Team Members:

Gabrielle Sarao: Methodology 

Donovan Grahame: Materials, Analysis & Discussion

Jialing Hu: Materials

Maya Lorton: Analysis 

 

Methodology

The goal of this project was to compare the gender languages of two characters in a given Japanese anime, manga, or other form of pop culture. Both the characters had to be from the same show and the same gender. In order to gain prime results, we aimed to find characters that had very different personalities as far as masculinity or femininity. 

To pick the characters and anime we wanted to analyze, we decided to pick an anime that was popular and that the majority of members could understand. This anime is called Fullmetal Alchemist, and the characters chosen were the protagonists, Edward and Alphonse Elric. 

Fullmetal Alchemist is a Japanese Shonen manga and anime. It is set in a fictional universe where alchemy is an advanced natural technique revolving around scientific laws of equivalent exchange. The series follows the adventures of two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, who are searching for a philosopher’s stone to restore their bodies after a failed attempt to bring their dead mother back to life using alchemy.

Edward and Alphonse seemed like ideal characters to analyze for this project, for not only are they the main characters, but they have extremely different personalities. The episodes we analyzed were episode 2 to have a solid introduction to the character’s personalities, and later episodes (49,51,52) to see how the character’s personalities and gendered language have changed.     

Edward Elric

Edward (Ed) is the older brother of the Elric brothers and is the main protagonist of the story. Ed has taken his younger brother Alphonse (Al) with him to search for the philosopher’s stone to restore their bodies after they tried to revive their mother using alchemy. However, due to the laws of equivalent exchange in Alchemy, Al lost his entire body and Ed lost an arm and leg.

Edward Analysis

Ed, similar to other Shonen manga protagonists, speaks in a masculine tone with aggressive mannerisms. However, Ed is known for being especially angry among other Shonen protagonists since he is consistently made fun of for being short and looking younger than he is. The most frequent use of masculine features is Ed’s sentence enders. Almost every sentenced Ed said in the episodes analyzed were ended by either ”ぞ”,”ぜ”,”な”. Ed also sometimes speaks in the Japanese command form when they are fighting in the story. He speaks this way to both his opponent and his allies. 

Ed didn’t always speak in a very masculine form. In the second episode of the show, they showed both Ed and Al before their mother’s death. Ed spoke in a neutral tone for the small amount that they showed but changed very quickly once their mother died. In one of the very few scenes that showed their mother alive, Ed said “落書きじゃないよ” which is not similar to the sentences that he would say only 5 minutes later in the episode. In episode 2, there was a scene of Ed and Al at their mother’s grave and Ed’s entire speech changed. Ed said “お母さんのお葬式にも帰って来なかたんだぞ” at that scene as well as “お母さんを元に戻せないかな” which shows how quickly his speech changed. This same speech style continues in the future in the story as Ed continues to be aggressive and speaks in a strong masculine style. In episode 49, at the climax of the story, Ed is fighting an opponent with a few of his allies. During this fight Ed turns to one of his allies who is talking to him and he says “うるせぇ！お前まだ腕が本調子じゃねえだろ.” Ed still has the same style of speaking even when he is talking to an ally, enemy, or superior, which is common for a Shonen protagonist to do.

Alphonse Elric

Alphonse (Al) is the younger brother of the Elric brothers. Al is being taken along with Ed as they try to find the philosopher’s stone in order to restore their bodies after trying to revive their mother. Al lost his body but his brother Ed was able to transfer his soul over to a suit of armor which was a substitute for his body. A cause of Ed’s aggression is that people tend to think that Al is the stronger older brother because of his body being a large suit of armor. Ed and Al have the same goal throughout the story but as the story unfolds, they split off from each other in order to stop an evil force from abusing the power of the philosopher’s stone.

