Hello and welcome back to Favourite Character Praise Friday!
This is one of my absolute favourite posts to write and I hope you enjoy my
picking apart of my favourite characters enough to stick around while I examine
my next victim, I mean, character. Don’t worry, I do not rank these characters
in a particular order, it just so happens that some characters are better worth
sharing praise for at a different point in time to others! Remember, every
fifth instalment is Least Favourite Character Praise Friday, so keep an eye out
for me probing at characters I can’t stand and raving about how well they were
written in order to evoke such a reaction.
So, who is the subject of my next Favourite Character Praise Friday?
Riza Hawkeye from the Fullmetal Alchemist Franchise
Warning! The following content will contain spoilers for the Fullmetal Alchemist Franchise!
So, who is my first victim, post-hiatus? Riza Hawkeye from
the Fullmetal Alchemist Franchise. I’ll admit, you’ll be seeing a fair amount
of her this month as she is one of my all-time-favourites. I actually wrote an
essay about her for university coursework because a friend of mine insulted her
and her character arc.
I have been a fan of Riza’s character for many reasons, and
not just because of her heavily implied romantic relationship with Roy Mustang,
despite my shipping it. I generally love seeing such a complicated character be
presented. Hiromu Arakawa gave us an absolute gem with Riza, being a
multi-faceted, insubordinate yet trustworthy character with an immensely
well-crafted story, which interweaves perfectly with her perceived love
interest.
I feel like a lot can be learned about Riza from both a
stand-alone character perspective but also in the idea of writing an
established relationship, whether romantic or platonic.
The first thing I think that I, as a writer, learned from
the way Riza was written would be that dry humour is equally as effective. When
I was writing, particularly for young adults, prior to exposing myself to
Arakawa’s content, the majority of the humour I used was loud and boisterous,
with characters poking fun out of each other, bawdy banter and crude jokes. I
even once had a character dare his best friend to carry him on his back in a
pair of golden high heeled boots that belonged to another one of their friends.
While these aspects of humour worked, especially in circumstances where
characters are either immensely comfortable with one another, or are in a 21
Dares type of scenario, they weren’t necessarily the be-all and end all of
humour. Riza’s means of joking with her superior, Roy, tended to be similar in reference
to what she would say, however, her delivery was usually quiet, snide and
sharp. In their case, it tended to be quips about Roy’s inability to use his
alchemy in wet environments, which became a running joke throughout the
franchise, particularly as Riza had snubbed him as being useless, as if his
other military training was surplus compared to his alchemic prowess. Observing
this as someone consuming this content exposed me to a more adult and mature
method of sharing how a character may feel about a companion, and establishing
their rapport for the readers / consumers. I thought this was really
interesting!
Another aspect of Riza’s character that I adored to no end
was how serious she was in contrast to the other characters in her company.
Despite her being a lieutenant in the military, she is surrounded by young and boisterous
male characters that tend to be over-dramatic when left to their own devices.
She, in contrast, is significantly more reserved and stern, yet still gets
along very well with her colleagues, despite the differences in their behaviour
and outlook. In some instances, it is the way in which they share trauma, with
many of the older characters in the series having served in the military during
the wall in Ishval, however, even with that in mind, they do not tend to
discuss those events due to them being too horrific. I found Riza’s perspective
on her actions in Ishval as interesting when compared to other characters like
Kimblee, who seemed remorseless. In contrast, her reaction to the atrocities
that took place was that she deserved to be executed for the war crimes she
committed, and she was willing to serve her country until she was granted the
chance to die by court martial as she felt she deserved.
The last thing was how to portray a different type of
devotion. Regardless of how one looks at the relationship between Roy and Riza,
romantic or platonic, their storylines are closely interwoven to demonstrate
how close the pair are. The level of trust they have in each other is hard to
pull-off in fiction, in my experience, without the action coming across as
forced. However, Roy and Riza are constantly demonstrating that they will help
one another when they need it, with Riza saving Roy’s life as early as episode
five, and him returning the favour by episode nineteen. They are co-dependent
on one another, sharing the same goals and ideals, deciding it would be better
for them to be punished for what they did at war, instead of getting on with
their lives as if nothing happened, or ending their lives themselves. Which,
ultimately, made Riza’s declaration that she had “no intention of going on by
[herself]” toward the end of the series to be much more emotive, as she never
wanted to end her life by suicide. This is, likely due to the fact that
military systems tend to consider suicide or attempting to do so as cowardice.
Ultimately, I love Riza’s character, regardless of what she
taught me. I hope that my analysis will help you see her in a new light!
Please, if you have opinions on Riza, feel free to share
them with me! Don’t forget you can check out my previous Character Praise by
looking through the hashtags below.
And remember!
Per Aruda Ad Astra!
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