“It's their choice. They choose their own path.”
Riza Hawkeye Quotes
2 quotes from Fullmetal Alchemist, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.
The officer who agreed to guard Mustang's back and to shoot him herself if he strays from the road he claims to be on. Narrates his ambition back to him in the flattest available register.
“You may not want to display your ambition quite so nakedly, sir.”
The Mustang plot needs a device that lets the audience see his ambition without him ever confessing it, and Hawkeye is that device. She narrates him to himself, in the flattest possible register, with a sir attached. The joke about rank is doing real structural work: the only person permitted to audit a colonel out loud is the subordinate who has already agreed to kill him if the audit ever fails.
Read Riza Hawkeye's story from the start
Every line above is a fragment. The manga is where the fragments come from, and the print edition is the one this site checks its quotes against.
Find Fullmetal Alchemist on Amazon
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Links on this page are affiliate links, which cost you nothing extra. They never influence what appears on this site or what the commentary says about it.
Five words of doctrine that the rest of her arc spends its time testing. Hawkeye is the officer who agreed to guard Mustang's back and shoot him herself if he strays, an arrangement built entirely on the idea that people are answerable for the roads they pick. Ishval is what happens when that principle meets orders, and the series makes her carry the contradiction rather than resolving it for her.