Fullmetal Alchemist: Finding the truth behind the truth

What is the truth behind the truth?

Hiromu Arakawa’s magnum opus, Fullmetal Alchemist, is an absolute triumph of shonen action storytelling and, for my money, probably the best the genre has to offer outside of Mob Psycho 100. I watched all of it towards the end of 2024, and it has since implanted itself so firmly in my brain that it’s basically become a part of my personality. And I think the show hit me as hard as it did because it’s extremely opinionated - it has a lot to say about a lot of things, and its deft exploration of its characters, its world and the political complexities rooted in it are used say some really poignant things about our world and its political complexities. But what this story has to say is a little less static than most other anime, because unlike most other anime, Fullmetal Alchemist exists twice.

Arakawa’s original manga, which began publication in 2001, got adapted into two different anime - 2003’s Fullmetal Alchemist, and 2009’s Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. This is highly atypical when it comes to anime production; see, anime prior to the streaming era had a unique problem: since they were produced for television on a regular ongoing basis, anime adaptations of manga often had to contend with the ever-present threat of literally running out of source material to adapt, which often led to the creation of anime-exclusive story arcs whose primary purpose was to fill for time so that animation studios could wait for more manga chapters. Fullmetal Alchemist was a little different, though - while Brotherhood focused on more closely adapting Arakawa’s original story thanks to that story having been largely complete by the time it started airing, the 2003 adaptation starts with the same characters, setting and general plot beats, but with significantly less source material to work with, director Seiji Mizushima and head writer Sho Aikawa take those elements and spin them out into an entirely different story with an entirely different conclusion. As a result, there are two different stories titled Fullmetal Alchemist - both with very different opinions, but both equally opinionated all the same. So what do these two stories have to say?

Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist tells the story of Edward and Alphonse Elric, two brothers from the land of Amestris who practice alchemy, a magical science which allows for the controlled deconstruction and reconstruction of matter. The brothers are on a quest to find the Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary item said to be able to bypass the most fundamental principle of alchemy: in order to gain something, something of equal value must be lost - that is the law of Equivalent Exchange. However, the brothers don’t seek the Philosopher’s Stone for power or glory or even just scientific inquiry - they need the power of the Philosopher’s Stone to restore their bodies, and in so doing, undo their greatest mistake - as children, they tried to bring their mother back to life through the taboo of human transmutation, with the whole process leaving Ed less one arm and one leg, Al as merely a soul hastily bonded to a suit of armour, and both of them with a horrifying, barely-alive abomination where their mother should have been.

In order to secure funding and support for their quest, they get themselves involved in the Amestrian military, who also happens to run the nation’s government. As they search for leads on the Philosopher’s Stone, they make numerous friends and enemies both in and out of the military, confront adversaries and troubling histories, and eventually come to learn the truth about the Philosopher’s Stone: countless human lives must be sacrificed as part of its creation. As the two dive deeper into the sordid history of the Philosopher’s Stone, they also learn more about the equally sordid history of Amestris, and uncover another truth - the genocidal war which Amestris waged on the neighbouring nation of Ishval several years prior was simply one part of a grand government conspiracy to create a Philosopher’s Stone so large and powerful that it would allow one man, who had established Amestris in order to monopolise the flow of all alchemical energy in the region, to consume, and ultimately become, the metaphysical manifestation of truth itself. From here, the boys and the countless people they’ve connected with learn overcome their own prejudices and break down the divisions imposed upon them in order to defeat the core of the rotten system that threatens to destroy the world in order to maintain and expand its own power. Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist is, at its core, a story about how a better world is possible, but only if people fight for that world together.

Mizushima and Aikawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist tells the story of Edward and Alphonse Elric, two brothers from the land of Amestris who practice alchemy, a magical science which allows for the controlled deconstruction and reconstruction of matter. The brothers are on a quest to find the Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary item said to be able to bypass the most fundamental principle of alchemy and, indeed, the world’s only universal truth: in order to gain something, something of equal value must be lost - that is the law of Equivalent Exchange. However, the brothers don’t seek the Philosopher’s Stone for power or glory or even just scientific inquiry - they need the power of the Philosopher’s Stone to restore their bodies, and in so doing, undo their greatest mistake - as children, they tried to bring their mother back to life through the taboo of human transmutation, with the whole process leaving Ed less one arm and one leg, Al as merely a soul hastily bonded to a suit of armour, and both of them with a horrifying, barely-alive abomination where their mother should have been.

In order to secure funding and support for their quest, they get themselves involved in the Amestrian military, who also happens to run the nation’s government. As they search for leads on the Philosopher’s Stone, they make numerous friends and enemies both in and out of the military, confront adversaries and troubling histories, and eventually come to learn the truth about the Philosopher’s Stone: countless human lives must be sacrificed as part of its creation. And it’s really just all downhill from here. The brothers are faced with seemingly endless moral quandaries and ethical dilemmas as they discover that events in Amestris - including the genocidal war which it waged on the neighbouring nation of Ishbal several years earlier - have been due to the machinations of the homunculi, a group of artificial beings created by the process of human transmutation who seek to become human. Because they’re not human… right?