Alphonse Analysis

Alphonse speaks very differently than his brother Ed. While Ed uses strong masculine speech and has an overall aggressive demeanor, Al is the complete opposite. Al speaks in neutral speech with rare uses of masculine speech and has a kinder personality than Ed. Before their mother’s death, Al spoke in a neutral tone and even after her death, he still spoke the same unlike Ed. In episodes 50-52, Al is fighting two of the antagonists of the story. Even during the fight, Al continues to speak in a neutral tone. During episode 52, Al speaks to one of the opponents during the fight. Some of the quotes from it are “囮だよ・それだとみんなを救えない・なんでにたくなの？” which shows that Al pretty much speaks in a neutral speech style the entire time. During episode 51, one of Al’s allies that was helping him fight was hurt which made Al use a little bit of masculine speech but was majorly neutral. At the end of that episode, Al says “一緒に戦う。” which seems strange since he is declaring a fight but continues to speak in a neutral style.

However, as said before, there are some times that Al speaks in a masculine speech style. Al spoke a little in masculine form while his friend was injured in episode 51 with one of his quotes being “僕がたすけるな.” Al said both “僕” and ended his sentence with “な” which is very rare for Al. The other instances of Al speaking in a masculine form that were analyzed were when Al was speaking to either Pride, who is younger than him, and Winry who is a woman. We think that the reason why Al spoke in a masculine form to both of them is to try and sound “macho.” The instance we got of Al speaking to Winry in a masculine form was at the end of episode 2 when Al said “兄さん、試験大丈夫かな” with his sentence ender being ”な.” The quotes that were said to Pride was during the fights of episodes 50-52. Al had quotes like “どうかな？” and “離せ” which show the usage of a masculine sentence ender and the command form. An interesting observation that we found during these episodes is that Al would speak to Pride in a masculine form since Pride is both younger than Al and was his opponent for the fight. However, Al spoke to Kimblee, the other opponent of the fight, in neutral form without any masculine sentence enders. We think that the only reason why Al spoke to Pride in a masculine tone was because he was younger, not because he was an opponent. 

Data 

Episode 2

Alphonse Quotes	兄さん、なかへんだよ	兄さん、試験大丈夫かな	ｘ	ｘ	ｘ	ｘ
Edward Quotes	落書きじゃないよ	お母さんのお葬式にも帰って来なかったんだぞ	お母さんを元に戻せないかな	やめろ	ああ、ひょとするとひょとするかもしれないな	今度こそあたりだといいな

 

Episode 49

Alphonse Quotes	僕のせいだ	x
Edward Quotes	うるせぇ！お前まだ腕が本調子じゃねえだろ	今は、自分じしに事だけにスンにしろ

 

Episode 51

Alphonse Quotes

離せ！

いやだって言ってるだろ

僕がたすけるな

諦めらないで

一緒に戦う

 

Episode 52

Alphonse Quotes

囮だよ

それだとみんなを救えない

なんでにたくなの

どうかな？

 

Conclusion

Even though both Alphonse and Edward are brothers and have the same goal, they act very differently from each other. The language between the two is very different since Ed uses a lot of masculine sentence enders (な、ぜ、ぞ), masculine pronouns (僕、俺、お前) and command form while Al uses very neutral speech with a few exceptions of using a masculine sentence ender. The demeanor of these characters are also a complete contrast. Alphonse is either calm normally or nervous during fights while Edward has a short fuse so he is always aggressive in fights and sometimes is aggressive even in normal situations. The characters are greatly written since they are a duo for most of the story and are complete contrasts of each other but they end up working well together. Ed is someone who uses his aggression in fights and wants to become stronger while Al didn’t want to fight a lot unless it was absolutely necessary. Ed is the cliché Shonen protagonist who is aggressive but Al fits the counterpart that is needed in every story in order to balance out the characters’ personalities. Both characters changed throughout the story. Ed changed at the start of the story when his mother died since his speech became masculine. Al’s speech didn’t change throughout the story but his mannerisms did. At the start of the story, Al was very passive but he grew as a character and became stronger by the end. Al didn’t become aggressive like Ed but he became more mature. However, he still didn’t speak in a masculine form like the majority of the characters in the story.