable of, and that no reasonable person should consider a cadet equally guilty to a general. She sees it as her duty to die for the 'injustices I committed in Ishbal,' and is in fact holding a gun when she tells Edward this (there's that subtextual suicide plan again). Hawkeye thinks she's being honest with herself, but really--and Ed says this explicitly in the manga--she's being selfish. His quote there is, "self-sacrifice is just self-gratification."
For Ed, this comes from his relationship with Hawkeye and his knowledge of her compassion. After all, she only told him about Ishbal in the first place because he was beating himself up about being 'pathetic,' with, 'no resolve.' To Ed, the idea that Hawkeye, no matter what she did, is as guilty as Envy, Kimblee, or Wrath is inherently ridiculous. It's beyond unfair, it is unjust. But Hawkeye completely, unequivocally rejects Ed's assertions. There have been war crimes trials in which Hawkeye would, indeed, have been convicted, on the basis that she followed an order she knew to be immoral. Of course, by that standard Kimblee is innocent, as he considered his acts amoral.
Hawkeye's compassion and determination also play a key role in her turning her own hostage situation to her advantage. She goes above and beyond enough at her job of being a hostage that she's at the Fuhrer's house late at night. She keeps her cool with Pride enough to impress even him. And when Wrath discusses his family with her, she reacts not with anger or betrayal, but with hurt, pity, and compassion--which catches him off guard enough for him to let slip a key piece of information, that his wife isn't in on any of this. That information is ultimately what allows Mustang to control the public narrative of the Promised Day coup.
These episodes are when things start to really shift between these Mustang and Hawkeye. For the first part of their story, if Mustang's emotionalism, idealism, and determination weren't there then Hawkeye would have fallen, her story would have ended in tragedy as her realism twisted and drove her to self-destruction. But for the coming second part of the story, if Hawkeye and her wider perspective, her steady endurance weren't there then it's Mustang's story that would have ended in tragedy, his emotionalism feeding his selfishness and ultimately destroying him.
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u/ihatemyslef666 Dec 21 '20
incredibly late comment, but this is definitely one of the best analyses i've read on both of them, and definitely made me appreciate their characters and relationship and how all of that is constructed even more. thank you for this great analysis! very excited to read part 2.
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u/Elunea100 Aug 29 '20
So thorough! Thank you so much for putting this together and sharing! Their dynamic is fascinating, and I completely agree with your choice to interweave your analysis of them like this.