The boys’ journey from here continues to challenge everything they’ve held true until now: Ed kills someone, they see countless people die for no reason, they learn that countless more people will die as part of a conspiracy to create a Philosopher’s Stone not so the homunculi can become human, but purely so one woman can artificially extend her life by a few years, and finally, the boys learn the truth: that there is no truth. There is no equivalent exchange. Ed literally dies and learns that what lies beyond the so-called Gate of Truth is another world - our world circa World War II - and that all alchemical reactions are powered by the souls of people from our world that have died and gone to the Gate. And so Ed, coming back to thanks to Al sacrificing himself, returns the favour, bringing Al back by sending his soul through the Gate to live out the rest of his days in Fucking Real Life Germany while his brother remembers literally nothing about what happened and… [sigh] Mizushima and Aikawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist is a story about… Something. I mean, it has to be, right? There’s clearly some truth this show is trying to communicate, but what is that truth?

Look, it’s probably not a surprise that of the two adaptations of Fullmetal Alchemist, I prefer the more optimistic Brotherhood. But 2003 perplexed me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it - its conclusion was so baffling that my need to make it make sense felt like something stuck in my teeth. I knew this story had something to say, but I couldn’t figure out what that was, and it was driving me insane. There had to be an answer, and I just didn’t have it.

So maybe the first and most obvious place to look for an answer is in the show’s epilogue film, Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa. I’ve got… real mixed feelings about this film, man. Like, of course the animation is stellar, the action is well-choreographed and it does some interesting things with its characters - particularly how it wraps up the story with Envy and Hohenheim, and I especially like what it does with Wrath. But by that same token, the absolutely baffling worldbuilding detail that the other side of the gate only has uranium-powered nuclear fission because some random wacko from Amestris discovered it and brought it over because he tried to transmute a zombie army to fight Ed and Al for him is, like, self-evidently silly? And the decision to make the real life version of Maes Hughes a literal Nazi just feels really mean-spirited.¹

But to its credit, Shamballa did, in fact, give me an answer. I got my answer specifically in this scene near the middle of the film. Ed is having a conversation with Fritz Lang, a Jewish filmmaker who is the other side’s version of King Bradley. They talk about the concept of parallel worlds, the lines between reality and fantasy, and the present political situation in Germany - primarily the details of the nascent Nazi party and its ethnonationalist political program, along with its plans to drop nuclear bombs² through the gate as a means of gaining control of Shamballa, which - according to their more occult beliefs - will allow them to gain control of the entire world. The scene ends with this exchange:

Lang: “I’m one of the Jews that they want to get rid of, and after they’ve exploited my talents, they’d cast me aside. So I cast them off first. Reality is just a knotted mess I choose to avoid.”

Ed: “You think you’re too good for the world, but really, you’re afraid of the risk… just trying to avoid being forced out of your dream.”

“You’re trying to avoid being forced out of your dream.” It basically required the film spelling its thesis statement out to me in order for me to finally get the picture, but we got there. The truth of Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is this: you cannot substitute fantasy for reality. You cannot change the world by merely imposing your ideals onto it and expecting it to work out - you have to understand and accept the world as it exists in front of you in order to confront it and change it for the better. And y’know what? I like this as a central theme. It’s maybe executed with a little more pessimism than I’d prefer, but it’s a good message overall. It’s giving… historical materialism.

But while this exchange was an answer, it wasn’t the answer. In many ways, the knowledge of what the show was trying to say left me with more questions about how it chose to say it. Why is it our world that sits on the other side of the gate? Why is it souls from our side that are the power source for alchemy? Is the contrast between the worlds on both sides of the gate meant to be an allegory for the distinction between an idealised fictional world and the real one? Because if that’s the case - and in many ways, the text seems to indicate that it is - then why did the series bother breaking down Ed’s ideals in the first place? Especially since for all of the knowledge Ed gained about how the world works, he didn’t really seem to actually learn much of anything.

Okay, I’m going to talk about Brotherhood again, but I promise I’m going somewhere with this. One of the really neat things that show does in the back end is it effectively pairs each of its main players with a villain who represents their central character flaw, with their relationship culminating in a final conflict - Mustang (and kind of everyone, but mostly Mustang) has his arc culminate in the confrontation with Envy, where he ultimately realises his need to let go of his darker momentary impulses and prejudices in order to envision the larger picture, allowing his own envy to swallow itself. Scar’s arc culminates in the fight with Wrath, where he learns that while his own wrath is justified, true justice for him and for all of Ishval will require more than just destroying the old - it will also mean creating something new out of it, thus conquering his wrath not by destroying it, but by allowing it to fade away. Armstrong’s final fight with Sloth represents his desire and resolve to overcome the guilt he felt over his inaction in the face of the horrific injustice of the Ishvalan War of Extermination - the guilt of having been the good man doing nothing. And finally, Ed’s final confrontation is with Pride, because the one thing that Ed spends the entire series learning is that he can’t do everything himself - even with the power of alchemy, he is just one person, and one person cannot change the world no matter how hard they try. Ed’s entire character arc is centred on his journey to swallow his pride and accept help from other people. That’s why he gives up his ability to perform alchemy at the end of the series, because he’s finally learned that he doesn’t need to perform alchemy when he can rely on others to help him and do what he cannot. That’s a huge part of what makes Brotherhood’s ending so satisfying to me: everyone goes through a complete character arc, learning something about themselves and becoming better people through that process, which in turn allows them to change the world for the better together.

