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Manga randomosities
I know very little about steampunk, and surely steampunk should involve more than just trains. That said, FMA sure feels steampunk to me.
Any week in which one encounters both a female shogun Yoshimune and the frighteningly brainy Major General Olivier Armstrong is a very good week. (Why FMA would not be a happy romp in Japanese: army titles. 'Nuff said.) That anent this metafandom post on authorial intent and female characters. The answer to the problem posed in that post seems to be having series created by women, if FMA and Oo-oku are anything to judge by.
I can't conceive a thing unless I see someone else doing it. Yoshinaga's authoritative, sexual, and charismatic Yoshimune is an eye-opener: how to be a sexual and procreative being with dignity, indeed. The real Yoshimune was rather abstemious in that respect, which I like to attribute to him having a thing going with Oo-oka Tadasuke though I'm sure he didn't. Cold fish, that man. OTOH you can make an excellent argument for Oo-oka having a thing for Yoshimune. Neither, however, was likely to grab unsuspecting gardeners for a romp in the bushes as manga Yoshimune does. On the other other hand it's distinctly possible that historical Yoshimune had trysts in the bath with his (female) bath attendants, since that bit Yoshinaga put in, about several people lying just outside the shogun's bed screens listening in on the pillow-talk in case his partners were to ask him for some special political favour, was a) quite accurate and b) a serious disinducement to copulation. Nobody listened in at the bath, which is why several shoguns' heirs had embarrasingly low-born mothers.
Any week in which one encounters both a female shogun Yoshimune and the frighteningly brainy Major General Olivier Armstrong is a very good week. (Why FMA would not be a happy romp in Japanese: army titles. 'Nuff said.) That anent this metafandom post on authorial intent and female characters. The answer to the problem posed in that post seems to be having series created by women, if FMA and Oo-oku are anything to judge by.
I can't conceive a thing unless I see someone else doing it. Yoshinaga's authoritative, sexual, and charismatic Yoshimune is an eye-opener: how to be a sexual and procreative being with dignity, indeed. The real Yoshimune was rather abstemious in that respect, which I like to attribute to him having a thing going with Oo-oka Tadasuke though I'm sure he didn't. Cold fish, that man. OTOH you can make an excellent argument for Oo-oka having a thing for Yoshimune. Neither, however, was likely to grab unsuspecting gardeners for a romp in the bushes as manga Yoshimune does. On the other other hand it's distinctly possible that historical Yoshimune had trysts in the bath with his (female) bath attendants, since that bit Yoshinaga put in, about several people lying just outside the shogun's bed screens listening in on the pillow-talk in case his partners were to ask him for some special political favour, was a) quite accurate and b) a serious disinducement to copulation. Nobody listened in at the bath, which is why several shoguns' heirs had embarrasingly low-born mothers.
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And yes, FMA runs to steampunk.
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The basic conceit of steampunk is that it's set in worlds where steam-based technology developed into what we would consider modern tech without the internal combustion engine replacing it. So you get the steam-driven computer, the steam-driven biplane. Generally the time period is somewhat behind ours, but not always. The stylistic stuff mentioned above holds true a depressing percentage of the time but is not actually a defining thing-- I have read (very good) steampunk set in the Mughal Empire in the 17th century, and there certainly wasn't any Victoriana in that.
Gearpunk has clockwork as the major tech instead of/in addition to steam.
FMA is kind of steampunky? It's hard to say. I think they have the internal combustion engine, but the aesthetics are very steampunk, in that you have very futuristic technology we don't have (automail) run by systems and extrapolated from systems that are not the futuristic ones we'd expect for that. But they also have alchemy, which muddies things-- there's magic in a lot of steampunk stuff, because, um, steam doesn't do that, but in most steampunk I've seen magic is clearly subordinate to gadgetry and used to provide handwavy explanations, and in FMA I think alchemy may be the basis of a lot of their tech. On the other hand, things not being obviously magical isn't part of the definition of steampunk either, so it may qualify. It certainly feels steampunk because it has the retro-future thing going.
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