I’m not sure that even happens in 2003. Mustang pisses away his chance at leading Amestris by impulsively fighting and killing Bradley despite no one knowing his nature as a homunculus; Scar turns a whole bunch of Amestrian soldiers into glue at the cost of his own life, ultimately changing nothing about the conflict between Amestris and Ishbal; Armstrong doesn’t even get a character arc, and Ed ultimately throws his life in Amestris away playing self-sacrificial ping-pong with Al, vowing to find a way back home only for him to conclude that he has to sacrifice himself again, permanently severing himself from everyone who has ever cared about him all to ensure the gate between worlds can be closed for good. He doesn’t learn anything - no one does. Why does no one in this show learn their god damned lesson? This was the question that I ultimately arrived at. And funnily enough, it was also the answer.

For a while, I thought that the decision to take the story in the direction they did was Mizushima and Aikawa’s attempt at deconstructing Arakawa’s story before she’d even finished telling it. Cynical, but not outside the realm of possibility when we’re talking about male writers adapting a woman’s story. But I realised that Fullmetal Alchemist was written at a time when Arakawa hadn’t fully set out what each of her characters’ arcs would be, which meant that these characters had to be interpreted on the fly. And if you can’t adapt a character arc that doesn’t exist… maybe you examine the effects of that arc not happening. If the beating heart of Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist is its characters coming to understand that solidarity, cooperation - maybe even brotherhood - is what will allow them to change the world, then perhaps Mizushima and Aikawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist is best understood as an examination of what happens when those characters don’t reach that understanding.

Mustang doesn’t learn to see the bigger picture, leaving himself at the mercy of his impulses. Scar allows his fury to take him to the grave because he never learns to envision creation after destruction. Ed’s ideals are constantly challenged because he keeps trying to force the world around him to fit his narrow view of “equivalent exchange,” and he continually comes up short. He tries and tries to stick to his principles, to impose his ideals on the world through alchemy and sheer force of will, only to keep discovering again and again that he does not understand how the world works - he doesn’t even understand how alchemy works. He falls into the other side of the gate - the real world - for much the same reason that Mustang throws away his ambitions, the same reason that Scar dies needlessly: Ed wants to change the world, but the world is so much bigger than he could even begin to imagine, and it… consumes him. If Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist is about people learning that solidarity and cooperation is how we change the world, then Mizushima and Aikawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist is about people failing to understand the world that they desperately want to change - it’s about good people who don’t learn their lesson until it’s too late.

For all of the ways in which I prefer Brotherhood to its predecessor, there is one criticism that I would be remiss in not levying: Brotherhood is written and produced under the assumption that the viewer has already seen Fullmetal Alchemist. It’s not an unreasonable assumption, but it’s still a decision that has a pretty noticeable affect on the show’s pacing and structure, with the earlier episodes rushing through a lot of key plot points and even just outright cutting some story elements altogether. And yet, the fact that Brotherhood is intentionally a companion piece to the 2003 anime means that the story of Fullmetal Alchemist gets to uniquely exist in conversation with itself, and in effect act as two halves of one whole story - one about the meaning of “the truth”.

A pivotal moment in the early stages of Fullmetal Alchemist is set up by Dr Marcoh asking Ed and Al to uncover “the truth behind the truth”. And while it is primarily a riddle that leads the boys to learn how to interpret his research on the Philosopher’s Stone, I think it’s a question that sets up the audience to consider something fundamental: the difference between knowing the truth and understanding it. Because to know the truth of the world is one thing - to know this truth is to know the world is a deeply cruel and unjust place; to know this truth is to risk succumbing to it. But’s another thing entirely to understand that truth - to understand why the world is so cruel and unjust, and to understand the ways in which that cruelty and injustice can be challenged. And I think that synthesising the two stories titled Fullmetal Alchemist in this way leads us to a conclusion more cohesive than either of those two stories could tell on their own.

Fullmetal Alchemist asks us to reveal the truth of the world, and to face that truth, and all the cruelty and injustice it entails, head-on. But it also asks us to not face that burden alone. It asks us to know our enemies as the arbiters of the system which creates that cruelty and injustice, that “truth”. It asks us to find our allies, however unlikely they may seem, so that we can fight against the “truth” imposed upon us by that system. The truth alone can consume you. But you can change the world, change the “truth”, so long as you uncover the truth that lies behind it.

“Who even needs alchemy when I’ve got them?”